Posted on 12/26/2018 6:15:16 AM PST by Liberty7732
Americans just celebrated the birth of Christ 2,000 years ago. What we are celebrating a lot less these days is the birth of our own babies.
In short, America’s fertility rate is in a free fall.
Over a 60-year period between 1957 and 2017, fertility rates in the United States plummeted. About 11 percent fewer babies were born in America in 2017 (3,853,472) than in 1957 (4,316,233.) But drop is at the same time as the population in America doubled, meaning the fertility rate as measured by number of births per woman in the country has fallen by more than half in 60 years.
Unlike all of the nonsense about Trump and Russia, this is actually is an existential threat — economically and culturally — at least based on what has happened in other western or industrialized countries whose birth rates have declined to below replacement level, i.e. Europe and Japan.
This little discussed or reported issue is put in painful new context in a deep-dive study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute in “Declining Fertility in America” by Lyman Stone of the Institute for Family Studies.
Stone writes, “The specter of low fertility, and ultimately of declining population, has come to America.”
Why?
“Most of these changes in age-specific birth rates, however, can be attributed to changing marital patterns. Controlling for marital status, fertility in the United States has been roughly stable for the past decade and a half. Most changes in marital status, in turn, can be attributed to the increasing delay in young people getting married. In other words, declining fertility is really about delayed marriage.”
So why is marriage being delayed?
Stone offers up five reasons. Ironically the central problem revolves around the large numbers of young going to college now, taking on enormous debt, and too many getting degrees in fields that in no way financially justify the level of debt. (We’ll leave out for now the government’s role in that great debt expansion because of soaring college costs.)
Here are Stone’s reasons:
Increased young adult debt service costs due to student loans; Decreasing young adult homeownership due to rapidly rising housing costs and student loans; Increasing years spent actively enrolled in educational institutions, which tends to reduce birth rates dramatically while enrolled; Higher cost of market-based childcare, alongside rising need for hired childcare due to diminished extended family support and more two-earner families; and Changed social and cultural expectations of parents and parenting, making children and childbearing more burdensome than for previous generations. I think the last one is 180 degrees off based on the one right before it. Two-income parents sending their children to day care and then to school have far less childbearing burden then moms who stayed at home and raised their babies, at least until school age.
Dropping below replacement rate is bad enough, but if Stone is right about the causes, and it seems likely he is to some degree, then the solution is virtually impossible to get to: Encourage fewer children to go to college, back the federal government out of guaranteed loans and force universities to compete for those fewer students by charging less. The first two lead to the third, but they do not seem remotely likely to happen.
Stone writes: “…the entire educational complex is presently structured in such a way as to discourage family formation for young adults.” Yes. Because a lot of people in charge of the complex benefit from that.
So then, on to the coming crisis — a real crisis, not a faux Russian election interference crisis.
The negative results of the plummeting birth rate are economic.
A thriving country requires a growing economy and a growing economy require more workers — yes, even in this age of rapid technological advance and a shifting economy, we still have an unemployment rate well below 4 percent and many companies are just going with unfilled openings. Eventually that begins acting like a choke chain tightening around the throat of the economy.
The negative results of the plummeting birth rate are political.
With fewer Americans entering the workforce and larger amounts of Americans in the retirement stage, and generally living longer, how does Social Security possibly hold up? Even before these numbers, Social Security was well enroute to bankruptcy as precious few in Congress are willing to touch it.
Dittos with Medicare. Same dynamic, but throw the rising costs of healthcare on top of it. Neither program is sustainable right now. But with a declining birth rate, the collapse of them rockets towards us much faster.
The negative results of the plummeting birth rate are cultural.
This is a problem Europe has been facing for decades as it’s birth rate dropped below replacement rate more than a generation ago. Their solution was increasing immigration to provide the needed workers. The immigrants came largely from North Africa and the Middle East, some from Asia. They did not assimilate or really want to become French or English (or Belgian or Italian or German.) Political correctness only adds to the problem.
That is not only making France less French and England less English, it is creating more chaos, conflict and violence — while not actually producing the desired results of young immigrants paying for older French and English natives’ old-age checks and healthcare.
This is not a pretty picture for America’s future. But it is one that is a making of our own choices. Changing the trajectory means a sea change in the culture that places a greater priority on families and children than on college and careers. I’ll let the reader judge the likelihood of that.
It shouldn't have to. Economic systems that depend on ever-growing populations by definition are pyramid schemes. Do we really want to label capitalism writ large as a pyramid scheme? Unfortunately, I think that many supporters of free markets, if pushed, would admit they think capitalism is a pyramid scheme.
Japan is struggling but still succeeding. Some rural cities are emptying out, but that means lower demand for education, health care, etc. from those areas.
It’s much cheaper to just import them, yaknow. China, India, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Iraq, Syria, and so many more are ready to make up the difference in our pregnancy ‘gap’.
Here is a ranked list of the world's fertility rates by country. Notice who is at the top.
Who cares about these stupid stories ?
Who cares if the population goes down ?
This might actually work if we controlled the flow and strongly encouraged integration via the old melting pot method. However, the current elites are leftists who believe the multi-culti nonsense. So instead of maintaining a youthful US population, we will instead get youthful Pakistani, Somalian, Mexican, Chinese, etc. populations who will either ignore one another or be at odds in increasingly violent way.
Japan's slow suicide will be a party compared to what is bound to happen in Europe and the US if the current migrant flows continue.
Not Caucasian American babies
I’m doubting the validity of the story.
Thanks to Scotus’ social justice rights to chemical contraception, abortion, and buggery, one generation has the power to eliminate the next, and with it, the republic.
An institution designed to adjudicate the law is an enemy within, the most powerful and destructive enemy we, and Western Civilization have ever faced. It must be stopped.
why?
What the heck does this have to do with statistics?
Caucasian moms are not having babies in any discernible amount.
Feel good stories about how Caucasians,blacks and Hispanic mothers do nice things is meaningless in this discussion.
To me it proved that there are white and black mothers having babies.
Sorry you didn’t read it that way.
Merry Christmas throughout the Octave of Christmas.
It used to be that relatively few went to college.
It used to be that businesses could take a high school grad, give an IQ test and some other tests, and either place him at a low level job or management track. Then came Supreme Court decisions declaring tests racist and discriminatory if too few minorities passed. From this came the increasing requirement for degrees.
Take that away, allow testing for aptitude and knowledge, and much of the need for college goes away.
In very small amounts compared statistically with non Caucasians in the West.
Hey, Laz and me are here to help out.
Contact us by FReepmail, and we will get going.
Oh, don’t tell the First lady, that could pose a problem...
5.56mm
Men don't matter.
It doesn't matter if 99% of men are good and responsible people, if women decide that the "bad boys" are more exciting. One thug can impregnate a hundred women. You regularly hear of criminals who have fathered a dozen or more kids by various women.
The only solution which will work is changing women's behavior.
Blocking enforcement is liberal judges biggest hobby.
Who needs fresh babies when coddled 20 and 30 year olds are still acting like babies?
City planners and Army generals for starters.
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