Pay the demographic piper
January 22nd, 2023 by Zen
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/america-it-s-time-to-pay-the-demographic-piper
in 2024, the Historical Reversal of America’s age structure is expected to occur, i.e., when persons aged 65 and older outnumber children under the age of 15. That demographic milestone represents a significant and far-reaching transformation of the U.S. population. It will usher in a new demographic era unlike much of the country’s youthful past when approximately one out of three Americans were children under 15.
Comments (3)
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
January 22nd, 2023 15:18:18
bruce charlton
January 22, 2023
Reversal has already happened for *Americans* – i.e. if you exclude from counting people who have only recently arrived in the US.
The longer it continues, the harder to reverse; as the proportion of the population that are women of childbearing age continues to shrink (meaning that to reverse the trend would mean these women having on average *very* large families, and even then reversal would take multiple generations).
But the whole subject is ignored when population-collapse is not being celebrated and actively encouraged – because the cause of chronic, extinction-inevitable sub-fertility is a deeply nihilistic spiritual malaise, that affects serious Christians (on average) almost as badly as everybody else.
G.
January 22, 2023
Bruce C., You are right, course, and that’s a much better way of measuring the health of the country (spoiler: it’s poor). No one would say that a company was a great work environment if all employees were bitter zombies except new hiresl.
bruce g charlton
January 24, 2023
“except new hires”
I’m not confident even of that . Subfertility is necessarily bad – but higher fertility is not necessarily good; e.g. when it is merely due to incapacity or fecklessness, which does seem to be the case, mostly.
The challenge is to choose, positively to have children. US Mormons did it until recently – albeit declining in parallel with secular trends but higher, but no longer (among the native-born population).
The spiritual malaise that leads to this behaviour is so profound and widespread that we are all a part of it.
(Because individuals bucking the subfertility trend clearly does not mean they are not seriously affected by the same underlying spiritual malaise – since the malaise is displayed in other ways – such as what I call the Litmus Tests – sexual revolution, antiracism, 2020 pandemic-vex response, climate stuff, and understanding of the current world war.)
The best that can be done is to understand – recognize and repent the fact. But that is enough.