| The American baby boom after the war
made unconvincing U.S. advice to poor countries that they restrain their births.
However, there has hardly been a year since 1957 in which birth rates have not
fallen in the United States and other rich countries, and in 1976 the fall was
especially sharp. Both former East Germany and former West Germany have fewer
births than they have deaths, and the United States is only temporarily able to
avoid this condition because the children of the baby boom are now an
exceptionally large group of married couples. It is true that Americans do not typically plan their births to set an example for developing nations. We are more affected by women's liberation: once women see interesting and well-paid jobs and careers available, they are less willing to provide free labor for child raising. From costing nothing, children suddenly come to seem impossibly expensive. And to the high cost of children are added the uncertainties introduced by divorce, couples are increasingly unwilling to subject children to the terrible experience of marital breakdown and themselves to the difficulty of raising a child alone. These circumstances—women working outside the home and the instability of marriage—tend to spread with industrial society and they will affect more and more countries during the remainder of this century. Along with them goes social mobility, ambition to rise in the urban world, a main factor in bringing down the births in Europe in the nineteenth century. Food shortage will happen again when the reserves resulting from the good harvests of 1976 and 1977 have been consumed. Urbanization is likely to continue with the cities of the developing nations struggling under the weight of twice their present populations by the year 2000. The presently rich countries are approaching a stable population largely because of the changed place of women? and they incidentally are setting an example of restraint to the rest of the world. Industrial society will spread to the poor countries and aspirations will exceed resources. All this leads to a population in the twenty-first century that is smaller than was feared a few years ago. For those anxious to see world population brought under control the news is encouraging. |