Posted on 12/21/2018 8:28:58 AM PST by Kaslin
In 1957, 4.3 million babies were born in the United States. In 2017, 60 years later, the number was 3,853,472. That's an 11 percent decline, in a nation whose population has nearly doubled over those six decades. And though there are a few days left in 2018, the number for this year is sure to be lower.
That's the dominant finding from the thorough -- and alarming -- report "Declining Fertility in America" by Lyman Stone of the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies.
In recent years, demographic journalists have focused on slivers of the population -- the increasing percentages of Hispanics and Asians, the decline in births to teenage mothers, low birth rates in high-cost coastal metropolitan areas. Stone looks at the larger picture, that of total population, and finds that "the specter of low fertility, and ultimately of declining population, has come to America."
That's a different picture from that of a decade ago. Then American birthrates hovered around, and sometimes just over, replacement level. That was a vivid contrast with substantially below-replacement-level birthrates in most of Europe and Japan.
Those birthrates were buoyed upward by immigrant mothers, after a quarter century of mass migration from Latin America, especially Mexico. But Mexican migration fell toward zero in the 2007-09 recession, and births to immigrants in the U.S. sharply declined, too.
Some Americans, including many Donald Trump fans, find that good news. It suggests that a lower percentage of babies are born to mothers in disadvantaged households.
And just about everyone, as Stone notes, takes the continuing sharp decline in births to teenage mothers as good news, too, considering that such children have tended to suffer negative outcomes.
But the negative outcomes of increasing infertility and eventual population decline have even greater implications. To put it bluntly: Who is going to pay for Social Security and Medicare when there are fewer working-age adults paying taxes for every oldster receiving benefits? Welfare states assume an expanding population, and America's potential parents don't seem to be providing one anymore. Why?
Stone rules out one cause: Surveys show that women want more children than they're having. That was probably not the case, or less so, when American's fertility rate dropped this low in the middle 1970s.
The culprit this time is something that scarcely existed then: college student loans. The top item on Stone's list of five causes is "increased young adult debt service costs due to student loans." Number two is "decreasing young adult homeownership" due to higher prices and -- here it is again -- "student loans." Number three is "increasing years spent actively enrolled in educational institutions, which tends to reduce birth rates dramatically."
Government efforts to encourage higher education have backfired for many intended beneficiaries. Non-graduates still have debt. Graduates with politically correct degrees can't find jobs. College costs have been inflated by administrative bloat and country club campuses. "(T)he entire educational complex is presently structured in such a way as to discourage family formation for young adults," Stone says.
The result is "delayed marriage." This "changed marital composition explains the vast majority of changes in American fertility over the past 10 or 20 years," Stone writes. And though he doesn't mention it, the increasing number of non-college whites who never marry surely explains some of the rest.
What are policymakers doing to respond to this abrupt demographic challenge? Approximately nothing. Stone notes that the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration and Medicare's actuaries have not "even published stress-test scenarios of long-term fertility at 1.5 or 1.6" -- just below the current 1.7 -- "an incredible collective failure of foresight by almost all the economic bodies whose job it is to anticipate this kind of problem."
House Speaker Paul Ryan, the one politician who has worked strenuously to address such problems and at one point got all his Republican colleagues to go along with entitlement reform, has just delivered his farewell speech. House Republicans will be in the minority next month, and with no appetite for taking up the issue again, especially since President Donald Trump has promised to leave entitlements entirely in place and no significant number of Democratic officeholders seeks to give up what they consider one of their party's chief political advantages.
It's quite a contrast with the late 1990s, when American fertility was higher and Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich were working on entitlement reform until the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.
Just another reminder that history is not always a story of progress.
Women refusing to be women is the problem
Fear of womanhood is contagious. Four inch spike heels are thought to be sexy while actually having real sex is neglected
What you need is old geezers to knock up these young babes and leave them their estates. Win win WIN! Any volunteers?
Western decadence and traditional gender roles are no longer encouraged by our society are the main factors in the decline of American birth rate.
Abortion, stds, tight pants, transgenderism, you name it...
Here we go! Another anti-woman thread for the guys who have trouble with girls.
In fact, how much do men contribute to this with their having kiddies in their 80s (autism, anyone?) and their stds which renders them incapable of producing babies.
American Fertility Headed to All-Time Low
Fertility is not the problem. The TRUTH is: Women opt to ABORT their babies.
And there you have it... we need unchecked immigration so we can have enough new workers to cover up the fact that we stole your social security
...drugs,the View, Don Lemon and or Shep Smith...
Millenials are addicted to self abuse unfortunately, thank you internet.
Our colleges are failing to turn out successful adults who are equipped to find and hold jobs that will support themselves and their own families. Colleges in the ‘60s and ‘70s could do that. High schools in the ‘40s and ‘50s could do that.
Too many children today stay in perpetual adolescence,never achieving maturity. In birds, it’s called “failure to fledge.”
Hard to have a kid if the modern womyn is more concerned with a career and traveling to Dubai a few times a year to have a half-a-dozen sheiks run a train on her in their 1 million dollar apartment. Then, at 40, they come to the realization that there’s more to life than brunch with the girls, travel, and climbing the corporate ladder. If you think what I am saying is crazy, go check out Instagram for 10 min and get back to me.
said the girl from New York from which floweth all the insanity
“Millenials are addicted to self abuse unfortunately, thank you internet.”
And Boomers are addicted to socialism (medicare, SS, etc.). They are also addicted to living beyond their means and pissing away their children’s inheritance and brith right.
I can go on if you’d like? I am a millennial, and it shocks me how many freepers have sudden discovered nationalism and America first. I can remember when this site was dominated by neo-cons that wanted to invade every country in the middle east, and cried any time a politician talked about cutting SS and Medicare.
The headline / premise is wrong about fertility.
The article is pointing to a decline in fertility. However, there is no mention of the number of abortions. To get to the raw numbers abortions + stillborn should also be added to the number of births to compare their definition of fertility. Otherwise, the headline should be that there are less live births compared to 1957.
Since the author said that the number one reason is ... student loan debt ... perhaps the title should be written as “Not So Smart After all - College Student Loans Threaten America’s Future”. I can see a leftist running with this article proclaiming that it justifies excusing student loans, make college education “free”, and why we need to import more welfare dependent people.
SS, Medicare, etc is forced upon us. If I had a choice I would opt out of all of it. I have paid the max into SS, meaning my % and since I am self employed, a matching %. Should I not withdraw the over $25,000 a year that I am forced to pay? What would you do?
Children have no inheritance, earn it yourself sparky.
It has nothing to do with student debt. I have a substantial amount of student debt (six figures) and I make enough to service it, own a home, and save for retirement. It has everything to do with (a) martial laws that allow a woman to financially rape a man and run of with his kids, (b) young women being told to seek a career and travel and live free (Eat, Love, Pray) and (c) to a large extent, more effective brith control that pollutes a women’s womb.
Soybean feminization of males.... and super powerful pot/hash, to make them eat more. For man teats and shrunken gonads— but, wow, man.... that’s good stuff!! Turn on- drop out.
“Children have no inheritance, earn it yourself sparky.”
Thus proving my point. You are a part of the most greedy, self-centered, short-sighted generation in the history of this country. Living for today, and seeing the future. It’s why you sat back and voted GOPe all of these years and did not care about the mass immigration, jobs being shipped overseas, and racial strife. As long as you made money and did not have to deal with the third worlders, you just kept voting GOPe and took that summer vacation and never worried about tomorrow.
Now, you look around, and you’re a stranger in your own country. And you blame...me? A millennial? Congrats on pissing away your children’s inheritance and birth right. I am sure they are thankful and proud of you.
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