Remember the Importance of Family

        I recently watched an interesting documentary produced by BYUtv called "The New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter". It discussed dangers of the worlds current population trends. Currently most of the worlds fertility rate, or the number of children born to a woman in her lifetime, is below 2.13. What is special about 2.13 is it's the replacement rate, meaning if a couple having children were to have just enough children to replace themselves they'd have to have 2.13 children. Now you can't have a 13th of a child so that means in a population a certain number of women would have to have three children for the whole population to have a replacement level.
         The documentary brought up some of the dangers of depopulation. A population that is experiencing population growth even if it is only a little bit looks like a pyramid. Incoming generations are larger than the exiting generations, which means the incoming generations are able to support the exiting generations. However when a population is decreasing it becomes an inverted pyramid where the few of the incoming generation have to support the many of the exiting generation. Which puts significant stresses on the economy because there is less human capital, or the knowledge and skills posses by a human population, in the work force that are needed to sustain the large exiting generation. So the younger generation has to work almost twice as hard as the retiring generation.

 

(http://thomaspmbarnett.com/globlogization/2010/11/27/chart-of-the-day-from-population-pyramid-to-kite.html)

        One of the interesting points that the documentary brought up was that the cause of these sub replacement fertility rates is the disintegration of the family. Over time the family has become less and less a priority to people through out the world, especially those that are in affluent countries. You can see it plainly in Europe, where their fertility rate is 1.58 (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Fertility_statistics) and it is common that most people choose not to have children. 
         It has been said that "that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets" (https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng). So I challenge to think about what we each can do to reemphasize the importance of the family on our society. I also challenge you to share something this next week with your friends and family that reminds you of the importance of family.