As it happens, an essay on this same general subject by Douthat was the basis for my final project in a graduate-level data-visualization coursre I took earlier this summer. In a preface to my charts, I cautioned the professor that one would have to be an idiot to take anything Douthat said at face value and that if (as he was in this case) he was purporting to cite a demographer, then checking the original material was essential.

In THAT essay, published in April, Douthat suggested not only that Japan was leading the industrialized world to demographic disaster but also that this disaster was attributable to a high suicide rate (something that 1) Douthat's source never mentioned and 2) was substantially lower than Hungary's, which has been appalling for most of the past half-century or more. He also falsely claimed that Japan's divorce rate was higher than that of "northern Europe," when in fact it was lower than those of not only the Scandinavian countries but also those of France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.

Apparently you can get a job writing for the NYT op-ed page just by slinging any old crap that sounds vaguely plausible. Perhaps I should try my hand at it.

If you follow the embedded link in the Douthat piece you'd find the blog post that does indeed show that the birth rate in the U.S. has fallen slightly below 2 per female in the U.S. but only since the Great Recession and the rate has already increased from it's bottom.

If you look at the source's follow up post you find that almost all future population growth will occur outside of developed countries.

http://prbblog.org/index.php/2...#more-1799

The latest available report shows teen birth rates declining by 9% in 2010 compared with 2009 to hit historical lows in the U.S. but we still have higher teen birth rates than most of the developed world.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db89.htm

Linked report showing that most future population growth will occur outside of developed countries.

http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2012/08/prbs-2012-world-population-data-sheet/

Douthat tells us that the birthrate has fallen below the replacement rate.

This is obviously a conspiracy to restore 30 years of lost productivity gains that were redistributed from wage earners to the upper class. There's more than one way to get back to full employment and earnings. Reduce the size of the labor force by reducing the population.

I dont get it ,why is that a reason to vote for obummer ,unless you understand that in his second term he will give unlimited amnesty to all illegals.