The world needs to wake up and invest in family, birthrate and intergenerational solidarity if it wants to save itself. The United Nations has sounded the alarm about “inevitable and irreversible” aging and low fertility in all countries; it did so in the 161-page World Social Report 2023 themed Leaving No One Behind in an Ageing World.
“Ageing societies may face fiscal challenges due to rising health care, long-term care, retirement, and other old-age support costs, combined with a potential reduction in government revenue from fewer working-age taxpayers,” warns the new report released in recent weeks, explaining how so many countries are experiencing low fertility and aging. To address this unprecedented crisis, the report recommends increased spending on “healthy ageing” and a universal basic income for the elderly. The UN report speculates that new rights for the elderly can be financed by increasing the participation of women and the elderly in the labor force, increasing immigration, and adopting family-oriented policies to increase the birth rate, including parental leave and baby bonuses.
A paper published by the International Monetary Fund analyzes the problems and economic consequences of an aging population, suggests sustained, family-oriented policies to aid fertility recovery, following the example of wealthier European nations, and blatantly omits, for the first time, any call for greater access to family planning or any mention of reproductive health and rights. Previous UN reports on low fertility have consistently sought to balance the focus on low fertility and aging with continued support for fertility reduction policies and reproductive rights. The decline in fertility and mortality combine to accelerate the overall aging of the population.
By mid-century, the majority of countries that will still enjoy the demographic dividend of youth will be in sub-Saharan Africa, according to United Nations data. Elsewhere, in Asia, Europe and Latin America, governments will need to support the rapidly increasing number of elderly and vulnerable citizens. Very few countries have begun to make the necessary social, political, and physical changes, although this is not a challenge that has crept up on politicians unseen. Demographic changes occur in slow motion. Birth rate data provide governments and scientists with decades of advance notice of population trends, barring major catastrophes such as war.
The situation is so unpleasant, not to mention worrisome, that even the globalist leftist newspaper The Guardian had to deal with it on Sunday, January 11. Are Western governments still interested in making their national identities and peoples survive by investing in serious and long-term family policies? At the moment, except for Poland and Hungary, no one in Europe seems to be thinking seriously about this and most countries are resigned to the ethnic and cultural change fostered by illegal immigration (gradually regularized), with the ‘side dish’ of permissive legislation favoring the euthanasia to reduce national health spending (Canada docket). We are facing a moral crisis, even before a political one.