JESSE POWELL writes:

Here’s a shocking statistic from the Economist magazine. From the article, “China’s Achille’s Heel“:

 “Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that rate (see table).

 But for now it [the one-child policy] is firmly in place, and very low fertility rates still prevail, especially in the richest parts of the country. Shanghai reported fertility of just 0.6 in 2010—probably the lowest level anywhere in the world.”

 Did you catch that? The Total Fertility Rate in Shanghai, China was 0.6 in 2010; less than one-third the replacement rate! Shanghai is the richest city in China with per capita income close to the standards of the rich Western countries. It is the most densely populated city in the country and the largest city by population in the world; it had 23 million people in 2010. This is about the same population as the country of Taiwan. Shanghai as a city has a population a little smaller than Texas (Texas has 26 million people). For every woman in Shanghai who has two children during her lifetime there are two other women who never have children at all. It is hard to imagine what that kind of insanity is like.

                                     — Comments —

Jane S. writes:

 One aspect of this the article does not address, because apparently people don’t usually think of it, is the gender ratio of China’s population. According to the CIA World Factbook:

In Chinese people between 0-14 years, there are 126,634,384 male as compared to 108,463,142. That’s 18,171,242 males who will not be able to find a woman to marry when they grow up.

Between 15-64, there are 505,326,577 males for 477,953,883 females; hence, currently 27,362,694 surplus males. It’s anyone’s guess what they are doing for female companionship.

It isn’t until age 65 that women outnumber men, but by then they are past their childbearing years.

Alissa writes:

Let me play devil’s advocate in this one. Two typical arguments against the belief that childlessness is bad is that, for one, less children are needed to curb overpopulation (an environmental claim) and that secondly, less children are needed in light of technological advance.

Laura writes:

Both these arguments are based on erroneous, Malthusian thinking, as Philip Longman argued in The Empty Cradle. Perhaps in the future, I can devote a separate post to those economic issues.

Christian civilization, in contrast to the East, also sees human life and procreation as intrinsically good.

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