Demographic Dangers & Declining Birth Rates, Part Six: Democracy, Identity Politics & A Socio-Cultural Conundrum.
The value of truth & facts are being diminished by subjective value judgements based not on data, but on opinion, and this is weakening liberal democracies everywhere. Combined with demographic crises, disruptive narratives are being used to peddle false freedoms that serve only to undermine the very thing they say they are protecting.
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“In a sense, (demography) is life — its beginning and its ending. Population must be understood alongside other causal factors such as technological innovation, economic progress and changing beliefs and ideologies, but population does explain a great deal.”
Paul Morland, The Human Tide (1).
Demography is life…
Everywhere the same trend is followed; there are no exceptions, the only only difference is the time-frame.
In the broadest sense; decreased infant mortality, improved life expectancy and urbanisation— the first demographic transition (FDT) — leads to generational improvements in education leads to generational improvements in wealth leads to generational declines in fertility — the second demographic transition (SDT).
One is not necessarily the cause of the next; one is not necessarily dependent on the prior; demographic patterns are complex, difficult to unravel and can vary hugely from one geographical or geo-political region to the next. Nothing is fixed, but using the broadest brush strokes they are all familiar, all similar, yet all distinctly different.
Before the onset of the FDT four demographic features were prominent across all societies: high fertility rates, low levels of education, the dominance of physical over human capital, and low rates of productivity/economic growth.
By contrast, in today’s developed world, in nations that have already experienced (or are continuing to experience) the SDT, we observe the exact opposite: low fertility, high levels of education, human…
