The Birth Dearth; J. Chamberlain

38 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK The Birth Dearth by John Chamberlain B en J. Wattenberg, a demographer by profession, did some informal polling of students in a Michigan high school in 1985 to determine their preferences in family size. What he discovered set him off on a worldwide statistical trail that has resulted in a startling book called The Birth Dearth: What Happens When People In Free Countries Don't Have Enough Babies? (New York: Pharos Books, 182 pp., $16.95). The students Wattenberg queried in the Michigan school were born to mothers just after the Baby Boom had ended. The fertility rate of the mothers (2.4 children per woman) was still high enough to guarantee a population increase. But the students who responded to Wattenberg's questions projected a different story for the future. To Wattenberg's question, "How many want to have four or more chil dren?" not a single hand went up. Only a tenth of the students' hands rose in response to the question, "How many want to have three chil dren?" But a whole sea of hands (half of the group) indicated a two child per family prefer ence. Thirty per cent of the students voted a one child per family choice, and a tenth wanted no children at all.

When Wattenberg worked out his arithmetic, the informal expectation data came to 1.6 chil dren per woman, far short of the 2.1 figure for a replacement level. A small Michigan sample is hardly enough to prove a world trend or even to justify a country-wide prophecy. But Wat tenberg went home from Michigan to consult the census data. He discovered that for quite some time the total fertility rate in the industrialized nations of the West has been running well below the 2. 1 replacement level. Japan went below the replacement line in 1957. West Germany followed Japan in 1970. By 1980 all the major free nations were below the replace ment figure. This evidence was not enough to dispose of Stanford University's Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, which frightened so many people in the 1960s. Ehrlich, relying on figures from India, Red China, and the Third World countries of Africa, believed he had brought Malthus up to date. The people in the modern ized industrial nations might not be reproducing themselves, but immigration would make up the difference. There would be at least a lev eling-off, at four children per family, around the world.

Not so, says Wattenberg. In the first place, the industrialized nations of western Europe and America are against unlimited immigra tion. Secondly, Wattenberg's figures for na tions that have been at the total fertility rate of four children per family will, within foresee able time, fall below the 2.1 level themselves. How Wattenberg can be sure that people in the less developed countries will cease to re produce themselves is not immediately ap parent. He tells us that fertility in the Third World, though still quite high, has been falling for fifteen years. But has anyone really been able to count the population of China? If the one-child allowance in China per family were, after the current capitalist surge, to be in creased to two or three, what would this mean? The AIDS death rate in Africa might complicate figuring for that continent. So might a cure for AIDS. Wattenberg is on more certain ground when he sticks to the West. He worries about what will happen when domestic markets shrink as reproduction falls and there is a general ,, graying" of the population. The optimists say that, with the birth dearth yielding fewer younger workers, there would be more bidding for their services. Youth unemployment would go down as wages went up. More capital would have to be invested to buy equipment to replace the higher cost of labor. The newer equipment would mean higher productivity per worker.