Rise and fall of nations

What is the role of the United States in the future? There is much talk today — as there was a few decades ago — that America is in big trouble.

It is said America is too powerful — the sole superpower and consequently arrogant and unpopular. We hear the war in Iraq has been lost, our political system is both bizarre and broke, we are flooded with immigrants, especially illegals, we pay little heed to the rest of the world, the dollar is cheap, the gap between rich and poor is growing, and so on.

Accordingly, so it is said, we are headed for a grand fall. This is not just garden-variety anti-Americanism. We need only listen to the rhetoric coming from our primary elections.

Surely, America is powerful. Never has there been a nation as economically potent, geopolitically influential, culturally dominant, scientifically important, and with a language that has become universal — American, or if you prefer, English.

I have worked more than 40 years examining and interpreting American and international social and economic data. To me the evidence seems clear. There is no collapse in sight. The United States will become vastly more powerful in the decades to come.

My primary reason concerns demographics. The first U.S. Census counted 3.9million Americans. The Census of 2000 counted roughly 300 million Americans, an increase of 7,500 percent. Just over the course of the 20th century, the population grew by 400 percent. Careful projections by both the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations Population Division now show a growth path to 400 million by 2050 and 500 million by 2100. But that is an increase of 67 percent — not close to 7,500 percent or 400 percent. Relatively, growth is slowing down — but a half a billion people is a big number. Population yields influence.

The astonishing point of this sequence of numbers is that almost every other nation — developed or less-developed — is on a path toward, or has already started decline. The exceptions I can think of are Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

In 2004 I wrote a book titled “Fewer.” Its operative sentence was “Never have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly.”

I think the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the most meaningful way of measuring what is going on demographically. It reflects the average total number of children born per woman over the course of her childbearing years. It takes 2.1 children per woman to “replace” a population over time. Sooner or later the two parents die — and the .1 represents those children who do not live to the reproductive age.

Today, the TFR in Western Europe is about 1.6 children per woman. Southern Europe is lower. In Italy, once famous as the land of the bouncing bambino — the rate is about 1.3. Not long ago that was the lowest in the world. Today the TFR as low or lower in Eastern Europe. Japan and South Korea have rates near 1.1 children per woman. China’s coercive one-child family policy has left them with a massive demographic shortfall. Who will pay the health and retirement bills when small cohorts of Chinese have to pay for huge numbers of elderly people who need health care and living expenses?

Already more than 25 Less Developed Nations (formerly called “Third World”) have TFR below replacement fertility rates. These include Cuba, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Iran, probably Turkey, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and North Korea.

Russia is in a particularly perilous demographic situation. Its TFR is about 1.2 children per woman — but exacerbated by out-migration and low longevity, particularly among men, due to alcoholism. That’s not the portrait of a super-power: a fleet of rusting nuclear weapons, a sea of oil — and ever-fewer people.

“Ever-fewer” is the root of the demographic situation. The horror stories about the “population explosion” concerned how population growth moved in a geometric progression. One scientist testified to Congress that if trends continued the radius of the human flesh would expand at the speed of light.

Other alarmists, like Paul Ehrlich had somewhat more modest projections. (My late colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Herbert Stein wisely noted that “a trend that can’t continue — won’t.”)

But when the TFR goes below the replacement level —- the depopulation also proceeds geometrically. The Europeans, Russians, Chinese and their East Asian neighbors will have starkly fewer people. India is still above replacement, but on a steep path toward decline — accelerated by female infanticide.

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