Our aging population
What would happen if feminist philosophy took hold in America to the point where women decided that having a successful career was the only thing that really mattered, and having children or caring for a husband were nothing more than burdens and therefore should be avoided?
This scenario isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. In fact, it’s happening today in some European countries. Here are some excerpts from an article published in the November 18th edition of the NY Times entitled “Empty Maternity Wards Imperil a Dwindling Germany."
Germany’s falling birthrate, like that in much of Western Europe, is entering its second generation. This means not only that mothers continue to have one or at most two children-too few to reproduce the population-but also that the number of potential mothers has dwindled…
Dresden, the capital of Saxony, closed 43 schools this past summer because of a lack of children. Elsewhere in the country, there are too many hospitals and even too many roads… Germany, like several of its neighbors, is running out of the people it needs to sustain its advanced social systems and public infrastructure…. Germany is becoming a land of predominantly geriatric towns and cities set in a deserted, creeping countryside.
Slobodanka Javonovic, a 32 year-old Bosnian woman who immigrated to Germany 13 years ago, works as a hairdresser in Dresden. She feels that children are neither particularly welcome nor prized in German society. “Germans want their houses, they want their cars, they want their peace,” she said. “It is partly selfishness. They want a Mercedes, and it costs so much that they can’t afford a child.” She noted, however, that women are motivated by something else: a fear that they will cramp their professional options if they stay at home too long…
Such angst is not new. The watershed decline in the birthrate occurred between 1967 and 1972, when female contraceptives became widely available. After dropping from 2.5 children per couple to 1.5, the rate has drifted downward only modestly since then. Without new immigrants, Germany’s population will wither from 82 million to 24 million by the year 2100. Even if the country maintained its current rate of immigration, the population would still shrink by 700,000 over the next 15 years.
Along with the shrinking comes aging. At current birthrates, the number of schoolchildren will fall 12 percent by 2050. One in every three Germans will be over 65, double the ratio today. Those numbers add up to a slow-motion calamity. Spain, Italy and Germany will become the first societies in human history with more elderly people than children.
In a report last June, Deutsche Bank warned that Germany would have to curtail its public services, because tax revenues from a declining population would not be enough to support them. Manfred Haubrock, an expert in health care finance at the University of Applied Science in Osnabruck, estimates that the number of hospitals in Germany will shrink from the current 2,200 to 600 in the next decade…
This scenario isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. In fact, it’s happening today in some European countries. Here are some excerpts from an article published in the November 18th edition of the NY Times entitled “Empty Maternity Wards Imperil a Dwindling Germany."
Germany’s falling birthrate, like that in much of Western Europe, is entering its second generation. This means not only that mothers continue to have one or at most two children-too few to reproduce the population-but also that the number of potential mothers has dwindled…
Dresden, the capital of Saxony, closed 43 schools this past summer because of a lack of children. Elsewhere in the country, there are too many hospitals and even too many roads… Germany, like several of its neighbors, is running out of the people it needs to sustain its advanced social systems and public infrastructure…. Germany is becoming a land of predominantly geriatric towns and cities set in a deserted, creeping countryside.
Slobodanka Javonovic, a 32 year-old Bosnian woman who immigrated to Germany 13 years ago, works as a hairdresser in Dresden. She feels that children are neither particularly welcome nor prized in German society. “Germans want their houses, they want their cars, they want their peace,” she said. “It is partly selfishness. They want a Mercedes, and it costs so much that they can’t afford a child.” She noted, however, that women are motivated by something else: a fear that they will cramp their professional options if they stay at home too long…
Such angst is not new. The watershed decline in the birthrate occurred between 1967 and 1972, when female contraceptives became widely available. After dropping from 2.5 children per couple to 1.5, the rate has drifted downward only modestly since then. Without new immigrants, Germany’s population will wither from 82 million to 24 million by the year 2100. Even if the country maintained its current rate of immigration, the population would still shrink by 700,000 over the next 15 years.
Along with the shrinking comes aging. At current birthrates, the number of schoolchildren will fall 12 percent by 2050. One in every three Germans will be over 65, double the ratio today. Those numbers add up to a slow-motion calamity. Spain, Italy and Germany will become the first societies in human history with more elderly people than children.
In a report last June, Deutsche Bank warned that Germany would have to curtail its public services, because tax revenues from a declining population would not be enough to support them. Manfred Haubrock, an expert in health care finance at the University of Applied Science in Osnabruck, estimates that the number of hospitals in Germany will shrink from the current 2,200 to 600 in the next decade…