Here's an article from 2006, on what's going to happen in Canada if the fertility rate - currently between 1.3 and 1.7 - doesn't get up to replacement level. By 2015, there will be more people over the age of 65 than there will be under age 15. Graphed by age, Canada's population will look like an inverted pyramid. Who's going to support the elderly? That is, us? Good question.
A couple of bits from the article:
What's most interesting is that the most serious decline in fertility is affecting those whom the nation would most like to see as parents. The highest-paid, highest-educated women are forgetting about motherhood entirely or seriously reducing their number of desired offspring in what has been called a revolution in fertility. ... higher-income, professional women aren't marching with their feet to protest the dearth of truly family-friendly policies; they are responding pragmatically by first delaying child-bearing and then having only one child or remaining childless.
These missing 'family-friendly' policies are precisely the ones that my sister-in-law's childless co-workers object to as 'perks'. Why should there be family health insurance/ onsite day care/ maternity or paternity leave/ absences to take care of sick children? they argue. After all, the childless aren't benefitting by these policies, so they're unfair. In the larger social context of "policies that it might be a good idea to put in place, to persuade women to have children at all", however, these policies make sense. All working mothers already know what recent research has demonstrated ("Mothering and the Workplace"), that childless women advance faster in their careers; that for women, success in a career vs having children is a choice, and one that they tend to delay making. Women delay having children, have fewer children, or have none. This is demographically a time-bomb.
Margaret Somerville argues that
... delaying or avoiding child-bearing as just another aspect of society's drift toward a culture of "intense individualism," where children are seen more as "a desirable thing to have, rather than as new individuals to repopulate the world."
In a culture driven largely by the rights of adults to reproduce on their own timeline, to have access to the technology that affords reproduction at later ages, to limit reproduction in order to better pursue a career path, what may have fallen by the wayside is the consideration of the greater good for society, Prof. Somerville says.
This may be part of the reason for the lower fertility rates, but Prof. Somerville is missing some practical concerns. A recent British study found that the reason women were delaying motherhood wasn't because they were being selfish individualists who didn't want to benefit their society, but because they didn't have the money to support one. It is all very well to say that people ought to be willing to make sacrifices for the good of their society, but when it comes to parenting, at least in Canada, the sacrifices are overwhelmingly made by women. Those that have the opportunity to delay motherhood and thus decrease its negative effects on their careers and lifetime incomes are rationally likely to do that.
The rational social response is to increase the incentives for women to have children. Increase family-friendly policies in workplaces; subsidize child care and make it well-paid; stop penalizing women for "selfishly taking time off work" for maternity leave; that sort of thing. If they were doing any of these things in Japan, their current age-demographic graph wouldn't look so much like a mushroom. As it is, women in Japan are overwhelmingly choosing to have one child, or none.
What are the results of the imploding fertility rates in Japan? To quote the same article:
The economy will not be able to get enough skilled work force for its manufacturing and services sectors. Labour would become costlier, increasing the cost of production. There will be more elders to tend, straining the medical and pension systems. The social sector expenditure by the Government will have to increase. By 2025, it is expected that there will be two dependents for every three workers. A drastic fall indeed from 1:12 in the year 1950. The dwindling work force would also result in lower purchasing power and reduced demand for goods and services. The domestic market will shrink, production will fall, as will the Government’s revenue, forcing it to manage higher medical and pension expenses with a lower income.Family-friendly policies are not 'unfair perks for selfish jerks' who self-indulgently decided to pop out a sprog or too. They're essential to maintain society; to make women willing - and able - to have children and raise them. Parents are doing a massive social good in bearing and raising children, and it is the job of society to encourage us to carry on the good work. Otherwise, fewer and fewer of us, particularly women, will choose to do it.
