Rolf Gleißner

The collapse of birth rates in wealthy nations is NOT something new to our time. Ancient Rome had the same problem, and it was disastrous. Their fertility crisis was identified by Caesar in 49 BC, and Augustus later tried to encourage childbearing through public policy. Childlessness was most common among the Roman elites — why? According to Will Durant: "The increase of wealth conspired with the corruption of politics to loosen morals and the marriage bond… practically every well-to-do woman had at least one divorce. This was not the fault of women; it resulted largely from the subordination of marriage, in the upper classes, to money and politics. Men chose wives, or youths had wives chosen for them, to get a rich dowry or make advantageous connections." In short, the upper classes had become more concerned with status than family. If you didn't have children to inherit your wealth, that meant you could use it instead to acquire status and influence. "Children were now luxuries which only the poor could afford." The results of this were strikingly similar to our own. A study of skeletons in Herculaneum (killed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD) showed that the average number of children born to elite women was <2. That's a huge problem when the replacement rate is 6+ due to infant mortality. Abortions and infanticide were also rampant in the culture. Early Christianity pushed back by championing a pro-natal culture, though it remained a relatively small movement until the mid 4th century. Augustus tried to fix things with policy measures. The jus trium liberorum ("right of three children") awarded privileges to citizens with 3 or more children, and there were tax penalties for the unmarried and childless (men over 25 and women over 20). When the birth rate problem had spread to the agricultural classes by 100 AD, Trajan's welfare program again tried to stimulate the birth of freeborn men. None of the policies worked. Tacitus later reported in 109 AD: "And yet, marriages and the rearing of children did not become more frequent, so powerful were the attractions of a childless state. Meanwhile there was an increase in the number of persons imperilled, for every household was undermined by the insinuations of informers; and now the country suffered from its laws, as it had hitherto suffered from its vices."