Fertility decline is a coming reality that immigration won't solve (Letter)

Solving the problem of dropping human fertility rates begins first with understanding why it's happening, then realizing that it's happening across the entire globe, and finally that it's a trend that's been underway for over 50 years.

A year before the widely-read publication "The Population Bomb," which scarily predicted overpopulation of the globe, Edward Fulton Denison published a much less widely-read academic tome titled "Why Growth Rates Differ." In the book, Denison demonstrates authoritatively that fertility is already dropping across the globe. His analysis made it clear that dropping population was our future reality.

Denison's statistics also made clear that this trend is driven by urbanization. As countries urbanize the need for children to help in the fields declines. Children in urban spaces are an added expense, no longer sources for unpaid labor.

Urbanization driving a drop in human fertility is a difficult problem because it is driven by economic gravity. Specifically, it costs a lot less to organize and supply people who are living close together. Also, the serendipity of people living close together means that ideas have a more fertile field to land in. And there is more money in urban places to promote new ideas, so urban places are more creative.

The economic power of these realities is why city growth is called "economic gravity." Immigration — promoted as the "answer" in the editorial — does help, but the reality is that urbanization will continue and with it there is a powerful likelihood there is little we can do to prevent a continuing worldwide decline in fertility. A more realistic "answer" is to begin to prepare for a new kind of economy, one not driven by population growth.

Phillip Michaels

University City