Australia in 20 years time will most likely have the same pattern of family life that exists in Sweden today. So the demographic trends in Sweden interest me: they tell us a bit about what's in store for us.
I recently had a look through some statistics for Sweden provided by the Council of Europe. Two things struck me. First, Sweden seems to have missed out on the baby boom of the 1960s. If you look at completed fertility rates (the actual number of children born to women by their mid-40s), there hasn't really been much of a change over the years.
The completed fertility rate has stayed between a peak of 2.16 for those women born in 1933 and a low of 1.94 for those born in 1967.
The second interesting statistic is the great change in marriage rates for women. A Swedish woman born in 1936 had a 92% chance of marrying. A steady decline set in for those women born after 1942. For women born in 1967 (my generation of women) there was only a 59% chance of ever marrying.
Where will it end?
(For the statistics, go to the bottom of this page and click on the links to the Excel charts.)
I don't think Sweden is a reliable guide to Australia's future; the culture and circumstances are too different. Swedes IME have a smug sense of superiority, Aussies a blokish matiness (including the women).
ReplyDeleteIME Scandinavian feminism makes men effeminate, but Anglosphere feminism makes women masculine. So you get lowered marriage rates and increased divorce rates in both, but other attitudes stay quite different.
Ok so getting back on track with the discussion...
ReplyDeleteSo by completed birth rates we mean each woman..including unmarried women...
So what we are seeing is the decline in marriage yet no subsequent change in fertility?
Thus this is proof of the men's marginalization in society as familial providers and the affect of the social pro-woman welfare state.
Furthermore, the question is who is impregnating the 40% of non-married women? Does that mean there is a high number of beta males that are unable to get married and bare children?
Does that mean there is a high number of beta males that are unable to get married and bare children?
ReplyDeleteNo, they're in Thailand.
Oh! You mean, beta males "still in Sweden"? Good question.
Some thoughts on the excel spreadsheet:
ReplyDelete- Before the pill, women did have babies past 40. With the use of the pill that dropped drastically. This coincides with my theory that usage over the pill over long periods of time decreases overall fertility.
- Woah! Look at the decrease in marriages among 20-24 year olds!
- So 49% of women in society get married and 1/2 of those marriages break up?? Am I reading this right??? So only 25% of women in Sweden get married and stay married to one man??
Wow...that's really depressing....
Wow read this New York Times Article and how great it sounds but then compare it to the REAL statistics....If this isn't spin and outright lies I don't know what is
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?ref=global-home
This article makes it sound like Sweden is brimming with babies and happy parents. Yet the statistics prove otherwise.
One more....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/international/best-country-3
This Anne Marie girl is a fun one. A self-professed Swedish whore who thinks her job is really really important.....and her job is a Human Resources Assistant...now here in corporate America HR people are worthless *insert bad four letter word here*
The irony is all the women in this magazine article have whimpy jobs. None are engineers, none are farmers...none produce anything or manufacture anything (other than a woman's mag.) So who actually does the work in Sweden? This probably explains why salaries in Sweden are so low (on top of taxes) because none of the women actually do any productive, necessary work.
(Caveat...I am well aware that I currently don't do productive work as defined by teaching, manufacturing/engineering, or farming)
Yeah I'm posting alot...I'm bored this weekend.....
ReplyDeleteOk so since the birthrate of Sweden has not changed since the 1930s (well from 2 to 1.65)...Here is the real problem with The Matriarchal Swedish Society...
The Feminization of society leads to the societal stagnation. It goes back to what I always say about white men being natural mechanical engineers. Women are nurturers...so the vast majority of women do not gravitate towards careers in which they will invent something. That is why in this latest article the women are HR people, magazine people, television workers, or police officers who use 'psychology.'
Not one of these fields are innovative...not one of these fields maintain technology, advance technology or produce anything of necessary value for society (like food).
So basically Sweden is a 'wedding planner' society where the wages are slowly eroding, and birthrate is slowly going down.
Things will probably change in Sweden due to immigration. Immigration has a habit of turning left liberals into right liberals, as can be clearly seen in the Netherlands right now.
ReplyDeleteThis also happened in New Zealand in the 1980s, when we had Australasia's most serious post-war economic crisis and middle class caucasians decided they didn't want to subsidise the growing Polynesian and Maori population.
The problem with the right liberal response though, is that once the immigrants start to become the majority, as is occuring in the U.S. then the right liberals are unable to get enough votes to keep them in office. At that point things are likely to resemble South American politics where unstable populist governments battle for control against authoritian pro-capitalists who wish to restrict the franchise or outlaw democracy.
Yes, I think that the future for the US is more South American than anything else ... kind of like a Brasil del Norte scenario.
ReplyDeleteSo only 25% of women in Sweden get married and stay married to one man??
ReplyDeleteActually, 25% seems sort of high to me.
Sweden's birth rate is propped up by the higher birth rate of it's non-native women. The natives have a declining population, while the non-natives are increasing in number. The non-natives also have generations that are much shorter than the native Swedes (who have the average "age at first child" of 28 years). So, even if both the natives and the non-natives have 2 children each, the non-natives have 2 generations in the same time frame.
People forget about the importance of generation-length when discussing demographic trends, but it is essential. My mother, for example, had 4 grandchildren before she turned 55. Most of her peers don't have a single one. She will likely have 8 or more great-grandchildren by the time her peers are just getting their grandchildren. That discrepancy adds up quickly over time.
The fertility of white women in North America, Australasia and Scandinavia seems to be about 1.6-1.7, while the fetility rate of white women in other western countries is about 1.3. This difference in my view is mainly due to economic factors, as countries like Spain and Italy have high unemployment or expensive housing.
ReplyDeleteAs Alte, points out, most of those western countries with total fertility rates over about 1.6 have bigger numbers of high fertility minorities.
I should also add that globally the biggest factor in falling fertility rates besides contraception is urbanisation. Most of today's jobs are in crowded cities, but cities are hostile environments for family formation, and even Muslim birthrates decline after several decades of city living.
If you want to raise white birthrates, my suggestions would be:
-increase the supply of cheap housing
-explain the Bell Curve to middle class young women
-restrict immigration from poor countries
-provide tax incentives for middle class people to start families
-make it tougher to enter university and restrict the range of courses - a young women of average intelligence should be chasing after a tradie not doing a women's studies degree.
-increase investment is smaller towns and cities, and rural broadband
Regarding Mike Courtman's comments (which seem sensible to me), just how urbanised is Sweden? I really don't know, but my impression is that these days Stockholm, Malmo, Uppsala, and Gothenburg account for about four-fifths of the Swedish population. Also, those cities seem to be where the Muslim immigrants arrive (especially Malmo, which now has no-go areas for white people, I'm told).
ReplyDeleteAnother absolute necessity for any Western government serious about arresting white demographic decline will be to ban not only abortion but contraception. In large parts of the West until the 1970s, contraception already was banned.
It's probably not reversible as a macro-trend. (1) Prosperity coupled with (2) female economic and sexual liberation coupled (3) with reliable contraception and abortion just drives lower birth rates pretty reliably. Non-whites tend to have less of all three, at least upon initial entry. It's not clear, however, whether the non-white birth rates will also creep down as they remain longer in the "host" countries.
ReplyDeleteIt's not clear, however, whether the non-white birth rates will also creep down as they remain longer in the "host" countries.
ReplyDeleteActually, the longer a community of immigrants remains in the West, the lower their birthrates go. Still higher than the white population, but lowering.
There are even some Muslim countries on the verge of lowering their birthrates below replacement, most notably Iran.
Since we already have an overpopulation problem, wouldn't the best course be to lower non-white birth rates, rather than raise white ones? Don't know how you'd go about that though, short of replicating Mao's One Child Policy.
ReplyDeleteWe do not have an overpopulation problem.
ReplyDeleteThat was just intellectual b.s. to get San Francisco liberals to stop having kids. And gave women an excuse of course.
We have an overpopulation problem because as Steve Sailer and VDARE have well documented....Mexican women in Mexico have 2 kids but when they come to the US they have 4.
Actually, the longer a community of immigrants remains in the West, the lower their birthrates go. Still higher than the white population, but lowering.
ReplyDeleteAlmost. What happens is that some of the immigrants integrate into the native population, while others remain mostly segregated. Those that integrate then eventually have the same birth rate as the natives, after a lag. Those that don't, tend to have an increase in their birth rate, due to the better medical care and greater wealth of their host countries. That's what's going on with the Mexican women.
So the immigrant's birth rate goes down, but the most hard-core among them are still reproducing quickly. That's why they insist on multiculturalism and de facto segregation. They are not fools. They know that if their women "join in" with the natives, they will become feminists like the native women are, and their society will die out.
Separatism fuels the birth rate, by protecting women from feminist influences. The Mormons and Amish have a similar method, which is why their populations are exploding. The most traditional mainline-Christians are increasingly doing so, as well. Their wives are housewives, their children homeschool or attend Christian schools, they don't watch TV, their social life revolves around the church, etc.
So the future belongs to the most traditional/conservative among both the native and non-native populations. Devout Christians and devout Muslims are in a bit of a reproductive race, to see who will lead in the future. Muslims usually produce more children, but there are more of us to begin with, so we have a significant head-start. It's our race to lose, although we sometimes seem quite determined to lose it.
I think you're going to see a universal move away from "welfare states", as the traditionalist children start refusing to pay for the decadent lifestyles of the older, childless libertines. They will tend to wish to cancel the inter-generational social contract (which penalizes people with children) and replace it with direct transfers to their own parents and mere poverty-level charity for the childless.
It is currently the opposite. Currently, children pay the most money for the childless (through national retirement programs, for instance), while their own parents go without. Homemakers fare particularly badly under the present system, despite "paying in" the most children. Normally a woman with many children would be wealthier than the others in old age. Now they are poorer, and their children are fed up. My husband and his brother calculated that if they took the money they currently pay into the German retirement fund, and simply handed it to their parents, their parents income would more than double. More and more young people are going to be making that calculation, especially as it's clear to us that such programs will go bankrupt before they are of any use to the people of our own generation.
Anonymous said,
ReplyDelete"Since we already have an overpopulation problem, wouldn't the best course be to lower non-white birth rates, rather than raise white ones?"
Since when have we had a WHITE overpopulation problem?
Jesse wrote,
ReplyDelete"Since when have we had a WHITE overpopulation problem?"
Yes, there is that detail.
But some of the low-birthers know that and are fine with that. They seem to think that if we whites have fewer children and cut off immigration, there will be 100 acre cattle ranches and seaside cabins for everyone.
I think they're forgetting that it is very difficult for one fully employed adult child to care for two elderly parents, let alone four (one full-time working man, providing for his own and his wife's elderly parents).
Every home a nursing home, I guess.
By the way, I would and plan to care for my own parents if they make it to old age some day. But, I'd expect my wife's (if I'm so lucky) siblings to care for hers. Or vice versa.
ReplyDeleteBut for that to work on a bigger scale, most families should have 2 to 3 children at the very least, which the low-birthers dislike, I think.
Sorry, that should read "1000 acre cattle ranches."
ReplyDeleteHaha, 100 acres is a little small for a ranch...
I think they're forgetting that it is very difficult for one fully employed adult child to care for two elderly parents, let alone four (one full-time working man, providing for his own and his wife's elderly parents)
ReplyDeleteActually -- in Germany, at least -- it's one fully employed adult supporting his own family, 2 retirees/pensioners, unwed mothers, government employees(most of whom are women, and most of whom don't do anything important), the unemployed, the ill or disabled, and the people in prison.
So each one is supporting five or six people. Or he would be, if the government wasn't running massive debts. And then he's supposed to pay for his own retirement, and that of his wife.
If we're lucky, the system will go bankrupt soon, and we can start over again with something better. If we're unlucky, it'll drag on for ages, with mounting debt and increasing totalitarianism.
But for that to work on a bigger scale
ReplyDeleteOf course there is an alternative solution: euthanasia. Kill off the old and infirm. Some European countries are taking steps in that direction.
Are you for real Alte? Presumably you'll be old or infirm one day and I doubt you'll enjoy being "killed off".
ReplyDeleteAre you for real Alte? Presumably you'll be old or infirm one day and I doubt you'll enjoy being "killed off".
ReplyDeleteNo, that was an example of sardonicism. I'm completely pro-life, of course.
But it is being discussed seriously in medical and political circles. The Economist just published an article noting that the number of alzhiemer's patients in the West is meant to triple, and there is no cure in sight.
What do you think our life-loving politicians would do when faced with armies of wandering, doddering, old folks? Those elderly will be expensive, defenseless (except those that have children), and inconvenient. We know what they do with such people already, don't we?
We can only pray that reform comes as quickly as possible, or we will be reduced to protecting our aging relatives, in addition to our children. Things will get ugly, there is no doubt about that.
Its true that utilitarianism is a brutal philosophy and would have us do away with our old people, like wandering Eskimos, rather than be even slightly put out.
ReplyDeleteSorry I misinterpreted your comment, which is easy to do in text.