Fertility 2.1

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | April 26, 2013

Fertility is plummeting around the globe and countries are at a loss to solve the problems created by aging and population decline. Without robust workforces it will be impossible for African countries with emergent fiscal systems  to sustain any kind of social protection floor in the future.

While countries negotiate a document to address the challenges countries and individuals face through migration at the UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD46), the international community is beginning to realize the problems that population control can create in least developed countries. Immigration, all acknowledge, can alleviate the challenges faced by aging and declining populations, but only in the short term. Migrants tend to conform to the reproductive habits of the countries they migrate to within one or two generations. Buried underneath a heap of gibberish about sexual health and climate change, these are some of the facts presented this week by UNFPA and UN Population Division at the Commission.

That’s why it is unlikely that the final document countries will adopt at CPD46 will contain any advance for the population control agenda, abortion rights, or any other population reduction measure advanced under the auspices of the “women’s rights” umbrella. Countries may be finally owning up to the fact that population control was a bad idea all along.

For decades the UNFPA and USAID have been financing condom campaigns to reduce the fertility of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Countries in Latin America and Asia jumped on the population control bandwagon over two decades ago. In both regions brutal population control programs have been in place to attract funding from USAID and the UNFPA. In recent years these programs have been sold as family planning, women’s rights issues, HIV/AIDS prevention programs (even though condoms only work some of the time), but above all as the creation of a demographic dividend. That dividend is poised to soon cause a demographic deficit.

The reality is that 2.1 fertility cannot sustain any kind of social protection. It is physically and financially impossible. The countries that have embraced population control more enthusiastically are the ones facing the most daunting challenges. China’s one-child policy, for example, means that China has a contracting work-force, and that population aging may create a humanitarian disaster in the coming years. But the issues that China faces, however dramatic, pale in comparison to what Africa may be facing.

After almost half a century of population control, even where coercion has failed, population control programs have been successful in changing cultures and individual expectations. But that was the real purpose of the programs all along. If you teach a population that it is better to have one child for financial reasons, there is no need to force them to have one child. That is why countries spend 60 billion USD every year in “population activities,” to change norms.

While Africa still has high fertility compared to the rest of the globe, it also is showing signs that its people want less children. You can’t blame them. Most africans in their reproductive years have been educated by fear mongering UN radicals and materials telling them to use condoms or die, and failing to tach abstinence and fidelity. It is difficult to imagine Africa plunging into deeper poverty than it already is, but it is not impossible. It will very likely become a reality in 20-30 years when the population control aim of 2.1 fertility begins to have an effect.

Nevertheless, Africa has proven the most resistant region to the new fertility 2.1 USAID hegemony. In Africa tribes, families and individuals still consider children (many of them) a blessing, a resource and a source of security. Why not help Africans develop their own countries without population quotas and false promises of demographic dividends?

Despite worries about overcrowding the earth, and dwindling resources, human beings have been able to provide for the food needs of the world’s population, and some. Commodity prices have fallen for the past 50 yrs. There is no evidence that will change. Time to start helping families have children?

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