Consumer spending keeps the economy
Walking in a demographic
winter wonderland
By Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
Why are people averting their eyes from the
coming collapse of population growth?
Demographic Winter is an independently
produced film describing the consequences
of the population collapse of industrialized
countries. I have been amazed at the
response, or I should say, lack of response to
this film. Many of the reviewers either
dismissed the thesis of the film, or changed
the subject. The lack of serious American
attention is surprising, considering that
Demographic Winter has been translated in
several languages, most recently, Romanian.
(Full disclosure: I was interviewed as one of
the experts for Part II, as yet to be released.)
Commentators Left and Right are wandering
through a Demographic Winter Wonderland
with their eyes glazed over.
The film argues that falling population will
mean a diminished quality of life for the
aging generation and for future generations.
For instance, pensions, both private and
public, have to be paid for. When the retired
population is too high relative to the
working population, paying the promised
pensions becomes an enormous burden.
Either the young pay crushing taxes, or the
elderly will not get what they expected, or
both.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
humming and the stock market climbing.
When population shrinks, the demand for
goods and services of all kinds shrinks.
Harry Dent, one of the experts interviewed
on the film, is an investment advisor. He
discovered the significance of population
growth by accident. He had a chart showing
birth rates over a hundred year period on his
desk next to a chart showing the stock
market over the same period. He laid them
over each other and realized that the stock
market tracks birth rates with about a 40
year lag. That is because people spend the
most money in their 40s. They buy the
biggest house they’ll ever have; they feed,
clothe and educate their children; they buy
cars and vacations.
I have been thinking about Harry Dent and
his charts while I drive through my San
Diego neighborhood. Out of 42 homes, we
have 4 foreclosures. Yes, the housing prices
ballooned up and people took on mortgages
they couldn’t pay. But there is more to the
story than the credit crunch: there simply are
not enough people at the right age, with
enough income, to afford these houses.
Because the Baby Boomers didn’t replace
themselves, there are not enough people to
buy their homes. Falling demand translates
into falling home prices.
The Chattering Classes can not bring
themselves to take the Demographic Winter
thesis seriously. The Left dismisses it as a
hysterical racist rant. Kathryn Joyce, writing
in the Nation magazine, reports on her
conversation with Stephen Mosher.
"Mosher, president of the Catholic
anticontraception lobbyist group (cue scary
music) Population Research Institute (PRI),
describes his grim vision of Europe's future:
fields will lie fallow and economies will
wither. A great depression will sink over the
continent as it undergoes ‘a decline that
Europe hasn't experienced since the Black
Death.’"
Joyce never refutes Mosher’s argument that
population decline precedes economic
decline. Instead, she changes the subject to
something she wants to talk about: the
alleged racism of pro-natalists. "The white
Christian West, in this telling, is in danger of
forfeiting itself through sheer lack of
numbers to an onslaught of Muslim
immigrants and their purportedly numerous
offspring."
Oddly enough, the Demographic Winter
film makes no mention of race or
nationality. In fact, the film emphasizes that
the problem of population decline is a
worldwide problem. Nobel Prize winning
economist Gary Becker notes that 70
countries now have fertility rates below
replacement. The left-wing commentariat
would like the film to be about race, so they
can dismiss it as unworthy of attention.
Representing the Libertarian Right, we have
Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine. He
likewise makes no pretense of engaging the
actual argument of the film: "I doubt that the
"demographic winter" portends economic
collapse or social deterioration, but let us set Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up
that aside for this column, and instead ask
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
why people are choosing to have fewer
children?" He wants to talk about how the
modern world has given men and women
more choices, which is a good thing.
His libertarian instincts blind him to the fact
that the Invisible Hand does not always
promote the social good. Having children
may be optional for individuals, but it is not
optional for society as a whole. The
principles of individual liberty and personal
choice that he holds dear are not self-
sustaining. Those ideals will collapse, if the
people who hold them do not transmit them
to the next generation. In this case, we are
not even creating a next generation.
As I mentioned, the producers of
Demographic Winter interviewed me to
appear in Part II. The producers happen to
be Mormons. They told me that they had
anticipated more interest in the film from
church groups of all kinds. But in fact, only
Catholics and their fellow Mormons seem
receptive.
This is not entirely surprising, in that these
two groups have theological reasons for
supporting larger families. But still,
churches and all of civil society, ought to
take the argument of Demographic Winter
seriously.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder
and president of the Ruth Institute, and the
author of Love and Economics: It Takes a
Family to Raise a Village and Smart Sex:
World.