Posted on 09/15/2013 9:41:23 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
This was not the headline that the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics gave its recent release of provisional fertility data for 2012. But for the first time, in 2012 Russia’s birth rate actually exceeded that of the United States. This is a significant reversal from the past when the US had a birth rate that was as much as 75% higher than Russia’s. The speed and scale of the convergence is impressive. Since 2008, the Russian birth rate has increased by about 10% while the United States has slumped by about 9%.
[snip]
Essentially, Russian wages have never been higher and unemployment has never been lower. Meanwhile, in the United States, wages are stagnant and unemployment is way above its long-term trend. Economic malaise has had a predictably depressive effect on fertility.
What is not particularly relevant for the discussion are the personalities of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin... most of the change is due to structural demographic and economic factors that are incredibly difficult to change.
[snip]
But I nonetheless want to highlight the enormous change in relative performance between Russia and the United States because 1) it’s something that’s not well recognized and 2) strongly suggests that Russia is not some bizarre and indecipherable ”dying nation” but is actually dealing with a number of demographic problems that every other advanced country is also dealing with.
A lot of people pointed at Russia’s naturally shrinking population and basically said “what a wretched and awful place: they can’t even maintain their own numbers!” The fact that the white population is now naturally shrinking in the US should hopefully make people just a little less willing to stereotype the Russians and a little more willing to honestly discuss issues of demography by engaging with hard data.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
“Availability of money in the hands of families would go a long way.”
That is a problem. The birthrate goes up in good times and down in bad. I think the liberals know that and have enacted policies to ensure permanent bad times. But abortion will be free. Wouldn’t want to “punish” people with children.
Everything you have said is true. Social Security is responsible for a great deal of evil.
And don’t underestimate the effect that the Draconian (for males, that is) family/probate courts and laws factor in the decline in the American-American birthrate.
That’s led many males (me included) to say; “No way in Hell am I wading into that den of a thousand deaths.”.
Comparing what folks did 50 or 80 or 100 years ago to what folks do today is pretty much a waste of time.
Folks regularly had 5 - 7 kids back in the ‘50s and ‘60s? Let's take a look at a few example of the differences between then and now.
I was the third of four children, my wife the last of five. Our families were working/middle class. We owned modest cars. No vans or mini-vans. At best, a station wagon with five standard seats. So, how did our families fit 6 or 7 people in our cars? We just sat closer together! Oh, but wait. Couldn't do that in a modern sedan or a smallish station wagon. Not enough seat belts. And failure to have everyone belted in is a violation of law, drawing fines, and I guess even worse on multiple incidents. When she was a child, my wife rode in the “way back” of the family station wagon, often hanging out the rear window. Today, that’d likely bring arrest.
We all went to Catholic school. How did we manage? Easy. Our families put an envelope in the basket every week, went to Mass every week, and volunteered around the parish. Our pastors made sure our parents would be able to afford Catholic school for all of us. Even if it meant half price for kid #2 and free for the remainder.
Doesn't exist anymore.
A few years back, I sat on a local scholarship committee for Catholic schools. I read through folks’ financial statements and tax returns. Other than very, very well off families, no one could afford to send 5 - 7 kids through Catholic school. When elementary school runs $6K and high school (at the low end) $15K, five kids in school might mean $50K per year in tuition. Without uniforms, books (typically $1K per year in an academic high school), no less band or sports. Median household income in the United States is roughly $60K per year. Large, median Catholic families can't send their kids to Catholic schools.
Remember that according to Church teaching, use of Catholic schools by Catholic families is SUPPOSED to be normative. The only problem is that real, live, actual, large Catholic families are now shut out of Catholic schools. Unless they're rich.
When my wife was a child, it was seven folks in a three bedroom, one bathroom house. Such a family might draw the interest of “child welfare” authorities. You wouldn't even be able to rent an apartment, nowadays, for seven folks. Heck, even in 1966, when we first moved to Maryland and at first lived in an apartment, my parents had to search high and low for an apartment complex that would permit six people in three bedrooms.
Whether by actual legal requirement, or by true lack of affordability, or by strong social custom, it really is true that at least for Catholics, median-income folks, large families really are no longer affordable.
Some still manage to do it, but it is often by way of special circumstances, often because now such families are the exception, not the rule, and always by way of heroic virtue.
It's anachronistic to make the comparisons.
sitetest
Thanks Mrs. Don-o. The Russian population of Russia is what is in decline; the rise in non-Russian and in particular muzzies in Russia is what the problem is, and it’s not a new problem.
MOSCOW, Russia, July 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Russian nationalist youth group is encouraging youth to have more sex in an effort to combat the nation's devastating demographic crisis, reports the Daily Mail.
In a lengthy special report the Daily Mail documents the activities of the Nashi youth movement, which is sponsoring a summer camp attended by some 10,000 Russian youth this summer. Not only are Nashi organizers encouraging the youth to have more sex, but they have designated a special area at the dormitories, the Love Oasis, for young men and women to engage in sexual intercourse. According to the Mail, condoms are unavailable in the camp.
"They [The pre-historic mammoths] became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia," said a Nashi organizer to a group of assembled campers.
The nationalistic camp involves two weeks of lectures, reported by some Western sources as being little more than anti-Western "propaganda," as well as a strenuous regimen of physical exercise. Numerous young couples have also been married at the camp, with 25 couples being married at the beginning of the first week, and ten to be married at the beginning of the second.
While many people, especially in the West, are finding in the Kremlin-initiated, and Kremlin-loyal Nashi youth group a disturbing image of similar groups started up in Nazi-era Germany, the camp's approach to sex is further evidence that the Russian government is not unaware that a demographic crisis is leading the entire Russian nation towards an early grave.
Russia's president devoted the largest part of his annual State of Russia speech to reversing Russia's population decline.
If Russian couples have a third child, they will get a baby bonus, better health care, and free land to build a house or dacha, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev promised in his annual State of Russia speech.
Political analysts were hoping to hear about missiles or democracy. Instead they got babies.
[...]
What he did not say is that Russia compensates for its aging workforce by importing about 10 million laborers a year from Central Asia. After the United States, Russia is now the second-largest importer of workers. This influx of overwhelmingly Muslim workers creates tensions in Russia, where the population is largely Orthodox Christian.
ugh
Putin has created a very sophisticated youth movement made up of over 100,000 volunteers called "Nashi", much like a clone of the Nazi youth movement. It is a well-equipped, fanatical, nationalistic private army that is hostile to foreigners and to any political group opposing the Kremlin leadership. Their aggressive behavior is not only tolerated by the authorities but also even encouraged. They help re-enforce local police; wearing black attire, they aggressively beat anyone they consider hooligans or insurrectionist.
They have been taught to believe that the United States is actively preparing a pro-western revolution in their country and that they will thwart it. They have developed high-level recruiting and training camps right across the expanse of Russia. Not only are they schooled in a variety of military issues, they also have orientation courses in such esoteric subjects as gestalt therapy, to help them to survive under extreme conditions.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, birth rate fell sharply. And since, aided by rising oil prices, the Russian birthrate is almost back up to where it was in 1990.
The US birthrate was stable from 1996 until the economic collapse in 2008. As the economy has recovered the US birth rate leveled up.
How do they live without two incomes? Actually, they live cheaper, and they've found homeschooling cheaper even than public school, because they don't have to worry about the kids competing with or comparing themselves to other kids in clothes, toys, and other possessions. And transportation? When you don't have to shlep everybody back and forth to and from school and afterschool activities every day and half the night, it's just incredibly simpler.
One of the moms does do a certain amount of real estate sales from home. Another, web design. So creative. I admire them so much.
According to this Russia’s abortion rate has declined steeply form the unreal numbers in the early 90’s, which supports your idea. It could be that they are just using better birth control now, I suppose. Does anyone know if there is an official Russian Orthodox position on birth control within marriage? I have heard different things from posters on here before.
“So, in 2012 there were about 42 abortions per 100 live births, not 130. The last time the number of abortions exceeded the number of births by 30% or more was in 2002. Additionally, rather than representing “the most grisly statistic the world has ever seen,” an abortion rate 30% larger than the birth rate was actually a huge improvement from rates that prevailed in the early 1990s”
According to this, there was a peak of something like 280 abortions per 100 live births in the early 90’s.
Freegards
It's OK if they want to encourage Russians to marry young, which is the only realistic way to get a goodly number of children, but the pro-fornication slant will kill family-formation, which (even sociologically) is the only stable way to grow a healthy society.
Sin does not --- no, not even in the practical demographic sense --- build up a nation.
They are at least birthing Russians.
We are birthing people associated often with other countries who are mostly all welfare dependent.
Fornicating teens produce "fatherless" children, and there's nothing more destructive to a family, a neighborhood, a school, a city or a nation than a large cadre of fatherless male youth.
What is TFR?
Total Fertility Rate=TFR.
It is the number of children that every woman is expected to have. 2.1 replaces a population. Less than 2.1 and population declines.
Agreed on family, and thank you for replying. Hopefully, the information will be helpful. I posted quite a few articles about Iran and related nations a few years ago.
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