America's babies: No longer booming

Throughout the years of abortion debates, abortion advocates have often claimed that abortion helps alleviate the problem of overpopulation. While killing human beings because you believe the world is overpopulated is wrong regardless of whether the world is overpopulated or not, more and more people are beginning to recognize the world will soon be dealing problems caused by decreased fertility.

In a Wall Street Journal column, Jonathan Last describes the problems with a fertility rate which falls below replacement levels.

The nation's falling fertility rate underlies many of our most difficult problems. Once a country's fertility rate falls consistently below replacement, its age profile begins to shift. You get more old people than young people. And eventually, as the bloated cohort of old people dies off, population begins to contract. This dual problem—a population that is disproportionately old and shrinking overall—has enormous economic, political and cultural consequences.

For two generations we've been lectured about the dangers of overpopulation. But the conventional wisdom on this issue is wrong, twice. First, global population growth is slowing to a halt and will begin to shrink within 60 years. Second, as the work of economists Esther Boserups and Julian Simon demonstrated, growing populations lead to increased innovation and conservation. Think about it: Since 1970, commodity prices have continued to fall and America's environment has become much cleaner and more sustainable—even though our population has increased by more than 50%. Human ingenuity, it turns out, is the most precious resource.

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