Posted on 08/21/2007 11:15:21 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Regular readers will recall that we are on the verge of a population problem. Fertility rates have been falling across the globe, and in nearly every industrialized country are already below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Despite the appearance of a world bursting at the seams with an ever-greater number of people, the current growth rate is slowing and the world's population is likely to peak about nine billion and then begin contracting - precipitously - by 2080. Regular readers also will recall that there are convincing, if not certain, reasons to suspect that population contraction could be bad for civilization. So what is to be done? We've never had a population contraction in modern times, but it has happened before. The Greek historian Polybius wrote, circa 140 B.C., about his own civilization's fertility decline. The same fate eventually befell the Roman Empire, where birthrates became so low that Caesar Augustus instituted a "bachelor tax" to punish men who did not marry and produce children.
Such measures would be untenable today, but while population contraction won't become a global reality for 70 more years, the decline in fertility is already worrying some governments. In Poland, which has a deathly fertility rate of 1.26, the prime minister recently proposed tax exemptions for mothers. In Russia (fertility rate: 1.39), the government offered a bonus of $9,200 for women who had a second child and has begun running youth camps where young men and women are encouraged to procreate right then and there. Portugal (fertility rate: 1.48) is trying to change its pension system so workers with fewer than two children will pay more into it through taxes.
Elsewhere, the support for natalism has been more rhetorical. Before being elected prime minister in Turkey (fertility rate: 1.89), Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that contraception was "treason to the state" and that Turks should "have babies, Allah wants it."
Yet experience shows that it is easier to depress fertility - as the governments of China and Mexico have - than it is to goose it. For instance, Soviet Russia tried desperately to get women to have children as it faced collapse in the 1980s, going so far as to award a "Motherhood Medal." It didn't help. Sweden has also been struggling with dangerously low fertility. Through a series of incentives, officials managed to move the country's rate up to replacement level for a moment in the 1980s, only to see it plummet again in the 1990s. It stands today at 1.66.
Fortunately for us, the United States is in a better position than these other countries - for now. Buoyed in part by immigration, our fertility rate sits just below replacement (2.09). And the good news is that we have gotten rich before we will get old. (One of the demographic quirks about population contraction is that as the fertility rate drops, the average age increases; to put matters crudely, old people are more costly than young people.)
But this benign situation is not likely to last. More likely is that at some point in the coming years, pro-natalism will become a significant feature of U.S. politics, too.
So what will pro-natalist politics look like? The single most important factor in predicting fertility is what demographers unromantically refer to as "desired fertility" - the number of children a couple would like to have. This figure, however, is more restrictive than predictive. If the desired fertility rate is 2.0, for instance, the actual fertility rate may wind up lower, but it almost certainly won't be higher.
For instance, studies show that among Europeans, actual fertility lags noticeably behind desired fertility. German and Italian women born in 1960, for instance, had desired fertility rates of 2.0 and 2.1 respectively, but a real rate of only 1.65. Across the continent, if women had reproduced at the levels they wished for, Europe would not be facing a baby bust. There has been a similar gap between desired and actual fertility in the United States. U.S. women born in 1960, for instance, desired 2.3 children but produced only 1.9.
Desired fertility is particularly difficult to manipulate, as the failure of the Motherhood Medal demonstrates. But fortunately, in the United States that aspect isn't a big part of the problem: Desired fertility numbers are actually rising, with 42 percent of Gen-Xers - compared with only 29 percent of baby boomers - saying three or more children is the ideal size for a family.
A pro-natalist politics, then, seeks not to persuade people to have children, but rather tries to make having children more economically feasible. And it can start, as most everything in government does, with taxes.
In 1950, the Social Security tax rate was 1.5 percent for employees, with all wages above $3,000 tax-free. This meant a worker paid a maximum of $144 ($1,100 in today's dollars) in annual Social Security tax. By 2003, the maximum Social Security tax was $11,136 in constant dollars - a 1,000 percent increase. To put it more starkly, the median tax rate of a family with one earner in 1955 was 17.3 percent. By 1998, that median rate had jumped to 37.6 percent.
Since everyone is eligible for Social Security, these taxes are a transfer of wealth from those who create the next generation of human capital to those without children. Pro-natalist politicians will find ways to change this system, perhaps by cutting Social Security taxes for families with more than two children.
College is another problem. The unending spiral of college tuition both increases the costs for prospective parents and saddles with debt many young couples who might be contemplating starting a family. But just as important, the expanding timeline of college and the increasing necessity of graduate degrees continue to push back the age of entry to the workforce - and hence the financial ability to start a family. The problem is that nature has its own fertility boundaries. The entire college system needs to be changed to make it both more affordable and flexible to young couples who want to start families.
Pro-natalism shouldn't be antithetical to either Democrats or Republicans. Certainly, both parties would face some internal resistance - Republicans from big-business types who care only about sucking the most out of employees, Democrats from those who see traditional families as patriarchal structures that should be destabilized. But at this moment, either party could claim pro-natalism as its own.
Sooner or later, one of them will. The 2008 election may be about Iraq and George W. Bush and the housing market. But the future of U.S. politics is going to be which party helps people have babies. And that's up for grabs.
And CITIZENS ONLY for good measure.
I posit that Liberalism is the effect, I don't know what the cause is.
Democrats Secret Advantage Discovered
This does coincide with the rise of the Pill, I wonder if we aren't all drinking more female hormones than we did before the Pill but that is just conjecture on my part.
Conservatives are breeding. Liberals are aborting.. Whats the problem.
Not sure if that makes sense either. When a woman is on the Pill, she gets a steady stream of estrogen that is LOWER than what her body NATURALLY produces. Women off the pill also have estrogen in their urine, and probably at higher levels at certain times of the month than women on the Pill. I understand your point, but it doesn't make sense scientifically.
Prediction - in 100 years, abortion will be viewed similarly to how we view slavery, witch-burning, and leeching today. Lack of children will make it such. It will be considered a brutal practice from an uncivilized age.
I don’t think the Pill is really ‘good’ to take. A lot of women who take it develop cystic mastitis, so smoking and caffeine shouldn’t be taken with the Pill.
Maybe playing with hormones isn’t a good idea. We don’t do it to men that I know of, unless someone wants to instruct me on the contents of Viagra...
[crickets]
No hormones in Viagra. It’s medicine, not hormones.
Good to know. If you don’t already know, when you and the Mrs. have children there are big mood swings sometimes when the hormones get all wild. Not every lady, but most. I find this is an excellent time to refrain from all these, but not limited to:
1. Noticing other females. Of any species.
2. Noticing her weight gain or outgrowing of clothes.
3. Noticing that she in any way has become derelict.
You can thank me later. ;o)
And to what, pray tell, do you attribute the perpetually high birthrates in Muslim countries?
First, Ehrlich’s Population Bomb was a sheer brain-fart, known by wiser heads to be a hoax even at the time.
Second, raw numbers in the aggregate are not as significant as age-distribution and cultural impact. Other factors being equal, a society where the mean age is 29 (Israel) is just going to be a lot more dynamic than one where the mean age is 41 (Russia): that is, if they have the education and the cultural infrastructure to use all that energy.
Simple ... the RETENTION of the their Muslim values. Historically (say the past 600 years or so), has been heavily influenced by Christian values. When those values leave, the basis for the understanding of the relationship of the person to their God, to the State, to their neighbors, and their families is replaced with focus on self.
Sure. What other popular ideas have come and gone, some to be replaced by their total opposite in the space of a generation? There are several, maybe a lot. Note: some of these observations still have the power to put some people off their feed.
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We’d have a better opinion if their out-of-wedlock rate weren’t so high. That usually represents unstable attachment between Mom and Dad, trouble and danger for the unfledged nestlings in such an unstable nest.
Yeah, well, I’m retired from the baby biz.
My babies are now having babies. Come to think of it, over half of my grandbabies live outside of the U.S.
I’ve read a BUNCH about fish, frogs, and other river-dwellers turning up physiologically freaky, with hermaphroditic amphibians, male fish producing yolk proteins and large percentages of fish that were just sexually indeterminate. I’ve read separate accounts about this in NY state, in Colorado, Canada, and Germany.
One culprit seems to be estradiol and other estrogen-related contamination originating from wastwater effluents from sewage treatment plants. All the hormones in pills, patches, and implants, whether for birth control or HRT, are eventually excreted and “feminize” the freshwater sources of the continent.
I think that right there is enough reason to ban hormonal contraceptives, but they’ll never do it, even if their sons start to menstruate..
I’ve got four. I’m a SAHM, so we function on one income.
I would have loved to have a couple more if we started earlier and if our taxes weren’t so high. We waited until our late 20s so we could be financially stable before had kids.
First of all, no baby deserves to be killed by his parents.
Second of all, "liberal" and "conservative" are flexible and fluid categories, with many of today's conservatives having been liberals at some point in their lives. It would be interesting to poll FR on this: "Are you a convert?"
Third of all, we shouldn't kid ourselves that none of our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, or daughters have had abortions. Something like 40% of American women will have an abortion at some point in their lives--- brutal, isn't it? --- and many a conservative woman at 30 had an abortion that the family never knew about when she was 19.
Every one of those abortions involved a man who was complicit in some way. And every one of those abortions affects me as a woman, as an American, and as a human being: it's a "hole" in the diminished future of my country and my world, and a wound in the heart of God.
Well, my fiance and I are just getting married at 30 and 33!
Under your plan, the husband and I would have been able to start having children as soon as we got married. As it is, we’ve had to wait a minimum of 4 years... Incentives like that would also encourage us to go for the 4 kids I’d like instead of the 2 that are probably more practical.
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