Straight Dope on Medicine: Children of Men

Author

Scott Ganser
December 04, 2023

Children of Men is a 2007 science fiction adventure that poses the question: “What if no more children were born?”

Unless we cracked the longevity code, humans are not long for this world.

We thrive on hope. Without a next generation, what hope do we have?

Clive Owen is the protagonist. He is entrusted with a miracle: a single child.

The movie is based on a novel by P.D. James.

It's set in a recognizable dystopia (full of violence, poverty, disease, segregation and warfare) and the story follows a strict 'journey' template, following a group of characters as they travel through myriad locales, suffering death, defeat and adventure along the way.[i]

The best scene is when Owen and the child walk down the center of a raging war. Both sides stop cold. No one speaks. They all know that they are witnessing a miracle, and it transcends their animosities.

If only we knew that today.

Today we abort our children and call it freedom. We don’t value their lives. There are around 8 billion people on the planet, and we take it for granted that there will be more children and a next generation.

We are very cavalier about the whole thing.

Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fertile and multiply.’”

Psalm 127:3: “Lo, sons are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.”

Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Thankfully abortions had been on the decline.

One reason might be that marriages are precipitously declining. Albeit, that doesn’t stop the production of children, but it doesn’t provide a family structure to properly raise children either.

Are we headed for a future reminiscent of the movie?

Yes.

All indicators are that we will suffer population collapse.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and busi­ness mag­nate, now most promi­nent among their ranks.

“Pop­u­la­tion col­lapse due to low birth rates is a much big­ger risk to civ­i­liza­tion than global warm­ing,” Musk wrote on Twit­ter this sum­mer. “Mark these words.”[ii]

To maintain a steady pop­u­la­tion with­out immi­gra­tion, a nation has to achieve a fer­til­ity rate of 2.1 chil­dren per woman, experts say. But the fer­til­ity rate is just 1.7 in China and Brazil, 1.5 across the Euro­pean Union, and 0.8 in South Korea, the low­est of any coun­try, accord­ing to the World Bank. The current fertility rate for Taiwan in 2023 is 1.236 births per woman.[iii] The rate is 1.6 in the United States, where the pop­u­la­tion is still ris­ing only due to longer lifes­pans and immi­gra­tion, which is pro­jected to out­pace nat­ural births by 2030.

“There’s never been any­thing close to a par­al­lel,” John­ston said.

Some experts are ring­ing alarm bells on what that could mean for societies.

In their book “Rever­sal: Age­ing Soci­eties, Wan­ing Inequal­ity, and an Infla­tion Revival,” econ­o­mists Charles Good­hart and Manoj Prad­han warn of mount­ing fis­cal crises, “as med­ical, care, and pen­sion expen­di­tures all increase in our age­ing societies.”

Nations could wind up burn­ing the can­dle at both ends: as a higher per­cent­age of peo­ple become retirees they require more pub­lic resources, while at the same time the tax­able work­ing pop­u­la­tion shrinks. Prob­lems could be exac­er­bated as rates of Alzheimer’s and other costly elder ill­nesses increase, while labor short­ages cre­ate infla­tion­ary pres­sures. As coun­tries face these chal­lenges, their soci­eties and pol­i­tics could destabilize.

Young people are the engine that energizes society.

Without them, we may keep our numbers because of extended lifespans, but those figures are masking a society decline.

In Italy, whole towns are at risk of becoming ghost towns. Japan also has this problem. They have 1.3 million vacant homes because of the lack of people.

For a country of 60 million people that would easily fit within the state of California, Italy punches well above her weight when it comes to vanishing places. There are more than 2,500 towns and villages—about a third of all small settlements—that are considered “perilously depopulated.” The Guardian estimates that more than two million houses are sitting empty across Italy.[iv]

The phenomenon is called shoushikoureika—the combined effects of an aging population, anemic birthrate, and surging demand for social services. Japan’s population is set to lose up to one-third of its population, down to 88 million people, by 2065. In 2017, fewer than 1 million babies were born in Japan, the smallest number ever recorded—until 2018, when the country handily beat the previous year’s low. In 2016, the nation’s population declined 330, 786, the seventh straight year of decrease, and the largest year-over-year drop since such record-keeping began in 1968—until 2018, when a population decline of 449,000 was recorded. Census figures show a population contraction of almost 1 million people since 2010.[v]

Conclusion

Children of Men is happening. Slowly, but surely. The factors propelling it forward are almost inexorable. Could it change? Sure. But the change would have to be seismic, deliberate and ongoing.

Benjamin Franklin included this age-old story in Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1758:[vi]

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

We could adapt that:

For want of a child, humanity was lost.