Translated material
Does it make sense to regulate the birth rate?
The numbers of the Pew Research Center, which are being discussed in America now, are disputed from a demographic point of view: the birth rate can be considered differently, and the indicator calculated by generations is more accurate-how many children of such a generation will give birth throughout life. And this indicator in the United States , as in Russia, is growing, which is associated with the general trend that experts call the second demographic transition .
However, in these discussions I am not occupied by specific demographic disputes (although it is very interesting), but of fundamental provisions. Both in Russia and in the United States, the initial thesis of most demographic discussions is that the birth rate should be maintained at a level that would provide a natural increase or at least stability of the population - often this thesis is not even specifically pronounced, since they consider it self -evident. The need to increase is most often economically explained. Here, for example, Ross Doutet in New York Times :
Today they are children, and tomorrow are taxpayers, workers, entrepreneurs. Relatively young population means rapid economic growth and social expenses feasible for the budget.
I immediately have a problem with this argument: where does the need to grow? Why not the economy stabilize at some optimal point? This question - with me - is asked mainly by philosophers and environmentalists. We cannot eat and consume more than we can eat and consume, and our capabilities are determined biologically. In the same way as the possibilities of the planet as a whole, which at some point our frantic growth will exhaust. Experts can, again, argue when this is exactly the case, but this does not cancel the doubtfulness of the main premise about the need for growth.
The need to grow, naturally, is no longer economically, but geopolitically - based on the need to retain (as in the case of the United States) or the restoration (as in the case of Russia) of the dominant position of the country on a global scale. (That is why, by the way, a very reasonable argument is noted that the future taxpayers and consumers can be successfully born in this particular country, but immigrants.) But the geopolitical argument, again, leads to conflict in the reasoning, because it turns out that the country's status on the world stage is valid higher than the order of private life, within the framework of which a specific decision is made to born a child. Should a woman be guided when planning her own (I recall, the only) life with the strategic interests of the country in which she happened to live? What is more important - personal freedom or greatness of the Motherland?
Here, either religious or conservative values usually come to the fore. And if in the case of religious argumentation the case is limited to a reference to the creed that encourages reproduction, then secular arguments are usually appealed to a culture that is characterized either by “healthy” or as “decadent”. Here is a passage written not in Nazi Germany of the 30s, but in the USA in December this year:
Refusal of offspring is, at a certain level, a symptom of fatigue of the late modern, decadence born in the West and now captured the whole world. These people prefer the present to the future, the stagnation of innovations, the existing - possible. They love comfort and modern benefits, but are not ready for sacrifices, without which our civilization would be impossible.
Of course, purely theoretically, it is easy to move on to the value ranking of citizens by the amount of offspring that they brought, to the ban on abortion, promotion of homosexuality and contraception - that is, to which we are steadily leaving in Russia and what the working democratic system that controls the observance of fundamental rights in America. But here another purely theoretical question arises, which seems terribly funny to me. Arguments about the need to pursue a state demographic policy in favor of increasing the birth rate in the United States are usually leading conservatives, that is, people who, in all other cases, are opposed to any state intervention in private life - whether it is a restriction of weapons, the introduction of compulsory medical insurance or additional social taxes. Here is an angry passage reflecting the essence of the matter:
Most conservative Americans, including me, hate collectivism in much less significant issues. It is only worth the government to recommend us to use more economical bulbs or reduce water consumption in the toilet, and calls for the revolution are already sounding. Let anyone try to force us to buy more environmentally friendly cars, reducing taxes on them - we will call it a tyranny. Let anyone say that it is necessary to turn off unused electrical appliances - we will call him dirty hippies, or even a terry communist. But when we are told that women should abandon social achievements of the last 50 years, because we need to give birth more, we say - yes, a very reasonable proposal.
Really. Much more reasonable. As for the Russian national project, who was triumphantly carried out by Prime Minister Medvedev during his previous premier term and the most fundamental reaction to which was the “War” campaign in the Zoological Museum , I was most amazed in it by an amazing inattention to the heterogeneity of Russia. Maternity capital of 200 thousand rubles, which could only be used on account of a mortgage or when buying housing, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, except for homeric laughter, did not cause, while in the city of Rubtsovsk, the Altai Territory, he was probably quite seriously as a measure of support for a young family. Which, of course, returns us to discourse about “healthy” and “decadent” cultures. Obviously, according to the Russian government, the population of small provincial cities with cheap housing was to increase. There are probably more correct values there, and Russia is some kind of more real. Not the other, but the one that needs to be revived.
This is my last remark, however, completely optional. Because the most murderous argument against organized state investments into the future is not even ethical, but purely epistemological: we do not know all the introductory ones. Imagine that the city authorities of New York in 1890 would have decided to take care of the future of the city to leave it to the descendants in the best possible way. If this issue got up seriously, they would probably build stables to prevent transport collapse in the future. Well, in fact: the population of the city is growing - it means that the number of horses that transport them will also increase.
In this sense, it is more logical to influence the demographic situation in the country not to maternal capital, which is issued for the birth of new children, but the availability and quality of treatment and education that existing babies can receive. But this question usually causes much less enthusiasm than demographic. Because it does not give special space for fantasies.
Here is the New York Times about whether there is such a thing as a demographic problem.
In New Yorker is a witty female reaction that links the text of Ross Doutet with pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge.