President Dmitri A. Medvedev has signed into law the first steps intended to restrict abortion since the collapse of communism, the latest salvo in what is beginning to resemble the fierce divide over abortion in the United States.

The changes require abortion providers to devote 10 percent of any advertising to describing the dangers of abortion to a woman’s health, and they make it illegal to describe abortion as a safe medical procedure.

Tighter restrictions on abortion may follow after Parliament considers a separate health bill in the autumn. ...

Mr. Medvedev has made the fight against Russia’s falling birthrate and plunging population, now at just under 143 million, a feature of his presidency, offering incentives like payouts for a third child and land plots to encourage women to give birth.

Official statistics placed the number of abortions at 1.3 million in 2009, a significant drop from the 1990s. Russia’s increasingly vocal anti-abortion activists, some in Parliament, say it is perhaps many times higher, and Mr. Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana Medvedeva, has taken up the cause. ...

The campaign was tied into the “Day of Family, Love and Faithfulness,” a holiday created by Mrs. Medvedeva and the Russian Orthodox Church and centered around Pyotr and Fevronia, a couple who ruled the Murom region northeast of Moscow in the late 12th century and were later declared saints. The president and his wife went to Murom to extol family values and encourage childbirth.

Meanwhile, Valery Draganov, a member of Parliament from United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party, reintroduced a legislative package for consideration in the lower house that would place strict limits on abortion.

Labels: abortion, demographics, natalism, Orthodox Christianity, Russia

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In October 2007 a son was born to Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, and Larisa Trembovler, the divorcée and mother of four whom he had married by proxy while behind bars. The birth followed a series of controversial conjugal visits at the Ayalon Prison, where Amir was then incarcerated. These were in turn preceded by a lengthy court battle involving, at various times, the Israel Prison Service, the internal security service known as Shin Bet, various members of the Knesset, and the Amirs. ...

In the end, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled for Amir, determining that, like all prisoners, he was entitled to certain basic human rights, including the right to bring children into the world and to have a family. ...

In the pre-state period of the Yishuv, or Jewish community in British Mandatory Palestine, a Committee on Birthrate Problems was attached to the National Committee. It called upon David Ben-Gurion, later Israel’s first prime minister, to use both his moral and financial influence to increase the Jewish birthrate. It also asked for the establishment of a “childbirth regime” as “a cornerstone of our Zionist policy and as one of the main functions of our social and local offices; not less important than recruitment to the army, spreading the Hebrew language, purchasing land or maintaining the right for immigration.”

After the establishment of the state in May 1948, in an attempt to encourage an increase in the birth rate, Ben-Gurion introduced a birth prize awarding 100 lira, then the Israeli currency, and a signed letter to every woman on the birth of her 10th child. Though the amount itself was largely symbolic, the program received significant media attention and even became the subject of a popular dictum: “In honor of the motherland/ Ten boys to be born/ With grandeur we receive/ Ben-Gurion’s prize.”

In 1967 the Israeli demographic center was established to act systematically to realize a state policy directed at raising the Jewish birth rate. In 1968 the Fund for Encouraging Fertility was set up to offer subsidized housing loans for families with three or more children and in which one member had served in the Israel Defense Forces. The 1970 Veteran’s Child Allowance Scheme similarly provided child allowances to large families in which at least one member had served in the IDF or another national security service. Given that Jews are required to do military service—and Arabs exempt from it— some have argued these policies had a de facto discriminatory effect, supporting and encouraging an increase in specifically Jewish fertility.

Today, there are more fertility clinics per capita in Israel than in any other country in the world. Every Israeli, regardless of religion or marital status, is entitled to unlimited rounds of in-vitro fertilization treatment free of charge up to the birth of two live children (or even three, under some health insurance policies). In 1996 Israel passed the Embryo Carrying Agreements Law, making Israel the first country in the world to legalize surrogate mother agreements. According to a 2006 paper prepared for the Knesset, 1,800 IVF treatment cycles are performed each year per million people in Israel, compared to 240 in the United States. A 2010 article in Haaretz stated that Israel performs the highest ratio of fertility treatments among developed Western nations.

Labels: abortion, Artificial Reproductive Technology, contraception, demographics, Israel, IVF, natalism

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...Culturally speaking, Japan’s fertility problem is a marriage problem: As Japanese women began attending college at greater rates in the 1970s, they began to delay marriage. By 2000, the average age of first marriage for college graduates was over 30. At first, these women simply postponed childbearing; then they abandoned it. Today, college-educated Japanese women have, on average, barely one child during their lifetimes.

These changes created some new cultural stereotypes in Japan. For instance, it is not uncommon to see dogs paraded around in strollers by childless, adult women. But the most prevalent new demographic archetype is the parasaito shinguru or “parasite single.” These creatures are college-educated, working women who live with their parents well into their 30s—not because they are too poor to pay rent, but because they spend their salaries on designer clothes, international travel, and fancy restaurants. The parasite singles are Japan’s biggest consumer group because, unlike real adults, their entire paychecks are available for discretionary spending. Sociologist Masahiro Yamada, who coined the term, explains, “They are like the ancient aristocrats of feudal times, but their parents play the role of servants. Their lives are spoiled. The only thing that’s important to them is seeking pleasure.”

The Japanese government has been trying to stoke fertility since the early 1970s. In 1972, when Japan’s fertility rate was still above replacement, the government introduced a monthly per-child subsidy for parents. Over the years, the government tinkered with the subsidy, altering the amount and raising the age allowance. None of which made much difference: The fertility rate fell at a steady pace. In 1990, the government formed a committee charged with “Creating a sound environment for bearing and rearing children,” the fruit of which was a Childcare Leave Act aimed at helping working mothers.

In 2003, Japan passed the “Law for Basic Measures to Cope with a Declining Fertility Society,” followed two years later by the “Law for Measures to Support the Development of the Next Generation.” To get a sense of how daft the Japanese bureaucrats and politicians are, one of the new provisions required businesses to create—but not implement—abstract “plans” for raising the fertility level of their workers.

In the face of 35 years of failed incentives, Japan’s fertility rate stands at 1.2. This is below what is considered “lowest low,” a mathematical tipping point at which a country’s population will decline by as much as 50 percent within 45 years. This is a death spiral from which, demographers believe, it is impossible to escape. Then again, that’s just theory: History has never seen fertility rates so low.

Next to Japan’s, the U.S. fertility rate looks pretty good at 2.06. The massive, continual influx of immigrants we receive is enough to keep the U.S. population slowly growing. But America’s fertility rate has been falling since the founding.

Labels: Asia, China, culture, demographics, Japan, Latin America, natalism, Singapore

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Germany reported last week that its birthrate has reached a historic low. That doesn’t bode well for Europe’s largest economy as it struggles to support a graying population. ...

I’d put the reasons into two categories. One has to do with the structure of German society. Many schools let out earlier than in other European countries. Mom or dad must be home to cook the main midday meal. Then follow the afternoon child activities. This set-up makes it very hard for a parent to work, forcing a choice between parenthood and a full-time job.

Another big structural hurdle: Daycare in Germany is limited. You should have heard the bitter complaints of the working women of East Germany when reunification caused many of their state-run daycare centers to close. At that time, daycare in West Germany was almost unheard of. This is another structural norm that forces a parent to choose between work and having a child.

But attitude also plays a role. The Germans themselves admit they could be more child-friendly. My best German friend tells of being shooed away as a child when she tried to play in the courtyard of her apartment building.

Labels: children, day care, demographics, economics, Europe, gender, Germany, natalism

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The Anglican Church wants Australians to have fewer children and has urged the federal government to scrap the baby bonus and cut immigration levels.

The General Synod of the Anglican Church has issued a warning that current rates of population growth are unsustainable and potentially out of step with church doctrine - including the eighth commandment "thou shall not steal", Fairfax newspapers say.

Labels: Australia, Christianity, demographics, natalism, religion

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With more than one in five Japanese 65 or older, the government is encouraging citizens like Tsuneko Hariki of Kamikatsu to work well past traditional retirement age.

In Kamikatsu, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, officials have set up an agricultural cooperative whose members log on to computers daily to check the fluctuating prices of the produce that they grow. Then they go out and pick whatever is fetching the best price that day. Unusual, yes, but what’s truly surprising about this cooperative is the average age of its members: 70. In a country where lots of folks retire at 60, Kamikatsu’s residents are working well into their senior years—and they’re doing so not only to buoy retirement earnings but also to energize the local economy. With nearly half of the town’s residents 65 and older, the government realized that there simply wasn’t enough of a traditional workforce available to build or staff most typical industries.

Kamikatsu shows in microcosm what Japan and several other nations now face--and what others soon will. For decades, demographers and economists have watched the world’s fertility rate plunge as countries grew wealthier and more urban. These days, fertility rates in much of the industrialized world are far below replacement levels--that is, the number of kids that parents must have to replace themselves and adults who remain childless. Though the steepest declines happened first in wealthy countries like Japan, Italy, Germany, and Spain, even many developing countries have seen their fertility rates head downward. ...

Seeking solutions, a few policy experts have begun looking more closely at the United States. After a big drop in the mid-1970s, America’s fertility rate bounced back and has remained relatively stable, near replacement level--a 30-year-plus pattern that astounds European observers. For a time, demographers explained the difference between the U.S. and other industrialized countries by observing that America’s population was more diverse, with more recent immigrants who had more children. But fertility levels among native-born white Americans also remain higher than among native-born Europeans, and the U.S.’s overall fertility outpaces that of other countries with a high percentage of foreign-born residents.

Demographers have also speculated that the higher fertility rate is a function of America’s being a more religious country, reasoning that those who engage in organized religious activity favor larger families. One survey found 46 percent of Americans attending religious services regularly, compared with just 4 percent of Japanese, 7 percent of Swedes, and 16 percent of Germans. Yet fertility rates have remained stable in the U.S. even as they have plummeted in religious fundamentalist countries like Iran and Jordan, as well as in developing countries like Mexico, where rates of religious attendance remain higher than in America.

Faced with these contradictions, some scholars are now positing the distinctive nature of the U.S. economy and its labor market as a principal reason why Americans are having so many kids. “In general, women (and couples) are deterred from having children when the economic cost--in the form of lower lifetime wages--is too high,” wrote economists Francesco Billari, José Antonio Ortega, and Hans-Peter Kohler in a 2006 study. “Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then reenter the labor force.”

Labels: demographics, economics, Europe, Italy, Japan, natalism

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Ever since the days of the British political economist Thomas Robert Malthus [1766-1834], demographic commentators have been faulted for excessive despondency, for being overly ready to find ubiquitous "population problems" in virtually every new demographic development. Be that as it may, serious or even disastrous population problems can still threaten real existing countries--even today. In fact, we are currently witnessing a demographic crisis of historic proportions right before our very eyes.

The crisis, however, is not ravaging an illiterate and impoverished Third World country. Instead, it is unfolding in a modern, highly-educated nation that sent the first cosmonaut into space: the Russian Federation. Russia is in the grip of startling and anomalous demographic tendencies, trends whose humanitarian and economic consequences are not only self-evidently adverse, but, quite arguably, dire.

Russia today is a society at peace. But judging by vital statistics alone, it looks like a country trapped in a prolonged and devastating war. Since the end of the Communist era, in late 1991, the country's birth rates have collapsed while its death rates have soared. Over the post-Communist era as a whole, Russia has reported three deaths for every two births. The year 2008 was a "good" one for modern Russia: it registered "only" five deaths for every four births.

Since the beginning of 1992, Russia has recorded nearly 13 million more deaths than births, and the country's population has dropped by about 7 million; only a net influx of migrants prevented an even steeper drop. The magnitude of Russia's ongoing population decline (to date) is overshadowed in our post-war epoch only by China's terrible population decline in the immediate wake of Mao's disastrous "Great Leap Forward." China's population decline abated, however, as soon as Beijing's fanatical policies were reversed. Russia's depopulation, on the other hand, shows no signs of a genuine turnaround.

One major component of the "demographic shock" that Russia has been experiencing was a sudden, radical reduction in fertility. In the late Soviet era--the Perestroika period--the Russian Federation's childbearing patterns held more or less at the levels required for long-term population replacement. By contrast, in the early years of the 21st Century, Russia's fertility rates have been almost 40 percent below the replacement level. Although the Kremlin unveiled an ambitious and expensive pro-natal population program several years ago, this seems to have elicited only a modest increase in births. According to official Russian reports, birth totals in the first four months of 2009 were up, albeit slightly, on a year-to-year basis--but death rates remained substantially higher than birth rates. ...

What distinguishes modern-day Russia's demography from the rest of Europe's is not its fertility trends, however, but rather its patterns of mortality and survival, which can be described as shocking--or even disastrous. In the post-war era, the modern world has been all but exploding with health. According to the UN's Population Division, for the planet as a whole, life expectancy at birth jumped by about twenty years between the early 1950s and the early 2000s. Russia has been an exception to this global rule: according to those same UN estimates, the country's life expectancy was actually two years lower in 2000-2005 than in the late 1950s. Though there has been some recovery since 2005, life expectancy for both males and females in the Russian Federation is lower now than it was four decades ago.

Labels: demographics, Europe, natalism, poverty, Russia

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In recent years, American conservatism has morphed from a smoke-filled room of martini-swilling adults into nothing short of a nursery. The Right, once known for its emphasis on individual accomplishment and personal responsibility, once a haven for those keen on adults making their own decisions, has linked arms with the stroller moms of Park Slope and put babies at the center of its universe.

The most sensational recent case of this may have been Sarah Palin’s “Seventh Heaven”-esque family, which pitted those inspired by such fruitfulness against those repulsed by it. But even before the Palin brood hit the national scene, conservative intellectuals far from Wasilla had been celebrating babies at all costs. City Journal contributing editor Kay Hymowitz argues that the fight against teen pregnancy is based on a middle-class bias that misapprehends “adolescent baby lust.” Traditionally, conservatives discussing teen birthrates do not accept any lust as worth reckoning with, so this makes for a change. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s recent book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008), proposes family-friendly policies, a two-step approach intended first to gain the support of parents with many children (a traditionalist-leaning bloc), and, in turn, to see those same policies encourage all Americans to have larger families, and thus to shift, for the sake of the children, towards social conservatism.

What ties these authors together is the belief that social ills come not from unwanted pregnancy, but from the fact that we think a pregnancy could possibly be undesirable. In other words, for Hymowitz, the problem is not that very young women want children, but that our society frowns on early marriage. For Douthat and Salam, the concern is not that those who can’t afford to have babies have them anyway, but that the state fails to make childrearing affordable. These writers, along with columnist David Brooks, do not merely want to correct what they see as a stigma surrounding procreation. The purpose of the movement is to encourage Americans—even arugula-eating sophisticates—to have more babies.

Labels: babies, demographics, fertility, natalism, tax policy

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