David Veksler/Unsplash.com
Posted on 02/07/2026 8:56:42 PM PST by SeekAndFind
George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago—the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that despite an upward blip in birth rates during the war, “the general curve is downward. The position is not quite so dangerous as it is sometimes said to be, but can only be put right if the curve not only rises sharply but does so within ten or at most twenty years.”
David Veksler/Unsplash.com
“Otherwise,” he went on, forebodingly, “the population will not only fall, but, what is worse, will consist predominantly of middle-aged people. If that point is reached, the decline may never be retrievable.” Orwell did not live to see it—he died at the age of 46 in 1950—but the danger was averted. Postwar birth rates rose in Britain and parts of Europe, though not so robustly as in the United States, where the baby boom peaked in 1957 and petered out after the introduction of the birth control pill in 1962.
The peak U.S. fertility rate, or the projection of how many children the median woman would have if current birth rates continued, hovered above 3.5 and then plunged to 1.74 in the bicentennial year of 1976, just about the same as 2025’s 1.79.
Fertility rates remained low in the 1980s, then rose and occasionally reached the replacement rate of 2.1 in the high-immigration 1990s through the Great Recession of 2007. The latest rate was an uptick from the 1.6 levels of the COVID-19-affected 2020–24 period, leaving the United States with something similar to the dilemma Orwell warned Britons against.
And it’s not just the United States. Plunging birth rates are a worldwide phenomenon. Europe’s fertility rates have been well below replacement for years, with nations’ under-70 populations set to fall by 20 percent in the next decade, not only in economically stagnant Britain and France, where births are tilted toward immigrants, but also in rapidly growing, low-immigration Poland.
Birth rates have dropped below replacement rates since 2000 in most of Latin America, largely because of lower-income mothers, such as Hispanic women in the United States, having fewer children.
China, despite the repeal of its one-child policy in 2015, saw its fertility rate plunge to 0.9 in 2025. If births continued at current numbers, the lowest evidently since the 18th century, China’s population would shrink by more than half, from 1.4 billion to 625 million. Elsewhere in East Asia, the latest birth rates have fallen to 0.8 in Taiwan and Thailand, and even lower in South Korea.
Koreans have shown the determination to maintain their culture, including their alphabet and independence, in a neighborhood with many more Japanese and Chinese. They have risen from abject poverty to become world-class exporters since the 1953 armistice. But they may be at risk of disappearing: At current birth rates, every 100 South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren.
What is behind this worldwide trend? At least one thing is clear about what is happening in America—and how it’s different from previous periods. It’s that childbearing has increasingly become a partisan activity.
As the Institute for Family Studies’ Lyman Stone pointed out, American conservatives and progressives each had a fertility rate of 2.7 in 1980, well above replacement level. In the 2020s, conservatives’ fertility rate has dropped marginally to about 2.4, still above replacement level.
But the progressives’ rate has fallen to 1.8, below replacement level, and generally tracks the pattern in economically developed countries.
It’s not difficult to see why. Young women increasingly tilt left politically and also tend to marry less often, hold jobs outside the home, say they don’t want children, and travel more frequently. These behaviors correlate with childlessness or with delaying childbearing, which often results in fewer births than desired.
The gap reflects “systematic differences in family formation between conservatives and liberals,” analyst Zachary Donnini wrote. Before the Great Recession, this was masked by high birth rates among black women who were heavily Democratic. But black (and Hispanic) birth rates fell sharply after 2007.
At the same time, the gap in political and cultural attitudes between young men and women has grown wider, on campus (where young men are increasingly outnumbered) and off, and both marriage and premarital sex rates have declined.
Extrapolate those trends outward, and you see something like the picture revealed in the Census Bureau’s recently released 2026 estimates of states’ populations. They showed two-thirds of the national population increase occurring in safe red 2024 states, 21 percent in the seven seriously contested purple states, and only 11 percent in the safe blue states.
Similarly, since children tend to share their parents’ political views, Wall Street Journal contributor Louise Perry wrote, we can “expect the partisan fertility gap to usher in a United States that is more conservative. In fact, the whole of the developed world is on track to become more conservative.” That’s a trend that Orwell, a proud socialist, might well have found even more dangerous than it’s sometimes said to be.
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
” Will Falling Birth Rates Mean A More Conservative World?”
No.
If we seek a more conservative world we need to abolish the department of education and erect a wall of separation between education and state.
More kids; less kids. Don’t matter. All will be indoctrinated in a government school.
No. More Islamic world. Muslims have highest birth rates and the are majority in majority of countries.
No worries.
The Black Plague (aka Black Death) in Europe (1347–1351) killed an estimated 30% to 60% of the of the population. It was immediately followed by the Renaissance and a great leap forward in civilization.
The declining birth rate will lead to a transformation. The best of western culture will only survive if there is a viable faithful remnant of character and values to restablish the civilization. People who embrace neo pagan, hedonistic decadence do not procreate.
Actually, by my math with their latest TFR around 0.7, that works out to 3 great-grandchildren. But that's a funny way of putting it since each child can only have 8 great-grandparents, so no more than 24 of the 100 will even have descendants.
Even more cheerfully, the equivalent trajectory for North Koreans yields 63 great-grandchildren. Still a decrease, but I'm sure that 21:1 population ratio won't affect the balance of power... /s
Getting back to the author's point, conservative cultures are having more kids than liberal ones. In the US the liberal birthrate is down in South Korea territory; the more liberal a person's views, the lower the birthrate. This has been true a long time, but liberals have made up for it with their control of education/media to parasitize off the conservative population.
Everywhere I look, I see this effect weakening. Parents of school kids are more aware fighting back more; school choice is providing options to avoid liberal indoctrination; conservative media is no longer a fringe effort. People are aware their culture is under attack. There will always be some mushy indifferent folks, but the population the liberals can brainwash is dropping. And that means a more conservative future.
I don't mean this as triumphalism. The "conservatism" will be a mixed bag, everything from a swelling Amish population (which is interesting to consider) to unassimilating immigrant subcultures.
Like you said, Conservatives tend to have more kids.
But the end result is the same.
Even the Mormons are not having kids. Utah's fertility rate is now at 1.8. Decades ago, it was pretty high.
If we are starting to do that now, we won't see fruits for another 20-40 years.
The Left is very patient as they were able to complete the long march through the institutions.
They managed to pull it off without us noticing (until now).
Women have outnumbered men in college since 1980.
Actually, the birth rate has dropped sharply in most Islamic countries.
You are leaving out the fact that South Korea has the highest suicide rate of any country near that size.
When are we going to demand the creation of a wall of separation between education and state?
Birth rates in iran, Saudi Arabia, turkey, Qatar, even Bangladesh are below replacement levels.
And due to consanguinity ie cousin marriages being prevalent, the genes are weak and they produce large numbers of physical and mental defects
‘Conservative’ women can turn on a dime. The 19th amendment sealed our fate. Suicidal empathy resides in the XX chromosome.
Realistically? We have Trump but he's just buying us some time. He's doing a better job in his second term but I think so far, it's a missed opportunity.
Trump can't do it all. All the institutions are working against him and yes, that includes Republicans (RINOs).
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.