God in History: Is The U.S. Running Out Of People?
"The US is facing an aging population, falling birth rate, and economic recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic. These issues will have huge implications on the size of the workforce and the consumer base. Watch the video to find out why America could be confronting an underpopulation problem and what business leaders and policymakers can do about it." from video introduction.
When we discuss things such as a declining birth rate or an aging population we often talk as if God is a disinterested third party. We see this even among Christians.
Retired NFL player Benjamin Watson is husband to Kirsten, and father of seven children. He recently wrote an excellent opinion piece in Newsweek titled: “To Address America’s Declining Birth Rate, We Need a Culture of Life.
Here are some excerpts:
"Americans aren’t having kids like they used to. The most recent census shows that the U.S. birth rate has hit its lowest level since 1979. In fact, the birth rate has fallen almost every year since 1991. Today, at just 1.64 births per woman, American families aren’t even having enough babies to meet the replacement rate of 2.1 births.
Our plummeting birth rate is a complex issue, of course. But it presents a unique problem for our country. We need to view this trend as a part of a broad and deeply concerning cultural drift away from the importance of the family.
…raising a family is hard, and not just economically or financially. Aspiring parents need things like job security and health care, that’s for sure. But they also need a robust life-respecting culture that supports mothers, encourages fathers and inspires young couples to raise families.
Our historically low birth rate is the canary in the coal mine; it’s a sure sign that we don’t have that kind of culture anymore. Young parents need support and guidance, but our culture gives them confusion, doubt, worry, pessimism and fear. Instead of uplifting and protecting the dignity of families, our culture seems to systematically devalue them...
It’s almost impossible to understate the scale of devastation that abortion is wreaking on the family. With our historically low birth rate, the census data reports that there were just over 3.6 million babies born in 2020. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute reported that in 2017, the last year of available data, there were more than 860,000 abortions.
Not only are fewer people than ever before finding their way to a full appreciation and embrace of the family but hundreds of thousands of babies are being killed every year by the for-profit abortion industry. Our culture doesn’t just devalue the family and discourage pregnancy; it actively supports killing what few children are conceived."
If we look toward biology we also find concerns.
In 2017, author Shanna Swan and a team of researchers completed a major study. Over the past four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent. It appears our sexual development is changing in broader ways, for both men and women and even other species, and that the modern world is on track to become an infertile one. Her book is: Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race