Why America Must Not Follow Europe by Hannan Daniel

Author:Hannan, Daniel [Hannan, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2011-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

EUROPE IS DYING

The state has assumed control over functions that were once discharged within families: health, education, day care, provision for the elderly. So it is perhaps no surprise that the family itself is in decline in Europe.

I don’t simply mean that the nuclear family has been replaced by a broader diversity of combinations. I mean that there are fewer and fewer babies. The current population of the continent, including European Russia, is around 720 million. According to a U.N. forecast, that figure will have fallen to 600 million by 2050. Germany’s population will fall by 20 million, Russia’s by 30 million – a far greater loss than was suffered as a consequence of the Nazi invasion and consequent deportations. The EU’s own statistical office, Euro-stat, tells a similar story. Within the next 50 years, it expects Germany’s population to fall by 14 percent, Poland’s by 18 – figures that include net immigration.

Albania is the only European country with what demographers call replacement-level fertility: 2.1 or more live births per woman. In every other European state, the population will decline except to the extent that it is off set by immigration. This is not, unlike most forecasts, based on an extrapolation of current trends. The fall in births has already happened: It’s a fact. All that remains for us is to decide how to deal with its consequences.

We can also, of course, speculate about its causes. Perhaps the babies are missing because of the spread of contraception and the legalization of abortion. Perhaps the decline has to do with lifestyle changes and the fact that women are settling down at a later age. Perhaps it is simply a function of choice or of a fashion for smaller units.

The one thing we can say definitively is this: The problem is not nearly so severe in the U.S. The number of live births per American woman is almost exactly what demog raphers estimate to be the rate at which a population will remain stable: 2.1. In Europe, the figure is 1.5.

Can we connect these figures to politics? I think so. What Europeans most disdain in America, especially Red State America, is cultural conservatism. Even those who have little truck with anti-Americanism feel more or less obliged to sneer at America’s Christian Right. But I can’t help noticing that values voters seem to be keeping up their numbers. Just as the U.S. is outbreeding Europe, so the Republicans are outbreeding the Democrats. Mega-churches may offend European taste, but they have plenty of children in their Sunday schools.

The higher rates of church attendance in the U.S. are arguably themselves a product of small government. The U.S. was founded on the basis that there would be no state church; instead, there would be friendly competition among congregations. In most of Europe, by contrast, there is either a single state church or a number of approved religious bodies, often in receipt of state funds. In other words, religion in the U.S. has been privatized: There is a free market of denominations.

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