The nation of Canada is something of a mystery to most Americans. The U.S. and Canada share many dimensions of culture, language, heritage, and history. Nevertheless, the two cultures are also significantly different--as any visitor across the border will quickly notice.

In recent decades, Canada has moved in a generally more liberal direction, while American voters have elected a conservative candidate in five of the last seven presidential elections. In general terms, Canadian culture is more pervasively secularized than that of the U.S.--a factor that explains, at least in part, Canadian acceptance of gay marriage, marijuana, and other liberal causes. In addition to these observations, demographers now point to another significant distinction--a divide in fertility rates.

Writing in the August/September edition of Policy Review, Barbara Boyle Torrey and Nicholas Eberstadt argue that significant shifts within Canadian culture have produced a significant decline in fertility rates.

Torrey, visiting scholar at the Population Reference Bureau, and Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, note that the United States and Canada "are more similar to each other than any two other large countries on the planet today." Nevertheless, the two nations remain "remarkably distinct from one other." Torrey and Eberstadt argue that the political divide now separating Canada and the United States is eclipsed by demographic factors of even greater importance. The "steadily increasing differentiation of demographic trends" traced in Canada and the United States represent, they argue, a "largely unrecognized divergence" between the two neighboring countries.

"Twenty-five years ago the population profiles of Canada and the United States were similar," the authors note. "Both were younger than their European allies, and their societies were more heterogeneous. In 1980 their populations had almost the same median age, fertility rates, and immigration rates. In the year since then, small changes in demographic variables have accumulated, ultimately creating two very different countries in North America by the end of the twentieth century."

Significantly, Torrey and Eberstadt report that Canadians now have half a child fewer than Americans during their life spans. In other words, the Canadian fertility level is approximately 25% lower than that of Americans. Coupled with this is the fact that Canadians live two years longer on average. Thus, the divergence in fertility rates is likely to grow, and the resulting population changes are likely to be exaggerated in Canada--especially as the population ages.

"Changes in patterns of marriage and fertility are the accumulated outcomes of millions of personal decisions by men and women," Torrey and Eberstadt acknowledge. "When couples, one at a time, make decisions that differ in aggregate from the couples in a neighboring country, it is a reflection of deliberate agency rather than mere chance. That's why the still-widening demographic gap that has opened up between Canada and the U.S. says even more about the two societies and their futures than public or policy differences on any single issue."