Generation Alpha (or Gen Alpha for short) is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z.
Researchers and popular media use the early 2010s as starting birth
years and the mid-2020s as ending birth years. Named after the first
letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century. Most members of Generation Alpha are the children of Millennials.
Nomenclature
The name Generation Alpha
originated from a 2008 survey conducted by the Australian consulting
agency McCrindle Research, according to founder Mark McCrindle who is
generally credited with the term. McCrindle describes how his team arrived at the name in a 2015 interview:
When I was researching my book The ABC of XYZ: Understanding the Global Generations (published in 2009) it became apparent that a new generation was about to commence and there was no name for them. So I conducted a survey (we’re researchers after all) to find out what people think the generation after Z should be called and while many names emerged, and Generation A was the most mentioned, Generation Alpha got some mentions too and so I settled on that for the title of the chapter Beyond Z: Meet Generation Alpha. It just made sense as it is in keeping with scientific nomenclature of using the Greek alphabet in lieu of the Latin and it didn’t make sense to go back to A, after all they are the first generation wholly born in the 21st Century and so they are the start of something new not a return to the old.
McCrindle Research also took inspiration from the naming of hurricanes, specifically the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season in which the names beginning with the letters of the Roman alphabet were exhausted, and the last six storms were named with the Greek letters alpha through zeta.
Demographics
Global trends
As of 2015, there were some two and a half million people born every
week around the globe; Generation Alpha is expected to reach two billion
by 2025.
For comparison, the United Nations estimated that the human population
was about 7.8 billion in 2020, up from 2.5 billion in 1950. Roughly
three quarters of all people reside in Africa and Asia in 2020.
In fact, most human population growth comes from these two continents,
as nations in Europe and the Americas tend to have too few children to
replace themselves.
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Population pyramid of the world in 2018
2018 was the first time when the number of people above 65 years of
age (705 million) exceeded those between the ages of zero and four (680
million). In other words, this was the first year in which there were
more grandparents than grandchildren. If current trends continues, the
ratio between these two age groups will top two by 2050.
Fertility rates have been falling around the world thanks to rising
standards of living, greater access to contraceptives, and improved
educational and economic opportunities. The global average fertility
rate in 1950 was 4.7 but dropped to 2.4 in 2017. However, this average
masks the huge variation between countries. Niger has the world's
highest fertility rate at 7.1 while Cyprus has one of the lowest at 1.0.
In general, the more developed of countries, including much of Europe,
the United States, South Korea, and Australia, tend to have lower
fertility rates. People here tend to have children later and fewer of them.
Education is in fact one of the most important determinants of
fertility. The more educated a woman is, the later she tends to have
children, and fewer of them.
Increasing immigration is problematic while policies that encourage
people to have more children rarely succeed. Moreover, immigration is
not an option at the global level. At the same time, the global average life expectancy has gone from 52 in 1960 to 72 in 2017.
Half of the human population lived in urban areas in 2007, and
this figure became 55% in 2019. If the current trend continues, it will
reach two thirds by the middle of the century. A direct consequence of
urbanization is falling fertility. In rural areas, children can be
considered an asset, that is, additional labor. But in the cities,
children are a burden. Moreover, urban women demand greater autonomy and
exercise more control over their fertility.
The United Nations estimated in mid-2019 that the human population will
reach about 9.7 billion by 2050, a downward revision from an older
projection to account for the fact that fertility has been falling
faster than previously thought in the developing world. The global
annual rate of growth has been declining steadily since the late
twentieth century, dropping to about one percent in 2019. In fact, by the late 2010s, 83 of the world's countries had sub-replacement fertility.
During the early to mid-2010s, more babies were born to Christian
mothers and those of any other religion in the world, reflecting the
fact that Christianity remained the most popular religion in existence.
However, it was the Muslims who had a faster rate of growth. About 33%
of the world's babies were born to Christians who made up 31% of the
global population between 2010 and 2015, compared to 31% to Muslims,
whose share of the human population was 24%. During the same period, the
religiously unaffiliated (including atheists and agnostics) made up 16%
of the population but gave birth to only 10% of the world's children.
Africa
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Population pyramid of Egypt in 2018
Egypt's population reached the 100-million milestone in February
2020. According to government figures, during the 1990s and 2000s,
Egypt's fertility rate fell from 5.2 down to 3.0, but then rose up to
3.5 in 2018, according to the United Nations. If the current rate of
growth continues, Egypt will be home to more than 128 million people by
2030. Such rapid population growth is a cause for concern in a country
marked by poverty, unemployment, shortages of clean water, lack of
affordable housing, and traffic congestion. Harsh geography exacerbates
the problem: 95% of the population lives on just 4% of the land, a
region in the neighborhood of the Nile River roughly half the size of
Ireland. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
claimed that overpopulation posed as much a threat to national security
as terrorism. He launched a campaign called “Two Is Enough” in order to
curb the problem, but to no avail. Egypt's fertility rate surged at
around the Arab Spring,
likely as a result of political chaos, economic uncertainty, and funds
for birth control from Western governments drying up. Fertility rates
remained the highest in rural areas, where children are considered a
blessing, but the impact is most visible in Greater Cairo,
a megalopolis home to over 20 million people. In general, Egypt's
densely populated cities and towns have one million additional residents
each year between 2008 and 2018.
Statistical projections from the United Nations in 2019 suggest
that, by 2020, the people of Niger would have a median age of 15.2, Mali
16.3, Chad 16.6, Somalia, Uganda, and Angola all 16.7, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo 17.0, Burundi 17.3, Mozambique and Zambia both
17.6. (This means that more than half of their populations were born in
the first two decades of the twenty-first century.) These are the
world's youngest countries by median age. While a booming population can
induce substantial economic growth, if healthcare, education, and
economic needs were not met, there would be chronic youth unemployment,
low productivity, and social unrest. Investing in human capital is crucial.
While Africa is the world's most fertile region, it also has the world's highest child mortality rates. Nevertheless, Africa is largely responsible for human population growth in the twenty-first century, overtaking Asia.
Moreover, sub-Saharan Africa is the only major region that is an
exception to the general trend of falling family size seen around the
world.
Asia
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Population pyramid of China in 2018
In 2016, the Chinese Communist Party replaced one-child policy
with the two-child policy; the nation's birth rate briefly surged
before continuing on a downward path. In 2019, 14.65 million babies were
born in China, the lowest since 1961. Although demographers and
economists have urged the Chinese Central Government to eliminate all
birth restrictions, they have been reluctant to do so. Economist Ren
Zeping of Evergrande calculated that between 2013 and 2028, the number
of Chinese women between the ages of 20 and 35 would drop by 30%.
Official data is often unreliable and even self-contradictory. "China’s
birth numbers are very sloppy and highly influenced by politics,"
demographer Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin – Madison told the South China Morning Post. Overall, China's population grew to 1.4 billion in 2019 from 1.39 billion the year before. Less than 6% of China's population was under five years old in 2018, compared to 3.85% in Japan.[10]
A Chinese person born in the late 2010s has a life expectancy of 76
years, up from 44 in 1960. According to a projection by the United
Nations, China's median age would reach that of the United States in
2020 and would subsequently converge with Europe's but would remain
below that of Japan. If the current trend continues, by 2050, the median
age of China will be 50, compared to 42 for the United States and 38
for India.
Such a trend has fueled predictions of dreadful socioeconomic problems. A study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
(CASS) published in January 2020 predicts that China's population would
peak in 2029 at 1.44 billion, after which decline would be
"unstoppable." CASS calculated that China's population will fall to 1.36
billion by mid-century, losing almost 200 million workers. CASS
recommended that the government implement policies that would address
the problems of a shrinking labor force and an increasing elderly
population, which means a growing dependency rate.
A large and young labor force and domestic consumption have driven
China's rapid economic growth. Yet due a shrinking pool of young people,
China has suffered from labor shortages and reduced growth in the
2010s. Young Chinese women living in the twenty-first century tend to be
reluctant to have children for a number of reasons. In large cities,
such as Shanghai, people typically spend at least a third of their
income on raising a child. Chinese women have become a lot more
career-oriented. On top of that, Chinese work places generally to not
offer accommodations for women with young children, who often face
demotion or even unemployment after returning from maternity leave.
As a result of cultural ideals, government policy, and modern
medicine, there has been severe gender imbalances in China and India.
According to the United Nations, in 2018, China and India had a combined
50 million of excess males under the age of 20. Such a discrepancy
fuels loneliness epidemics, human trafficking (from elsewhere in Asia,
such as Cambodia and Vietnam), and prostitution, among other societal
problems.
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Population pyramid of Singapore in 2018
Singapore's total fertility rate continues to decline in the 2010s,
as more and more young people are choosing to delay or eschew marriage
and parenthood. It reached 1.14 in 2018, making it the lowest since 2010
and one of the lowest in the world.
Reasons for this include long work hours, digital disruption,
uncertainties surrounding global trade, climate change, high cost of
living, and long wait times for public housing.
The median age for first-time mothers rose from 29.7 in 2009 to 30.6 in
2018, which poses a problem because fertility declines with age.
Meanwhile, the death rate has been increasing since 1998; Singapore now
faces an aging population.
In fact, Singapore's birth rate has been below the replacement level of
2.1 since the 1980s, and appears to be stabilizing by during the first
two decades of the twenty-first century. Government incentives such as
the baby bonus have proven insufficient to raise the birth rate.
The number of women in their prime childbearing years (25–29) who
remained single increased from 60.9% in 2007 to 68.1% in 2017. For men,
the corresponding numbers were 77.5% and 80.7%, respectively. In
Singapore, the singleness rate is a major determinant of fertility
because only 10% of married couples have no children at all. While it is
not unusual for men to marry late because they are expected to have
established themselves before getting married and to be the primary
breadwinner, one major reason why women are marrying later is because
higher education eliminates the need to get married for economic
survival.
At the 2019 Forbes Global CEO Conference, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
said that one of the top issues facing his country is finding the right
demographic balance. "To secure our future, we must make our own
babies, enough of them. Because if all of the next generation are not
our own, then where do they come from and what is the point of this?" he
said. Lee added that the long-term goal of his government is to
maintain a workforce that is two-thirds Singaporean, with the rest being
brought in from overseas. He argued that such a ratio is manageable
while relaxing immigration restriction would be "unwise" because "there
is no shortage of people who want to come."
Map of East Asia by total fertility rates in 2018
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Population pyramid of South Korea in 2018
Singapore's experience mirrors those of Japan and South Korea.
A baby boom occurred in the aftermath of the Korean War, and the
government subsequently encouraged people to have no more than two
children per couple. As a result, South Korea's fertility has been
falling ever since.
South Korea's fertility rate dropped below 1.0 in 2018 for the first
time since that country began keeping statistics in 1970. The figure for
2017 was also a record low, at 1.05. Since 2005, the government has
spent a fortune on child subsidies and campaigns promoting reproduction
but without much success. Possible reasons for Korea's abysmal fertility
rate include the high cost of raising a child, high youth unemployment,
the burden of childcare on career-minded women, a stressful education
system, and high levels of competition in Korean society. In South
Korea, because marriage is usually associated with child-rearing, it is
extremely rare for children to be born out of wedlock. That figure stood
at 1.9% as of 2017. By contrast, in some other developed countries,
such as France and Norway, it is not uncommon for children to be born to
unmarried couples, at 55% or higher.
Government figures show that the average age of at first marriage for
women climbed from 24.8 in 1990 to 30.2 in 2018 while the age of first
birth was 31.6. According to Statistics Korea, women to give birth to
their first child in their early 30s are unlikely to have more than one.
In Korea's traditionalist society, new mothers face discrimination in
the work force, and as such delaying childbirth becomes commonplace.
Such a low fertility rate endangers the nation's welfare programs
(including healthcare and pensions), and causes more and more schools to
close. It also has implications for national security, as the South
Korean military relies on conscription to confront the North Korean
threat.
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Population pyramid of Taiwan in 2018
According to the National Development Council of Taiwan
(NDC), the nation's population could start shrinking by 2022 and the
number of people of working age could fall 10% by 2027. About half of
Taiwanese would be aged 50 or over by 2034.
According to the NDC, Taiwan reached the stage of being an aging
society – one in which the number of people aged 65 and up is about 7% –
in 1993. Like South Korea, Taiwan has since moved from being an aging
society to an aged one, where the number of elderly people exceeds 14%.
It therefore takes the country just 25 years, compared to 17 for South
Korea. During the 2010s, Taiwan's fertility rate hovered just above 1.0,
making it one of the lowest in the world. In fact, data from the Ministry of the Interior shows it has consistently been below 1.5 since 2001.
(In 2010, Taiwan's fertility rate actually fell below 1.0 because it
was thought to be a bad year to have children because he previous year
was considered inauspicious for marriage.) Many couples still live with
their parents, and the older generation expects women to stay at home,
take care of children, and do house chores. Stipends and subsidies from the government have been unsuccessful in encouraging more people to reproduce, but the government has added more money for childcare, education, and birth subsidies. The government is also considering immigration policies that attract highly skilled workers from other countries, and to make English an official language.
At the current rate, Taiwan is set to transition from an aged to
super-aged society, where 21% of the population is over 65 years of age,
in eight years, compared to seven years for Singapore, eight years for
South Korea, 11 years for Japan, 14 for the United States, 29 for
France, and 51 for the United Kingdom. As of 2018, Japan was already a super-aged society, with 27% of its people being older than 65 years. According to government data, Japan's total fertility rate was 1.43 in 2017.
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Population pyramid of Vietnam in 2018
Vietnam's population grew from 60 million in 1986 to 97 million in
2018, with the rate of growth falling to about one percent in the late
2010s. Like Bangladesh and unlike Egypt, Vietnam is a developing country
that has successfully curbed its population growth. Vietnam's median age in 2018 was 26 and rising. Between the 1970s and the late 2010s, life expectancy climbed from 60 to 76.
It is now the second highest in Southeast Asia. Vietnam's fertility
rate dropped from 5 in 1980 to 3.55 in 1990 and then to 1.95 in 2017. In
that same year, 23% of the Vietnamese population was 15 years of age or
younger, down from almost 40% in 1989. According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), Vietnam's population is one of the fastest aging in
the world. WHO projected that the proportion of people above the age of
65 would rise from 4% in 2017 to almost 7% by 2030. According to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), "Vietnam is at risk of growing old before it grows rich." The share of working-age Vietnamese peaked in 2011, when the country's annual GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was $5,024, compared to $32,585 for South Korea, $31,718 for Japan, and $9,526 for China. Other rapidly growing Southeast Asian economies, such as the Philippines, saw similar demographic trends.
In India, the number of women who would like to have more than
one child has declined significantly. The National Family Health Survey
of 2018 found that only 24% of Indian women were interested in having a
second child, down from 68% a decade prior. Nine states – Kerala, Tamil
Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal,
Punjab and Himachal Pradesh – found their fertility rate to be below the
replacement level in 2018. In general, India's falling fertility is
correlated with increasing women's literacy rates and level of
education, rising economic prosperity, improved mobility, and later
marriage.
Europe
In 2018, 19.7% of the population the European Union as a whole was at least 65 years old.
The median age of all 28 members of the bloc, including the United
Kingdom which recently decided to leave, was 43 years in 2019. It was
about 29 in the 1950s, when there were just six members: Belgium,
France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Like all other
inhabited continents, Europe saw significant population growth in the
late twentieth century. However, Europe's growth is projected to halt by
the early 2020s due to falling fertility rates and an aging population.
In 2015, a woman living in the European Union had on average 1.5
children, down from 2.6 in 1960. Although the E.U. continues to
experience a net influx of immigrants, this is not enough to balance out
the low fertility rates.
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Population pyramid of Italy in 2018
Italy is a country where the problem of an aging population is
especially acute. The fertility rate dropped from about four in the
1960s down to 1.2 in the 2010s. This is not because young Italians do
not want to procreate. Quite the contrary, having a lot of children is
an Italian ideal. But its economy has been floundering since the Great
Recession of 2007–8, with the youth unemployment rate at a staggering
35% in 2019. Many Italians have moved abroad – 150,000 did in 2018 – and
many are young people pursuing educational and economic opportunities.
With the plunge in the number of births each year, the Italian
population is expected to decline in the next five years. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) reported that the number of babies born in 2018 in Italy was the lowest since the unification of Italy in 1861.
Moreover, the Baby Boomers are retiring in large numbers, and their
numbers eclipse those of the young people taking care of them. Only
Japan has an age structure more tilted towards the elderly. In 2018, 23% of the Italian population was above the age of 65, compared to 27% for Japan.
One possible solution to this problem is incentivizing reproduction, as
France has done, by investing in longer parental leaves, daycare, and
tax exemptions for parents. As of 2019, France has approximately the
same population as Italy but 65% more births.[38]
In 2015, Italy introduced a cash handout of €800 per couple per child.
This does not seem to have had an impact in the long run. People may
choose to have a child earlier, but ultimately, this does not increase
the nation's fertility rate. This pattern has also been observed in
other countries, family study expert Anne Gauthier of the University of Groningen told the BBC. In Italy's case, the subsidy does not address economic concerns or social attitudes. Another solution is immigration, which has been alleviating the decline, but it does not come without political backlash.
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Population pyramid of Greece in 2018
As a result of its financial crisis, Greece also suffers from a
serious demographic problem as many young people are leaving the country
in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Between 2009 and 2018,
about half a million people left the country, many of them of
child-bearing age. In 2010, 115,000 children were born; that number dropped to 92,000 in 2015, and then to below 89,000 in 2017, the lowest on record.
In 2019, the fertility rate fell to just 1.3 per woman, well below the
replacement level and one of the lowest in Europe. Some of the more
remote regions of Greece suffer from shortages of obstetricians and
gynecologists, many of whom have gone abroad, which deters would-be
parents. And there are primary school students who are the only child of
their village and whose parents are in their 40s. In general, the
Greeks are having children later and having fewer children in the 2010s
compared to the 1980s. This brain drain and a rapidly aging population could spell disaster for the country.
The Spanish National Institute of Statistics
reported that the number of babies born in Spain in 2018 was the lowest
since 1998 and a 40.7% drop compared to 2008. This is due to the fact
that there were fewer women of childbearing age in Spain than in the
past, and that modern Spaniards are having fewer children.
In Portugal, the fertility rate dropped to 1.3 in the late 2010s.
Across Southern Europe, about 20% of women born in the 1970s are
childless, a number not seen since the First World War. More and more
schools have been forced to close and many towns are becoming empty.
Southern Europe could become countries of old people by the late 2030s
(when people born in the early 2010s and mid-2020s come of age) if the
current trend continues.
Hungary's birth rate was about 1.48 in 2018. For the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban,
which favors "procreation over immigration," raising the national
fertility rate is a matter of "strategic importance." In December 2018,
the Hungarian government nationalized six fertility clinics and said it
would offer free in vitro fertilization
(IVF) treatment starting February 2020, though the details of who would
be eligible for this program remain unclear. Like other Eastern
European countries, Hungary faces a declining population not just due to
its low birth rate, now half of what it was in 1950, but also to
emigration to Western Europe. About one in every seven Hungarian
children was born outside Hungary in the 2010s.
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Population pyramid of Russia in 2018
The United Nations Population Division projected that Russia, which
had a birth rate of 1.75 in 2018, would find its population drop from
143 million down to 132 million by 2050. Russia's population has been on the decline since the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another reason for Russia's demographic decline is the nation's low
life expectancy for men, at only 64 years in 2015, or 15 years less than
that in Italy, Germany, or Sweden. This is due to a combination of
unusually high rates of alcoholism, smoking, untreated cancer,
tuberculosis, suicides, violence, and HIV/AIDS. Although previous attempts to raise the birth rate have failed, in 2018, President Vladimir Putin
proposed giving money to low-income families, first-time mothers,
families with many children, and the creation of more nurseries. This is
part of a massive spending package aimed at revitalizing the struggling
Russian economy.
Despite recent declines, France retains one of the highest birth
rates in Europe at 1.92 in 2017, according to the World Bank. While many
countries have introduced policies intended to incentivize people to
have more children, these might be counter-balanced by other policies,
such as taxes. In France, the Ministry of Families is solely responsible
for family and child benefits packages, which are more generous for
larger families.
Germany's fertility rate rose from 1.33 in 2006 to 1.57 in 2017,
moving the country away from Spain and Italy and closer to the E.U.
average. This is due to a few reasons. Older women were having children,
which caused the rate to increase slightly. New immigrants, who arrived
in Germany in great numbers in that decade, tend to have more children
than natives, though their children will likely assimilate into German
society and will have smaller families of their own than their parents
and grandparents. In West Germany, working mothers were once
stigmatized, but this is no longer the case in unified Germany. In the
late 2000s and early 2010s, the German federal government introduced
more generous parental leave, encouraged fathers to take (more) time
off, and increased the number of nurseries, to which the government
declared children over one year old were entitled to. Although the
supply of nurseries remained insufficient, the number of children
enrolled in them rose from 286,000 in 2006 to 762,000 in 2017.
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Population pyramid of Sweden in 2018
In Sweden, generous pro-natalist policies contribute to the nation
having a birth rate of 1.9 in 2017, which was high compared to the rest
of Europe. Swedish parents are entitled to 480 days of parental leave to
share between both parents, with fathers claiming on average 30% of the
amount. According to the European Commission, Sweden has one of the
lowest child poverty rates in the E.U. Nevertheless, Sweden's birth rate
has begun to fall in the late 2010s.
One of the reasons why Sweden has maintained a relatively high birth
rate is because the country has for decades been accepting immigrants,
who tend to have more children than the average Swede. But immigration
has proven to be a contentious issue. While some see it as a lifeline,
others view it as a threat.
Other Nordic countries face the same situation. Denmark, Norway,
Finland, and Iceland all saw their fertility rates decline in the late
2010s to between 1.49 and 1.71 from previously near replacement level,
although their economies had already recovered from the Great Recession
by that time. "The number of childless individuals is growing rapidly,
and the number of women having three or more children is going down.
This kind of fall is unheard of in modern times in Finland," family
sociologist Anna Rotkirch told AFP. According to Statistics Finland, the total fertility rate of that country in 2019 was 1.35, the lowest on record.
Causes for this decline include financial uncertainty, urbanization,
rising unemployment, declining median income, and high cost of living.
Falling fertility rates jeopardize the much prized Nordic welfare
systems. Generous parental benefits, including subsidized childcare, have proven ineffective in halting the demographic decline.
According to a 2020 report from Nordic Council of Ministers, the Finns
were aging at a faster rate than any of their counterparts in the Nordic
region.
Statistics Finland predicted in 2019 that given current trends in
fertility and migration, Finland's population would begin to decline by
2031.
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Population pyramid of the Faroe Islands in 2018
According to the World Bank, the Faroe Islands
had a birth rate of about 2.5 in 2018, one of the highest in Europe, a
position they have maintained for decades. Like the rest of the Nordic
region, the territory has implemented a variety of family-friendly
policies, such as 46 weeks of parental leave, numerous and cheap
kindergartens, and tax cuts, including one for seven-seat vehicles. But
unlike the rest of the Nordic region, traditional family values and
family ties remain strong. Sociologist Hans Pauli Strøm of Statistics Faroe Islands
told the AFP, "In our culture, we perceive a person more as a member of
a family than as an independent individual. This close and intimate
contact between generations makes it easier to have children." In
addition, women's workforce participation is comparatively high, at 82%,
compared to an average of 59% for the European Union, of which the
Islands are not a member. More than half of Faroese women work part-time
as a matter of personal choice rather than labor-market conditions. The
autonomous Danish territory in the North Atlantic in fact had a
prosperous economy, as of the 2010s.
In 2018–19, the Republic of Ireland had the highest birth rate and the lowest death rate in the European Union, according to Eurostat.
Although Ireland had a thriving economy in the mid- to late-2010s, only
61,016 babies were born here in 2018 down from 75,554 in 2009.
Ireland's birth rate fell from 16.8 in 2008 to 12.6 in 2018, a drop of
about a quarter. The average age of first-time mothers in Ireland was
32.9 in 2018, up by over two years compared to the mid-2000s. Between
2006 and 2016, the number of babies born to women in their 40s doubled
while that to teenagers fell by 52.8%. Economist Edgar Morgenroth of Dublin City University told the Irish Times
that one of the reasons behind Ireland's falling fertility rate was the
fact that Ireland had a baby burst in the 1980s after a baby boom in
the 1970s, and the people born in the 1980s were starting families in
the 2010s. He further explained that high housing and childcare costs
could be behind Irish couples' reluctance. The marriage rate was 4.3 per
1,000 in 2018, the lowest since 1997 even though same-sex marriages
were included. In addition, people were getting married later. In 2018,
the average age at first marriage for a man was 36.4, up from 33.6 in
2008; for a women, those figures were 34.4 and 31.7, respectively.
Usually, rising birth and marriage rates correspond to a healthy
economy, but the present statistics seem to have buckled that trend.
As of 2016, Ireland was, demographically, a young country by European
standards. However, the country is aging quite quickly. According to the
Central Statistics Office,
although Ireland had more people below the age of 14 than above the age
of 65 in 2016, the situation could flip by 2031 in all projected
scenarios, which will pose a problem for public policy. For instance,
Ireland's healthcare system, already operating on a tight budget, will
be under even more pressure.
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Population pyramid of the United Kingdom in 2018
According to the United Kingdom Office for National Statistics,
the fertility rates of England and Wales fell to a record low in 2018.
Moreover, they fell for women of all age groups except those in their
40s. A grand total of 657,076 children were born in England and Wales in
2018, down 10% from 2012. There were 11.1 births per a thousand people
in 2018, compared to a peak of 20.5 in 1947, and the total fertility
rate was 1.70, down from 1.76 in 2017. In fact, their fertility rates
have been consistently below replacement since the late 1970s. At the
same time, the number of stillbirths – when a baby is born after at
least 24 weeks of pregnancy but with no signs of life – plummeted to a
record low for the second consecutive year, standing at 4.1 per a
thousand births in 2018. England said it was committed to pushing that
number down to 2.6 by 2025.
Falling fertility rates in England and Wales have been part of a
continuing trend since the late twentieth century, with 1977 and
1992-2002 the only years where these jurisdictions had lower fertility
rates on record. As has been the case since the start of the new
millennium, the birth rate of women below the age of 20 continues to
fall, down to 11.9 in 2018. Before 2004, women in their mid- to late-20s
had the highest fertility rate, but between the mid-2000s and the
late-2010s, those in their early- to mid-30s held that position. Social
statistician and demographer Ann Berrington of the University of Southampton told The Guardian
that access to education, "changing aspirations" in life, the
availability of emergency and long-acting contraception, and the lack of
affordable housing were among the reasons behind the decline in
fertility among people in their 20s and 30s. Meanwhile, in Scotland, the fertility rate continues its downward trend since 2008. Figures from the National Records of Scotland
(NRS) reveal that 12,580 births were registered in the final quarter of
2018. Except for 2002, this is the lowest since record-keeping began in
1855. NRS explained that economic insecurity and the postponement of
motherhood, which often means having fewer children, are among the
reasons why. In the late 2010s, 46% of U.K. couples had only one child.
North America
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Population pyramid of Canada in 2018
In Canada, about one in five Millennials were delaying having
children because of financial worries. Canada's average non-mortgage
debt was CAN$20,000 in 2018. One in three Millennials felt "overwhelmed"
by their liabilities, compared to 26% of Generation X and 13% of Baby
Boomers, according to consultant firm BDO Canada. More than one in three
Canadians with children felt stressed out by debt, compared with one
fifth of those without children. Many Canadian couples in their 20s and
30s are also struggling with their student loan debts. Research by the Royal Bank of Canada
suggests that Canadian Millennials have been flocking to the large
cities in spite of their expensive costs of living between the mid- and
late 2010s in search of economic opportunities and cultural amenities. Data from Statistics Canada
reveals that between 2000 and 2017, the birth rate among women under 30
years old fell in all provinces and territories except New Brunswick
women between the ages of 25 and 29 whereas that of women of age 30 and
over rose everywhere except in Nunavut among women aged 35 to 39.
Meanwhile, the adolescent fertility rate (15 to 19) halved in most of
Canada, a result likely due to improved sex education. The comparatively
low birth rate of women in their 20s living in British Columbia and
Ontario was correlated with the high housing costs in these provinces.
On the other hand, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut had relatively
high fertility rates because they have large Indigenous populations, and
Indigenous women tend to have more children. (Data for Yukon was not
available.)
During the early 2010s, among the various religious groups in
Canada, Muslims had the highest fertility rate of all. At 2.4 per woman,
they outpaced Hindus (2.0) Sikhs (1.9), Jews (1.8), Christians (1.6),
and secular people (1.4). Nationwide, 38.6% of Canadian couples had only one child during the late 2010s.
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Population pyramid of the United States in 2018
As their economic prospects improve, most American Millennials say they desire marriage, children, and home ownership. While Millennials were initially responsible for the so-called "back-to-the-city" trend, by the late 2010s, Millennial homeowners were more likely to be in the suburbs than the cities.
Besides the cost of living, including housing costs, people are leaving
the big cities in search of warmer climates, lower taxes, better
economic opportunities, and better school districts for their children.
According to the Pew Research Center, by 2016, the cumulative number of
American women of the millennial generation who had given birth at
least once reached 17.3 million. About 1.2 million Millennial women had
their first child that year. By the mid-2010s, Millennials, who made up
29% of the adult population and 35% of the workforce of the U.S., were
responsible for a majority of births in the nation. In 2016, 48% of
Millennial women were mothers, compared to 57% of Generation-X women in
2000 when they were the same age. The increasing age of women when they
become mothers for the first time is a trend that can be traced back to
the 1970s, if not earlier.
Factors behind this trend include a declining interest in marriage, the
growth in educational attainment, and the rise of women's participation
in the workforce. Single-child families were the fastest growing type of family units in the U.S. during the late 2010s.
A report from the Brookings Institution
stated that in the United States, the Millennials are a bridge between
the largely Caucasian pre-Millennials (Generation X and their
predecessors) and the more diverse post-Millennials (Generation Z and
their successors).
Overall, the number of births to Caucasian women in the United States
dropped 7% between 2000 and 2018. Among foreign-born Caucasian women,
however, the number of births increased by 1% in the same period.
Although the number of births to foreign-born Hispanic women fell from
58% in 2000 to 50% in 2018, the share of births due to U.S.-born
Hispanic women increased from 20% in 2000 to 24% in 2018. The number of
births to foreign-born Asian women rose from 19% in 2000 to 24% in 2018
while that due to U.S.-born Asian women went from 1% in 2000 to 2% in
2018. In all, between 2000 and 2017, more births were to foreign-born
than U.S.-born women.
By analyzing data from the Census Bureau, the Pew Research Center
discovered that in 2017, at least 20% of kindergartners in public
schools were Hispanics in a grand total of 18 U.S. states plus the
District of Columbia, compared to only eight states in 2000 and 17 in
2010. Between 2010 and 2017, Massachusetts and Nebraska joined the list
while Idaho left. This reflects the falling pace of population growth of
Hispanics in the United States, due to declining fertility and
immigration rates. Hispanics, who comprised 18% of the U.S. population
(or about 60 million people) have been spreading across the United
States since the 1980s and are now the largest minority ethnic group in
the nation. They also made up 28% of the students in K-12 public schools
in 2019, up from 14% in 1995. For comparison, the number of Asian
public-school students increased slightly, from 4% to 6% during the same
period. Blacks fell slightly from 17% to 15%, and whites dropped from
65% to 47%. Overall, the number of children born to ethnic minorities
has exceeded 50% of the total since 2015.
Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
reveal that U.S. fertility rates have fallen below the replacement
level of 2.1 since 1971. In 2017, it dropped to 1.765, the lowest in
three decades. 15.4% of the U.S. population was over 65 years of age in 2018.
After the Second World War, the U.S. fertility rate peaked in 1958 at
3.77 births per woman, fell to 1.84 in 1980, and climbed to 2.08 in 1990
before declining again in 2007.
However, there is great variation in terms of geography, age groups,
and ethnicity. South Dakota had the highest birth rate at 2,228 per a
thousand women and the District of Columbia the lowest at 1,421. Besides
South Dakota, only Utah (2,121) had a birth rate above replacement
level.
From 2006 to 2016, women whose ages range from the mid-20s to the
mid-30s maintained the highest birth rates of all while those in their
late 30s and early 40s saw significant increases in birth rates. American women are having children later in life, with the average age at first birth rising to 26.4 in the late 2010s, up from 23 in the mid-1990s. Falling teenage birth rates play a role in this development.
In fact, the number of births given by teenagers, which reached ominous
levels in the 1990s, have plummeted by about 60% between 2006 and 2016.
This is thanks in no small part to the collapse of birth rates among
black and Hispanic teens, down 50% from 2006. Overall, births fell for Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and whites but remained stable for native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
While Hispanic American women still maintained the highest fertility
rate of any racial or ethnic groups in the United States, their birth
rate dropped 31% between 2007 and 2017. Like their American peers and
unlike their immigrant parents and grandparents, young Hispanic American
women in the 2010s were more focused on their education and careers and
less interested in having children.
That U.S. fertility rates continue to drop is anomalous to
demographers because fertility rates typically track the nation's
economic health. It was no surprise that U.S. fertility rates dropped
during the Great Recession of 2007–8. But the U.S. economy has shown
strong signs of recovery for some time, and birthrates continue to fall.
In general, however, American women still tend to have children earlier
than their counterparts from other developed countries and the U.S.
total fertility rate remains comparatively high for a rich country. In fact, compared with their counterparts from other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),
first-time American mothers were among the youngest on average, on par
with Latvian women (26.5 years) during the 2010s. At the other extreme
end were women from Italy (30.8), and South Korea (31.4). During the
same period, American women ended their childbearing years with more
children on average (2.2) than most other developed countries, with the
notable exception of Icelandic women (2.3). At the other end were women
from Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan (all 1.5).
Below-replacement-level fertility rates could lead to labor
shortages in the future. Speaking to the Associated Press, family
specialist Karen Benjamin Guzzo from Bowling Green State University
in Ohio recommended childcare subsidies, preschool expansion, (paid)
parental leave, housing assistance, and student debt reduction or
forgiveness.
Oceania
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Population pyramid of Australia in 2018
Australia's total fertility rate has fallen from above three in the
post-war era, to about replacement level (2.1) in the 1970s to below
that in the late 2010s. It stood at 1.74 in 2017. However, immigration
has been offsetting the effects of a declining birthrate. In the 2010s,
among the residents of Australia, 5% were born in the United Kingdom,
2.5% from China, 2.2% from India, and 1.1% from the Philippines. 84% of
new arrivals in the fiscal year of 2016 were below 40 years of age,
compared to 54% of those already in the country. Like other
immigrant-friendly countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and
the United States, Australia's working-age population is expected to
grow till about 2025. However, the ratio of people of working age to
dependents and retirees (the dependency ratio)
has gone from eight in the 1970s to about four in the 2010s. It could
drop to two by the 2060s, depending in immigration levels.
"The older the population is, the more people are on welfare benefits,
we need more health care, and there's a smaller base to pay the taxes,"
Ian Harper of the Melbourne Business School told ABC News (Australia).
While the government has scaled back plans to increase the retirement
age, to cut pensions, and to raise taxes due to public opposition,
demographic pressures continue to mount as the buffering effects of
immigration are fading away.
Australians coming of age in the early twenty-first century are more
reluctant to have children compared to their predecessors due to
economic reasons: higher student debt, expensive housing, and negative
income growth.
Statistics New Zealand
reported that the nation's fertility rate in 2017 was 1.81, the lowest
on record. Although the total number of births went up, the birth rate
went down because of country's larger population thanks to high levels
of immigration. New Zealand's fertility rate remained more or less
stable between the late 1970s and the late 2010s. Younger women were
driving the birth rate down, with those between the ages of 15 and 29
having the lowest birth rates on record. In 2017, New Zealand teenagers
had one half the number of babies of 2008, and under a quarter of 1972.
Meanwhile, women above the age of 30 were having more children. Between
the late 2000s and late 2010s, an average of 60,308 babies were born in
New Zealand.
Education
Asia
In order to boost the nation's birthrate, in 2019, the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
introduced a number of education reforms. Starting October 2019,
preschool education will be free for all children between the ages of
three and five. Childcare will be free for children under the age of two
from low-income households. These programs will be funded by a
consumption tax hike, from eight to ten percent. Starting April 2020,
entrance and tuition fees for public as well as private universities
will be waived or reduced. Students from low-income and tax-exempt
families will be eligible for financial assistance to help them cover
textbook, transportation, and living expenses. The whole program is
projected to cost ¥776 billion (US$7.1 billion) per annum.
Europe
In France, while year-long mandatory military service for men was abolished in 1996 by President Jacques Chirac, who wanted to build a professional all-volunteer military, all citizens between 17 and 25 years of age must still participate in the Defense and Citizenship Day, when they are introduced to the French Armed Forces, and take language tests. In 2019, President Emmanuel Macron
introduced something similar to mandatory military service, but for
teenagers, as promised during his presidential campaign. Known as the Service National Universel
or SNU, it is a compulsory civic service. While students will not have
to shave their heads or handle military equipment, they will have to
sleep in tents, get up early (at 6:30 am), participate in various
physical activities, raise the tricolor, and sing the national anthem.
They will have to wear a uniform, though it is more akin to the outfit
of security guards rather than military personnel. This program takes a
total of four weeks. In the first two, youths learn how to provide first
aid, how navigating with a map, how to recognize fake news, emergency
responses for various scenarios, and self-defense. In addition, they get
health checks and get tested on their mastery of the French language,
and they participate in debates on a variety of social issues, including
environmentalism, state secularism, and gender equality. In the second
fortnight, they volunteer with a charity for local government. The aim
of this program is to promote national cohesion and patriotism, at a
time of deep division on religious and political grounds, to get people
out of their neighborhoods and regions, and mix people of different
socioeconomic classes, something mandatory military service used to do.
Supporters thought that teenagers rarely raise the national flag, spend
too much time on their phones, and felt nostalgic for the era of
compulsory military service, considered a rite of passage for young men
and a tool of character-building. Critics argued that this program is
inadequate, and would cost too much.
The SNU is projected to affect some 800,000 French citizens each year
when it becomes mandatory for all aged 16 to 21 by 2026, at a cost of
some €1.6 billion.
Another major concern is that it will overburden the French military,
already stretched thin by counter-terrorism campaigns at home and
abroad.
A 2015 IFOP poll revealed that 80% of the French people supported some
kind of mandatory service, military, or civilian. At the same time,
returning to conscription was also popular; supporters included 90% of
the UMP party, 89% of the National Front (now the National Rally), 71% of the Socialist Party, and 67% of people aged 18 to 24. This poll was conducted after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks.
North America
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The American Academy of Pediatricians recommended that parents allow their children more time to play.
In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics
released a policy statement summarizing progress on developmental and
neurological research on unstructured time spent by children,
colloquially 'play', and noting the importance of playtime for social,
cognitive, and language skills development. This is because to many
educators and parents, play has come to be seen as outdated and
irrelevant.
In fact, between 1981 and 1997, time spent by children on unstructured
activities dropped by 25% due to increased amounts of time spent on
structured activities. Unstructured time tended to be spent on screens
at the expense of active play.
The statement encourages parents and children to spend more time on
"playful learning," which reinforces the intrinsic motivation to learn
and discover and strengthens the bond between children and their parents
and other caregivers. It also helps children handle stress and prevents
"toxic stress,"
something that hampers development. Dr. Michael Yogman, the lead author
of the statement, noted that play does not necessarily have to involve
fancy toys; common household items would do as well. Moreover, parents
reading to children also counts as play, because it encourages children
to use their imaginations.
In 2019, psychiatrists from Quebec launched a campaign urging for
the creation of courses on mental health for primary schoolchildren in
order to teach them how to handle a personal or social crisis, and to
deal with the psychological impact of the digital world. According to
the Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec (AMPQ), this campaign
focuses on children born after 2010, that is, Generation Alpha. In
addition to the AMPQ, this movement is backed by the Fédération des
médecins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ), the Quebec Pediatric Association
(APQ), the Association des spécialistes en médecine préventive du
Québec (ASMPQ) and the Fondation Jeunes en Tête.
Although the Common Core standards, an education initiative in the United States, eliminated the requirement that public elementary schools teach cursive writing
in 2010, lawmakers from many states, including Illinois, Ohio, and
Texas, have introduced legislation to teach it in theirs in 2019.
Some studies point to the benefits of handwriting – print or cursive –
for the development of cognitive and motor skills as well as memory and
comprehension. For example, one 2012 neuroscience study suggests that
handwriting "may facilitate reading acquisition in young children."
Cursive writing has been used to help students with learning
disabilities, such as dyslexia, a disorder that makes it difficult to
interpret words, letters, and other symbols. Unfortunately, lawmakers often cite them out of context, conflating handwriting in general with cursive handwriting. In any case, some 80% of historical records and documents of the United States, such as the correspondence of Abraham Lincoln, was written by hand in cursive, and students today tend to be unable to read them.
Historically, cursive writing was regarded as a mandatory, almost
military, exercise. But today, it is thought of as an art form by those
who pursue it, both adults and children.
In 2013, less than a third of American public schools had access to broadband Internet service, according to the non-profit EducationSuperHighway. By 2019, however, that number reached 99%. This has increased the frequency of digital learning.
Since the early 2010s, a number of U.S. states have taken steps
to strengthen teacher education. Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas had the top
programs in 2014. Meanwhile, Rhode Island, which previously had the
nation's lowest bar on who can train to become a school teacher, has
been admitting education students with higher and higher average SAT, ACT, and GRE
scores. The state aims to accept only those with standardized test
scores in the top third of the national distribution by 2020, which
would put it in the ranks of education superpowers such as Finland and Singapore. In Finland, studying to become a teacher is as tough and prestigious as studying to become a medical doctor or a lawyer.
Health problems
Food allergies
While food allergies have been observed by doctors since ancient times and virtually all foods can be allergens, research by the Mayo Clinic
in Minnesota found they are becoming increasingly common since the
early 2000s. Today, one in twelve American children has a food allergy,
with peanut allergy being the most prevalent type. Reasons for this
remain poorly understood.
Nut allergies in general have quadrupled and shellfish allergies have
increased 40% between 2004 and 2019. In all, about 36% of American
children have some kind of allergy. By comparison, this number among the
Amish in Indiana is 7%. Allergies have also risen ominously in other
Western countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, the number of
children hospitalized for allergic reactions increased by a factor of
five between 1990 and the late 2010s, as did the number of British
children allergic to peanuts. In general, the better developed the
country, the higher the rates of allergies. Reasons for this also remain poorly understood. One possible explanation, supported by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
is that parents keep their children "too clean for their own good."
They recommend exposing newborn babies to a variety of potentially
allergenic foods, such as peanut butter, before they reach the age of
six months. According to this "hygiene hypothesis," such exposures give
the infant's immune system some exercise, making it less likely to
overreact. Evidence for this includes the fact that children living on a
farm are consistently less likely to be allergic than their
counterparts who are raised in the city, and that children born in a
developed country to parents who immigrated from developing nations are
more likely to be allergic than their parents are.
Problems arising from screen time
Anatomical diagram of myopia or nearsightedness.
A 2015 study found that the frequency of nearsightedness
has doubled in the United Kingdom within the last 50 years.
Ophthalmologist Steve Schallhorn, chairman of the Optical Express
International Medical Advisory Board, noted that researchers have
pointed to a link between the regular use of handheld electronic devices
and eyestrain. The American Optometric Association sounded the alarm on a similar vein. According to a spokeswoman, digital eyestrain, or computer vision syndrome,
is "rampant, especially as we move toward smaller devices and the
prominence of devices increase in our everyday lives." Symptoms include
dry and irritated eyes, fatigue, eye strain, blurry vision, difficulty
focusing, headaches. However, the syndrome does not cause vision loss or
any other permanent damage. In order to alleviate or prevent eyestrain,
the Vision Council
recommends that people limit screen time, take frequent breaks, adjust
the screen brightness, change the background from bright colors to gray,
increase text sizes, and blinking more often. The Council advises
parents to limit their children's screen time as well as lead by example
by reducing their own screen time in front of children.
In 2019, the World Health Organization
(WHO) issued recommendations on the amount young children should spend
in front of a screen every day. WHO said toddlers under the age of five
should spend no more than an hour watching a screen and infants under
the age of one should not be watching at all. Its guidelines are similar
to those introduced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which
recommended that children under 19 months old should not spend time
watching anything other than video chats. Moreover, it said children
under two years old should only watch "high-quality programming" under
parental supervision. However, Andrew Przybylski, who directs research
at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, told the
Associated Press that "Not all screen time is created equal" and that
screen time advice needs to take into account "the content and context
of use." In addition, the United Kingdom's Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
said its available data was not strong enough to indicate the necessity
of screen time limits. WHO said its recommendations were intended to
address the problem of sedentary behavior leading to health issues such
as obesity.
Obesity and malnutrition
A report by the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF)
released October 2019 stated that some 700 million children under the
age of five worldwide are either obese or undernourished. Although there
was a 40% drop in malnourishment in developing countries between 1990
and 2015, some 149 million toddlers are too short for their age, which
hampers body and brain development. UNICEF's nutrition program chief
Victor Aguayo said, "A mother who is overweight or obese can have
children who are stunted or wasted." About one in two youngsters suffer
from deficiencies of vitamins and minerals. Only two-fifths of infants
are exclusively breastfed, as recommended by pediatricians and
nutritionists, while the sale of formula milk jumped 40% globally. In
middle-income countries such as Brazil, China, and Turkey, that number
is 75%. Even though obesity was virtually non-existent in poor countries
three decades ago, today, at least ten percent of children in them
suffer from this condition. The report recommends taxes on sugary drinks
and beverages and enhanced regulatory oversight of breast milk
substitutes and fast foods.
Use of electronic communications technology
Many members of Generation Alpha have grown up using smartphones and tablets as part of their childhood entertainment. Some of their parents used electronic gadgets and pacifiers simultaneously. Others even use portable digital devices as pacifiers. In addition, electronic devices are also used as educational aids.
As a matter of fact, their parents, the Millennials, are heavy social
media users. A 2014 report from cybersecurity firm AVG stated that 6% of
parents created a social media account and 8% an email account for
their baby or toddler. According to BabyCenter,
an online company specializing in pregnancy, childbirth, and
child-rearing, 79% of Millennial mothers used social media on a daily
basis and 63% used their smartphones more frequently since becoming
pregnant or giving birth. More specifically, 24% logged on to Facebook more frequently and 33% did the same to Instagram after becoming a mother. Non-profit advocacy group Common Sense Media
warned that parents should take better care of their online privacy,
lest their and their children's personal information and photographs
fall into the wrong hands. This warning was issued after a Utah mother
reportedly found a photograph of her children on a social media post
with pornographic hashtags in May 2015.
Being born into an environment where the use of electronic devices is
ubiquitous comes with its own challenges: cyber-bullying, screen
addiction, and inappropriate contents. Nevertheless, because the
Millennials are themselves no stranger to this environment, they can use
their personal experience to help their children navigate it.
Predictions
A yawning infant (2018)
The first wave of Generation Alpha will reach adulthood by the 2030s.
By that time, the human population is expected to be just under nine
billion, and the world will have the highest proportion of people over
60 years of age in history, meaning this demographic cohort will bear the burden of an aging population.
According to Mark McCrindle, a social researcher from Australia,
Generation Alpha will most likely delay standard life markers such as
marriage, childbirth, and retirements, as did the few previous
generations. McCrindle estimated that Generation Alpha will make up 11%
of the global workforce by 2030.
He also predicted that they will live longer and have smaller families,
and will be "the most formally educated generation ever, the most
technology-supplied generation ever, and globally the wealthiest
generation ever."
Writing in 2009, demographer Phillip Longman
predicted that falling fertility rates around the world, among
developed and even some developing countries, and the resultant
demographic changes will play a role in the ongoing cultural evolution.
Governments have not and will not be able to dramatically increase
fertility rates; they succeed only in helping people have children
earlier. In many current countries, various cultural and economic
realities discourage procreation. Longman observed that in the past
there have been cases of jurisdictions finding their fertility rates to
be too low, yet humanity has obviously not gone extinct. The kingdoms
and empires of old and the people who forged them are no more, but those
places remain populated—just with different people. When certain groups
of people have no children or too few, they will gradually be replaced
by those who have more children. People who live in fast-moving and
cosmopolitan societies typically find their connections to their ancestors fade
and are thus less likely to have children whereas those who will
eventually outnumber them tend to be religious, to hold traditional
views, and to identify strongly with their own people and country.
Longman contended that already by the early 2000s it had become apparent
that the mainstream culture of the United States was gradually shifting
away from secular individualism and towards religious fundamentalism while Europeans were slowly distancing themselves from the European Union and being "world citizens."
Longman asserted that another consequence of low fertility is the
increasing difficulty of financing welfare programs, such as pension
schemes and elderly care, ordinary family functions that had been
appropriated by the state. This is because while life expectancy has
grown only slightly in recent decades, fertility has fallen
dramatically, meaning the widening dependency ratio is largely due to
the fact that many of the taxpayers needed to finance these programs
were never even born. Raising taxes would depress fertility rates even
further. As a result, they will have to be scaled back or even abolished
and family units that are less dependent on government will become more
common as these now enjoy an evolutionary advantage. Longman also
predicted that single-child households would find their number dwindle
as a percentage of the population because one child can only replace one
parent, not both, and the descendants of families with many children
will slowly become a majority and will retain the values that made such
families possible. Of course, history contains cases of major youth
revolts, with the 1960s being a recent example. But back in the post-war
era, it was the norm for people to marry and have many children, with
very little difference along social, political or religious lines. In
the early twenty-first century, families with just one or no children
have become a lot more common, meaning the future proponents of
counterculture would likely find that their companions will have never
existed.
In his 2010 book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, political and religious demographer Eric Kaufmann
argued that the answer to the question raised in the title is in the
affirmative because demographic realities pose real challenges to the
assumption of the inevitability of secular and liberal progress. He
observed that devout factions tend to have a significant fertility
advantage over their more moderate counterparts and the non-religious.
For instance, white Catholic women in France have on average half a
child more than their white secular counterparts while the Amish in the
United States have three to four times more children than their fellow
Christians on average. Highly religious groups tend to isolate
themselves from the secularizing effects of modern mainstream Western
society, making it more likely that the children will retain their
parents' faiths. At the same time, secular people generally have rather
low fertility rates by comparison for a variety of reasons, such as
materialism, individualism, the preference for the here and now,
feminism, environmentalism, or general pessimism. Kaufmann projected
that secularism will have a mixed future in Europe. It will remain
strong in most Catholic countries, notably Ireland and Spain, but has
essentially ground to a halt in Protestant Europe and in France, and
will falter in Northwestern Europe by mid-century. He told Mercator Net
that the only way to buckle the trend involves "a creed that touches the
emotional registers can lure away the children of fundamentalists" and
"a repudiation of multiculturalism." He suggested that "secular
nationalism" and moderate religion associated with the nation-state
could be part of the mix, but these traditions have been losing support
at a considerable rate.
A 2017 projection by the Pew Research Center suggests that
between 2015 and 2060, the human population would grow by about 32%.
Among the major religious groups, only Muslims (70%) and Christians
(34%) are above this threshold and as such would have a higher share of
the global population than they do now, especially Muslims. Hindus
(27%), Jews (15%), followers of traditional folk religions (5%), and the
religiously unaffiliated (3%) would grow in absolute numbers, but would
be in relative decline because their rates of growth are below the
global average. On the other hand, Buddhists would find their numbers
shrink by 7% during the same period. This is due to sub-replacement
fertility and population aging in Buddhist-majority countries such as
China, Japan, and Thailand. This projection has taken into account
religious switching. Moreover, previous research suggests that switching
plays only a minor role in the growth or decline of religion compared
to fertility and mortality.
Eric Kaufmann's Whiteshift is an extensive study of how the migration-driven demographic transformation of the West affects the ballot box.
The title of the 2018 book encodes Kaufmann's predictions that, as a
result of international migration, Western countries will become ever
more ethnically diverse and a growing number of people will be of mixed
heritage. He further argues that the category of 'white people' will be
enlarged to include more ethnically diverse individuals. For Kaufmann,
one of the major schisms in the political landscape of the West at the
time of writing is due to factions that want to speed up this process
and those who want to slow it down. He suggested that the surge of
nationalism and populism observed in many Western countries is due to
the latter group. For decades, the norms of acceptable political demands
had been established by the media, institutions of higher education,
and mainstream political groups. Such norms include what he called "left
modernism," a more precise term for what is commonly referred to as political correctness, and "asymmetrical multiculturalism,"
or the idea that all cultures present in a given society deserve to be
preserved except the host culture. These norms have prevented mainstream
politicians and political parties from responding to the concerns of
large swathes of the voting population, giving nationalist populists an
opportunity to rise to the front.
In a related book, National Populism – The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, political scientists Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin attempted to explain the political phenomenon of the same name using a '4D model': destruction of the national culture due to large-scale international migration; deprivation of opportunities due to globalization and in the post-industrial economy with its frequent disruptions and slow growth; growing distrust
by working-class and rural voters who feel increasingly alienated by
liberal cosmopolitan city-dwelling political and media elites; and de-alignment
from traditional allegiances, which can be seen in high levels of voter
volatility, or people switching from one party to another between
elections. National populism
should not be confused with left-wing populism, which focuses on
socioeconomic class rather than love of country. Eatwell and Goodwin
observed that support for mainstream social democratic parties all
across Europe has plummeted – in France and the Netherlands the
socialists got pushed to the fringe – and predicted that nationalism and
populism would remain a dominant characteristic of Western politics
until the other side can build a platform that resonates better with the
general public. Even after some surprising political developments such
as the 2016 United Kingdom European Union Membership Referendum
(Brexit), many mainstream politicians still believed their constituents
wanted more immigration, more deregulation, more globalization, and
more cultural diversity, when YouGov opinion polls of European voters
showed that their number one concern was immigration.
