In early 1990 I changed my name to ZPG and stood for the NSW Senate because of the big lie - that without immigration, Australia's population is declining. It was so wrong then, and it is so wrong still. But recently Nine/Fairfax/ABC/SBS/News have been revving up the old propaganda. Is the big lie propaganda being orchestrated by dark hands?
In November 2018 The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) published an analysis of the higher education overseas student industry. It was framed around the remarkable growth in the share of commencing overseas university students to all commencing students over the years 2012 to 2016. This share increased from 21.8 per cent in 2012 to 26.7 per cent in 2016.
Bob Birrell and Katharine Betts
(This post is republished from John Menadue’s site, Pearls and Irritations, 27 December 2018.)
In November 2018 we published an analysis of the higher education overseas student industry. It was framed around the remarkable growth in the share of commencing overseas university students to all commencing students over the years 2012 to 2016. This share increased from 21.8 per cent in 2012 to 26.7 per cent in 2016.
Since publication, higher education statistics for 2017 have been released. They show that the share of commencing overseas students to all commencing students have increased to 28.9 per cent. In the case of the Group of 8 (Go8) universities, by 2017 this share had reached well over 40 per cent in the University of Sydney, ANU, and the University of NSW (Table 1).
The following brief summary indicates why such extreme reliance on overseas students should be of concern. We then explore another issue, not canvassed in the November report. This is the implications of the rapid growth in overseas student commencements for access to higher education on the part of domestic students.
This a highly topical matter because in December 2017 the Coalition government announced that it would henceforth cap the level of domestic higher education enrolments. Since that time, Australia’s universities, including the Go8, have mounted an offensive against this decision on the grounds that it limits opportunities for domestic students. Yet the enrolment data examined below indicates that, at least since 2012, the Go8 have effectively enforced just such a cap on domestic enrolments.
A summary of the November report’s findings
The November report argued that the overseas student industry was in a precarious state because of its increased reliance on overseas student enrolments. The share of overseas commencing students to all commencing students at Australia’s universities increased from 21.8 per cent in 2012 to 26.7 per cent in 2016.
We concluded that the tail was wagging the dog. That is, such was our universities’ reliance on overseas students, that most were prioritising the health of the overseas student industry over the educational needs of domestic students. In the case of research, the universities’ focus was primarily on basic research. This is because it is this that is relevant to their aspiration to achieve a place in the top 100 institutions in the global university ratings systems. As documented in the November report, research of this kind is the most likely to be accepted by the top international journals that drive the ratings system. Research focused on local priorities wouldn’t make the cut.
Australia’s overseas student industry is split into two distinctive markets. The first includes most of the Go8 universities, where overseas students were charged some $40,000 a year, mainly for courses at the undergraduate and post-graduate-by-coursework level in business and commerce. Most of the students are Chinese. Indeed, between 2012 and 2016, the total increase in overseas student commencers at Go8 universities was 13,738 . Of these 12,198 were Chinese.
Students’ (or parents’) willingness to pay for such high priced courses can be attributed to the fact that they deliver credentials from a university rated in the international top 100. (This includes almost all of the Go8.) Qualifications from these universities appear to be highly regarded in the Chinese labour market. Relatively few of these Chinese students stay on in Australia after completing their studies.
This enrolment pattern helps explain the universities’ focus on basic research. In order to maintain enrolments from China, they have to promote such research because it scores best on the metrics used by the international ratings systems.
The second market is composed of almost all the other universities. The number of overseas students enrolling in these universities also increased significantly between 2012 and 2016 (though at a slower rate than occurred in the Go8). However the countries of origin were primarily located in the Indian subcontinent. Most of these students were attracted to Australian universities because of the access their enrolment gave them to the Australian labour market and thus to the potential of a permanent residence visa.
We concluded that the overseas student industry was in a precarious state. In the case of the Go8, overseas enrolments were vulnerable on three points.
First is the risk of reputational damage on account of the poor quality of the education overseas students are receiving. In the business and commerce faculties at the Go8, where Chinese students often constitute the majority, such courses have had to be made less demanding so that the many Chinese students with relatively limited English language skills can cope with their requirements. Then there is the risk from geopolitical tensions that threatened Chinese enrolments. And finally there is the risk of competition from other countries.
For the other universities the main issue is current changes in the rules governing overseas-student access to the Australian labour market and to long-term employment contracts. This means that their chances of obtaining a permanent residence visa are contracting. As a consequence we argued that these changes would diminish the attraction of enrolling for higher education at a non-Go8 Australian university.
Table 1: Per cent share of commencing onshore* overseas students to all onshore commencing students, Go8 universities and all Australian higher education institutions, 2012, 2016 and 2017
| 2012 | 2016 | 2017 | |
| Group of eight: | |||
| University of Melbourne | 27.3 | 36.2 | 38.7 |
| University of Sydney | 22.8 | 39.2 | 42.9 |
| Monash | 24.0 | 36.5 | 39.8 |
| ANU | 28.8 | 36.5 | 43.1 |
| University of Queensland | 27.4 | 31.8 | 37.0 |
| University of NSW | 30.2 | 38.7 | 42.9 |
| University of Adelaide | 28.5 | 28.3 | 31.4 |
| University of WA | 19.1 | 20.8 | 25.1 |
| All Australian higher education institutions | 21.8 | 26.7 | 28.9 |
Source: Department of Education and Training, Higher Education Statistics, Table 1.10, Commencing Students by State, Higher Education Provider, Citizenship and Residence Status.
* The term onshore is used to distinguish overseas students being educated in Australia from those in Australian campuses set up overseas. The latter are not included in these figures.
Higher education opportunities
Australia’s universities repeatedly assure the Australian public that increased enrolments of overseas students are not damaging the prospects of domestic students aspiring to a university education. Rather, they state that the two sets of enrolments are independent of each other; opportunities for locals are not being crowded out.
How could this be? Well, according to a 2014 policy document from the Go8, international students actually ‘directly facilitate domestic participation in higher education’. This is achieved, the document claims, because revenue from overseas student fees contributes to the costs of domestic education. It asserts that international student fees ‘subside each domestic student by around $1,600’.
This might seem plausible given that domestic enrolments have increased since the removal of enrolment caps for domestic students in 2009. Over the years 2012 to 2017 (years in which overseas enrolments expanded rapidly) the number of commencing domestic students at Australia’s universities increased from 370,314 to 416,371.
The result is that a very high share of the cohort of university age are currently enrolled as higher education students. In fact, university competition for potential domestic students is such that some universities have seen a drop in their domestic enrolments over the past couple of years. Concern that this enrolment scramble had gone too far (and was costing the Commonwealth government too much in funding) prompted the Coalition government in December 2017 to announce that it would re-impose enrolment caps in 2018 (caps which Labor promises to withdraw should it win government in 2019).
The universities have responded to these caps by insisting throughout 2018 that they amount to a reduction in opportunities for domestic students. According to Margaret Gardiner, Vice Chancellor at Monash University, the cap acts as a funding freeze which ‘will limit the share of highly-skilled well-paid jobs in our economy that can be done by qualified Australians in the decades ahead’. Or, in the words of the newly appointed (in June 2018) Chief Executive of Universities Australia, the reinstating of caps puts an end to the ‘unearthing and unleashing’ of talent that has occurred since the caps were removed, starting in 2009.
If expansion of overseas student enrolment was helping to create opportunities to increase domestic enrolments you would expect that more domestic students would be gaining places in Go8 universities. Over the period 2012 to 2017, when there were no caps on the number of domestic students that any university could enrol, domestic student commencements at Go8 universities barely moved. They were 87,939 in 2012 and 87,930 in 2017. By contrast, over these same years the number of overseas student commencements at the Go8 increased from 30,320 to 56,363. (The data are drawn from Higher Education Statistics releases, various years.)
Given that there were no caps in place, the Go8 could have taken more domestic students over these years. Many more thousands of these students would have jumped at the opportunity to attend a Go8 university. They were precluded from entry by the high ATAR entry thresholds imposed by Go8 universities. Such is the Go8 universities’ prestige that they attract the best domestic performers in secondary school exams. Like the overseas students, domestic students know that a credential from a Go8 university gives them a competitive advantage in the labour market (in this case within Australia).
The stabilisation of domestic enrolments was not because the Go8 lacked the capacity to increase their student load. They did have the capacity, but all of it has been taken up by increased enrolments from overseas students.
Clearly, the Go8 universities preferred to enrol overseas students. In effect, the benefits of the allegedly superior education that these universities offer went to overseas students rather than to local students. This was not because overseas students had superior potential to take advantage of what the Go8 offers. The contrary is the case. The Go8 do not preference high performing overseas students. There are minimal entry barriers to their enrolment other than the ability to pay the huge fees required.
Conclusion
Australia’s universities, especially the Go8, are caught in a vicious circle as their reliance on overseas student revenue deepens. This reliance means that they cannot prioritise teaching which benefits the vocational needs of their domestic students, to expand enrolment opportunities for domestic students or to focus on research activities relevant to Australian industry or the well being of Australian citizens.
Report authors
Bob Birrell (mobile 0413 021 126) is the Head of the Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI), an independent, non-profit research organisation. Katharine Betts is deputy head.
This paper is based on two TAPRI research reports:
Australia’s higher education overseas student industry revisited, December 2018 and Australia’s higher education overseas student industry: in a precarious state, November 2018.
Dr Liz Allen of the ANU, who describes herself as a demographer, has written another mass immigration promotion article within the disappearing post-war paradigm of jobs and growth. In ”Here’s what a population policy for Australia could look like,” she pays no attention to the diminishing prospects offered under that model by Australia’s shallow economy of holes and houses.
Allen argues that we need more young people to “fund the Australia we’ve become accustomed to”, but she should question the rising costs of that Australia where population pressure is inflating all the basics, whilst continuing to erode our manufacturing base, due to these costs, which affect wages and profits.
Allen advocates increasing the youth cohort for Australia. She is unoriginal in this goal of population engineering, which she, like many others before her, has put forth dishonestly as if it is an uncomplicated benefit. However, to increase the youthful cohort in Australia also means increasing the aging cohort, because immigrants also age. This is a classic population Ponzi. Henri Leridon, senior demographer with INED in France, once wrote an article lampooning this kind of ‘replacement demographics’ which Liz Allen would do well to read. See “Warning on folly of trying to increase and maintain a country’s youthful cohort by mass immigration”.
Allen writes,
“But contemporary population policies, for countries like Australia, are less about controlling numbers and more about ensuring population well-being. The core tenet of a population policy for Australia should be about the population’s quality of life, now and into the future.”
This is casuistical. Australia already has a de facto population policy that is all about control - controlling numbers upwards by flooding the country with more and more migrants. And Liz Allen is advocating more of the same!
As for ensuring population well-being, Australians are constantly complaining about their quality of life deteriorating due to the effects of this population engineering, but no-one in power listens and the mainstream media - in which I include The Conversation - continually publishes articles like Liz’s, favouring the politics of the growth lobby.
The growth lobby are a small number of people who benefit from the continual inflation of prices of land, power, energy, water. They either form or influence the government and the opposition. The rest of us pay for this.
Liz Allen is a demographer - essentially a mathematician or a statistician. I have come to realise that Australian mathematicians specialising in demography rarely have interest in or knowledge about the natural environment or political concepts like democratic representation and local self-determination. At best they filter everything through the narrow lens of econometrics.
Despite this, I continue to be amazed at how none of the demographers writing about population in Australia ever raise the major issue of doubling times. At 1.6% growth Australia is destined to double, with an ever enlarging population base, every 43.67 years. But populations increase more rapidly when they are constantly in movement, as they are in Australia, because this breaks down the natural population brakes associated with endogamy. At 2.4% growth, Victoria’s population is set to increase in under 30 years - to about ten million, then in 30 yrs time, to 20 million.
The great question that Dr Allen avoids or somehow actually fails to think about, is where does it stop? And can you stop it when you have huge population bases rapidly growing? Australians were slowing down their population growth and the population would have declined in around 2030 (recollection from old projections) but population engineering by politicians and corporations associated with the growth lobby and the corporate media, has prevented this democratic adjustment. To my mind it is obvious that Australians were noticing the rising cost of living and the crowding of positional advantages, so they stopped having so many children.
Surely any demographer unable to consider the problem of population doubling and population inertia and democracy should stick to maths and stay away from policy.
Finally, Allen also recycles the very old political argument that population growth problems can be alleviated by getting people to move to the country. There is an equally old argument against this. It is that, despite every attempt to get people to move to the country, people keep moving to the city. Even those who move to the country tend to move back to the city. It is very hard for me to believe that Liz Allen, demographer, is unaware of the failure of this ‘solution’, so once again, I think that she is simply promoting propaganda.
The Conversation is abusing the authority it derives from its association with universities because it does not apply academic rigor to the articles it publishes. The article I have criticised would go well as an op-ed piece in the property pages of any Australian newspaper, along with the other fake news. In the article’s collage of frequently used population fallacies, nothing justifies the term ‘expert’.
Population analyst, Brian McGavin, writes about the silent crisis in our midst, of overpopulation. "Today there is a ‘Silent Crisis’ in our midst. The crisis, still largely unrecognised, is potentially greater than all the other problems that transfix our policy makers. For many decades now there has been a willful blindness in recognising that relentless human population growth is one of the pre-eminent problems we face. Rather than providing solutions and leadership, "More and more developed countries offering new ‘baby bonuses’ make it even less likely that we will achieve the lower figures being quoted in the media."
Today there is a ‘Silent Crisis’ in our midst. The crisis, still largely unrecognised, is potentially greater than all the other problems that transfix our policy makers.
For many decades now there has been a willful blindness in recognising that relentless human population growth is one of the pre-eminent problems we face. A problem that is driving the astonishing growth of fossil fuel use and its depletion, climate warming, bio-diversity loss, the growing shortage of fresh water to meet human needs - and as a consequence of these changes - the prospect that agriculture will be unable to produce enough food to feed us.
In 1950 world population was barely over two billion. As we pass seven billion at the end of October, it is nothing to celebrate.
In most countries today existing populations are not living environmentally sustainably, yet even if the UN’s assumptions of birth-rate decline in developing countries happens, global population will rise to 9.3 billion by 2050. Less reported is that if current birth rates persist, the United Nations Population Division warned in March 2009 that our population will exceed 11 billion in just 40 years.
More and more developed countries offering new ‘baby bonuses’ make it even less likely that we will achieve the lower figures being quoted in the media.
We have to start thinking about a ‘genuinely sustainable’ rather than ‘endless growth’ economy – an economy that is already faltering around us. Politicians focus on reviving economic growth and stimulating spending, but in an era of rapidly depleting resources, the ‘business as usual’ economy will need to be radically rethought to keep our complex society functioning, with a transition to a dynamic, self-supporting economy that satisfies our needs.
The growth lobby is pushing two great myths: That our ageing populationwill be a disaster unless we have higher birth rates and, despite rising unemployment, there is a terrible shortage of labour that only high immigration can supply. Both claims have been repeatedly shown to be either false or grossly exaggerated. They have huge long-term costs on our infrastructure and environment. Young people get old too and have higher dependency costs. Politicians don’t emphasise this.
In Africa, the UN now admits that it won’t meet its Millennium Development Goals but fails to explain the underlying causes for pessimism. Many countries in Africa already have massive unemployment and not enough food. How will they provide all the schools, jobs, hospitals and food to sustain populations that are set to more than double and in some cases triple in size in the next 40 years?
Governments will be struggling with millions of unemployed and hungry people attracted to violence and extremism. Look at the problems already in our news in countries like Haiti, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan – all countries on constant food aid, with exploding populations and increasingly scarce resources – yet population growth is never mentioned!
In Australia, mainly arid and with a water crisis, the population is set to double every 33 years, fuelled mainly by high immigration. America, Canada and the UK’s already high environmental impact is also increasing due to demographic pressures.
Most environmental organisations tell us that ‘if only we each reduced our environmental demand, population growth would not be a problem’. But our economic system, predicated on growth, is driving us in the opposite direction. Even if all the efficiency and renewable alternatives could be implemented the savings would be quickly wasted if populations continue to grow.
You can try reducing consumption all you want, but when you keep adding 100 million and another 100 million, you simply drive every human to a lower and lower standard of living. You cannot escape that reality.
Most experts now agree we will pass ‘peak oil’ production in 2012 and production of all liquid fossil fuels will drop within 20 years to half what it is today. Yet, forecasts project energy demand will grow by 60 per cent between 2002 and 2030. (Sources: (US) Energy Information Administration and chief executive, BP oil).
A huge problem is most alternative energy sources are poor energy performers because they need a high-energy input to provide a given energy return. Wind and solar power are intermittent, while Hydrogen is only as clean as the fuel source used to produce it and provides only a quarter the energy as the same volume of gasoline. Ethanol, from corn or sugarcane, contains 33 per cent less energy than the same amount of oil and competes with food production. Already, 18 per cent of U.S. corn now goes to producing ethanol, but provides only one per cent of the liquid fuel used in the U.S.
Charles Hall, professor of Environmental Science at the State University of New York, warns that apart from bicycles, there are virtually no functioning forms of transportation that are not powered by oil. Most products are made with petroleum and most jobs would cease to exist without it. Renewables (other than hydropower or wood) currently provide less than one per cent of the energy used in the world, but the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is far greater than the total electricity production from wind turbines and photovoltaics.
Governments now plan to spend billions by substantially increasing nuclear generation. Apart from potentially critical contamination risks, even doubling the number of reactors across the world could see commercially extractable uranium ore run out in just 20 years.
According to some energy analysts, the energy commitment required in mining, waste storage and disposal will shortly make the nuclear industry a net user of energy, just when the energy famine begins to hit hard. Unless there is an unlikely breakthrough with fusion power and we drastically cut demand, we are on course to exhaust the energy we need in the lifetime of many people alive today.
Professor John Beddington, UK Chief Scientist, warned in March 2009 that: “Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water. They are dramatic problems, and they are all intimately connected”
The Stockholm International Water Institute calculated in 2008 that 1.4 billion people live in regions where existing water cannot meet the agricultural, industrial, municipal, and environmental needs of all and only 2.5 per cent of the world’s water is fresh. Today, one person in five across the world has no access to safe drinking water, and one in three lacks safe sanitation.
Around 19% of US energy demand goes into food production. Fossil fuels to meet this demand are declining and many regions are already reaching the limits of their water resources, according to the UN’s World Water Development Report in 2009.
And then there is the impact of climate change. The accelerating icecap melt will make at least a metre rise in sea level probable by 2100 - threatening the world's major cities and fertile crop-growing deltas. Freshwater glaciers that feed major rivers used for irrigation are shrinking.
If governments won’t talk population, then they are not serious about cutting emissions, managing the water supply, managing food supplies, and a secure quality of life for our people. We can secure a way to genuine sustainability and a fairer use of resources, but we have to recognise the problem and act quickly.
It is not a question of ‘either or’ and who needs to act. We are in this together. Rich nations are consuming too much and populations continue to rise. Legitimate aspirations to raise living standards in high population countries like China and India are consuming ever-more resources. In many developing countries with acute water and food shortages, populations are projected to double or triple in size within 40 years – driving social unrest and migration on a massive scale.
There are several key challenges we have to talk about and face. In particular, ensuring development aid from donor countries delivers fully accessible and properly funded reproductive health care for all, along with equal access to education for girls and women. In many countries there are still barriers to this. We also have to start incentivising welfare systems to encourage fewer births rather than more.
Some people believe they have a right to have as many children as they want, whether they can look after them or not and fail to understand or just ignore the consequences of human population growth. Many commentators wilfully promote an ever-larger population in the name of freedom of choice. There will be precious little choice left if we go on multiplying with no thought for the future.
Others claim their religion as an excuse for actions that impact on others: Have large families "in the name of God"; Over-consuming resources? "God will provide” - so we don't need to think about the ecological consequences; and when the day of reckoning and collapse arrives - "It is God's will" - a religious opt-out from moral responsibility.
We have superior intellect to understand the consequences of our actions and the ecological and social devastation that will run like a scourge of misery for billions if population keeps increasing. Do we plan for a secure and better life or do we carry on blindly toward a minefield of lethal limits?
Rights come with responsibilities. Governments ‘incentivise’ many aspects of our lives for a common good, but the more crowded we become the more governments will police our behaviour and restrict our activities. We still have a choice. The world badly needs a grown-up, rational discussion of the population issue - without blame, abuse and hysteria.
It would be a tragedy if population growth became a catastrophe - a catastrophe we were too polite to talk about. Our children will not thank us for being driven to an abyss.
Originally submitted as, "The Silent Crisis,"
by Brian McGavin, writer and analyst, dated September 2011.
The Emperor Julian codified the land-tenure laws which Napoleon later consolidated. The substitution of the Napoleonic code for the British inheritance system could help overpopulation and poverty.
July 11 was World Population Day, marking the day in 1987 when the world’s population passed five billion. This year’s theme in the UN is ‘Fight Poverty: Educate Girls.’
The third world countries that have natural increase problems began by their steady-state communities being disorganised through massive immigration - then called colonisation, now called industrialisation. The problems began with loss of land-tenure as entire peoples were disorganised and disoriented by having their traditional land removed from their control. Africa and India, for instance, had many stable populations for centuries, as testified by their high biodiversity and healthy natural systems at time of colonisation. The degradation of their natural systems has accompanied the destabilising of their human social organisation and overpopulation.
It was not until the 18th and 19th Century, with the imposition of the English political systems that these populations blew out. Polynesia, micronesia and Australia, colonised later, are succumbing later to the same failure of practical democracy.
The people of the original steady state societies lost their land to the colonisers and were encouraged to become wage-earners instead of self-sufficient. The new economy was initially agricultural and then manufacturing. Large landless families benefited both agriculturalists and manufacturers. Those without land were totally dependent on wages for their labour to survive and could not opt out of the labour market. Thus, people who for thousands of years had been self-sufficient and free, became servants.
Like the Americas and Canada, Australia is still being 'colonised'. The landless people who were forced to come here or who came voluntarily and displaced the aboriginal population are now losing their own access to land here, just like the Aboriginals. At the same time women here are being conned into having more children. It is becoming harder to get a decent education as well.
There is every reason to anticipate that this difficulty will increase.
Once the rot has set in, next thing to go are effective child labour laws. This is because if there is no ban enforced on children labouring, then large families are preferred to educated wives. Once children are a major source of income, mass-education withers away.
Here are some explanations for changes in human fertility since the beginning of agriculture.
In countries where effective labour laws prohibit the employment of children, those children become costly rather than income-beneficial.[ii] In those countries where working for wages is the main option for survival for many but where child labour is prohibited, then people who rely mainly or uniquely on wages will have fewer children.
Similarly, a woman who has education will be more valuable as an income-earner than as a child-producing wife in a society that prohibits child-labour. Where women earn less than men for doing the same job, in a society which needs skilled workers and prohibits child-labour, then this will be a disincentive for taking such women out of the workforce to have children. It will also be an obstacle to marriage because men's capacity to find work will be undermined by the cheaper but still skilled labour of women. In societies where monogamous marriage is the model for raising children, there are implications for marriage frequency. With children a high cost, only men with high incomes will be able to afford to take a wife out of the workforce to nurture children.
In countries where men can own and inherit land, but women cannot, (England from the 12th century until the 1920s) then lack of land is an incentive for women to marry for material survival, but women who can own land and earn a salary may experience their ability to earn as a disincentive to marriage due to the status and power of running their own lives.
A disincentive also operates in countries where, in divorce, either partner may acquire rights to the assets that the other brought to the marriage.
Some countries have facilitated the ability of women to work, raise and educate children outside marriage -- e.g. France. To this should be added the fact that French women also benefit from equal inheritance rights to men.
Although French women only recently (in the 1970s) regained the right to manage their affairs, this right, coupled with the government's duty to house, educate and assure an income to its citizens, enhances women's security and independence.
France also, through its inheritance system, makes French women more likely to inherit wealth than British women and many British men, who had almost no land inheritance rights until primogeniture was revoked in 1926.[iii] Even though all children may now inherit in societies based on British law, because there is no legal requirement that they inherit, there is still a profound tendency to disinherit children in those societies, through second marriages or due to their being the product of casual union, or based on ideology or a whim. (I often think of how the very rich Australian, Reg Ansett, disinherited his son, Bob, apparently excusing the inexcusable with an ideology that everyone should make their own way in the world, failing to take into account that different generations have very different prospects according to resource depletion and other changes.)
The legally enforceable inheritance rights of any French child, legitimate, illegitimate, issue of first or subsequent marriages is almost certainly a major factor in the lesser disparities between rich and poor in France and those other countries in Europe which benefited from the Napoleonic Code (a Roman law based system). It is noteworthy that Pacific Islands which have inherited the French system do not have the same rates of overpopulation, homelessness and economic poverty as the ones that were colonised with the English system. (Neither do those in Japanese waters, with the exception of those which passed into US ownership after the Second World War. The Japanese inheritance system also preserves land in families.)
Unfortunately the French situation of equity will be affected by changes to the Napoleonic Code introduced by President Sarkozi in 2008. Now it becomes possible for a spouse to make a serious claim on part of a deceased's estate where that estate previously went entirely to blood relatives.
The recent ability of technological societies to prove paternity is a new factor that could be exploited to access additional income for children whose mothers might otherwise be their sole providers. This could act to increase the fertility rate, but men might become more careful about impregnating women under these new circumstances.
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[i] Excerpt from my book in progress below on this subject.
[ii] Doepke, M., Growth and Fertility in the Long Run, Mimeo, University of Chicago, 2000, available in reduced form in Doepke, M. "Accounting for Fertility Decline During the Transition to Growth", Journal of Economic Growth, 9(3), 347-383, September 2004. The speed of the fertility transition depends on policies that affect the opportunity cost of education, namely education subsidies and child-labor restrictions. Doepke considered the case of two countries that started to grow at roughly the same time, but which had experienced very different government policies: (South) Korea and Brazil. Korea had a strong public education system, and child-labor restrictions were strictly enforced, while Brazil had an ineffective public education system, with little systematic enforcement of child labour restrictions. Doepke found, as his model predicted, that the fertility decline associated with development proceeded much faster in Korea than in Brazil.
[iii] The rule of primogeniture in England was not changed until the Administration of Estates Act of 1926.
Thursday 9th August readers of the Italian papers were awakening to 'wonderful' news: the 'crisis' of the empty cradles is coming to an end, at least in the industrial area of Lombardia, north/west of Italy.
In spite of the economic crisis, women have started to breed again. By the way, I don’t understand why we refer only to women, as men are extraneous to births. Maybe we should rather refer to : couples ?
The news, which I want to share with you all, is that storks have been very active between July and August this year: there’s’ been an unexpected influx of babies. The official statistics counted 4000 new babies, fortunately boys more than girls (have we contracted the Chinese syndrome?). It’s a record! The feared demographic decline is yesterday’s history: now we can look forward to a more crowded future.
Contrary to the prevalent dogma, the new trend is concurrent with a depression in the economy, which should- in theory- give rise to a mode of pessimism not conducive to breeding, which is an optimistic sort of activity. Statistical analysis concur in concluding that young people cannot find jobs or housing, prerequisites for create families and prefer to take the last advantage of the willing Mama’s care.
Well, immigration helps to explain the upward trend. The disparate ethnic groups that animate our urban landscapes, have one unifying trait: a tradition of large patriarchal families, which preserve the role of womanhood as breeder. Indeed, the Muslim wives, who are the most numerous ethnic group, have no life outside the home and have no use for learning Italian as any form of education is barred from them.
Besides, immigrants found better opportunities in the new land and see in the birth of children the fulfillment of sacrifices and hopes.
Indeed, in 2007 in the northern city of Milano, there were 9156 Italian children and 2709 from immigrant parents. The more numerous of them are Egyptians, Philippinos, Chinese. And the wealth of such variegated multi-ethnic society is represented by 65 nationalities.
Maybe spurred by competition or the forces of example and imitation, Italian households are also participating in this newfound fecundity. Economic recession, social difficulties, the costs of raising a child, were presented as factors that lately have limited the Italian fertility rate, ignoring previous theories ( the demographic transition) which explained that couples, dazed by the lure of wealth and sexual liberation, choose to produce fewer children.
It may be time to deviate from concentrating on a purely economic vision for human behaviour. The new demographic growth may reflect different needs: deliverance from material constraint and the the search for affective relationships .
I do not share the demographers, politicians and various commentators’ optimism for the current demographic growth.
It has more than one negative result: beside the inexorable environmental damage imposed on an already hyper-dense landscape, whose ecological degradation dates back to the first human settlements. It will mean social/cultural and economic consequences. It will create on the one hand a fractured society, and on the other, a growing demand for more government – assisted measures: bonuses, more nurseries, flexibility of working hours for women.
Do not get me wrong, I have nothing against immigrants. There are numerous criminals among them, but the majority are hard working people, more so than the locals. I am not impressed either with different skin colour.
And I have nothing against children: I love them, I am a sucker for the smile of little babies.
These are brave and generous sentiments.
But a massive, though peaceful, invasion of people, who have diverse hygienic habits, customs, ethics, degrees of instruction, etc., differ not only from us, but also from each other, and cannot be easily absorbed into the fabric of the receiving society. God, so the story of the Babel tower goes, destroyed an ancient civilisation by confounding the languages, (Confusion of Tongues) to the point that nobody understood what the others was saying, and therefore couldn’t live together.
This is a powerful metaphor, used by the language critic George Steiner, for incommunicability of culture, which reflects the cultural and social disintegration of Italian society– and perhaps in a not-far-off- future, the whole of Europe . It is not the fault of the immigrants. After all, if you think that your life would be better off somewhere else, why the hell should you worry if your arrival is disrupting someone else’s life, so long as yours is comparatively improved?
It is up to the Italian government to regulate this disorderly influx reminiscent of a new Babel Tower, where not only languages are at odds with each others, but the thought processes which these languages define are out of line with our millenary culture. It is a sort of cupio dissolvi, a death wish, that inspires confused Italian legislation. The Government is not sure if and when and how it should accommodate such a growing number of immigrants.
Sadly, it seems that we do not believe anymore in our cultural heritage. The revolution of political correctness has swept away layers and layers of awareness and pride . The anthropologist Levi Strauss’s influence has successfully brainwashed us by tales that our Western civilisation is no better than the customs of a primitive tribe. The education of our children has become a shameful, perfunctory exercise, where programs change continually, teachers are badly paid and below standard, discipline inexistent and teaching is no more the way of connecting the past with the present. The interpretation of globalisation, as a sort of badly digested accumulation of generalised knowledge cribbed from the Net, where even the language has undergone a standardisation of vocabulary and syntax, is culminating in a void: we do not know who we are. On top of this dissolution of national identity, we receive industrial doses of institutionalised jargon and clichés. The unregulated arrival of people, who know nothing about our past traditions, is disastrous in a country like Italy, which, after many colonisations, already has such a weak sense of identity.
To be more specific: What will be the fate of our monuments and works of art, in the hand of semiliterate incomers of such alien backgrounds ?
Of course, everybody has a potential educability; but there are classes, as in the Milano hinterland, composed by a majority of children of foreign origin, and the Italian teachers themselves have no confidence in the value of own culture, confused between the notion of preserving the children’s ethnic diversity, and the need to prepare them to be Italian citizens: what will happen next ?
Secondly, the other dangerous development of the baby boom is the ever-expanding request for state-help in the “free” choice of motherhood.
Here I step into another minefield, even hotter than the subject of immigration - feminism.
We have been told – another tale- that women who work do not make babies. Female education was presented as having triple benefits: 1) it liberated them from inferior status and offer them the same intellectual freedom , 2) it was good for the economy ( Okay, old-style economy) ,3) and it was the best contraceptive. According to these views: ” … a high return to a female market world generates high participation, a lower demand for children and higher attainment for these children” (Population Matters, Oxford University Press).
Unfortunately, the reality is different, because the state has decided to interfere in the working of the “invisible hand”.
Statistical evidence contradicts such beliefs. In France, for example, the high participation of women in the workforce – 60,6% of women are working- has resulted in a bigger contribution to the demographic growth. The equation is: more births = more women at work. Sociologists and demographers are banging their heads over this phenomenon, which contradicts all received ideas. Finally they found out why: France’s government spends for the family 2,8% against only 1% by that mean Italian government. Entire pages of Italian newspapers are dedicated to this discovery, which represents a humiliating set back for Italy in the rivalry with its neighbour, which has achieved the record among European countries of 800.000 newborns a year. It doesn’t matter if half of the children are born out of wedlock- this is a problem for later, when the cute babies, reach adolescent status and start rioting, taking drugs and wielding knives.
The 'international' Anglophone press, posing as if they were actually relaying official EU policy, have for some time pretended that a democratic competition is underway among European countries, concentrating on who gives the best deal for working women, as such policies will result in puffing up their GNP and a parallel increment of the future workforce.
They imply that the European Union has one stated objective: two mandatory children per woman. In Italy we have finally reached 1,34 (thanks to immigration!). This corporatised media complains that we are still at a primitive stage, as regard support of working mothers. We want the same French treatment: long paternity and maternity leave, nurseries a gogo’, fiscal deductions according to the number of children, more deductions for education , A godsend. A child becomes a family business, a financial investment. But a burden for the State and its citizens. I do not know why I should pay for other people’s expenditure, which as result, will only damage the environment where I live.
If having babies is a free choice, it is the responsibility of those who made them, not mine.
A child is not a toy or a status symbol. It is a job imbued with absolute dedication to the emotional formation and happiness of a human being The first years of a child’s life cannot be delegated, especially not to a state-paid practitioner, because the child’s sense of belonging and affective development will suffer. Children’s experiences last a lifetime and parents have the duty of caring for them, during the most vulnerable period which takes place before six. Those are most critical years for neurological development.
Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph, author of Raising Babies: Should Under 3s Go To Nursery? advocates that parents should stay home with their kids for as long as possible, because the brain grows in response to love and affection.
If a woman will find that to stay at home looking after a small child is not her calling, if she feels frustrated, bored, and it is not able to see the beauty and interest inherent in her function, she should not have children. If the government offers her all sort of facilities, in order that she can have her cake and eat it, well, the result is that we will have more and more children. Children relegated in nurseries across the country, looked after by other women, maybe from immigrant minorities that offer themselves at low wages, in an endless circular motion of mothers-children-mothers of other children who are looked after by other mothers … the whole economy expanding and swell at the cost of a child’s psychological deprivation.
In his new book Il Fattore D”, Maurizio Ferrera, professor of Political theory of Milano University, lays down the economic program for female workforce expansion: the GNP. Every woman entering the labour market will create another 15 places in the sector of family help and correlated functions. Other women, of course. The employment of 100,000 women will create therefore another 15,000 more employees, and at the same time it will inflate the GNP by 1/3. Has anybody thought about all the series of consequences derived by certain profound social changes ? The law of the unexpected consequences is always at work.
Now, I know that many will object: poor women won’t be able to have babies. I suggest some stay-at-home voucher for poor families who would devote themselves to bringing up a child for the first years of its life, in exchange for further part time education of the mother, after the child is at school.
But the urge to reproduce is instinctive and doesn’t need too many incentives.
Lately, Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute wrote a book, with the hopeful title: “What women want”: hopeful because it assumed that they wanted fewer children. But what if they want more of them ? A man never knows. In old Europe, already full to the brim and soon to be overflowing, it looks like we will see the awakening of that dormant impulse, which will dumfound all the sages’ predictions.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
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