As the world hurtles deeper into the twenty-first century, demographers are increasingly concerned about a dangerous trend and its inevitable impact on our global society. Demography, the statistical study of human populations, reveals that the developed world is aging while producing too few babies. This short-sighted tendency is perilously shrinking the future workforce necessary to maintain a healthy level of economic activity, such as is required to support the critical social balance between generations and the survival of the current world order.

As people age, more resources are required to maintain their health. When a developed society has plentiful young people to work, such resources are available to keep economic activity strong enough to care for the aging and ensure its culture’s subsistence.

Currently, the population aged sixty-five and older is the fastest-growing segment in the U.S. and much of the developed world. For the first time, sixty-five-year-olds outnumber five-year-olds. Hospitals in advanced nations are closing their maternity wards due to a lack of business. Local, state, and national budgets suffer from shrinking tax bases while being overburdened by pension payments. Companies struggle to find new employees, and college enrollment is seriously declining, as are economies everywhere.

A developed nation’s birthrate has always been a reliable indicator of future economic health and growth. Without unrestrained migration, an average birthrate of 2.1 children (per female at childbearing age) is the minimum required to maintain the current population and preserve a healthy generational balance. Today, the U.S. birth rate stands at 1.6, while China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and most of Western Europe and the United Kingdom slot even lower. Without an immediate, dramatic, and sustained uptick in native births, much of the developed world is nearing a demographic “death spiral,” which could lead, in time, to a disturbing upheaval of the world order and a collapse of normal social functions—a societal catastrophe.

Sadly, the only nations showing robust birth rates are located in or around the African continent, with a few more scattered in Central and South America, the Middle East, and Southern Asia. Indeed, the top-thirty nations according to birth rates are all African, save for Timor Leste of Indonesia. Because of their underdeveloped economies and often unstable political climates, most of these nations’ citizens are less educated and lack cross-cultural competence—the ability to adapt to another culture effectively and peacefully. Therefore, while ripe for immigration opportunities, they bring more challenges, costs, and disorder than skills to needy developed countries.

Nevertheless, virtually unrestricted immigration from these poorer countries dominates global headlines. It has already had a worrisome impact on the native populations of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Western Europe, as social unrest, cultural clashes, increased criminal activity, and costly aid programs lay bare the struggle to integrate an unabating stream of migrants to compensate for their shrinking birth rates. Though many of these nations’ native citizens bewail their fading heritages, a growing radical movement stigmatizes childbirth while encouraging and even glorifying the elimination of their legacies in the name of diversity and equity.

Ultimately, their leaders appear unable or unwilling to make the hard choices necessary to stem the flow. With only minor exceptions, few in power seem willing to confront or admit the cataclysmic consequences created by modern, godless philosophies of radical feminism and humanism, declining marriage rates, and the end of family-friendly public policy. Meanwhile, near-unrestricted abortion, LGBT ideology, and climate-change dogma continue to add to the relentless demographic nightmare confronting the entire globe.

Most telling is another worldwide demographic trend: declining church attendance, which leads to a diminishing awareness and respect for our Creator and His directive for mankind to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Our adversary, Satan the Devil, has long sought to destroy humanity through deception and murder (John 8:44) while attempting to supplant our great God (Ezekiel 28:2-6). Only with widespread repentance can we expect the world and its leaders to understand the enormous benefits our children provide (Psalm 127:3-5) and to experience the joy and blessings of seeing the births of our children’s children (Psalm 128:6).