It's time! ....To start thinking about the future, your future in fact! Tell me, how many children did you have in your family? Do you find yourself wanting the same family size that you grew up in? This week in class we watched a documentary called "New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter". It taught me a lot about the issues that are going on right now relating to population, fertility rate, and birth rate. All of those are very closely related. I think we can all agree that it is pretty modern these days to have a smaller non-traditional family. These days the average family will have around 1 child. Which has greatly declined after the Baby Boom of the 1950's. Birth rate has gone down, but the population has gone up! How does this make sense....its simple! We have a rising older population. Medical care and advancements in health have gone up so much that the life expectancy has too. Less children are being born, but less people are also dying. Do you see this as an issue?
What do you think is affected by this issue? The environment? The economy!? DEFINITELY the economy! But first before you get really excited about the really juicy economy issue, lets talk about the environment. A lot of people believe that if there are less people in the world, than there will be less of a carbon foot print and the world can be a lot healthier. Here's a solution...if you care so much, take the time to educate your children to be environmentally aware! They can bring a better environment to reality and be conscious of what they are doing to our planet and make a difference. What larger families can do for the economy is a much bigger issue. More people are retiring and less are young healthy workers. That means that with less people working, each person much be that much more productive to pull the workload that is slacking. Taxes are also higher where fertility is lower. Part of this is because of the elderly retiring. This comes out of our taxes, lots of people are retiring and more people are having to pay for that. Less are working and the younger population's are paying more money! More people need to live in assisted living homes, with less young people to assist. Also, side note: There are less people to innovate!
You might also think to yourself, Its OKAY! Mexico and immigration will continue to fuel our country full of people. Problem solved :) Nope. Mexico and other european countries (especially France) are having startling birthrate decreases as well. They wont always be giving us more people, because they themselves arent having more babies!!
I know there's a lot going on in this post, but what I really want to know is what you think? How many children is "ideal." Are you concerned about the birth rate being in decline?
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