Population downturn.

ITEM: Citing the planet's downward spiral of fertility rates given in Phillip Longman's recent book, The Empty Cradle, an April 28 Wall Street Journal editorial warned, "But it is to the situation in America that [Longman] devotes most of his attention.... In his telling, the American populace--aging, self indulgent and ever less disposed to produce and raise offspring--has set itself on a dangerous and unsustainable course."

ITEM: On May 11, Treasurer Peter Costello of Australia announced the availability of a $13 billion package of financial incentives to encourage childbirth. Writing for Crosswalk.com, reporter Patrick Goodenough summarized the unique program which "for five years starting in June will pay couples $2,000 for each new baby born."

Costello closed the press conference announcing the program by telling journalists, "Go home and do your patriotic duty tonight." Like virtually all nations, Australia's birth totals declined each year for the past 33 years. According to leading Australian demographer Bernard Salt, "We need more people in the younger age group, that's the bottom line."

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: In October 1970, AMERICAN OPINION magazine, the predecessor of THE NEW AMERICAN, reported: "According to the government's own statistics, the rate of our population growth is declining. If that continues, our population will actually decrease instead of grow. Yet, we are told of a frightening 'population explosion.' Millions of the same housewives who we are told deliberately drive up prices every Saturday, deliberately spend the rest of the week getting pregnant, as part of a conspiracy to squeeze us off the earth--the humor of which becomes apparent during a drive through Wyoming."

Among the steady stream of articles pointing to population decline, the January 5, 1998 issue of THE NEW AMERICAN reported: "Anti-fertility fright-peddlers have claimed for decades that burgeoning population growth poses a serious threat to human welfare and the environment. Benjamin J. Wattenberg, however, is convinced that some of our most serious population-related problems are likely to result from a continuation of the precipitous birth-rate decline already underway."

Pointing to falling birth rates around the world, Wattenberg, the author of the 1987 book The Birth Dearth, noted that U.S. birth rates "have been below replacement for 25 straight years." There is a problem that goes beyond having enough people to finance socialist welfare state programs. Wattenberg asserted, "There is likely to be a lot more personal sadness ahead. There will be missing children and missing grandchildren.... Lots of people without brothers or sisters, uncles, aunts or cousins, children or grandchildren --lonelier people."