![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI'd like to thank ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jackwalker, by his reply to my previous post on Third World population shrinkage, for making me realize in my reply a very interesting parallel. To wit:
In the 1930s, the France of the Third Republic was on the verge of a sharp population decline despite heavy immigration and a population that only recently became mostly urban. Other Western countries had birth rates which were below long-term replacement levels. I suspect that demographers made three mistakes:
There was a general tradition, inside and outside France, to consider France's early demographic transition as proof of its decadence:
Even now, American conservatives--coming from a country with relatively high birth rates--claim that low birth rates in developed countries worldwide reflect not a natural outcome of the demographic transition, but rather profound decadence. We see this attitude reflected in this National Review article: "France and Germany both suffer from historically low birthrates, insufficient even to replace themselves. Commentators note that the decision of couples not to have children usually reflects narcissism and/or lack of confidence in the future. Interestingly, the Muslim populations in the two countries do not suffer from low birthrates." Writing for Townhall, Maggie Gallagher goes further, claiming that "Europe, which gave us the idea of same-sex marriage, is a dying society, with birthrates 50 percent below replacement."
These attitudes reflect an assumption that what is happening in France, or the wider First World, isn't going to happen to one's own country, that the low-fertility countries represent exceptions to a general trend of high fertility worldwide or that one's own country constitutes the high-fertility exception. (Incidentally, does anyone care to bet that US fertility rates will remain as relatively high as they are indefinitely?)
Now, France did experience a remarkable baby boom after the Second World War, the only continental European country to do so. However, as the March 1997 issue of Migration News reports, immigration played a crucial role in its substantial population growth:
As I'm not a professional demographer, I've no idea if people examining population aging and declining are examining the experience of Third Republic France. They should, though.
jackwalker, by his reply to my previous post on Third World population shrinkage, for making me realize in my reply a very interesting parallel. To wit:In the 1930s, the France of the Third Republic was on the verge of a sharp population decline despite heavy immigration and a population that only recently became mostly urban. Other Western countries had birth rates which were below long-term replacement levels. I suspect that demographers made three mistakes:
- They assumed that France wasn't setting any precedents, but that the French experience was unique. As in other areas of thought, this was incorrect.
- They further assumed that other Western countries' experience of below-replacement fertility in the 1930s was just a transitory phenomenon, not a natural endpoint for the demographic transition.
- Finally, they assumed that the experiences of France at its relatively low level of socioeconomic development in the 1930s wouldn't be repeated by other countries at similar levels of development.
There was a general tradition, inside and outside France, to consider France's early demographic transition as proof of its decadence:
[D]ecadence was attributed not to the defeatist attitudes condemned by Kérillis and Pertinax, but rather to the corrupt institutions and social practices of the Third Republic. The best example of this thinking is Giraudoux's famous 1939 treatise, Pleins Pouvoirs. Here Giraudoux, who was acting at the time as Daladier's High Commissioner of Public Information, an office ironically set up to rally public opinion behind the effort to prepare for war, declared that France had become a second-rate power not because of military weakness, but because of its longstanding "demographic problem," i.e., the chronically low birthrate and its corollary, the high rate of immigration. Because of its population deficit, Giraudoux argued, France had accepted far too many undesirable aliens who had corrupted the nation's racial purity. The nation was therefore doomed; not even the most savvy of military alliances could remedy this problem. The sole solution, according to Giraudoux, was a long-term one: the creation of a ministry of naturalization to ensure that France accept only "desirable" immigrants, i.e., peasants and artisans "from those races closest to our own." As he declared: "What does it matter if a country's borders are intact if its racial borders are constantly shrinking," (Pleins pouvoirs, pp. 75-76) Such defeatist thinking obviously did nothing to prepare the nation for war, and it provided a convenient excuse for France's military leadership after the defeat.
Even now, American conservatives--coming from a country with relatively high birth rates--claim that low birth rates in developed countries worldwide reflect not a natural outcome of the demographic transition, but rather profound decadence. We see this attitude reflected in this National Review article: "France and Germany both suffer from historically low birthrates, insufficient even to replace themselves. Commentators note that the decision of couples not to have children usually reflects narcissism and/or lack of confidence in the future. Interestingly, the Muslim populations in the two countries do not suffer from low birthrates." Writing for Townhall, Maggie Gallagher goes further, claiming that "Europe, which gave us the idea of same-sex marriage, is a dying society, with birthrates 50 percent below replacement."
These attitudes reflect an assumption that what is happening in France, or the wider First World, isn't going to happen to one's own country, that the low-fertility countries represent exceptions to a general trend of high fertility worldwide or that one's own country constitutes the high-fertility exception. (Incidentally, does anyone care to bet that US fertility rates will remain as relatively high as they are indefinitely?)
Now, France did experience a remarkable baby boom after the Second World War, the only continental European country to do so. However, as the March 1997 issue of Migration News reports, immigration played a crucial role in its substantial population growth:
A French government report released by INED in February concluded that immigration kept France's population equivalent to that of Britain and Italy. Without immigration, France's population would be 47 million today rather than 59 million. According to INED, 40 per cent of the population increase since 1946, when France had 40 million people, can be attributed directly or indirectly to immigration. In 1946, about nine percent of French residents were first or second generation immigrants; in 1996, about 21 percent had immigrant ancestors.
As I'm not a professional demographer, I've no idea if people examining population aging and declining are examining the experience of Third Republic France. They should, though.
