On this first weekend of autumn in the northern hemisphere, here we go with Part Four of our new audio adaptation of a favourite book among Steyn readers: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
In this week's episode, we run the numbers on demographic energy:
Take an alphabetical list of nations of the world and start at the beginning:
1) Afghanistan. In 2005, the rate of births per 1,000 people in the country was 47.02.
2) Albania. In 2005, the rate of births per 1,000 people in the country was 15.08.
That means Albanians are breeding at a third the rate of Afghans. As noted above, 'replacement' fertility rate – ie, the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller – is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Niger, is 7.46, Mali 7.42, Somalia 6.76, Afghanistan 6.69, Yemen 6.58. Notice what those nations have in common? Starts with an "I-", ends with a "slam". As in: slam dunk.
Go back to that Albanian fertility rate. It looks low compared to Afghanistan but it's the highest in Europe. And why would that be? Because it's Europe's only majority Muslim country. At the moment.
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.09 births per woman. Ireland is 1.86, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. So Spain's population is halving with every generation: Two grown-ups have a total of one baby. So there are half as many children as parents. And a quarter as many grandchildren as grandparents. And an eighth as many great-grandchildren as great-grandparents. And after that there's no point extrapolating, because you're over the falls and it's too late to start paddling back.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Four of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
As to how those numbers look two decades later:
Afghanistan's birth rate per thousand people has fallen from 47.02 to 35.04, and Albania's from 15.08 to 10.44.
Global fertility rates have also fallen: Niger is down from 7.46 children per woman to a mere 5.79, Mali from 7.42 to 5.42, Somalia from 6.76 to 5.91, Afghanistan from 6.69 to 4.66, Yemen from 6.58 to 4.41. Meanwhile, Chad, the Congo and the Central African Republic have all rocketed up the hit parade.
But the few western nations noted above in the 2006 Hot One Hundred have all dropped out. Indeed (per the United Nations), only three are clinging, barely, to the Top 150: New Zealand at big hit sound number 143, Australia 145, France 146, and America 147.
As for the actual - rather than relative - fertility rates, the four comparatively healthy numbers I noted twenty years ago have all fallen - New Zealand from 1.79 to 1.65 babies per woman, Australia from 1.76 to 1.64. Formerly Catholic Ireland, having fully embraced the Islamo-tranny phase of western decline, has slumped from 1.86 as Europe's breeder-leader to 1.6. Truly, has there ever been a bigger waste of time than Irish nationalism? On course to be a mere one-century blip between Prods vs Papists and Sunni vs Shia.
And perhaps most staggering of all is the collapse of the US fertility rate: from the more or less uniquely healthy (among developed nations) 2.09 births per woman, it has fallen further and faster than its antipodean and Celtic cousins to a mere 1.62. This is a remarkable achievement during a sustained period of open borders. It seems that even surrendering your territory to MS-13 gangbangers, Haitian cat-eaters and the usual excitable Mohammedan lads hasn't prevented the aging of America and has failed to offset all those bepenised women and plonkerless menfolk the left has conjured into being. There are doubtless other factors - the prolongation of education until twenty-third grade, etc - but, from personal observation, I would suggest that, among non-political types in rural America, a profound despair has settled in among young men in particular.
As for the remaining western peoples, it is no longer really even possible reliably to measure their fertility. France has Western Europe's highest fertility rate - 1.64 - but it also has Western Europe's highest Muslim population: gee, do you think those two statistics might be connected? Likewise, Germany, with the second biggest Muslim population, has seen an uptick from 1.3 to 1.46. If, as in France twenty years ago, ninety per cent of the population is more or less native ethnics with, let's say, a 1.6 fertility rate, and ten percent are Muslims with, approximately, a 3.5 fertility rate, then the ninety per cent and the ten per cent will have the same number of grandchildren. That's to say, it requires just two generations to catch up - and we've already let one of those two generations slip by without doing a sod-bollocking thing. As all good-thinking persons know, the Great Replacement is a totally racey-racist conspiracy theory. It's never gonna happen - mainly because in many western countries it's already happened.
Thank you for your kind comments about this latest of our audio serialisations. Kelly, a Florida member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
I had planned to not listen to Mark's reading of America Alone until all chapters were in the can but broke down and listened to the first three on the equinox. It's remarkable how well that book has aged in the last two decades. I was surprised to hear of Serbia-Montenegro until I remembered that the book is from 2005, the year before that final separation. And the band Coldplay gets a mention. I may not like their music, but there is no denying their staying power.
Gulp. I hadn't realised there was so much Coldplay in the book. For the new edition, I must remember to update it to Hootie and the Blowfish. Speaking of music, we always get a lot of questions on our choice of theme tunes. First Day Founding Member Tom Gelsinon asks:
Mark,
What is the musical selection? Is it the last waltz played on the Titanic?
Nothing so vulgar, Tom. It's Shostakovich - whom I was very hard on last weekend - but I've always been very partial to his Waltz Number Two.
If you prefer more fictional fancies of a weekend, we have thrillers, comedy classics, tales of horror and historical romance and much more, all over at our Tales for Our Time home page. If you've a friend who might be partial to our six-dozen pertinent adventures, we have a special Gift Membership that, aside from audio capers, also includes video poetry, live music and more. And I'll be doing a live-performance Tale for Our Time at sea on the next Mark Steyn Cruise - sailing aboard the Queen Mary 2.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to over seventy audio adventures in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Five of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.