The historical record shows that population faith & life matters decline is a negative phenomenon. It stifles `...the greatest economic and social challenge facing cultural creativity arid causes the rate of increase in demand for goods and services Australia is the continuing fall in our fertility rate... to fall and thus it reduces economic Due to our ageing population and lack of young opportunity. Demographic decline places a heavy burden on the young who have to people entering the workforce, government support an ever-growing proportion of spending, especially for health and pharmaceuticals, dependent elderly. With the increased pressure it places on pension funds, would reach un-sustainable levels.' demographic decline in developed countries will threaten nation-wide and tax- financed pay-as-you-go pension programs. Towards a Solution: The In affirming marriage and the value of Up to now, the working assumption in Rediscovery of Fundamental Values children as gifts, we must simultaneously Western nations was that superannuation Many factors have contributed to our reject contraceptive practices as morally funds built up by the baby-boomers during demographic problems in Western evil. their working lives would finance their countries. Amongst these is a loss of living costs during retirement. However, as fundamental values relating to the One final point. In much of the public Japan and other Western countries are meaning and purpose of marriage. This debate regarding problems associated now experiencing, the safety and aspect of the problem is borne out in with Australia's fertility decline, there tends sufficiency of these funds is far from comments made by the Australian to be a heavy focus on the need to raise guaranteed. Statistician in 1997, when in reference fertility levels in order to provide the to fertility levels and changing attitudes economy with more producers and In Australia, the Retirement Income to marriage, he said: consumers. While this is not without Modelling Taskforce (RIM) within the significance, it frequently seems to be Australian Treasury has estimated that "Increasing levels of control over fertility based, however, on a reductionist view of about 75 per cent of those who over the with the introduction of the birth control the dignity and value of the human person. next 20 years or so enter the retirement pill in 1961 helped to provide young people As this debate intensifies, let us never lose age group will still be eligible for either a with more lifestyle choices...Couples were sight of the most fundamental truth that full or part pension. Coupled with this, a reappraising the importance and relevance should inspire our reflection upon it, i.e. treasury report released with the Federal of marriage during the 1970s. This resulted that the human person is "the only creature Budget in May 2002 warned that the from the reduced influence of religion on on earth that God has willed for its own greatest economic and social challenge young Australians, rising divorce rates that sake."15 facing Australia is the continuing fall in undermined the idealism of marriage, and our fertility rate. Entitled 'Inter- the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ' The London Tines, 5September 1989. generational Report 2002-03', this report 1970s that helped to separate sexuality ' Cf, The Economist, May 4, 2002. estimated that due to our ageing from marriage. In more recent years, the IIRPD, Executive Summary, p. 2.. population and lack of young people number of couples who chose to postpone `Amartya yen, Development As Freedom, Anchor Books, entering the workforce, government or reject the tradition of marriage in favour NewYork, 2000, p.165 spending, especially for health and of a de facto relationship has risen. By 1992, IIRPD, p.3 pharmaceuticals, would reach un- more than half (56%) of all couples who ' Theodore Panayotou, 11RPD Report, Background Paper sustainable levels. married in that year had cohabited before No. 7, Population Growth and the Environment, p. 40. their current marriage, compared to 16% 'Julian Simon, The State of Humanity, Blackwell Publishers, In the United States, the stock market in 1975." Massachusetts, 1995, p.7 losses in mid-2002 combined with 'Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource: Revised Edition, structural problems in the U.S. pension To reverse the present trends in fertility 1996, Princeton University Press. system are creating a retirement crisis. decline, it will be necessary to adopt 9 Professor Gary Becker, The Economics of Life, McGraw- Reporting on this, the front page economic and social policies that are family Hill, New York, 1997, p. 288. headline of the July 29, 2002 edition of friendly in that they support married 1° Press Release by UN Population Division (Dev/2234 Pop/ Time magazine read; "Will you ever be couples who choose to have a relatively 735, 17 March 20001 able to retire? With stocks plummeting large number of children and who " Chris Richardson, Population Policy or Perish, Australian and corporations in disarray, boomers' recognise that fulltime motherhood is a Business Review Weekly, February 7-13, 2002. finances are in peril." One article went vocation, the nobility of which is second to 12 Australian Social Trends 1997, Australian Bureau of on to state that with eroding pension none. Coupled with this, we need to Statistics, 1997, Cat. No. 4102.0, p. 28 benefits and the ageing population, reaffirm the truth that the family based on 13 Vatican ii, Gaudium et Spes n. 24; Catechism of the "most Americans will have to work well marriage as an indissoluble bond between Catholic Church, rt. 356. into their 70s." a man and a woman is the basis of society. Eamonn Keane is married with five children. He is a high school teacher in CATHOLIC Sydney and President of the Population ADULT EDUCATION CENTRE SYDNEY INfORM and Environment Research Institute of faith&life matters Australia. He has authored several Published five times a year, INFORM is available from: books including: Population and Catholic Adult Education Centre, Sydney Locked Bag 888 Silverwater DC NSW 1811 Development (1994), Humanae Vitae: Tel: (02) 9643 3660 Fax: (02) 9643 3669 Email: [email protected] Wisdom For All Ages (1998), The Brave New World of Therapeutic Cloning Published with ecclesiastical approval. ©2003, Catholic Adult Education Centre, Sydney. (2001), and A Generation Betrayed Most people think the world faces a mounting problem of over- EDITOR: Fr John Flader LAYOUT & DESIGN: Annette Loughlin-Smith (2002). population, which will lead inevitably to a shortage of food and resources as well as to environmental disaster. Eamonn Keane Alternatives -- Fclucotion INFORM GClg per copy {minimum order; 10 copiesY. Single subscription is only avai Newsletter of the Catholic fIBRUARY 2003 COntre: $27 pm War, 5 issues. Single heck issue of INFORM in print; $40 per se °Copying Prohibited. explains in this article that the real problem is quite different. he January 1, 2000 Millennium most fire; but later, the critics were reference to population growth and food social change or trend, point in the positive Edition of the New York Times listed accepting his estimates as the basis for supply, the Executive Summary of the direction, as long as we view the matter "The enormous expansion in the global T "over-population" as "one of the rational discussion."' IIRPD said: "Experts are cautiously over a reasonably long period of time."' myths of the twentieth century." optimistic that it will be possible to feed 9- He pointed out that the key factor in world Another pioneer of the revisionist position 12 billion people adequately on a economic growth is the human capacity production of goods and services... has Population and Development was Lord Peter Bauer of the London School sustainable basis."3 In this regard, it is for the creation of new ideas and the allowed the world to sustain both much larger The myth of 'overpopulation' has a long of Economics. In 2002 he was awarded the worth noting that Amartya Sen, winner of expansion of knowledge. He argued that history, stretching back to ancient Greece. Milton Friedman Prize "for the the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, has the more people who live on the planet populations and vastly higher standards of In its modern form, it can be traced to an advancement of liberty" but he died argued convincingly that famines in the and who can be trained to help solve essay entitled The Principle of Population suddenly at the age of 85 before he could Third World are not caused by actual food economic and environmental problems, living than ever before in history..." written by Anglican clergyman Thomas receive it. He believed that worries about shortages but by institutional failure. For the faster we can grow economically and Malthus in 1798. Unaware of the population growth reflected a patronising example, he has demonstrated that the the greater will be the economic agricultural and technological revolution view that poor people were incapable of Bangladesh famine of 1974 "occurred in a inheritance we will pass on to succeeding increase having occurred since 1950. Rapid The final reference above to apparently then taking place, Malthus contended that making responsible choices about their year of greater food availability per head generations .8 growth was triggered by dramatic ever-expanding planetary per capita Britain with its then population of 10 million family size. He stated that the so-called than in any other year between 1971 and reductions