According to the latest figures, Japan’s population declined by 800,000 in the last year. That makes 14 consecutive years during which deaths outnumbered births. The mathematics of population decline get really desperate from here on out. CNN’s report emphasizes Japan’s desire to meet its needs with foreign workers and perhaps even immigration. But this problem is far too large for immigration to solve. Immigrants alone cannot solve a housing or a cost-of-living crisis. In fact, they can exacerbate one.
Of course, there are people who are hoping for population decline. Most of them are environmentalists, others simply believe that machines and AI will make billions of humans redundant and we should retire a portion of the species voluntarily as they take the field.
But I don’t. I think low-fertility societies are fundamentally deranged. Just as our hormones react positively to periods of fasting and feasting, I strongly suspect that the human capacity for fertility is tuned in us — by Nature and Nature’s God — for our own good and flourishing, as individuals, as a species, and as nations and civilizations.
I’ve seen how inadequate government inducements have so far been at pulling societies back to replacement level. But what should we expect culturally? I expect that “low-fertility societies as dystopias” won’t become a common theme in literature and cinema for another decade or so. Unless we see it from Korea and Japan. But, when it does happen, I expect there will be an explosive cultural reaction. What forms could it take?
I tend to imagine that it will feel like a fun-house mirror. In the 1960s the world condemned the Church for denying the goodness of birth control, and Christians had to assert the dignity of the natural family. Maybe by 2060 or 2160, the world will be condemning the Church as anti-family and anti-humanity for preserving a role for consecrated virginity.