Nearly six decades ago, biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote “The Population Bomb,” predicting a population explosion that would threaten famine and environmental collapse in a decade. With his death on March 13, it is worth reflecting on a legacy that was as influential as it was wrong.
A leading figure in the environmental movement, Ehrlich was a key promoter of widespread contraception control policies found in the western contraceptive and sexual revolutions, to China’s on- child policy and India’s forced sterilizations. His predictions proved to be spectacularly wrong.
Our societies today suffer from loneliness, divorce and the commodification of relationships that came in the wake of the sexual revolution. Canada’s total fertility rate is at an all-time low, and most other developed countries around the world are looking at demographic implosion through declining birthrates, aging societies, and shrinking family formation without a serious course correction. Some countries have seen modest success in bucking the trend but are often mired in an understanding of human nature that blunts the effect of policy reform. No countries have reversed the decline or stabilized it. Canada is a particularly worrying case in point, and Catholic social thought can provide a way forward with its characteristic grounding in a sound anthropology of our human nature and what fulfills it.
Fertility decline is global in nature, and it is set to impact pension and social security net viability in the coming decades. It will intensify already strained ties between the young and the old, as the former will be increasingly asked to support an aging population that comprises a growing proportion of the total population. Such pressures shape policy responses across the life cycle, from the expansion of euthanasia and assisted suicide, where Canada is an unfortunate leader, to the growing use of IVF and other forms of assisted reproduction that sever conception from the family union and routinely entail the destruction of unborn embryos. Each present death as an acceptable means of managing the burdens of life.
When we compare ourselves to peer nations, Canada’s situation is interesting. We are worse off than peer countries with higher, albeit still concerning birthrates, such as Israel, France, Hungary, and large swathes of the United States. As Daniel Hess and I recently discussed, some reasons are that Canadians are highly secular, marry later and face housing and economic barriers that delay family-building. Canadians are also more socially liberal, meaning choice, autonomy, expression, value subjectivity and fluidity characterize our society to a high degree, and contribute to delayed or foregone family formation.
If we follow the logic of Catholic social thought, the connections are clear. Declining religiosity weakens community networks that support early and stable family formation, along with values that give pride of place to virtue, sacrifice the sacredness of deep bonds and family, along with a transcendent and meaningful picture of the world. This, in turn, contributes to more individualistic perspectives, and a decline in marriage rates and fertility. Unlike anglosphere countries, such as the United Kingdom and United States, which are experiencing religious revival in a subset of the population, Canada is seeing the seeds of revival only among its youth, a new report from Cardus shows.
Marriage is the strongest predictor of fertility. However, since Canadians are marrying later, children come later, if at all, and fewer, since the window for childbearing is smaller. The largest decrease in fertility is accounted for in the growing number of childless women.
Housing is another constraint. We face severe housing shortages, pronounced immigration policy-related shocks in urban centres where demand is highest, and promote construction of housing ill-suited to family formation. High costs and family-unfriendly housing delay household and family formation. Housing affordability has been correlated with as much as 13% of the decline in fertility in the United States, according to the research of Ben Couillard, a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Toronto.
A few countries stand out from the trend of decline. Israel has a total fertility rate near 3.0 due to a culture with strong religious participation that affects the rest of society through norm diffusion, but it has been declining since 2018. France’s quotient familial system and Hungary’s family subsidies have blunted the effect of fertility decline. In spite of these partial successes that have slowed the decline, none have reversed or stabilized it. That’s because the pervasive liberal-secular cultural shifts are so pronounced, and the policy efforts to counteract them pale in comparison to the downward pressure of cultural forces on fertility and family formation.
Canada’s predicament is even worse. Our policy framework treats families as secondary to individual autonomy. Our taxation system, benefits and child care policies assume atomized individuals and favour dual-earner families, often penalizing part-time parenting and larger families.
Catholic Social Thought (CST) offers a useful framework to correct course in Canada and a clear diagnosis of why even strong family and fertility policies in other countries have limited effect.
An important principle of CST is the common good. It is not the utilitarian sum of private satisfactions, crudely understood. It emerges when human capacities are properly developed and shared, producing a richer good that individuals cannot achieve alone — much like a shared meal whose value lies not only in individual enjoyment, but in communion, conversation, and friendship.
The family is an example of an institution that promotes the common good par excellence — a form of life that leads to a superabundance of goods that emerge from its structure, which properly orders and diffuses individual and communal capacities. Within the family, the complementary gifts of men and women, the bonds between generations, and the daily practices of care, sacrifice and education cultivate virtues that extend beyond the household. These goods do not remain contained within the family but radiate outward, forming persons capable of friendship, work, citizenship and service.
Looking at the Canadian landscape today, it’s clear that we have a generous and communitarian state and culture that is a strength, aligned with some aspects of CST. The Canada Child Benefit, parental leave and child care supports reflect this, and they can contribute to increased marriage and fertility, as evident in European countries with larger social support systems.
However, Canadian culture and policy do not properly recognize the primacy of the natural family, nor an anthropologically sound conception of human nature. Our institutions assume an individualistic model of life, privileging dual-earner households and treating family formation as a private lifestyle choice rather than a pillar of society.
Politically palatable reforms in the near term could move us in a better direction: allowing family income-splitting that reflects the nature of a family as basic unit of social life; adopting elements of France’s quotient familial system, which reflects the economic and social contributions of having children and tailors taxes accordingly; reforming the Canada child benefit so it does not penalize larger families; and directing child care supports toward families rather than providers so parents can choose arrangements — including no childcare — that suit their circumstances.
The bottom line is that family formation — and with it, fertility declines — reflect anthropology as much as economics. An approach that prioritizes family, human flourishing, and incentives aligned with durable social bonds offers a more hopeful path, as it would rightly be pro-family, not merely pro-natal.
Peter Copeland is deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa.
