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.
“My siblings and I would be horrified to put any kind of burden on our parents.”
Same with my sister and me. I’ve said I’d be a bag lady before I’d ask my parents for a dime. My sister, too.
Sadly, our brothers, although raised in the same home, have had no problem hitting up Mom and Dad for financial help, even though Dad was a poor country preacher, and we lived in the “poverty” level.
Change our tax law; it’s that simple. Make the financial incentive for US citizens to have larger families so strong that those who delay children because of financial constraints will no longer have a reason to wait.
We have brought in 35 million legal permanent immigrants since 1990. Legal immigration is a far bigger problem. We have just had three of the four highest decades of legal immigration in our history.
We have 5 kids on one very average-sized salary and some work on the side. Most of our friends have more kids than that--and all the moms stay at home. We moved to the country where we could afford a modest but decent-sized home, and we go without a lot of stuff. Our cars are all used and are beat into the ground before we get a new one. Hand-me-downs are the rule not the exception. We don't take expensive vacations--heck, we hardly take vacations at all.
Now if you say "citizens can't afford kids because they have a certain lifestyle that they want to cling to, and blah blah..." well then that's a different story.
The sad fact is that Americans are more and more prioritizing pets and material possessions over kids. Family life is in shambles and that's not helping either.
Good for them!! And good for you too!! :)
Thank you!
The laughter and chaotic joy fills the home when they all arrive, then just as quickly disappears into quiet when they leave.
We enjoy the peace too, and the laughter in the walls.
There is if you know where to look. We have 5 kids, and in my little corner of traditionalist Catholicism, we are the small family. No abortion, no birth control, and no divorce. Of course we are a tiny numerical minority nationally but....logarithmic growth curves and all! And I understand similar things are happening in some Protestant communities and Orthodox Judaism.
Help is on the way...whether it'll be enough I dunno.
Mass deportation is needed asap this isn’t a 3rd world country yet.
My dad’s birthday is on Christmas Eve. We took a picture of him and mom surrounded by 10 grandkids (5 of them ours). He was beaming.
The laughter is in the walls....wow. What a powerful image, and I think it’s true.
No, the best solution is attrition thru enforcement.
“Spoiled, entitled, selfish young women are a big big big big BIG part of the problem in my experience.”
There WERE a couple of men involved in both stories that you told.
What’s your opinion of them?
.
The liberals have convinced our children they are damaging out environment by having kids. Then same liberals say ooh look y’all ain’t have enough kids so we need rrfugees (to come and damge the environment?).
The earth belongs to those who inherit it.
Thank you for the anecdotal shopping-trip musings.
So much better than the hard data we were stuck with before you posted.
How many families did you know growing up that had 4-6 kids. That was pretty much the norm in my suburban area.
As anyone under 30 how many families they went to school with who had more than 2 kids.
THAT is what the story is about.
Sure you might see newborns all over the place. Do you see families with five or six kids?
Ohhh. Snarky, huh? I guess Santa left you a lump of coal.;-)
I see very few large families if any.
BTW, I think the most recent birth data published is for 2017. Not exactly up to date.
Actually he gave me a really nice pair of Gucci drivers - but I'm still a-hole despite having nice things.
But yeah; should have gotten the coal. :)
Read Marc Steyn’s book “America Alone” and you will understand why this is so distressing. At the time of writing, America was right at the edge of “replacement births”. Europe is under siege and falling under the pressure of Islamic refugees because those countries have be at minus replacement for decades. The countries that gave birth to Western culture and technology are doomed.
If we go down that path, there is no coming back.
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