Don't Believe The Official Line on Reducing the Population

Earlier this year I read Mark Steyn's book, "America Alone". It was absolutely phenomenal and opened my eyes to a lot of things including the huge demographic changes that will become more & more obvious with each passing year.

In this recent posting, Steyn talks about this problem in Japan and in Europe and refers to this BBC article. Japan provides the most crystal clear example of the disaster ahead. The replacement birth rate for any society is 2.1. This means that in order for a population to sustain its numbers, each couple needs to have 2 children, plus there have to be a few more born to account for:

• Homosexual couples who don't produce any children.
• Children who die from disease.
• Children who die from accidents and other untimely deaths.
• Children who move away to other countries.
  

But in 2005, Japan had a birth rate of just 1.26. This is nowhere near enough to sustain their population.

A cynic might say, "Who cares, they have too many people there right now anyhow!" Fair enough, but if a population drops too quickly then obvious problems arise:

• Economic depression.
• Lack of funds to sustain the existing social programs.
• Lack of people to take care of the elderly.

Canada is not in as bad shape as Japan but we have big problems over the horizon too. We've tried to compensate for our declining birthrate by importing people from other countries. That has worked so far - sort of - but the young skilled professionals we'd ideally like are becoming fewer in number.

The next time you hear someone condemn you for the children you've had or are planning to have, remember Japan.