In the New York Times today, Jill Filipovic makes the case that declines in the US birth rate are due to family-unfriendly policy:
Liberals make the (better) case that birth declines are clearly tied to policy, with potential mothers deterred by the lack of affordable child care and the absence of universal health care, adequate paid parental leave and other basic support systems. Couple that with skyrocketing housing prices, high rates of student loan debt and stagnant wages and it’s no surprise that so many women say: “Children? In this economy?”
To judge this, you need to take a look at fertility rates by age. First off, here is teen fertility:
Teen fertility has plummeted strongly and steadily over the past four decades. Since teen fertility has always been viewed as a problem, this should be seen as a policy win even if we don't know for sure what policies caused it. Easier access to contraceptives may have played a role, but the evidence suggests it was at most a small role.
For many years, fertility at higher ages made up for the decline in teen births, but that changed a few years ago:
Until 2007, the fertility of women in their 20s (thin gray lines) remained roughly stable and the fertility of women in their 30s went up. But then things changed: 20-something fertility began a sharp downturn while 30-something fertility flattened out.
It's difficult to make a case that policy changed suddenly around 2007. It also doesn't fit the experience of Europe, where fertility in most countries declined steadily during the exact period (1970-2010) that family-friendly policies became commonplace.
The most obvious explanation for this is one that Filipovic also alludes to: the economy. Fertility peaked in 2007 and began to drop in 2008, the first year of the Great Recession. Its effect appears to have been permanent, and it's been strongest on the youngest women. Since 2007, fertility rates look like this:
- -63% for teens
- -40% for ages 20-24
- -24% for ages 25-29
- -6% for ages 30-34
- +9% for ages 35-39
One way or another, the fertility bust in the US seems to have been triggered by the Great Recession, which traumatized young women just entering the workforce far more than it did older women who had been through previous recessions and were entrenched in their jobs enough to be less affected by it. Policy may have something to offer here, but a solid, growing economy seems more likely to turn things around.
I hope it turns it around. Nobody really knows how to get a major increase in fertility - even with the countries that have basically done it right in terms of social services and gotten some kind of increase (the Nordic countries, Czechia, etc) are still below replacement level.
Not that I really want one, but it would be nice to have a fertility rate stable around the replacement rate.
Turn around??? Why??? How people do you want??? We have far too many right now. The US would be better around 150 million total population.
The US would be better around 150 million total population.
That would require a 60% decline in the US population. Even if this played out over a very long time period, it would almost certainly condemn the country to decades of sluggish productivity and economic growth, atrophying living standards, stressed government finances, and waning geopolitical influence. And all this despite barely moving the needle in terms of climate change or the planet's carrying capacity. No thanks.
I think we can all be grateful the earth's human population is growing dramatically more slowly than it used to, and is indeed headed for stabilization (and eventually, decline). But at the nation-state level, it's not the magic bullet people apparently think. And is in fact associated with a lot of very serious problems.
I don't care about "GDP" or productivity. Both are debt driven mirages. The US needs less people and more driven people. Capitalism is a system of debt tied to technocratic science and perpetual population growth, which is anti-nature.
Why would a population drop cut productivity? If there were fewer people, labor would be scarcer and more valuable. That would encourage using labor more efficiently and automating when possible.
I just want the US to be around replacement level. Not really growing or shrinking - we've got plenty of room.
The core problem is that raising a kid is hard even with good economic support. Kids are just a major chore, and if you get educated you tend to be way more interested in the rest of what life can give you instead of hooking yourself to an anchor.
This is borne out imo, because the best way to reduce fertility in 3rd world countries is to educate women.
It used to be that high fertility was supported by a pro-childbearing culture that didn't demand government-funded parenting-friendly policy of the kinds Kevin mentions. But if America is unable to revert to traditional cultural norms for white people (and there are good reasons not to, even if we could), we can always just let many more immigrants in. Many who want to come here don't need all that much encouragement to have children—in fact, certain policies toward immigration make it a good idea for the potential immigrant to either bring children or have children after they settle in the United States.
This does absolutely nothing. There aren't a enough jobs right now for them. If anything, global depopulation just be on the agenda. Just think if Africa and South America were completely depopulated down to the most native of tribesman who only lives within nature???? The earth's problems would be over in a 200 years. The forests would regrow. Ecosystems would recover.
There's no fixed amount of employment. This is a very old fallacy.
Again, fixed amounts of jobs is all we have. You act like debt just rolls every where.
Basically, it forced women out of the paid work force. In the US, it's about the money. Supposedly, green is the color that matters. Women like the green stuff too. What does a woman get for bearing children? Tsuris and bupkes.
Immigration is a one shot. Immigrants quickly adopt local fertility patterns. It happened with the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Hispanics. They become Americans, buy hypens and homes and start using birth control.
I think you're misreading Ms Filopic's op-ed. She makes the point that, clearly, there are lots of potential reasons for "declining fertility" (aka fewer babies). But her conclusion is that increaasing numbers of women JUST DON'T WANT TO. And they're no longer forced to have babies, by biology or lack of contraception.
Women have other things to do.
True that women have many opportunities that lead some to just not want to have babies. But surveys also show that, on average, women are having fewer babies than they say they want.
Haven't read her piece. But my understanding is reams of evidence (including polling) shows that, in the aggregate, American women are able to have (really, afford) fewer children than they want. So, while it's undoubtedly clear that many women are content with zero children (or, say, one), plenty of them are not able to afford to the one or two or three kids they'd like to have.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html
But the gap between the number of children women say they want and how many they actually have has been about the same since 1975 so that doesn't track with the drop in fertility.
Women haven't been "forced" to have babies for my entire lifetime-- I was born in 67, so two years after Griswold.
I agree. The economy is most likely the culprit. Better times will likely lead to more babies.
I understand that policy can do a better job of supporting families. But it wasn't a sudden change in policy that has made starting a family today a challenge -- which, for the record, has always been filled with hardship, tradeoffs, etc. Yet this rather whiny piece by Monica Hesse in WaPo claims women today put off motherhood because the US makes having a baby "hell."
My family values are fine. The country’s are not. For many years I did not have children because, in policies and practices, the United States is hell for mothers.
I did not have children because day care where I live costs an average of $24,000 per year, and renting a two-bedroom apartment can cost upward of $30,000, and in my childbearing prime my salary ranged from $37,000 to $45,000....
I did not have children because ... the United States has determined that what’s easiest is simply berating families who can’t make it work, telling them that they should have budgeted better, or saved more, or arranged for Grandma to watch the baby.
...And how some of those women maybe do want to have children, but they are among the many American women for whom motherhood is not a practical choice. It’s not because they are entitled, or weak, or dysfunctional. It’s because their country is.
Birth rate during the pandemic took a dip, but that should turn around in the next year. We're probably due for a dip in the death rate now as well, since many of the most vulnerable were victims of Covid-19.
Sorry, but fertility began dropping in the 1920's as debt expansion blew up and then plunged and surged in the 1930's/40's crisis, surged again to record highs by the late 50's during the "Baby Boom" and then fell again in the 60's/70's. With the echo boom only filling in the 80's and 90's. Economy is overblown as you can see. Birthrates depend on agriculture ended and thus is the slowing of population growth.
I would just let capitalism die. Its a middle ages ponzi scheme that requires both technocratic innovation and permanent population growth. Sounds like nihilism and its true goals is death of the world.
Shorter shooter2422:
((( Depopulation )))
There was also urbanization. 1920 was the first year the US was half urban, half rural. In the country, on farms, children can be an asset, especially before industrial farming. In the city, they're a liability with recurring expenses.
"...but a solid, growing economy seems more likely to turn things around."
But we have had rapid and steady economic growth since 2012, until the pandemic hit. And we don't see any turnaround there. I think you are on the right track with this idea, but overlooked a substantial condition. A growing economy is not going to solve this problem, nor any other, really, when all the growth gets skimmed off by the ultra-wealthy. Only if the typical person benefits from economic growth will this change. Life will return when neoliberalism dies.
Nope, when neoliberalism dies, consumption will be cut and population will be drastically reduced as food becomes more scarce.
GI Bill = baby boom
What could we do now?
Interestingly, the baby boom was a surprise. Birth rates were way down in the 1930s. Demographers expected more of the same, but post-war, the incentives lined up. Housing, schools and food were subsidized. Forced savings during the war and veteran benefits threw money into the economy. Throw in the propaganda and women getting fired left and right now that the "duration" was over, and even Joan Crawford adopted a kid.
I don't think those women in their 30s were "less traumatized" by the recession. They were just running out of time and decided they couldn't put it off any longer.
Sure, women have more choices today. When I was born, working mothers had one option: quit permanently. My coworkers also got the choice of coming back to work just 6 weeks after giving birth. Progress!
There's a lot of survey evidence that women in the U.S. and Europe are having fewer children then they would like to have. It's not surprising, given the cost of raising children in terms of cash, career, and personal effort.
It's good that women who do not want to have children feel less compelled to, and are able to make that choice for themselves. But there is also something deeply wrong about a culture where many women have fewer children than they would like due to the cost of adding one more maternity leave, one more stint in daycare, one more college bill. It's not like women in the U.S. and Europe want to have a dozen; their average desires are really close to replacement rate.
Fewer children is part of the forced "opportunity hoarding" that parents feel pressured into. We have a cut-throat economic culture where economic mobility is limited and the fear of falling down the economic ladder is a very real concern for many. If you want your kids to be in the middle class when they are adults, it is going to cost a heck of a lot of money to get them there.
I think you have accurately summed up the issues at hand. But I'd add in would be parents still paying off their student loans and the skyrocketing cost of daycare and housing.
Fertility rates are declining all over the world; looking for factors unique to the US to explain the declining fertility rate in the US is an exercise in futility. You don't have to look any further from the US than across the border into Canada to find a country basically similar to the US but with much more family friendly social policy. Despite the policy differences, the fertility rates in the US and Canada are similar and tend to rise and fall in tandem.
Modern medicine is a big factor. When the infant mortality rate is near 50%, as it used to be in many parts of the world, you have to have many children to be reasonably sure that one or two of them will live to be adults. Pensions are another matter. Absent pensions, if you are going to grow old you will depend on your children to support you in your old age, which means several living adult children are desirable. A pension means that it is less important to have children. Finally, there's urbanization and mechanization. Non-mechanized farmers tend to have many children because they can make a positive contribution to the operation of the farm at an early age; a six year old can feed the chickens and collect the eggs. Mechanized farmers, and non-farmers, have fewer children because children are, economically, all cost and no benefit.
I don't believe there is any remedy for falling birth rates, and that's a very good thing. The Earth has many more than enough human beings. A declining population is a goal to be pursued, not a problem to be solved.
In the bad old days before pensions retirement basically didn't exist and people worked until they died. Even a super-rich guy like George Washington was still working (at Mt. Vernon, he had retired from politics) until he contracted his final illness.
Slight correction. Before pensions, people worked until they couldn't. Washington, being rich, did essentially administrative work, which was not physically demanding and could be continued into old age. It's still fairly common for rich people to keep doing what they enjoy until they die. If you were a farmer (not a farm owner, but an actual farmer) or a miner, or a logger, or followed any other physically demanding trade, if you were lucky enough to grow old you eventually reached the point where you just couldn't do the work any more.
Don't buy it. There's no significant correlation beween "the economy" and the fertility rate; the latter in fact is a much smoother trend line than GDP or unemployment or whatever else one might use as a proxy for the health of the economy. Certainly steady improvement in all economic indicators since 2010 should have seen births begin to rise again by 2019, if there was a causal relationship. Unless women are scared to have babies because of the rising government debt? (Just kidding.)
I don't pretend to know the reasons for the decline, but it's altogether too facile to attribute it to the economy.
A slow drift down to a population in the US if whatever it was when the world population was 4 billion while the rest of the world goes there too sounds like a good thing. Family-friendly doesn’t seem climate-friendly. At least if the former means a growing population.
Alas, the US economy is predicated growth, and GDP growth basically is population growth. As the baby boomer retire and take their money out of the stock market, then....yeah....
The US economy is a debt driven mirage. Capitalism died in 1929 and should have been left to completely liquidate by 1935 into starvation and eventually removal of capitalism.
The saltwater version of capitalism died in 2008. Again, the party was over. The system of debt to technocratic growth was a one off with the industrial evolution.
Debt is very much part and parcel of capitalism, and it has been since before the Casa di Medici made its first loan
GDP growth is not necessarily tied to population growth. GDP per capita tends to increase.
I think it's despair. You can have all the child care facilities you want, plus a booming economy, you still don't want your kid to grow up on a doomed planet. Not thinking about global warming when you drive to see grandma is easy. Ignoring it when you're thinking of procreation is not.
That may be true for a few people. But terror of nuclear war, paired with frequent "nuclear attack" drills in the schools and exhortations to build "fallout shelters" in backyards didn't seem to make much of a dent in the 1950s birthrates.
Nuclear war is an "all or nothing" thing. If it happens we're doomed. If not, life is unaffected. That's very different from a problem that is happening even if we don't know how bad it will be
As every parent will tell you, raising kids is expensive in time, effort, and money (if done right.) Previously this sector of the economy was under-addressed because it was part of "women's work". TL;DR: It was only after women entered the official workforce in large percentages that monetary values were assigned to this unpaid labor. Which turned out to be a considerable amount.
Also, giving birth hurts. Sometimes a _lot_. I totally get not wanting to go through the process twice.
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