Philippa Davies | Drop the spin and speak the truth … about babies

On January 15, 2020, President Vladimir Putin announced new measures to increase Russia’s dwindling birth rate, including maternity capital (state funding for mothers) and free school meals, adding to the tax breaks already given to families with two or more children. With births averaging 1.5 children per woman, “Russia’s fate and its historical outlook depends on how many of us there are,” the President said.

The basic international replacement level is two children per woman.

The Shinzo Abe-led government in Japan established a ministerial post, Minister of State for Measures for Declining Birth rate in 2016, recognising that the double whammy of a low birth rate (1.42 per woman) and rapidly ageing population is a serious economic matter. Policy programmes include nationwide support for marriage, pregnancy and child delivery.

And, after ending the draconian one-child policy in 2015, the Chinese government is worried as the desired massive increase in births has not materialised (1.6 per woman). In fact, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has forecast that the state pension fund may “run out of money by 2035” because of a declining workforce, and increasing dependent elderly population.

These three of the world’s largest and more powerful economies openly admit a national crisis; they are running out of people. The leaders are at least to be commended for the courage to confront bad policies of the past, and also for their attempts to pursue national support for childbearing and rearing in order to secure the future.

DIRE PREDICAMENT

Miles away in the western hemisphere, the Caribbean faces a similar, dire predicament. We, too, are running out of people. Within the last three months, The Gleaner has reported how top policy officials in Jamaica (the Planning Institute of Jamaica, PIOJ) and now from the region (the Caribbean Development Bank, CDB) warn of the looming economic crisis because we, too, are experiencing a low birth rate and rapidly ageing population. Without enough incoming young people to sustain the economy, and especially to pay into pensions for the increasing and longer-living retiree class, we are in big trouble.

But instead of doing like the bigger world leaders have done, our policymakers resort to ‘avoidance by spin’. They say, ‘depopulation means more job opportunities and opportunities for migration from Africa’. That’s their sustainable solution for our problems? The possibility of job opportunities does not automatically mean that there will be jobs or that they will be filled by jobseekers. Jamaican youth leaving educational institutions actually need jobs today and to have been trained to fit into whatever is available.

Furthermore, migration is simply shifting around an existing number of people.

What the Caribbean urgently needs are leaders with the guts to call a spade a spade, to admit their wrong decisions and turn to pursuing a path of engendering life. In other words, drop the spin and speak the truth about babies.

The truth is, any society’s most-prized resource is their human resource. Economic performance is tied to the people in that economy. A well-functioning society with a future needs people to exist and to thrive. What the PIOJ and the CDB ought to do is promote pro-natalist policies. And these categorically have to begin with the primary formulae for stable family life; healthy man-woman relationships based on mutual honesty, commitment, fidelity and maturity. The escalating news reports of intimate relationships gone tragically wrong is a wrecking ball against social stability and economic growth and development. Furthermore, any policy or legislative decision to sanction the killing of unborn babies in their mother’s wombs is a sure measure of expediting depopulation.

Unless Jamaican and other Caribbean policymakers position as a priority for 2020 and beyond, the health of man-woman relationships and their impact on children, the region will continue in the direction of demographic suicide with our eyes wide open.

Philippa Davies is an attorney-at-law and co-founder of #MarriageMattersJamaica, a movement promoting the public policy goods of marriage. Send feedback to comments@gleanerjm.com.