Really Pro-Growth

I always feel a bit odd when I advocate higher birth rates for western countries. For a number of reasons:

1) Some other people who worry about low western birthrates are truly unpleasant, like Pat Buchanan.

2) The reality is that regardless of what I happen to believe about birthrates, the consequence of higher or lower birthrates will be born by women, i.e. not me.

3) More western people would not help the world at this juncture. Hell, more people, period, wouldn't actually help.

So I'm conflicted. What can I say. But I can't shake my fondness for this species, and my general belief that more people = good, and less people = bad.

Given that I am an in fact optimistic about humanity's future on this and other planets, it's always seemed odd to me that people would celebrate the fact that the Earth's population will peak and then stabilize (or even decline!) after we reach about the 9 billionth human. Frankly, it just seems so... small. Bizarre, I know. But this is all really prologue.

The main stumbling block for me has been objection #2 up there - I am a dyed in the wool progressive, and I can't really advocate higher birthrates if I think it will unduly harm women's rights. So I'm very glad to hear that in France at least, they've managed both higher birthrates and a greater level of female emancipation - indeed, the two are directly related. Gwynne Dyer:

The average fertility rate in France, to pick the most striking example, is 1.9. That is not quite enough in itself to keep the population stable over the long term, as the "replacement" rate is 2.2, but it is close enough to the replacement level that a relatively small flow of immigrants guarantees continued growth in the population. The French population, now close to 60 million, is forecast by the United Nations to be 63.5 million in 2025. So what are the French doing right?...

In France, by contrast, the traditional male-dominated family is all but dead -- almost half of all French children are born "out of wedlock" -- but informal new styles of family living give women more control over their lives while still providing secure environments for most children. And the main thing women do with their freedom is to stay in the workforce: 80 percent of French women between 24 and 49 work, the highest rate in the EU.

It's not just about money; it's about independence and satisfaction with one's life. The French government helps its female citizens with free child-care (even for the very young), with subsidised vacation camps during the school holidays, and with tax breaks and family allowances for bigger families, but other countries do the same with much less impact on the birth-rate. The three-child family is still a normal phenomenon among the French middle class because French women do not feel they must choose between motherhood and a real life outside the house. (Emphasis added, and added, and added.)

I don't know why it always takes us so long to learn these lessons, but more freedom for everyone is almost always better for everyone. And I'm not talking about the false freedom of tax cuts and service cuts that the Conservatives promise. Rather, we can look at the French example and see that the government has a positive role to play in freeing women from the role of domestic slave - something we haven't yet attempted, much less succeeded at in this country.

Every year, I see another media organ blather on about how women choose between work or family. The french example shows this choice is unnecessary. Women, like men, can have both a family and a career. Only a weird, puritan obsession about gender roles combined with a myopia about government power convinces us otherwise.

Oh, and regarding my first concern up top, I should point out that I am absolutely unconcerned with the skin color of new births. What concerns me is that even the developing world's birthrates are in decline, pointing towards a species-wide population stasis, or even decline.