Fertility rates are dropping worldwide. If we don’t make changes, we may go extinct. Let’s pray for more children before it’s too late.

From Ruth Institute. Demographic Winter could be the greatest disaster of the 21^st century.

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The science behind it is called demography which is the study of populations – their rise or fall. In the Northern Hemisphere, winter is a time of ice and snow – a barren landscape where nothing grows. Hence, “Demographic Winter,” which refers to the fatal fall of fertility worldwide.

A nation’s fertility rate is the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime.

We start with the number – 2.1. For industrialized nations, that’s replacement-level fertility. In other words, the average woman must have 2.1 children during her lifetime to maintain population stability. She has to replace herself and a man. The .1 recognizes the fact that some children will never reach maturity to have their own children.

Fertility rates are falling fast all over the world. Africa is the only continent with above replacement fertility. Every industrialized nation now has a fertility rate below replacement – in many cases, well-below replacement.

For the European Union as a whole, the fertility rate is 1.5. In some parts of the continent, it’s much lower. In Italy and Spain, it’s 1.3. Sometime in the next few years, worldwide population growth will end and de-population will begin – slowly at first, then (like a stone rolling down hill) picking up speed….

When discussing Demographic Winter, here are a few facts to bear in mind:

• Worldwide, the fertility rate fell by almost 50% in less than 70 years – from 4.7 in 1950 to 2.4 last year. Let me repeat that for emphasis: The fertility rate – the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime – was cut almost in half in 70 years. Within the next decade or two, we will arrive at below-replacement fertility worldwide.

• In America, I was part of a generation called the post-war Baby Boom which started in 1946 and ended in 1964. In the United States, fertility fell from 3.5 in 1950 to 1.78 today – the lowest on record – and it’s still falling — from boom to bust, as they say.

• Japan, which has a fertility rate of 1.3, saw its population decline by 640,000 last year. By the year 2050, it’s expected to lose an additional 27 million people – or almost 20% of its current population.

• Japan’s over-65 population is expected to increase to 38% of the total by the year 2065. The Japanese now buy more adult diapers than baby diapers. In May, Elon Musk tweeted that, “Japan will eventually cease to exist” – sooner rather than later, so it seems….

• Thanks to its insane, one-child-per-family policy – which included forced abortion and sterilization — China also has a fertility rate of 1.3. Last year, the number of children born reached a record low – 10.6 million, down from 12.2 million in 2019. That 10.6 million births may seem like a lot, but it isn’t in a nation of 1.4 billion.

• The proportion of those over 60 in China’s population will go from 18.9% today to 39% by the middle of the century. China got rich; now it’s getting old.

• The People’s Republic began abandoning it’s one-child policy in 2016. Now it’s moving rapidly in the opposite direction – expect for racial and religious minorities, like the Uyghurs. Recently, it started limiting vasectomies. Some hospitals require proof that a man seeking the procedure is married and has children. Sadly, it all comes too late….

• Due to declining fertility among traditional Europeans and immigrants with large families from countries like Turkey, Iraq and Iran, Europe will eventually become Muslim, probably sometime in this century. Thanks to Demographic Winter, this is to be the fate of a continent which once was known as Christendom. The European Parliament recently passed a resolution lecturing the United States on maintaining unrestricted abortion. Why not? Look at how well abortion has worked for the Europeans….

This is where we are now – trudging into the snows of Demographic Winter. How did we get here? People didn’t just wake up one morning and say, “Hey, let’s stop having kids. That’d be cool!…”

Thanks to the Sexual Revolution, in a few decades, starting in the 1960s, three millennia of Judeo-Christian civilization were erased and we’re back where we started, with human sacrifice. First there was widespread contraception, then normalizing pre-marital sex, then no-fault divorce, then legalized abortion, then same-sex marriage and now transgenderism. It’s a short walk from civilization to Armageddon.

• For the first time in history, just under half of the world’s population of child-bearing age uses some form of artificial contraception – much of it paid for by third parties including governments and employers.  Other peoples have become extinct — the Babylonians, Phoenicians, Etruscans and Aztecs to name few. But this is the first time a people have subsidized their own extinction.

• Worldwide there are 73 million abortions a year. That’s more than three times the number of military deaths in World War II – the bloodiest conflict in history — not spread over six years, but each and every year. In America, we are losing one million a year through legalized abortion.

• Fewer and fewer people are getting married, and more and more who do don’t want children.

• In the United States, among those 18 to 29 years old (those in their prime childbearing years) 59% were married in 1978, versus 20% last year.

• To confirm this, watch a few hours of commercial television. Count the number of commercials for diapers, car seats and toys. Now compare this to the number for pet products, retirement communities, in-home care and medication to treat a variety of ailments of the elderly. You’ll get the point very quickly.

• In a Pew Research Poll released last November, 44% of Americans ages 18 to 49 who don’t have children said they don’t want them.

• In the United States, by 2060 there will be more Americans over 65 than under 18. This means too few workers to pay for pensions and health care for the elderly. In other words, a demographic train wreck is heading our way.

• Taxes on young workers will take so high a percentage of their income, that they’ll revolt and shrug off the burden, or government will inflate the currency to such an extent that it will become practically worthless. 8% inflation will be a memory of happier times.

•  There will also be a push for the rationing of medical services for the elderly, along with legalized euthanasia.

• Why do so many Americans want a life without children? Pope Francis provided a partial answer when he observed late last year: “We see a form of selfishness. People don’t want to have children. Maybe they’ll have one child and not more than that. And many couples don’t have any children because they don’t want any…. But they have two dogs and two cats.” The Pope was excoriated for these comments. Truth hurts….

Add to this, the population-control cultists have been wildly successful….

For more than half-a-century, governments everywhere have been fighting a war on families, led by International Planned Parenthood, The Sierra Club, The Club of Rome, Bill Gates, George Soros, the U.N. Population Fund and other misanthropic elitists.

War is an apt metaphor, because the struggle against procreation always involves coercion….

Nations like Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India have forcibly sterilized millions of women. In Peru, under the Fujimori government, more than 314,000 women were sterilized in this small, mountainous country….

In the United States, Malthusian hysteria was abetted by the popular culture….

Declining fertility is a downward spiral. Obviously, the children who aren’t born today won’t have children or grandchildren of their own tomorrow. Each generation will start with a smaller childbearing base than the last, until (as Musk predicted) civilization crumbles….

Modern technology requires robust population growth. With fewer and fewer to care for it, the mighty industrial engine we’ve built over the past two centuries will grind to a halt and rust.

With depopulation, where will we find the workers of the future? Who’s going to work on the farms and in the factories? Where will we get the essential workers – the police and firefighters, the soldiers, teachers, and caregivers?

As our population shrinks, the infrastructure won’t shrink with it. We’ll still have the same farmland and factories, the same transportation system (roads, bridges and ports). What we won’t have are the people to work the land, operate the machinery, drive the trucks, repair the roads and do the thousand and one other things needed to keep society functioning….

What’s the answer to the fertility crisis? How do we climb out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into?…

To counter declining fertility, we need to take the following six steps:

1.    Encourage people to have large families. Help them to understand that the future of humanity depends on each generation creating the next. It doesn’t happen spontaneously but requires commitment and forethought. When I speak to college audiences on this topic, I often tell students that nothing they can do, nothing they can accomplish in their lives, is as important as having children.

2.    Explain the benefit of marriage to the young – On every index (including health, happiness and financial security), married couples do better than their single counterparts. More importantly, the fertility rate reflects the marriage rate.

3.    Make it easier for families to support children — with tax incentives and other pro-natalist policies. Hungary has lifetime tax breaks and favorable mortgage rates for families raising more than 4 children. Italy now provides monthly allowances for children from the 7^th month of pregnancy until the child turns 18. The Russian Province of Ulyanovsk – (yoo.lun.naav.shuh) 800 kilometers east of Moscow — has designated September 12 a Day of Conception. Couples are given the day off from work to do what comes naturally. Those who deliver – so to speak – 9 months later, are entered in a lottery to win prizes like SUVs.

4.    End abortion, now! Whether or not a pregnancy is intended, every child is wanted – wanted by God and humanity. Abortion is a curse, a blot on the land. Perhaps declining fertility is God’s way of saying: “Okay, you don’t want children, then you won’t have them.”

5.    Stop the culture’s war on men. Children require women who are willing to have them and men who are willing to support them – emotionally as well as financially. Men and women aren’t interchangeable parts. Each has a unique role to play in the family. This is the foundation on which childbearing rests. Feminists have spent decades making war on fatherhood, under the guise of combatting what they call the patriarchy. Unfortunately, it’s taken a toll. If you tell men they’re dispensable, that’s the way many will behave.

6.    Promote religion. When he was president, Dwight David Eisenhower said: “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religion, and I don’t care what it is.” Liberals of the day said, “Oh, Silly, Old Ike. He says we got to have faith, and he doesn’t care what it is.” Not quite. Our 34^th president affirmed that our nation needs religion to hold it together, whichever religion citizens choose to follow. Governments everywhere must stop stigmatizing and penalizing faith. In America, we need to recall that the Founding Fathers said “unalienable rights” are endowed by our Creator. Humanity finds its future in the cradle and the cradle is rocked by the hand of religion….

To solve the problem of Demographic Winter – before it’s too late and the world freezes over — we need a renewal of faith. Therein lies humanity’s hope….

How are you praying about the fall of fertility? Share your thoughts and prayers below.

(Excerpt from Ruth Institute. Photo Credit: Omar Lopez on Unsplash)