The Great Declining Population Myth (or why does France need all those immigrants?)

The "powers-that-be" have been telling us Europeans for ages now that we need to bring more (and more and more) immigrants onto the continent because we are not having enough babies (i.e. we're not replacing our population and, so, there will not be enough young folks to maintain the old folks in the manner to which they have become accustomed).

For example, in 2000 the UN released this report: "Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?" From the accompanying press release:

NEW REPORT ON REPLACEMENT MIGRATION ISSUED BY UN POPULATION DIVISION

NEW YORK, 17 March (DESA) -- The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has released a new report titled “Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?”. Replacement migration refers to the international migration that a country would need to prevent population decline and population ageing resulting from low fertility and mortality rates.

United Nations projections indicate that between 1995 and 2050, the population of Japan and virtually all countries of Europe will most likely decline. In a number of cases, including Estonia, Bulgaria and Italy, countries would lose between one quarter and one third of their population. Population ageing will be pervasive, bringing the median age of population to historically unprecedented high levels. For instance, in Italy, the median age will rise from 41 years in 2000 to 53 years in 2050. The potential support ratio -- i.e., the number of persons of working age (15-64 years) per older person -- will often be halved, from 4 or 5 to 2....

Major findings of this report include:

-- Population decline is inevitable in the absence of replacement migration. Fertility may rebound in the coming decades, but few believe that it will recover sufficiently in most countries to reach replacement level in the foreseeable future.... [link]

What's always bothered me about these declining population scenarios is the "inevitable" part. Inevitable? Irreversible? Really? Why?

In the UN study above, the assumed future course of fertility for France was reckoned thusly:

For each of the countries and regions considered in this study, the total fertility rate is below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. For those countries whose latest estimated total fertility rate was between 1.5 and 2.1 children per woman (France, Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States), it is assumed that the fertility rate will move towards a target level of 1.9 children per woman and will remain constant to the end of the projection period, 2050. (pg. 16) [link]

Interesting assumption, but it was WRONG. The French fertility rate in 2003 was 2.0 -- last year it was at replacement level, 2.1. And the rising rate is NOT just due to high birth-rates in the immigrant population:

Walker's World: French births soar
By MARTIN WALKER, UPI Editor Emeritus
Published: April 30, 2008

WASHINGTON, April 30 (UPI) -- The news that France has overtaken Ireland to boast the highest birthrate in Europe is intriguing for three different reasons....

The second development to note is that INED, France's National Institute of Demographic Studies, has done some detailed research and concluded that France's immigrant population is responsible for only 5 percent of the rise in the birthrate and that France's population would be rising anyway even without the immigrant population....

In France, the TFR has risen from 1.66 in 1993 to 2.0 in 2003 and 2.1 last year. If maintained, that means the population of France will rise from 60.7 million today to 70 million sometime before 2050.... [link]

So much for inevitable.

So why are Europeans (and why were the French) not having enough babies?

Steve Sailer has written extensively on the idea that people need to be able to afford to have families. If couples calculate, for whatever reasons, that they cannot afford to have several children, they won't.

This seems to have been exactly what happened in France -- the French could not afford to have large families until the government offered financial incentives:

[F]or a Europe that is worried about too few children being born to support the fast-growing numbers of elderly retirees, it suggests that public policy can make a difference. France now pays any mother with a third child about $1,200 in child support, along with massive discounts on train and public transport and subsidized day care. These incentives seem to work. [link]

So, the French didn't need all that immigration then, did they? Nor did/does the rest of Europe. We just need to be able to afford to have large families of our own.

Now why didn't the UN think of that?

See also: Declining population part I: taking care of retirees by Half Sigma.

Update: See part II of Half Sigma's "Declining population" post:

I previously wrote that women delay childbearing when they face resource insecurity. That explanation still holds. In that article I explained that, today, young people are comparatively worse off compared to years past. This is, in part, because of the importance of acquired human capital in the modern economy. It now requires decades of human capital accumulation before a person can make a decent salary, by which time the prime childbearing age is past.

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