We have been so bombarded with horror stories about overpopulation and so-called "limits to growth" that it takes a real effort to think clearly about the possibility of declining population and an even greater effort to imagine the consequences.
Of course, we don't have a declining population now. The most recent gross birth rate in the United States was 14.7 per thousand, which far out-strips the death rate of 8.9 per thousand. But those rates are dependent on what is called the age profile of the population -- the proportions of the population in different age brackets. A population with lots of middle-aged people will find the birth rate decreasing. as these people inevitably move beyond child-bearing years. and the death rate increasing, as they get older and closer to the inevitable.
The best indicator of the long-term trend in total population is the fertility rate, which expresses the average number of children each woman will bear in her lifetime. It makes sense to think that a stable population requires 2 children per woman (she has to replace herself plus a male who, in the nature of things, bears no children at all). In actuality, 2.1 is the zero growth fertility rate, since some children will never bear children themselves. A rate greater than 2.1 entails progressively larger numbers of babies and thus a younger population on the average; a rate below 2.1 means progressively fewer babies and an older population.
The most important datum in public affairs today is our current fertility rate of 1.835, well below the zero growth level. Moreover, there is no indication that this rate is going to rise substantially. To the contrary, attitudes are definitely against children and child-bearing and rearing, as demonstrated by the more than one million contraceptive sterilizations performed in the United States last year, to say nothing of the abortions.
Projections of population have been made based on a fertility rate of 1.7, which is approximately the rate in 1975 and 1976. These projections show, for example, that the United States population will peak at 253 million about the year 2020. Consider what that means for a 25-year-old person just taking out a 30-year mortgage on a new home, counting on the equity for his retirement. What will the market for housing be like when he retires and there are fewer people to be housed?
Back to Social Security. The projections show that the working-age population (21-65) will peak about the same time as the total population. but the number of those over 65 increases more rapidly and doesn't peak until around 2040, after which it declines less rapidly than the working-age group.
Using these projections, and assuming continuation of current experience with labor-force participation, I have made estimates of the ratio of retirees to adult workers for the next 70 years. This ratio will be 30 retirees to every 100 workers in 1980, will rise slowly to 33 per 100 in 2000, then jump to 47 in 2020, and to a colossal 64 retirees per 100 workers in 2040, meaning 2 retirees for each worker to support.
If Social Security taxes are now over 12% of payroll costs (taking employer and employee contributions together), then we will be faced with a rate of more than 25% in the future, even assuming all other factors -- such as productivity and labor force participation -- remain the same. Moreover, this increase will occur suddenly, in the early years of the 21st Century, as the post-World War II baby boom is retiring and the working-age population is stagnating. The retirees will have been led for most of their lives -- ever since 1969 -- to rely on Social Security as a replacement for earned income, not as a supplement. They will not give up easily. But the relatively widespread, incoherent, and silent working class -- the fleeced -- will then be fewer, more oppressed, and predictably more vocal. The stage is thus set by these inexorable population trends for a titanic struggle between the generations. and a social cataclysm to be ranged alongside the break from England. the War Between the States. and the Great Depression.
Picture in your mind's eye that time of catastrophe: Vast numbers of old people (with rapidly escalating medical care needs) demand the support they have been led all their lives to expect as their due; a constantly declining number of workers brings progressive increases in the retirement taxes; as they rise more and more, people avoid the taxes by taking wage increases in the form of more holidays and more untaxed fringe benefits, thus requiring yet higher tax rates and a spiraling burden on the remaining effective work force; more and more couples decide they can't support both the taxes and children, so they elect to have fewer and fewer children; then it suddenly dawns on them that there will be no one to support them when they retire; growing resentment clashes with the spiraling tax burden and. a democracy being unable to act with foresight and moderation, there is a sudden collapse of the Social Security system, which by that time will be virtually the only retirement pension plan. Workers then try to take care of their own parents, but there are many over-65 "orphans". The philosophical ground having been cleared by permissive abortion, the pressures for permissive and then mandatory euthanasia become overwhelming. As the total population plummets, we experience all the appalling effects of negative growth, including tremendous pressures from the countries that maintained their high birth rates.
Then abortion and euthanasia are outlawed as contrary to public policy. If we survive.
Biblical Economics Today Vol. 1, No. 5 (October/November, 1978)
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