And this family, too!
Posted on 07/01/2014 3:26:27 PM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Fertility rates in the United States are plummeting, driven primarily by non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women who are bearing fewer children.
In a report released on Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that non-Hispanic white Americans are dying at a faster rate than they are being born for the second time in American history. Hispanic women are having fewer children, partially due to how economic weakness has slowed immigration.
Hispanics and whites make up approximately 80 percent of the nation's population, and their childbearing patterns weigh heavily on the nation's overall picture. Hispanics have seen their childbearing habits change dramatically over the last several years -- while the number of Hispanic women at childbearing age grew by approximately one-sixth from 2007 to 2012, the birth rate dropped by nearly one-fourth.
America's fertility rate is currently at just under 1.9, representing the number of children the average woman has in her lifetime. 2.1 children per woman over her lifetime is considered the replacement rate.
The U.S. has already reached an all-time low birth rate, which is calculated by looking at a snapshot of how many women of childbearing age have kids. Now, its fertility rate is at an all-time low as whites and Hispanics have fewer children. The so-called "baby bust" is being partially blamed on the 2007 to 2009 recession and the weak recovery since 2009.
In the short run, according to Census Bureau statistician and demographer Benjamin Bolender, Ph.D., the decline in the number of births began during the last recession. Census estimates show that "the number of births started declining between 2008 and 2009," Bolender told LifeSiteNews. "The high point since 2000 was between July 2007 and July 2008, where we saw just over 4.3 million births. If you are looking at crude birth rates (births / population), the pattern is fairly similar."
The bigger picture is far more worrisome, however. According to Heritage Foundation Policy Analyst Christine Kim, the "baby bust" started long ago, even before the last recession. Kim told LifeSiteNews that "for decades, birth rates have been declining, particularly among the twenty-something and teens (although birth rates have increased among women in their thirties and older)."
Anne Morse of the Population Research Institute likewise told LifeSiteNews in May that the birth rate "has been declining since the 1990s and even before. The average age at first childbirth increased by almost two years between today and 1990 from 24.2 years to 25.8 years of age."
Despite the improving economy Morse said that "the baby bust isn't over. Part of the uptick in fertility can be explained by the end of the recession. But the recession didn’t cause America’s below replacement fertility, and so the end of the recession won’t fix it. … America will – like Germany, Italy, and Japan – face an aging problem."
Kim says the aging problem will have both economic and cultural effects. "As researchers have noted, declining birth and fertility rates are worrying because it impacts the age structure of the population and its economic well-being. As the population ages, in the coming decades, more younger workers will be needed to support the retiring generations. Without sufficient younger workers, the burden on them and on the government will continue to grow, further enlarging the welfare state," says the conservative policy expert.
"Culturally," Kim warns, "as the younger generations delay and forgo marriage, have fewer children and have them outside of marriage, our ideals of the family, marriage, and having children will continue to change and erode, with lasting implications for individual and societal well-being.”
As Kim notes, women over the age of 30 are increasingly having more children, a reverse from their younger counterparts. However, the increase was not enough to offset the delay in childbearing from women under 30, which is at an all-time low. A 2011 Census analysis shows that more women than ever are ending their childbearing years, generally considered 15-44 years of age, childless.
Seven states saw age decreases, says the Census report. This was because of economics, Census Bureau Director John Thompson said in a statement. "The population in the Great Plains energy boom states is becoming younger and more male as workers move in seeking employment in the oil and gas industry, while the U.S. as a whole continues to age as the youngest of the baby boom generation enters their 50s," said Thompson.
Bolender says the transition of young people to oil-rich states "has nothing necessarily to do with the aging of the population in others. In general, causes of 'aging' include fewer deaths, fewer births, and/or different migration streams (either fewer younger people or more older people)."
"It can also be caused by a cohort effect," he says. "For example, the Baby Boom came from a huge increase in births between 1946 and 1964. As those people move into older ages (the youngest are entering their 50's), they can move the age distribution and make the population 'age.' The population in some states could get younger by drawing young migrants from other states, which would make them 'older,' but it's just as possible that states have an increase in births, an increase in deaths at older ages, a greater number or proportion of younger age migrants from other countries, or they could just have a different age structure."
America is also becoming more racially diverse, as the last members of the older, whiter Baby Boomer generation enter their fifties. Brookings Institution demographer William Frey told Al Jazeera that “in 26 states, the under-age-5 population is at least 40 percent minority."
I wasn’t around for the Reagan years...lucky you!!!
And this family, too!
Given abortions, the statistic should be referring to birth rate, not fertility rate imo.
Not too different than the “Glad I’m near the end of my life” post I see on this site.
Don’t worry. It’s guaranteed a large percent of those illegal teens are pg or will be very soon.
My parents are in their late 80’s. They are horrified by what this country has become. They say they are glad they are near the end so they won’t have to witness this country destroyed.
Look, things are happening they could never have believed would happen. I can understand that because I never imagined how awful we could fall.
While this is not addressed to you personally I did want to say that as a single, white, Catholic Christian male in his early 30's why should I?
To perpetuate a society that those who have come before me has allowed to fail? You (collectively) failed to recognize the existential threat and failed to prevent our society from devolving into a cesspool of contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. We've been overrun. And now those who are getting ready to shuffle off want to put the onus on me to do something about it. I don't think so.
How can I and my co-generationalists expect to re-populate the nation with females raised by baby boomers to self-deify; whose ultimate expression is found in the phrase, "It's my body"?
Let it fail. We'll start again.
WOW!!! They sure are blessed!!!
Don’t forget Duck Dynasty family the Robertsons
Roughly one in five white women never have kids. Just by pushing half of them to have had a kid or two, we’d be at TFR.
Here’s the deal, have 5 kids and we give you 2 votes.
lol
They can’t find jobs to pay loan payments - or engagement rings - or buy their own homes & start families.
Seems like everyones been in a holding pattern since 2008
There's a fair amount of truth in that. There is a serious lack of upward mobility that will allow for the creation of families to happen. Older generations are "squatting" because they've been dipping into their 401(k) to finance their lifestyle and/or lost it in the housing crisis of 2007-2008. So we are in a holding pattern, waiting for those people to move on. At least that's been my experience in the Fortune 100 company I work for.
Plus, we have the example of our parents who decided to forego large families in exchange for the RV and the boat at the lake. So why wouldn't I follow their example and instead of having a family opted to get my pilot's license instead. Life as playground.
There’s a balance for each life.
If we want to know “Where have all the people gone? Long time passing”
maybe it’s
“The dumpster in the alley, every one.”
The shoe of abortion might take a while to drop in a way that even the insensitive can see, but drop it does.
Makes you wonder what Obambi’s population control experts are doing to the water. Heh
Been to Baltimore (Wash DC/St. Louis/Chicago/Detroit/etcetcetcetc) lately? I think not.
That is so very true and I think we're seeing the beginning of that now. I for one am not happy about 3rd world immigration barely pushing us over the finish line to replacement levels. Destroys our national character.
And I will not “directly” blame contraceptive measures that have no abortive intent, but they did form the occasion by which people were encouraged to think less about children when they thought about sex and marriage. And so sex got pulled out of context. Again I do not blame a technology. I point out the lack of responsibility in what people consented to do with it. The amoral, untrammeled capitalism did what it does best, even if it is to the bad. It sold a product. Now if someone from Mars came, and saw what we sell in the open, they might be pardoned for thinking that we are a society of alley cats.
Well, because the whoopee does have side effects. If people came up with an absolutely foolproof, no-thought-required cure for getting pregnant without those bothersome moral overtones, there’d be less — why in fact there ARE less, as abortion serves that role for many.
I weep. God weeps too. Convenience has yanked love out of context.
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