The pieces don't seem to fit.

Right-wing Catholic writer, Mary Eberstadt, has tried to explain the rise of secularization in the West. And she tries to do it and promote a Catholic view of things at the same time. Having babies is important, it is the only justification for sex, according to the Catholic sect. She argues that secularization of a society follows the decline in population growth. As people stop having more and more babies they cease to be religious.

Because families are smaller today than they used to be that is promoting a change in beliefs. Her evidence, in my opinion, is pretty flimsy. She also assumes that a smaller family is a "decline of the family." Big Catholic families ("every little sperm is sacred" - see video below for fun) would be described as a successful family. Having fewer children is not the decline of the family. It is just smaller families. People stil have families. Even just a couple who love each other are a family. But the Catholics are quite obsessive about reproducing—odd since their priests are so bad at it—though not for a lack of trying in some case. But altar boys just don't get pregnant.



Eberstadt theorizes that family sizes fell in Europe and then religion declined as a result. And, this is pretty much true. But corrallation is not causation. She says: "In France, for example — where secularism has been a ferocious social and political force for centuries — people generally stopped having babies much sooner than they did elsewhere on the Continent."

So, she assumes the one causes the other. And then to prove it says: "Once we allow that family decline is at least partly responsible for religious decline, we can do a better job of explaining the 'exceptions' in the literature than does secularization theory itself. Specifically, we can explain the largest problem that has bedeviled the theory all along: i.e., the difference in religiousity between Europe and the United States."

This is Eberstadt's proof. Since the U.S. is more religious and has higher birth rates than Europe then "changes in marrying and having babies are helping to drive changes in religiosity..." She claims that: "While fertility has plummeted in most of the rest of the industrialized world, to take one example, in the United States it remains the same, even registering a slight increase."

According to the The World Factbook, compiled by the CIA the fertility rate, that is the average number of children that a woman will give birth to in her lifetime, is 2.05 for the United States. For the "secular" French it is 1.98. The difference is rather small. So the drop in French fertility rates, as compared to the U.S. is all of 0.07. Basically that means for every 1 million American women there are 2,050,000 births and for every 1 million French women there are 1.980,000 births. Is a birth difference of just 70,000 per million women enough to drive the French to secularism while Americans are religious?

It is also curious, if the CIA numbers are correct, why cultures that are far more secular than the United States can have higher fertility rates? For instance, Greenland, a Danish outpost, has a birth rate of 2.19. The difference between Greenland and the United States is much greater than the difference between the United States and France (0.14 vs 0.07). If family size drives religiosity to some degree then we would have to presume that Greenland is even more religious than the United States. Unfortunately, for the theory, that isn't the case.

Another example is New Zealand. The fertility rate in New Zealand is 2.1, which is higher than in the United States. But church attendance in New Zealand is on levels well below the United States. Only 7.5% of the Kiwis are in church on any given Sunday. While surveys in the United States show about 20% of the population as saying they have "no religion," the New Zealand census showed that 32% of Kiwis claim to have no religion. Higher birth rates and higher secularization.

Eberstadt attempted to explain why the United States is the exception in religious trends around the world. She assumes that is the case. I don't think so. Religion is on the decline in the United States EVEN as birth rates remain steady or, as Eberstadt claimed "even registering a slight increase." She tries to explain exceptions to one theory and offers another that has even more exceptions that need explaining.

Take Cyprus as another example. Cypriots tend to be more religious than Americans. The percentage of Cypriots who claim to be members of Greek Orthodox church is greater than the number of Americans who claim to be Christian. Yet their birth rates are very low in comparison, just 1.77.

If Eberstadt's family-driving-religion theory made sense then the following ought to be true:

• Greenland ought to be more religious than the United States. In fact, it is less religious.

• New Zealand ought to be more religious than the United States. In fact, it too is less religious.

• Cyprus ought to be less religious than the United States but instead is more religous.

Now let us look at actual trends in the United States, trends that run counter to Eberstandt's theory.

Eberstadt notes that the U.S. has relatively higher birth rates compared to the rest of the West. She assumes religion causes that. Yet Americans today are far less religious than they were just a few years ago. The number of Americans who classify themselves as non-believers has doubled in recent years even as the birth rate has not declined, as would be expected if Eberstadt is correct. The most recent American Religous Identification Survey shows that currently 70% of Americans say they are Christian. In 1990 it was 86%. That is a substantial drop in a very short time that clearly is unrelated to birth rates. The Survey says: "The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not coe from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion."

The Survey said, in a press statement:

The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, had now increased to 15 percent. …Northern New England has now taken over the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the county, with Vermont, at 34 percent “Nones,’ leading all other states by a full 9 points. Ariela Keyser who helped conduct the survey said: “The Nones are the only group to have grown in every state of the union.”

The Survey says that statistical analysis indicates that a lot of people who decline to answer questions abour religion are more likely in the "None" category. They write, "we can observe that in 2008 one in five adults does not identify with a religion of any kind compared with one in ten in 1990." Clearly the secularization process is taking place in the United States, and at a relatively rapid pace, while birth rates are not declining. This ought not be happening if Eberstadt's theory makes sense. I conclude it doesn't.

Oddly Albert Mohler, comes to the defense of Eberstadt's theory. He says: "Mary Eberstadt is also surely right." He says that American "exceptionalism" is evidence of it. Southern Baptist Mohler is actually contradicting himself. In his own blog he previous claimed that "The worldview of most Americans is now thoroughly secularized..." He claimed the church was displaced as is "characteristic of the process of secularization which has now so thoroughly alterned the landscape of American culture." He goes as far as saying that America is a "post-Christian" nation. But if America is a post-Christian nation, as Mohler claimed, then Eberstadt's theory is wrong.

Poor Rev. Mohler, whatever you think of his theology, his logic is piss poor. He wants America to be the exception to the general theory and thus highly religious in one case. But in another case he claims religion has been displaced and America is now "post-Christian." I'm not surprised he has said contradictory things. His motives were different in each case. The artilce on "post-Christian" America was the typical doom and gloom you hear from fundamentalists. His cheerleading for Eberstadt's theory however, had a different agenda.

As Mohler sees it, and perhaps as Eberstadt does as well, this theory supposedly proved "the importance of preserving family structure and high rates of childbirth in light of spiritual commitments." When fundamentalist talk about "preserving family" you know that an old-fashioned gay bashing isn't far behind.

As Mohler wrote himself, America has entered a "post-Christian" era. Apparently he thinks America is still the "exception" to secularization while being a shining example of secularization simultaneously. It is one thing, and it's complete opposite, at the same time. In other words: A is not A. Now you know why I say he is poor at logic.

Both Mohler and Eberstadt have religious agendas. That's fine. We know they have them. But I think it is clear that they are trying to interpret reality to fit with their religion. Unfortunately for them reality doesn't work that way. It is what it is. Perhaps in Mohler's mind A can be non-A but in the real world A is A.

Panic du jour: overpopulation.

The Dominion Post in New Zealand recently published a doomsday prognosis based on the antiquated bugaboo of overpopulation. They actually avoid defining what they mean by overpopulation, which is always convenient. But let us look at some of the claims they make.

1. They say the world’s population “growth rate has been slowing in recent years, but only slightly.”

This is as understated as their claims of eminent disaster are overstated. They say that the United Nations estimates the world’s population will top out around 9.4 billion. Only a few years ago the UN was saying it would be 12 billion. So in a few years time they have reduced their estimate by 3 billion people. The Dominion Post calls that slight.

To put that into context, that is equivalent of the total population of China, India and the United States combined. Hardly a trifling number, I would say. In Kiwi terms that is the same as eradicating the entire population of New Zealand 650 times over.

The total fertility rate, that is the number of children born to each woman on average, has been dropping like a stone in spite of the Post’s claim that there have been only slight decreases. In the early 70s the TFR was 5.2 children. By the early 90s it had dropped to 3.6. By the beginning of this century it was standing at 2.97. And today, it is estimated to be 2.59. So the world TFR has been cut in half over the span of about half a lifetime.

It is generally conceded that for a nation to have a stable population it must have a TFR of 2.1. According to the CIA World Factbook there are 103 countries in the world with a TFR that is at, or below, this level. This includes the United States and Canada, virtually all of Europe, much of South America, and much of Asia. Nations that are close to dropping below their replacement levels include Mexico, Indonesia, Colombia, Jordan, and India.

Of course, birth rates only tell you how many people are entering the building, so to speak. What about the exits? The main driving force of world population today is not birth rates but death rates, or to be more precise, the decline in death rates. People are living longer. More infants are surviving into adulthood. This decline in deaths is the main reason populations have grown. That, however, is a conundrum for overpopulation hysterics like the Post. It is one thing to recommend that people have fewer children, but how does one recommend that people die faster and in larger numbers? That is why they actually ignore the driving force of population growth today -- longer life spans.

2. The Post argues that there are “ominous signs that the world might be reaching capacity.” Doomsday day prophets never have a shortage of ominous signs since almost anything unpleasant is usually attributed to their panic du jour. Their evidence in this editorial is that the UN “called for immediate help for poor countries hit by spiraling food prices. Those countries were spending 25 per cent more on food imports in 2007 than they had in 2006...” No doubt this is true. But let us look at what has happened, and who is responsible.

World food production has been increasing dramatically for decades now. World food supplies have been increasing faster than the world’s population. In the 1960s only 42 percent of nations had an average daily caloric intake that was equal to 100% of daily requirements. By the 70s it was 52 percent, by the 80s it was 66 percent. Nations which previously couldn’t produce enough food, such as India, China and Vietnam, became net food exporters. Then the environmental hysterics got involved and starting pushing biofuels.

To push biofuels they confiscated large sums of money from poorer taxpayers and poured it into the coffers of wealthy special interest groups, like Agribusiness and Big Energy companies. The politicians decided to offer subsidies to produce biofuels. Those biofuels started gobbling up massive amounts of the agricultural sector bidding up world food prices. One fuel tank of ethanol requires the food sufficient to feed one person for an entire year. The Financial Times reported that Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme “said policy makers were becoming more concerned about the impact of biofuel demand on food prices...” The paper said “biofuel production will sustain food inflation and hit the world’s poorest people.”

The politicians, in Europe and North America particularly, have adopted policies which are guaranteed to divert food from human consumption to energy and they are starving people to death because of it. The question is not so much a lack of food but food being wasted on “green” solutions that create more problems than they solve.

3. The Post gets all worried about the how much land each person has available to them. This has to be one of the biggest non-issues around. Individual prosperity and thriving is not directly effected by available land. The nations in the world with the lowest population densities also tend to be poverty stricken, death traps.

Some of the least densely populated regions are in Africa, whereas Europe is among the most densely populated regions in the world.

In any specific nation prosperity increases with population density. Auckland is more prosperous than South Island. London is more prosperous than the rural regions. New York is more prosperous than Wyoming. Population density for a nation is not the full story by any means. The rate of urbanization is also important. For instance, there are very wealth nations with low population densities: Canada, the United States and Australia are three. But in all three of these nations there are vast areas that are unpopulated with heavy concentrations of people in urban settings.

The Post seemed to chide one UN official who said population growth was a problem but “he shied from the next step, saying instead that forcing people to stop having children would be a simplistic answer.” The Post seems to think that using force to sterilize people, or some similar coercive measure, is the “next step.” I can think of people who have supported such policies, but I’m not sure the editors at the Dominion Post want to be in that hall of infamy.

The Post warns that “the pressure from an ever-expanding population on a world that is finite cannot be ignored forever.” This summation shows their lack of factual content. The world’s population is not “ever-expanding” even by the UN’s own projections. They fully anticipate the world’s population to go into steep decline within the lifetime of many of the people alive today.

I have just looked at the UN’s projections. Their projection, using their medium variants, maxes the world out with 9.19 billion people in 2050, not the 9.4 billion the Post mentions. The problem is that UN has a history of overestimating and then later reducing their figures to match what actually happened. Even their medium projections have a history of being too high. Their low projections, which I think are more realistic, show the world’s population maxing out at 7.87 billion in 2040 and then declining.

In the next few years Russia is expected to see population decline by up to 50 percent. Europe faces a decline of 25 percent, on a whole. Japan expects to loose 16 million people, Italy will lose 15 million, Spain 8 million, Germany 12.4 million, Netherlands 6 million. Nations like New Zealand, who have built a pension/welfare system based on the premise of more people paying in than collecting will face the dilemma of more and more people collecting benefits while fewer are paying in. Unfortunately as long as publications like the Post push the bogus crisis of overpopulation politicians find it easy to ignore the crisis of declining population that will impact the welfare states in the near future.

For our regular readers: This is our 1,000th post.

What you feel about population doesn't matter.

Over at the BBC web site Mark Mardell runs his Euroblog. His blog entry for November 5th is one expressing shock and surprise that Evan Davis said that the UK was not nearly as populated as Belgium or the Netherlands. Mardell’s response is basically summed up with this phrase “it certainly doesn’t feel that way.”

He dislikes London saying it is “sucking the life out of the suburbs” while Burssels “is just a much quieter place.” And in the Netherlands “it doesn’t feel head-bustingly bad.”

Mr. Mardell has a right to his feelings but feelings are not necessarily indicative of facts. Mardell does say that Mr. Davis, “I’m sure, is right.” And that is why I find his entry so odd. If you acknowledge that another persons statement “is probably right” then what is the purpose of telling the world about your feelings?

Mr. Davis is right. He says:

Indeed, if the UK had the population density of the Netherlands, it could accommodate 90 million people. And believe it or not, if the UK had the population density of the quaint island of Jersey, we would actually accommodate another 120 million people on top of the 61 million we already have.

The reality is that most people have incorrect perceptions regarding the population densities of various countries and regions. It is just widely accepted that Africa is heavily populated, ignoring the vast size of the continent. It is, in fact far less densely populated than any other continent, with the exception of Antarctica which only hosts a few scientific communities.

The most densely populated nation of the world is Monaco with 23,660 people per square kilometer. It is still known as the playground of the rich and famous. In fact many well know resorts, where people go to relax and have fun, are densely populated. Bermuda has a density of 1,211, Barbados is 627, Saint-Martine is 622, Mauritius is 610, Aruba is 553.

In comparison the United Kingdom is 246. And the Netherlands is well above that with 392 while Belgium is 341.

Mr. Mardell’s column did tell us what he felt. We even learned what his wife and and son felt. The one thing he never did was present one fact or figure. Unfortunately, these days, many people seem to think feelings are tools of cognition and if they feel something it must be right. It is indicative of the many people who can’t express a position on any issue without starting out saying: “I feel that....” In debate on important issues we need less feelings and more information.

People tend to spend more time in cities than they do in empty fields. Based on that limited sampling they tend to exaggerate the facts about population. The reality is that there is much more empty land than there is urban jungle.

The population story the media is missing.

The United Nations Population Division is estimating that the world’s population will top out at 9.2 billion in 2050. They increased it a slight increase from their previous projection of 9.1 billion because of anticipated declines in the death rate from AIDS and other diseases.

There are some who will take this as bad news. I am reminded of a “reviewer” who attacked something I wrote on population. He first admitted he had never read the manuscript in question and then said that my thesis was “not that birth rates are too high but that death rates are declining”. He then attacked me for not offering “a solution to this problem.” The problem being declining death rates. My reply was that he should think globally and act locally and that he always had the power to reduce the population of the world by one. Of course when he whines about low death rates it is always the death rates of others that worry him not his own.

I actually question the UN’s projection and I do so for a very understandable reason. I’ve been watching the population issue for some years now and I’ve read their population reports regularly. They are consistently wrong and drop their projections as they get closer to the dates in question.

More importantly they are always wrong in the same direction. They constantly overestimate population growth rates. To their credit they do give a low, middle, and high estimate. But the reality tends to be closer to the low estimate than the high estimate. I suspect, based on this record, that one should take a position somewhere between their low and middle estimates and you will be far closer to the truth. In fact a good case can be made for their low estimates being the most likely.

The new report, as per the media, gives a distorted picture in one important sense. It says that “46 countries are expected to lose population by mid-century.” But more nations than that already have birth rates below replacement levels. The reason for the difference is the time lag between one being born and one dying -- a lag most of us appreciate and work at extending. That lag increases as death rates decline. As people live longer the population continues to grow even though the total fertility rate is below replacement levels. Of course once the two catch up there is a rapid decline in population numbers.

Another report in the press says that “Fertility has already reached below replacement levels in 28 developing countries which account for 25 percent of the world’s population...:” Again you need to be careful in what you read. This is 28 “developing” countries not 28 countries. For instance most the countries that are already developed need to be added to that list.

In 1999 the UN noted that 61 countries had already reaching below-replacement fertility rates and said that by 2015 that would be true for 87 nations. One indication of how rapid the deceleration of the world’s population will be is that the number of people over the age of 60 will triple in the next few decades. The population grows but at some point soon large numbers of old people start to die and when that happens population numbers will plummet with all sorts of consequences. Expect numerous government commissions urgently trying to reverse the situation even while today they are urgently trying to create it.

The UN says that there will be more people over the age of 60 than there will be under the age of 15 for the first time in history. Consider the crisis for the welfare states of Europe. Already the number of people under the age of 60 is in decline in Europe while the number over 60 is increasing. The number aged 0 to 14 went into decline in 1965. And those aged 15 to 59 went into decline in 2005. But every years the number over 60 has been increasing. This trend will happen in every region of the world.



In fact the UN’s report, if you read their material yourself, focuses on the rapidly ageing population of the world. The media report focuses an a relatively minor increase in the projected maximum, from 9.1 billion to 9.2 billion. After years of conditioning by hysterical population gurus like Paul Ehrlich the media can’t get over the idea that the population explosion ended years ago. All that is happening now is that the world is waiting for the old people to die! Shocking but true.

The UN report says that the world has gone through a transition where birth rates are low and the numbers of children, and working aged people, will go into decline while the number of elderly will skyrocket. They write: “Today most countries in the world are already well into the demographic transition...” Most countries! Yet you won’t have trouble finding groups proclaiming that the UN report is a “wake-up call” due to over population.

You have to realize that there will be entire nations, by 2050, where the median age of the population will be over 50. Consider what this means to the issue of welfare, pensions and medical costs. And the disaster is particularly dangerous for those nations stupid enough to go down the welfare state road.

The number of people relying on such benefits will grow rapidly but those who work and pay into the system will be disappearing. There will be fewer and fewer people sustaining the system just as more and more people need it. Millions of elderly people are suddenly going to find out that the safety net they were building over their lifetime can’t sustain them. And because of the high taxes they haven’t had the opportunity to create private alternatives. They will be left out in the cold -- sometimes literally -- because the welfare state is built on a model that is the complete opposite of demographic reality.

I personally suspect, based on past overestimates, that the world’s population will peak at 8.9 billion and in the year 2045 not 2050. But the real story here is not one of “birth control” (which I happen to support) but one of welfare control. The disaster we face is not one of an overpopulated world. That disaster has not been looming for decades. But a world filled with elderly people reliant upon a safety net that doesn’t exist scares the hell out of me.