please respond

Another very insightful post. You’re perfectly right to point out that the political class and the ‘ordinary’ people need to be discussing this as dispassionately as possible and give it the kind of respect which the environmental debate is now starting to generate.

In the end I think were alking about sustainable populations – what is sustainable from an economic, social welfare, environmental and also cultural point of view.

My guess is that it is the ‘cultural’ part which makes some people nervous of discussing the whole subject as population change leads to cultural and ultimately political change. Or to put it in simpler terms, one culture or languages loses its perstige or domination in its historic territory.

Demographers should not be afraid to tackle this question as well as the economic and health-care side of the demographic change.

This I guess is Steyn’s reason for writing but it shouldn’t be discounted because of that. I have no doubt that cultures or rather languages like France/French and UK/English can accomodate the demographic change – if the birth rate keeps to around 1.9 or replacement. However, as I’ve corresponded with you in the past, I’m afraid very little is done in terms of academic research about the effects of a low birth-rate on a weaker linguistic community, like my own Welsh-speaking community, or even possibly an official state language like Estonian or Lativan.

It would be instructive to read research on a situation of a community with an historic problem of inter generational language transference (parent/s not passing on language to children) coupled with a non-replaceable birth-rate – a double whammy in effect.

Linguistic communities with this language transference problem already live with an actual non-replacable birth rate even if the actual ‘real’ birth rate is higher. This is one topic which is not dealt with by academic nor government institutions in the communities which it effects – Wales, Basques, Bretons etc. The problem is further compunded if the labour market deficiency, which a now low birth-rate has partly produced, is dependent on ‘importing’ labour from outside the linguistic community – a population which is unlikely to be linguistically assimulated by a weak linguitic community.

The article in the Economist gave a deliberate positive spin I believe for political reasons, although, here in the UK, the forecast isn’t as bad as one assumed. However, one doesn’t have to agree with Steyn to agree that demographic change will have massive cultural and linguistic effects on Europe, both East and West, and for different communities for different reasons.

I hope we can move on and debate these possible changes in the professional and dispassionate manner in which you’ve done. But for that to happen then people need to be aware of the situation.

It would be good if people who have a cutural and linguistic concern could contribute to the debate without it being, either in reality, or perceived, to be antagonistic towards other communities. This is something many of our policial and academic class are abdicating from.

But, “uninformed”? Steyn has explicitly said that it is secularism that is causing the low birth-rates (thus overlooking Poland’s lower birthrates as compared to the godless Swedes). I’d dig up a link but I guess that the onus is still on me then. I refuse to dredge through his refuse in order to find the column.

And he also has said that aborting a fetus because it has Down’s Syndrome is equitable to aborting it because there is a genetic precursor to homosexuality.

I do not target something larger when I correctly describe Steyn, because I think he is unworthy of being called or represent an “American” or “Canadian” in any non-official sense of the word. I despise Steyn as an individual, not as a representative for a society I feel rivals my own, or something like that…

Birthrates is one aspect of a nation, and I really do not seek to feel a sense of superiority when I compare between nations. I do believe that’s Steyn’s bag.

I doubt I’ve convinced you, because I am only 18 and hardly where I want to be communication-wise, but I only want to find out what works best to improve people’s situations.

“I could note how Sweden has social policies to prevent motherhood from being an obstacle to other circuits of life, while Germany and Northern Italy, with low birth rates, have either extremely few daycare centers and/or less andogynous outlooks.”

Yes, well this is obviously part of the picture. This is what Hoem and others have been drawing attention to.

“I think we should consider this causality:”

Well this is basically what’s called in the literature “second demographic transition” theory. There is obviously a lot of truth in it, although weighting just what is due to what here proves complicated in practice.

You also need to “factor-in” the birth postponement element, and some version of human capital investment theory helps here. Basically our societies are pushing every time further up the value chain, in part this is due to globalisation and the very rapid development of some substantial low-end of value chain competitors, but in part it is also due to the ageing process and the arrival of large numbers of elderly dependent which means that each individual labour market participant needs to produce more value to support them, so people need more and more education and training to be able to do this work, people start work later and later, and the earning curve stays pretty flat for the 20s age group.

Basically you might be interested in the Australian demographer Peter Macdonald ‘s 2005 – Fertility and the State: the efficacy of policy paper, which basically argues that in some societies there is a mismatch between formal equality at an institutional level and lack of equality at the interpersonal level (ie in the home).

But the German case is more interesting, since while the McDonald model might fit Southern and Eastern Europe to some extent it really doesn’t seem to meet the needs of Germany. Here we seem to find an excessive support for the traditional family model having exactly the opposite effect to the intended one.

“Christianists like Steyn would say….”

Basically I think it best to try and neatly sidestep this, and treat such uninformed arguments with the distance they deserve, which is why I think it isn’t worth responding in kind.

I would simply note that two societies seem to have some things in common in terms of fertility – the US and France – and some things are notably different (namely, as Hektor points out, one has a family positive policy and the other doesn’t, although the US of course gives a very high rating to gender equality, which is a big part of the picture).

Really we all need to stop treating this situation as yet another excuse for a transatlantic football match, and start giving it the attention it deserves. This I think is the core of my post.