Some Ranting About Population

I read an article in Science about how fertility rates in developed countries are going down. As a result, many countries are now offering bonuses to entice couples to have children - in France, paid maternity leave of 18 weeks for each of the first two kids and 26 weeks for a third kid; in Australia, $3000 a child and mothers are expected to take a full year off (in fact, child care won't accept a baby younger than a year). In Sweden, it's a few thousand dollars per child and 16 months of paid leave that can be split between the parents. Sweet!

Here in the U.S., the federal government guarantees up to three months of unpaid leave from your job if you work for a large corporation - and that's it. Child care expenses are so high that some women can't afford to go back to work after having a baby; their salaries wouldn't cover the child care. More from USA Today

I think financial considerations are definitely playing a role holding us back from kids. We're doing fine now, but I'm not sure we could afford to support a third person, or that my job would allow me to put my child first. If I have to go back to work after only a few months, how am I supposed to breast-feed for the first year? And if I'm leaving my kid at a day-care center for ten hours a day, how am I participating in the life of this child? Someone else is essentially raising my child for me, which isn't what I want. Some women go to part-time after kids, but with my job I wouldn't be allowed to do that.

Oh well. In a broader social sense, I guess it's good that it's difficult and expensive to have children here. There are way too many people in the world. We're shooting toward the 9 billion mark, and our planet is already so severely stressed and overburdened, the prospect of adding even more people to it just makes me shake my head. I think government officials who encourage people to reproduce are crazy. All countries, everywhere, should be encouraging people who don't want kids not to have them - so that all children can grow up happy and wanted - and encouraging people who do want kids to stop at replacement.

A professor of mine had a good idea about giving every woman on earth two passes for children. Women who didn't want to have kids could sell theirs, and women who wanted more than their share could buy someone else's. Birth control would have to be abundantly available so that no one would ever be accidentally pregnant. (The Science article also notes that in the U.S., population growth is slightly higher than in European countries, in part because of "a higher rate of unwanted pregnancies due to restrictions on birth-control information." Sigh.)

I guess the good news to me is that so far the insane fertility bonuses aren't working very well. The fertility rate is still below replacement in a lot of European countries. The pro-population growth camp worries that European nations will enter a low-fertility trap from which they won't ever be able to recover. Please. Of all the species on earth, we are about the least likely (after cockroaches) to ever become endangered. Countries with declining fertility rates should celebrate the fact that with fewer people, there is more to go around, and everyone's quality of life will increase. Then, they should put their pro-population growth advisors to work figuring out how to shift resources from their countries, which have plenty, to those that are really hurting - like the disaster zone that is Africa, where the average woman gives birth to seven children. That ought to keep them quiet for a while.