Posted on 05/07/2021 5:27:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
The National Center for Health Statistics, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention subagency, reported this week that America's fertility rate dropped for the sixth consecutive year. Total births declined by 4% in 2020, down to 1,637.5 children per 1,000 women. The statistical replacement rate for the U.S. population, by contrast, is roughly 2,100 births per 1,000 women. Overall, the 3,605,201 births last year in the U.S. represented the lowest number since the Jimmy Carter presidency.
It is perhaps too early to tell whether yet another annual incremental birthrate decline is anomalous, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, or flows naturally from existing demographic trendlines. Sociologists and demographers will pore over the data, but it is difficult to ignore the broader trend and place the blame squarely -- or even predominantly -- on the virus and the myriad draconian lifestyle restrictions the virus engendered. On the contrary, many had speculated before this week's report that the extended COVID lockdowns might lead to a one-time annual increase in the birthrate as couples sheltered in place together for months on end.
This bleak demographic reality is inconsonant with Americans' stated child-rearing preferences. According to polling data revealed by American Compass in February, 45% to 50% of Americans who do not report that their families are still growing say they have fewer children than they would ideally desire, whereas 0% to 10% of Americans without growing families say they have more children than they ideally would have had. Put simply, Americans want more babies, but for various, complicated reasons, they are not having them. A drastic incongruence between stated preferences and lived reality is the definitional case for good public policy, and there has been a resurgence of interest of late on the realignment right to rediscover the tools of economic statecraft as it pertains to family policy.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, recently released his Family Security Act plan to provide direct monthly cash benefits for young and school-aged children. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, came out in support of a further increase in the Child Tax Credit for young children. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., unveiled a new "Parent Tax Credit" that the American Principles Project's Jon Schweppe has labeled the "most pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-life, pro-adoption, pro-work, pro-everything-that-conservatives-love economic proposal offered...in recent memory," and American Compass itself devised a rival "Family Income Supplemental Credit" policy. There are other competing ideas, too, such as University of Dallas professor Gladden Pappin's 2019 proposal for a generous direct support system called "FamilyPay."
This economic policy fermentation is deeply healthy. Elected Republicans in Washington, D.C., ought to eventually coalesce around one proposal, but for now, the intellectual vitality of the present policy discussion is intrinsically beneficial. There are also innumerable avenues for noneconomic policy -- the realms of sociology, technology, religion and so forth -- to help lay the foundations for a possible new baby boom. Here is one exceedingly straightforward idea to add into the mix: Stop incessantly bashing America and telling young parents and children to hate America.
As a matter of public discourse and increasingly as a matter of education policy, impressionable young would-be parents and their even more impressionable children are indoctrinated in rank America-hatred. The most sordid forms of this indoctrination come packaged in woke-speak such as "critical race theory" and "anti-racism," which dovetail with The New York Times' insidious "1619 Project" in making an affirmative case for America's purported "systemic racism." This is no longer a fringe theory relegated to the cesspool that is the modern American academy; in the aftermath of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's recent guilty conviction, no less a figure than President Joe Biden himself seized the moment to decry the "systemic racism that is a stain on our nation's soul." Indeed, in the year 2021, condemning the United States' incorrigible "systemic racism" is perhaps the Democratic Party's foremost call to arms.
Holding aside the fact that this is a noxious lie -- America has not been "systemically racist," with the possible exception of the anti-Asian racism of affirmative action education policies, since Jim Crow -- there are tangible effects of this rhetoric for the body politic. Put simply, inculcating America-hatred logically ought to disincentivize young, healthy couples from procreating. After all, who would rationally want to bring forth new life into a country that is irredeemably "systemically racist" to its core?
Demographers often associate falling birthrates with falling confidence in a nation's future. The U.S. in the year 2021 is no exception. Fortunately, some of our plummeting confidence is baseless -- and self-inflicted. The most straightforward way to help accelerate birthrates again could be as simple as ceasing the collective self-flagellation of leftist America-hatred.
People don’t want to bring children into North Mexico
Want to fix plummeting birth rates? Stop the attack on women known as feminism. As a society we have taken away their purpose in being women, the bearing and raising of children, and the center of the family. These roles are not just a “social constructs” but are in innate in their being. But we have attacked this and said that they should act just like men. As a result, they have and no longer seek to be wives and mothers. Value women as true women and the babies will come.
Better yet, stop de-genderizing people with pressure to be gay, feminist, and trans. Restore normal family life and traditional sexual morality. Lock-up sexually out of control males so normal women can feel secure around men.
I’m amazed that the author managed to miss the fact that it takes two incomes for the average family and decent day care costs more than a private school tuition. Maybe that’s the reason for fewer children?
1,637.5 children per 1,000 women
What? I guess that’s why I did lousy in my statistics class.
Mexicans, Indians and Muslims are the US replacement population, per Biden’s plans
Bring back extended families, the nuclear family is unstable without support from a wider family unit comprised of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. The men end up feeling stressed and unappreciated and the women end up feeling dumped on and resentful. Many hands make light work, and many hands would make more children possible for middle and working class people who can’t afford to hire a staff of maids and child minders.
Marriage is a luxury good, out of reach of many young people at the time of their life when they should be getting married. Between student debt, housing costs, and just plain cost of living a regular joe and jane have very little chance being able to afford a single family lifestyle.
Children are also very expensive. While FR likes to complain about welfare queens, the reality is that WIC is not keeping up with inflation and that is having an effect on births.
Want to increase the birth rate? Make it cheaper to get married, raise kids, and educate them.
1.6 birthrate.
Replacement is 2.1 or so.
How in the heck do you make that work in a modern society?
I live 500 miles from where I grew up, and I am the closest in my family.
Could have stayed and maybe made minimum wage. I chose to move and make a better life.
Very, very few families are able to have everyone stay that close. Fewer still have the family be economically viable.
I’d like to see a racial breakdown on this - because from what I see with my own eyes here in California is Hispanics still having lots of children - five or more per family.
And, why not? They don’t have to pay for a thing. The government will take care of all of their needs cradle to grave - food, housing, schooling, medical care, cash welfare.
As long as they vote Democrat.
I wanted two more (have two) - husband said no way, we couldn’t afford it and had a vasectomy.
I feel ya.
My family is spread out all across the state of California - and increasingly further out.
When my mother grew up and even into early adulthood, they all lived within 50 miles of one another, making frequent get-togethers and family reunions far easier. I have the photos to prove it.
I’m getting together with my close family this weekend - haven’t seen some of them in over a year, some closer to two years - Zoom doesn’t do it. And, it’s only partly due to COVID, it’s mostly due to distance.
Thats what the problem is, thats why you can get developing world families with a ton of kids. We now have remote work and hopefully that will encourage people to spread out from the high rent coastal areas into more affordable places so extended family will stop being priced out.
Where I live the breakdown is
First generation a ton of kids.
Second generation back into the norm for the area.
And they don’t get “free” everything. The bennies are not as great as many believe.
If you didn’t have a problem with fundamentals brought on by a massive miscalculation by leadership decades ago, we wouldn’t have plummeting birthrates across the entirety of first world countries with everyone theorizing every conceivable redress to grievance beside the big glaring fundamental problem.
This is existential. Its not a matter of people not trying hard enough because passing on your genes is a very fundamental thing, right after obtaining food and shelter. We need to fix this and not engage in magical thinking by imagining that we can continue to do the same thing over and over and somehow get a different result.
I think that getting away from the idea of cherry-picking the productive members of society and sequestering them in high rent districts away from their support networks would go a long way toward fixing the problem of falling birthrate. It can be done now through remote work.
Lovely theory.
How do you do that?
I am an engineer. I grew up in a declining rural area. There was never going to be enough land for me to have a family.
So I left. Had to honestly. Same as my great grandfather did.
Extended support networks are great. They really are. But in smaller areas it is impossible to make it work.
I worked in the schools as a teacher for years and this is what I saw. They had to fill out forms for school lunches (and breakfasts and now dinners) - and we could see many of the families had 5-10 kids. There are a LOT of new immigrants in this category, and remember, they’re pouring in right now to replace us.
My school backed up against a Section 8 housing project - that was gated, with a satellite dish on every roof and many late-model cars in the locked parking lot (”residents only”).
One nearby project had a full-sized pool for the kiddies, a rec room with WiFi - and every service you could imagine, including psychological services. We had give-aways at our school - nice, new stuff that was donated. Never saw this at the white school I worked at - and there were many poor white kids there from a trailer park.
Kids came to school with the latest athletic shoes, make-up, cell phones, Beats headphones and earbuds from Apple. Saw it all the time. They’d pull out wads of cash too, especially after “Mother’s Day” - when the welfare checks came in.
Not all of them, of course, but many of them.
I just paid a massive tax bill so I’m a little testy on this issue at the moment.
Simply do a search for the words: women + empower + birth rates.
The solution for low birth rates is no mystery at all.
One branch of my family moved lock stock and barrel to a southern state. They are the only ones I know personally who have been successful in doing this. The property values were low enough that they could all easily find a house that was at least as nice as the one they left.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.