Posted on 08/28/2011 2:32:58 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Right before the recession hit, the U.S. was undergoing a mini baby boom. Now, birth rates are declining fast.
The number of children born in the U.S. peaked with a record 4.3 million births in 2007, but has since fallen, dropping to 4 million births last year, according to estimates by the National Center for Health Statistics. The birth rate -- a measure of births per 1,000 people -- has dropped 10%.
Historically, declines in birth rates have gone hand in hand with economic downturns. During the financial slumps of the early 1990's and 1970's, the birth rates fell 15% and 18%, respectively. In the midst of the Great Depression, the birth rate was down by 17%.
Meanwhile, the cost of raising a child has risen steadily since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began tracking the data in 1960. From buying car seats and strollers to paying for childcare and schooling, a middle-income family could spend an average of $226,920 to raise a child born in 2010 to age 18 (and that doesn't include overwhelming cost of college), according to the USDA.
The escalating cost, coupled with the most recent economic downturn, has caused many women to postpone or even forgo their plans to have children, said Steven Martin, a senior research associate for the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at New York University. "Certainly economic calamity does cause a significant decline in fertility," he said.
In fact, nearly half, or 43%, of women said they would wait to start or expand their family until they felt financially stable, according to a recent survey by BabyCenter.com, an online parenting resource.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
I'm going to have to talk with my kids.
The more sexually deviant and permissive the culture gets, the less people want to have children.
example: Japan (kiddie porn is even legal)
That’s OK, the government will just import more people from 3rd world countries to make up for it.
How about 50 million abortions since Roe vs. Wade?
oh, idunno. any chance it has to do with infertility linked to abortions?
I also think that most females don’t want the peer pressure to have an abortion. About the only people having kids these days are illegal aliens and “single moms” still in high school.
Abortion.
Okay, in Tokyo and Nagano kiddie porn is legal to possess.
I think our increasingly socialist society has something to do with it.
The producers can’t afford to have kids. The non producers do have kids but they’re also prime targets of the left for abortion.
Bears repeating. Abortion is not safe for children or other living things.
Intelligently disregarding them without a word. If I want to have an insane discussion based on dippy tv-shows and half-processed news, I have four sons under 10 who are brilliant at it.
(American-born, Catholic, married, 45 years old, expecting my 10th child early next year.)
Let’s see - $50,000 in direct debt, another $200,000 in unfunded debt, 10% unemployment, no GDP growth, weakening world standing, a currency that’s crashing, an ever-expanding Federal Government... Yeah, great time to bring a few kids into the world!
That makes such a huge difference to those exploited children I am sure.
Abortion.
I believe it has a lot to do with it.
A good younger friend of mine just had one. She still chose to believe the lie that the “doctor” told her: “it’s not really a baby just yet, just a clump of cells. Just take this pill and that will take care of it.”
Young women are still being told these lies, and they still choose to believe them.
So why don’t you inform all of us what the true demographic situation is here in the US, breaking down the birthrate for white, Hispanics, and blacks? Further, compare that to the demographic situation in both Europe, China, and Russia. Please use Europe as a cultural example of where America may be headed based upon demographic changes.
Some of us intelligent freepers are able to read between hastily worded lines and understand what the poster is trying to communicate.
Glancing at your previous posts on this thread, I see that you like to insult and tear down those freepers you think you are more intelligent than, sort of like those liberals who only know how to tear down a great nation but who have no idea how to build one. They’re happy, though, because they feel superior.
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