Misconception

There are a couple of misconceptions in the world today. I myself had fallen prey to them. But no more! Today I am going to talk about just one. The misconstrued idea of population growth. (What does this have to do with the family? Keep reading I’ll explain.) In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich published a book called The Population Bomb. In this book he described how if the population kept growing at the current rate then by 1970 there would be worldwide starvation because the world would be over populated. That of course did not happen. One of the biggest reasons was that shortly after this time period we basically doubled our food production due to technological advances. The other reason why this didn’t happen was because fertility rates were already dropping. (The definition of fertility rate is the number of children born to the average women in her life time.)

Why does this even matter?

Because in order for a population to be stable and be able to repopulate as the older generations die the fertility rate needs to be 2.15. At the height of the “Baby Boom” the fertility rate was barely over a 3. Which means that there were only on average 3 children in each household. (Not at all what I pictured for the baby boom. I was thinking more like 6 or 7 kids per family. Nope!) So when Ehrlich published his book the fertility rates were already on their way down. Slowly, but still going down. With this book, society’s mindset was changed. Everyone started looking at population grow as a bad thing and fertility rates dropped even more. Remember that number 2.15 for a stable population? Well, the United States at one of the highest fertility rates in the world is at 1.8. A 1.8! We are going to be in serious trouble if our mind set doesn’t start changing.

Now I’m not saying that everyone should start having a million kids as fast as they can. I am just saying that it is something interesting to think about. (By the way, all of the information found above comes from a study, called the Demographic Winter. Here is a link if you are interested. http://www.byutv.org/watch/59b6b917-984a-478f-93b1-521a647779c4/new-economic-reality-demographic-winter-part-1 You can also find it on Youtube. It was not done by the LDS church, even though it was broadcasted on BYUTV. Anyway, I have just given an overview of the things that I that where most interesting.) As a result of population decline, there could be economic trouble as well. For economics only works when there are enough people to keep it going.

With all of that said, I would like to talk about the solutions that the researchers talk about. The first one is called Human Capital. Human capital is the productivity of each person to contribute to society. This is a really hard thing to change and influence. The second thing that they talk about it strengthening the family. Strengthening the family. This is something that God has been telling us for a really long time. There are countless research studies that support the idea that the family is essential to the functions of society and is the best place to raise children. The family is so important. It is not only important to society but it is important to God. He has deemed it timeless and eternal. We need to strengthen our families. I would invite each of you to think about something that you can do to strengthen your own family and in turn strengthen society.