Free Republic

It has long been a cultural phenomenon that when people are confined to their homes due to dramatic weather events, babies start springing forth nine months later. Nearly half the worldÂ’s population is confined to their homes with two primary tasks: 1. Do not catch nor spread COVID-19. 2. DonÂ’t go nuts from boredom or cabin fever.In trying to accomplish No. 2, people are playing more board and card games. Others are catching up on sleep and preparing more homecooked meals. These are very good things.Husbands and wives are also finding themselves with plenty of time for other activities, and...

2020 is here, and many people are excited about starting a new decade. Yet for those who watch Social Security's financial condition, New Year's Day just means we're a year closer to the challenges facing the key government program.This year is likely to be the last one that Social Security manages to keep its spending under a key psychological level. Starting in 2021, the amount of money that the Social Security Administration spends on benefits for retirees and survivors of retired workers will exceed $1 trillion for the first time -- and that's just the beginning of an upward surge...

Although the great engine of American capitalism is now humming on all cylinders, Americans remain strangely reluctant to have children. That birthrates plummeted during the Great Recession, which ran from 2008 to 2016, is no surprise. Who would want to bring children into a jobless, stagnant economy? But the return of prosperity after the 2016 election should have produced a quick uptick in births. That, after all, was the consistent pattern we had seen in the past. Despite generous tax cuts and rising middle-class incomes, however, our birth rate remains mired at the lowest level ever recorded in American history....

I know three families planning to have another baby based on Trump's win and the bright future ahead now. That's just in my small circle of family and friends. People keeping jobs, getting jobs. Economy doing well. Optimism in America again. I'm expecting a TRUMP BABY BOOM Making America Great Again! Anyone else hearing similar stories?

It’s a happy image of racial harmony: Bloomberg Businessweek illustrates this story with a drawing of German and migrant babies, white and brown, all dressed in traditional German garb and happily playing together. It’s a sweet image, but how real is it? Is this a Baby Boom or invading force? Bloomberg doesn’t address that question, but on this issue it is really the only one that matters. Will the Muslim migrant babies grow up to accept German values? Or will they be taught from birth that Muslims are the “best of people, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is...

AT no point in recorded history has our world been so demographically lopsided, with old people concentrated in rich countries and the young in not-so-rich countries. The parable of our time might well be: Mind your young, or they will trouble you in your old age. A fourth of humanity is now young (ages 10 to 24). The vast majority live in the developing world, according to the United Nations Population Fund. By and large, today’s global youth are more likely to be in school than their parents were; they are more connected to the world than any generation before...

A gift of days with the extended family stretching from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday inevitably invites reflection on the fields of folly where we find the rising generations at work and play. Youth, beautiful in its blossoming, arrives with predictable attitude, often illustrated by various piercings and tattoos. They're adolescents forever in search of a way to make the "meaningful" statement, as elusive as the maturity that lies ahead. Babies, naturally, are exempt from criticism, gurgling and sucking their thumbs, blissfully unaware that the Brobdingnags around them are blowing their inheritance on big-government deficits. But as the seniors say, leaving...

A baby boom among conservatives could push the nation's politics further right in the coming decades, especially since liberals aren't having as many children, according to a new study of online dating habits of conservatives and liberals. The study featured in a Harvard University Shorenstein Center review of recent surveys released Tuesday on how political polarization of the nation is impacting Washington's budget talks is the first to challenge left-leaning pundits who have claimed that as the white population shrinks, the GOP will become marginalized. Instead, the study in the authoritative journal Political Behavior, conducted by scholars from Brown and...

A generation of Americans who embraced communal living in the 1960s is again considering that concept and other ways to coexist as they near retirement. This time, they’ve traded peace signs for dollar signs. “By force of sheer volume, the (baby boomers) who in 1968 thought they would change the world by 2028 actually will,” said Andrew Carle, founding director of the Program in Senior Housing Administration at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Over the next three decades, one in five U.S. citizens will turn 65 or older, Carle said. They’ll control more than half of the discretionary income,...

Born in 1970, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is the first generation X’er to be on a national ticket. Since the 1990’s my fellow generation Xer’s have been an often overlooked group of individuals compared to the older and much larger generation of baby boomers and the World War II generation. We’ve been called slackers, baby busters, cynical, skeptical, angry and indifferent among other descriptions. However, is this really the case now? Forty percent of generation X’ers are from families whose parents divorced. Many became known as “latch key children.” The Bergen County Record reported in 1995: More than...

FROM the moment they entered the workforce in the 1960s, baby-boomers began to shape America’s economy and politics. They will do the same as they leave. The first of the estimated 78m Americans born between 1946 and 1964 turn 65 in 2011, the normal age for retirement. As their ranks swell in coming years, the burden of financing their retirement will mount. So will their electoral importance. Retiring boomers will squeeze the economy from two directions. The number of people enrolled in Medicare (federally funded health care, available from the age of 65) will grow from 47m in 2010 to...

While baby boomers are still the driving force that controls America’s cultural and spending habits, when it comes to preferred methods of communication, they are pathetically out of the loop. These days, phone calls are “out” and texting is “in,” which can create another area of tension between parents and their 18 to 34 year old millennial offspring, according to the Washington Post. Young people say it’s a control thing – but it’s more likely a new media thing. The view among those 18 to 34-year-olds in the Facebook and Twitter set is that making a phone call is invading...

we boomers have a lot to be worried about because most of us plan to retire in a few years and Social Security and Medicare are on the way to going bust. I should know because I used to be a trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Those of you who are younger than we early boomers have even more to be worried about because if those funds go bust they won’t be there when you’re ready to retire. It’s already starting to happen. This year Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives...

Young adults in the United States are being squeezed out of the labor force as older workers either delay retirement or seek jobs to rebuild nest eggs destroyed by the recession, a study showed on Wednesday. The size of the labor force fell 6.3 percent for young workers, but increased 8.5 percent for workers 55 years and older between December 2007 and January 2010, according to the study by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Cara and Jamie Vernon have begun the "Obama baby boom " - a phenomenon the press predicted would begin nine months after President Obama was elected. It's a girl.

It's no secret that different age groups have different spending patterns. Younger people are a drag on economic growth since they consume a great deal but don't produce. In other words, they exacerbate inflation since they increase demand and reduce supply for goods. On the other hand, middle aged people are high earners, producers, and spenders. They tend to moderate inflation and prop up asset prices. Peak spending occurs on average at age 48. Spending patterns resemble a bell curve, so beyond this age, spending tapers as people save for retirement.

Last weekend I attended my niece's high-school graduation from an upscale prep school in Washington, D.C. These are supposed to be events filled with joy, optimism and anticipation of great achievements. But nearly all the kids who stepped to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are of America's future -- yes, even though Barack Obama, whom they all worship and adore, has brought "change they can believe in." A federal judge gave the commencement address and proceeded to denounce the sorry state of the nation that will be handed off to them. The enemy, he said, is the...

Obviously, the progressive viewpoint of providing sex education in our schools and the movement towards handing out birth control isn't working. And why should it? We've got an educational system in this country that can't teach the basics of reading and math, and somehow, we expect that same system to do a good job in teaching sex ed?

NEW YORK-When George W. Bush lifts off in his helicopter on Inauguration Day, leaving Washington to make way for Barack Obama, he may not be the only thing disappearing on the horizon. To a number of social analysts, historians, bloggers and ordinary Americans, Jan.20 will symbolize the passing of an entire generation: the baby boomer years.

Increases in social security benefits has produced a baby boom among poor families, Government-sponsored research showed today. Tax credits and big increases in means-tested state payments have resulted in 45,000 extra babies a year - around one in 15 of all children born. And it found that young women with the least education stopped using contraception after the benefits were pushed up because they were trying to get pregnant. The findings mean that Gordon Brown's benefit reforms now stand alongside immigration as the main reason why the number of babies born in Britain is going up. They also signal that...