Customer Reviews

THE EMPTY CRADLE: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What to Do About It

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Books about the relationship between the well-being of the human condition and population growth have been controversial since Thomas Malthus. More contemporaneously, Ben Wattenberg¡¦s ¡§The Birth Dearth: What Happens When Free Nations Stop Having Babies?¡¨ drew caustic comments with its proposition that fewer babies have adverse as well as beneficial effects on society and its institutions.

I wish that people could do a better job of rising above their personal values to critically examine books like The Empty Cradle ¡V like the reviewer who criticizes the book because it ¡§promotes the idea that women staying home is the solution for falling birthrates.¡¨ The book does no such thing.

Among other valuable contributions to our thinking, The Empty Cradle reveals that 59 nations representing 44% of the world¡¦s population are headed for population contraction and that this is hastening the aging of societies worldwide, many of which have virtually no infrastructure in place to meet the needs of coming vast waves of elderly, and others whose infrastructures are woefully inadequate.

The upshot is, the health and ƒnwell being of the world economy stands to be challenged as never before by the first population contraction in modern times. We would ignore Longman¡¦s work at great peril to social, cultural and economic institutions ¡V and one might argue even the environment, for the shortage of resources to deal with the problems he describes will almost certainly seriously stress an already over stressed environment.

This volume examines the implication of global fertility decline, and offers some solutions to turn things around.

Longman begins by laying out the data. Today global fertility rates are half what they were in 1972.

Europe of course leads the way, with precariously low levels. Italy for example has just 1.2 children per woman. Spain is doing even worse, with 1.15 children. These two nations are experiencing the lowest fertility rates ever seen in recorded history.

All together, 59 nations making up 44 per cent of the world's population, are not producing enough children to avoid population decline.

What are the implications of such a demographic time bomb? Simply stated, we are rapidly becoming an aging society, with ever shrinking pools of young people. This has very real repercussions on many fronts. But a major worry of governments is how we are going to pay for this growing pool of the elderly, with these declining fertility rates.

As but one example, in Europe today there are 35 people of pensionable age for every 100 people of working age. If present trends continue, by 2050 there will be 75 pensioners for every 100 workers.

Longman asks why this demographic trend is unfolding before our eyes. One major factor is that it simply costs a huge amount of money to raise a child today. The increasing number of working women, and women in higher education, is another factor. So too are such reasons as declining male wages, fear of divorce, rising taxes, the absence of grandparents as child carers, contraception use and abortion.

The economic component is certainly a leading cause of childlessness. Human capital in general, and people in particular, are dwindling because the economy demands more of its workers to be well-educated, while it does not provide the time or the money for that education. In the past the best nurturing and education of future workers came from parents themselves. They were best placed to raise well-developed children who in turn would become productive members of the workplace.

But governments today are simply not compensating parents for this vital role. It simply is not economically worthwhile for parents to pour themselves into their children, when governments do not acknowledge and reward this valuable service.

Parents provide quality future members of the workforce, and they curtail an aging population. The returns to society are huge, but the returns to parents continue to shrink. And taxation is a major means by which parents are penalised today.

In the past governments paid men a family wage to adequately account for dependent wives and children, Today we have nearly the opposite situation, with families amongst the most heavily taxed groupings in society. Parents currently face huge tax burdens which most other individuals do not. Thus it just does not pay to have children.

So how do we turn things around? Removing economic disincentives is obviously key. Substantial tax relief for parents is a first vital step. Longman also proposes the encouragement of home-based employment and family business.

Other options are canvassed. While they may not serve as a panacea, the truth is that currents trends are unsustainable. The increasing growth of the number of elderly people, coupled by a decline in our birthrates, is a recipe for disaster. Any volume that alerts us to the dangers and offers some alternatives, as this book does, provides a useful service indeed.

I was drawn to this book because I was writing an article on how fears about population decline affect society's views on the importance of individual women's rights. In other words, at many times throughout history, hysteria about national population decline has often led to a weakening of society's support of women's rights to equal education and job opportunities as many argued that a woman's #1 duty to the state was to produce healthy offspring to fuel the economy and strengthen the military. This book addresses this issue as well as the connection between population decline and the rise of reactionary governments (fascism) and xenophobia. As the author seems to be coming from a somewhat "progressive" perspective, he warns that it is currently the more religiously conservative groups/cultures/nations that continue to reproduce at high levels whereas the more modernized, educated segments of society are having fewer and fewer children. This is a source of concern for the author as he prophesies a possible return to religious fundamentalism and ultra-conservative governments throughout the world. In its discussion of these issues, I found the book useful and interesting. I also like the fact that the author doesn't simply say that women need to return to their roles as housewives and have lots of babies. Rather, he suggests government policies that will make it easier for educated, working women to have children. While such suggestions will not sit well with conservatives, I personally think this is a preferable alternative (women like myself simply are not interested in giving up our financial well-being, careers and personal interests to become full-time housewives). And of course, not many men are making enough money to support a wife and children anyway. Traditionalists need to wake up to this reality.

That said, I am a bit skeptical about some of the alarmist tendencies in this book. The biggest population decline is occurring in the industrialized nations. However, we consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources. There simply are not enough natural resources on the planet for everyone to live as well as we do. Also, future shortages in vital resources like water and oil are serious threats as they could lead to more armed conflict as nations try to secure their hold on these necessities. So, from an environmental perspective, I don't know that the future population decline is really such a dangerous thing.

This debate over population decline is a very controversial issue since it touches on hot button issues such as the reproductive rights of women (i.e., birth control and abortion), immigration (fears that immigrant populations will surpass the "white" populations of the industrialized world), and environmental destruction. So, Mr. Longman could not have possibly suggested solutions that would please a vast segment of his potential readers. For one perspective on the situation, however, it is worth reading.

I first became curious about "The Empty Cradle" when I was reading about Europe's demographic decline as a student of geopolitics in my last years at the University of Melbourne.

Fearing the threat of a radically conservative religious takeover, I was curious as to what should be done, and I found "The Empty Cradle" by Phillip Longman and was curious. After buying the book, I have never been disappointed and have recommended this work to a great many people whom I know or have known.

Phillip Longman, as not only this book but also his articles at the New America Foundation website demonstrate, is a brilliant writer who manages to transcend the boundaries of left and right without succumbing to predictable "wishy washy" centrism. In every section of "The Empty Cradle" he looks very clearly at every possible alternative and is remarkably effective at understanding how possible answers to declining birth rates are likely to be correct or incorrect. His illustration of essential issues like the present state of affairs in the most critically affected nations, the skyrocketing cost of children, the problems an aging society will face, and possible remedies that will avoid the problem of a state ruled by religious law and lack of freedom for women stands as masterful. He is, in fact, firmly principled and resolute in a way people seeking to bridge problematic political divides which both him and myself understand to relate to the issues mentioned above.

Similarly, Longman's viewpoint (like many conservatives) of the utility of home-based economics actually resonates well with me even though I have never married or even dated - probably because so much of what I have learned was never taught to me at school. As I see it, Longman is right that the ability to combine work, family and education is a major step forward for more affordable families. Yet, Longman sees beyond the typical stereotypes of the Right with his remarkable assessment of how societal health problems like obesity could be solved - like how old railways could be redeveloped as cycling paths.

Longman and his New America Foundation have been called "liberal" and "right wing" - in fact they are neither, and "The Empty Cradle" is a work of truly rare intelligence and logic. I strongly recommend it to all readers, despite the negative reviews.

This 2004 book, ominously titled "The Empty Cradle," focuses on declining birthrates and the resulting increased proportion of elderly people to be expected during the next few decades in many countries of the world. But I think the author, Philip Longman, is at least half mistaken in his analysis of the situation, and often deceptive, too. The message we should most urgently be promoting is for people in the Third World to have fewer children, not, as Longman proposes, for those in the First World (who waste so many non-renewable resources) to have many more children. We are increasingly living in a jam-packed world, in which more empty cradles should be welcomed, not deplored.

To his credit, Longman often admits that people today have excellent reasons for feeling that the world is overcrowded. With all the traffic jams, urban sprawl, longer waiting lines, disappearing farmland, etc., the impression of overcrowding is unavoidable, at least for people who can remember life as it was lived just a few decades ago. In acknowledging this, Longman admirably distances himself from the many more fanatical deniers of the overpopulation problem.

However, Longman's main thesis is that of worldwide population decline and the threat it poses to prosperity (and/or capitalism). His book is heavily based on a 2002 U.N. population study that seems, to me at least, too recent and too radical for its predictions to be accepted as truth so soon. Since when is the U.N. an infallible source? But Longman, following the U.N. study, writes that "An unprecedented fall in fertility rates over the last thirty years is now spreading to every corner of the globe...." The problem with this claim is that Longman has observed a gradual decline in fertility fates around the world, and only in some cases (less than half of all the world's countries) to slightly below the replacement level, and from that he extrapolates a Continuing Decline and also one spreading to All Countries of the world. But it just doesn't add up. He is counting his non-chickens before they don't hatch.

I would certainly agree with Longman that Europeans, sometime soon, need to increase their fertility rates to replacement levels (in general, 2.1 births per woman). But no higher. Stability of population should be the goal there, not an increase in numbers. And the current slight decline in numbers should even be welcomed for a while. Much of Europe is overcrowded and cannot feed itself off its own land.

The book would have been better if Longman had realized the limits of his "depopulation" theory. Then his practical proposals, some of which make much sense for certain countries and are found in the second half of the book, would have been the book's main content. Instead he sensationally overemphasizes declining fertility rates in his first chapters. He doesn't tell readers, or at least not clearly enough, that the world's average fertility rate, though it has indeed declined in recent decades, is still considerably above replacement level. As of 2008 it is about 2.58 (births per woman). And it hasn't gone down much in several years. Considering that the world's average death rate is now so low (lower than ever before in human history or prehistory), that figure means that the world's population will still grow at a fairly fast pace (and not merely because of births 20 or 30 years ago), even if somewhat slower than its superexplosive growth rate of a few decades ago, when death rates had already dropped significantly but average world fertility rates were still very high (about 5-6 children per woman).

Early on, Longman's all too brief discussion of the fertility rates in Islamic countries (pp. 7-11) seems not merely confused but actually deceptive. For an author who elsewhere in his book occasionally expresses fears (rightly, I think) of the demographic rise of religious fundamentalists around the world, Longman oddly worries here about the recently stable fertility rates (hovering around 2.1) of a few Islamic countries. In fact, he cites only three examples: Algeria, Turkey, and Iran. He is worried because he views them as a shrinking, or no longer growing, labor pool for Europe (a dangerous option to begin with, in my view). He does not once mention, in his entire book, the many other Islamic nations whose fertility rates remain high or even very high. Here, therefore, are some of them, with their rates as of 2008: Afghanistan 6.8; Yemen 6.41; Oman 5.62; Sudan 4.58; West Bank 4.06; Iraq 3.97; Saudi Arabia 3.89; Pakistan 3.58; Syria 3.21; Libya 3.15; Bangladesh 3.08; Turkmenistan 3.07; Tajikistan 3.04; etc., etc. (figures from a standard source: CIA World Handbook). Such high Islamic fertility rates were probably even higher in 2003 when Longman was researching his book. Yet, he misleadingly suggests to his readers that the Islamic world is on the road to depopulation: "... especially in Islamic countries ... people are producing fewer and fewer children" (pp. 7-8). Actually, the general population growth rate in the Islamic world has merely slowed slightly. Can such a slight slowdown in continued population growth be seriously called a "decline" in population? No, of course not.

Moreover, with regard to Islam, it is one thing for a Muslim mother today to have "only" 2, 3, or 4 children instead of the 6, 7, or 8 children her own mother had, and another thing entirely to imagine, as Longman naively does, that the average Muslim mother in dozens of Islamic countries throughout the world is soon going to have merely 1 or 2 children simply because she has a secondary school education. All of Islamic history and culture (grim patriarchy, legalized polygamy, women housebound, etc.) goes against that prediction. A decline in the fertility rate down to even 2.1 by the great majority of Muslims, which Longman (again, pp. 7-11) suggests is already the current situation, or about to be, could only happen if Muslims everywhere were to openly acknowledge the world's overpopulation problem and their own role in creating it, then responsibly help to solve it. That is the real challenge still facing us: overcoming certain Islamic traditions. If they are not overcome very soon, the destiny of humankind can be seen in the overcrowded slums of the Islamic world today.

An even more serious example of Longman's misleading statistics is this other early statement of his: "Birthrates are falling in sub-Saharan Africa as well.... The fall in fertility has been largest in South Africa, where total births per woman dropped from 6.85 during the early 1950s to 3.29 by the end of the 1990s" (p. 25). This sentence, and the entire paragraph it appears in, are downright devious. Yes, the fertility rate of the country of South Africa did "fall," but it fell from an astronomically high rate of 6.85 to a still high one of 3.29. Moreover, South Africa's rate is the only sub-Saharan fertility rate Longman cites. Once again he omits to mention those of other such nations. In fact, his entire discussion of sub-Saharan Africa is limited to only one paragraph (pp. 25-26) of his lengthy book, and most of that paragraph is inappropriately about AIDS. Let us now, therefore, cite the missing fertility rates of other black African nations as they stand in 2008: Mali tops the charts with a whopping 7.34 babies per woman; followed by Niger at 7.29; then Uganda at 6.81; Burundi 6.40; Burkina Faso 6.34; Democratic Republic of Congo 6.28; Sierra Leone 5.95; Republic of Congo 5.92; Liberia 5.87; Mozambique 5.24; Zambia 5.23; Senegal 4.86; Kenya 4.70; Tanzania 4.62; Cameroon 4.41; Swaziland 3.34; Zimbabwe 3.03; etc. Most of these national fertility rates have fallen somewhat from even higher earlier levels, but most are still very high. And even taking into account the higher black African death rate (AIDS, Congo War, Darfur), the region is still booming in total population, though we never or rarely read about that problem in our newspapers.

So, readers, please do not trust Longman's presentation of the statistics and world population situation. Do your own research and then do the math. He and those like him (Ben Wattenberg, author of "Fewer") have seriously evaded the continuing overpopulation problem in most Third World countries. The Third World urgently needs changed customs, contraceptives en masse, and incentives to encourage smaller families in order to reduce its population numbers to the more manageable ones of only a few decades ago, both for its own sake and for the sake of the whole world. The potential for chaotic spillover from these overpopulated nations into other, currently less fertile (but more responsible) nations is huge. In fact, it has been happening for decades. It must be stopped. So, please encourage very active population control in those areas of the Third World that still need it. What reasonable person wants 12 billion people on this planet?

The idea that falling birthrates threaten world prosperity makes a certain sense if one considers the ' greying of the population of Europe and to a lesser extent of America'. The fact however is that even with falling birthrates worldwide the world is going to add in the next twenty years over two billion people. And the real problem is that almost all this growth will be in the poorer areas of the world, those where it is least likely to be beneficial.

This suggests that an ideal global population policy might be one which addresses the needs of and character of specific populations and geographic areas. In a sense Longman does this when he talks about the importance of boosting the birth- rate among America's secular liberal population. Here he is disturbed by the fact that the more religious and to his mind, fundamentalist segments of the population are those with the larger populations and those likely to eventually take over American life and culture.

Here his recommended policy is to offer tax - incentives ( No social security taxes for parents with children under eighteen) to boost the birth- rate in this group.

However given the relatively poor success of tax- incentive programs for boosting birth- rates throughout the world it is questionable whether this particular policy, or any pro- natal government policy can have much effect.

But the real point is that Longman's recommendation here is based on a value- judgment of what the ideal shape and character of American society should be.

In general it would seem that the world would be improved if its more educated and richer populations would increase their birth- rates, and the poorer and less educated diminish them.

This book is very interesting and insightful. It is very interesting to learn about the conditions that caused the world to have high birth rates in the first place and about the conditions that have caused birth rates to be so low in recent years. It is also good to see that there is a solution to the aging of the world's population, and to learn about the changes that need to be made in order to solve this problem. I really like books that offer solutions to major problems.

Very informative with thorough support statistics. Thirty years from now when people look up from their defaulted pension statements they'll realize children were a blessing and say the author was a genius ahead of his time. Sad that it will be too late then to follow most of the practical suggestions Longman writes in this book to slow health care expenses and create a pro-natal society.

While I don't plan to go out and try to 'fix' the falling birthrate problem myself, this book puts the whole matter into a totally different perspective for me.

Well worth reading, if only to be able to argue with the 'too many people on the planet' people!

Of course we may all end up being 'prosperous' while starving to death!

Full of new ideas. It challenges your traditional knowledge in each chapter. Well supported. Just the last chapter was too mundane, but despite that I give it five stars.