Births ‘n’ Dearths

MY old-very old-friend George Abbott, the director of On the Town, Damn Yankees, and Pal Joey, died in 1995 at the age of 107 while working on a revival of The Pajama Game. Several years earlier, in his late nineties, he’d given up playing tennis because all his partners had died. That’s the position America is facing in respect of its transnational social life: It’ll be turning up at the G-8, NATO, and other summits only to find that all its partners have died.

The single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe, and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged. A society ages when its birth rate falls and it finds itself with fewer children and more grandparents. For a stable population, you need a Total Fertility Rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That’s what America has: 2.1, give or take. Canada has 1.48, an all-time low and a more revealing difference between the Great Satan and the Great White North than any of the stuff (socialized health care, fewer handguns, more U.N. peacekeepers, etc.) that Canucks usually brag about. Europe as a whole has 1.38, Japan 1.32, Russia 1.14. These countries-or, more precisely, these people-are going out of business.

About the Author

Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human-rights activist.

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MY old-very old-friend George Abbott, the director of On the Town, Damn Yankees, and Pal Joey, died in 1995 at the age of 107 while working on a revival of The Pajama Game. Several years earlier, in his late nineties, he’d given up playing tennis because all his partners had died. That’s the position America is facing in respect of its transnational social life: It’ll be turning up at the G-8, NATO, and other summits only to find that all its partners have died.

The single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe, and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged. A society ages when its birth rate falls and it finds itself with fewer children and more grandparents. For a stable population, you need a Total Fertility Rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That’s what America has: 2.1, give or take. Canada has 1.48, an all-time low and a more revealing difference between the Great Satan and the Great White North than any of the stuff (socialized health care, fewer handguns, more U.N. peacekeepers, etc.) that Canucks usually brag about. Europe as a whole has 1.38, Japan 1.32, Russia 1.14. These countries-or, more precisely, these people-are going out of business.