The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

The demographic patterns of older Americans and certain ethnic groups will have greater effects on the country’s socioeconomic outlook than previously thought, according to the latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PPAR). In particular, the Baby Boomer generation and residents of Hispanic and Asian backgrounds will have a noticeable impact as their populations swell.

Philip Kilbride, an American anthropologist, in his book, Plural Marriage for our Time, proposes polygamy as a solution to some of the ills of the American society at large. He argues that plural marriage may serve as a potential alternative for divorce in many cases in order to obviate the damaging impact of divorce on many children. He maintains that many divorces are caused by the rampant extramarital affairs in the American society. According to Kilbride, ending an extramarital affair in a polygamous marriage, rather than in a divorce, is better for the children, “Children would be better served if family augmentation rather than only separation and dissolution were seen as options.” Moreover, he suggests that other groups will also benefit from plural marriage such as: elderly women who face a chronic shortage of men.

I suspect that a lot of the anguish involving falling birth rates may relate to economic (capitalistic) concepts that are predicated on a continually growing market base. Each new house for a nuclear family requires any number of marketed trinkets ranging from refrigerators to TVs. We now have MORE people on earth that we really need or want or that the terrestrial environment can indefinitely sustain.
Continue reading ‘Where Have All the Children Gone?’

Former Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard already remarked that Quebecers were the “white race” with the lowest rate of reproduction here.

QUEBEC — The Action Démocratique du Québec wants to stimulate growth by urging women to make more babies and save Quebec from its steady demographic decline.

In another thread I talked about a fiqure I had read in the intro to
Albion’s Seed- Four British Folkways in America. I said the author
gave 20% as the perecentage of Americans with British Ancestory ( as
in majority or fully) I speculated that since the book was written in
1989 the fiqure 20% is no doubt lower but the info he uses comes from
the 1970 cenusus as shown on the chart on page 872 of the book. The
chart shows British Americans stopped being the majority population
by the 1920 cenuses with 41.4 percent of the population but they
still had the highest percentage of any other group. The Cenusus
had Germans and Austrians as one group, Dutch as another and Swiss as
another. In 1920 the first group made up around 15 percent of the
population, the Dutch around 2 percent and the Swiss 1%, if you count
all 3 groups as German if you assume there were very few SWiss of
other nationalities as I do then in 1920 Germans made up 18% of the
population, the third largest group was the Irish at 10%, then Blacks
at a bit less than 10%.

By 1970 British Americans made up just a bit more than 21%, German
and Austrian 19%, Dutch 2%, Swiss 1%, so by 1970 Germans were the
largest group in America with 22% of the population.

European population in 1920 was 88.4% with blacks being
9.8%, so whites and blacks in 1920 made up 98.2% of the population
with American Indians making up another 2 tenths of a percent, Latin
Americans made up 1.2 percent for a total of 99.6% for Whites,
Blacks, Indians and Latin Americans with ASians making up another
three tenths of a percent.

By 1970 the Scandinavian population had increased to 8.5 from
4.3, Itlaian to 6 from 3, French to 3.6 from 2.5, Polish to 3.4 from
2.6, The Russian and CZech population percentage dropped a bit. Other
European Groups not listed on any of the above increased to 7% from
3%. The European population percentage by 1970 had decreased to
82.8%.

Blacks by 1940 made up 11.4% of the population, Indians doubled
to 4 tenths of one percent, Latin AMerican increased to 4.4%, Asians
to 7 tenths of a percent and other non EUropeans to 3 tenths of a
percent.

Total non Europeans in AMerica in 1970 17.2%.

Since Latin Americans already out number Blacks I would guess
that the 2010 cenuses will show British AMericans being less than 15%
of the population, WASP maybe 10% or less since Scots, Scot/Irish and
Welch make up a big percetage of the British Americans