{"id":73378,"date":"2012-08-15T21:44:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T05:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=17839"},"modified":"2012-08-15T21:44:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T05:44:59","slug":"who-shall-inherit-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/15\/who-shall-inherit-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Who shall inherit the earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>There was a <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/2012\/08\/open-thread-8152012\/#comment-153246\">question below<\/a> in regards to the high fertility of some extreme (&#8220;ultra&#8221;) religious groups, in particular <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Haredi_Judaism\">Haredi Jews<\/a>. The commenter correctly points out that these Jews <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1997\/04\/21\/nyregion\/religion-and-welfare-shape-economics-for-the-hasidim.html?pagewanted=all&amp;src=pm\">utilize the Western welfare system<\/a> to support large families. This is not limited to just Haredi Jews. The reason Somalis and Arabs have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hel.fi\/wps\/wcm\/connect\/58cad180418770bebd78fd0fedca9d5b\/Foreigners+in+Helsinki+2011.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&amp;lmod=-2103609797\">fertility ~3.5 in Helsinki<\/a>, as opposed to ~1.5 as is the norm, is in part to due to the combination of pro-natalist subcultural norms, and a generous benefits state. Of course we mustn&#8217;t overemphasize economics. Israel&#8217;s decline in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Demographics_of_Israel#Total_fertility_rate\">Arab Muslim fertility but rise in Jewish fertility<\/a>\u00a0in the 2000s has been hypothesized to be due to different responses to reductions in child subsidies by Muslims and the Haredi Jews. In short, the former reacted much more strongly to economic disincentives in relation to the latter.<\/p>\n<p>A bigger question is whether exponential growth driven by ideology can continue indefinitely. I doubt it. Demographics is inevitable, but subject to a lot of qualifications. Haredi <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21559393\">political power<\/a> in Israel grants some benefits, but at the end of the day basic economics will serve as a check on the growth of the population of this sector. Similarly, barring &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a question below in regards to the high fertility of some extreme (&#8220;ultra&#8221;) religious groups, in particular Haredi Jews. The commenter correctly points out that these Jews utilize the Western welfare system to support large famil&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,55,576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-analysis","category-demographics","category-fertility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73378"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73450,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73378\/revisions\/73450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}