The Luxury of Children

The world’s fertility crisis is more severe than is commonly understood. Last year, humanity’s total fertility level dropped below what demographers call the replacement rate—that is, the average number of children that a woman must have to keep a population constant over the long run. This has never happened before. There have been periods when the human population declined because of wars or epidemics, such as the Black Death, in the fourteenth century, or the diseases brought by Europeans to the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But now, simply as a function of their choices, humans will see the world population peak around 2055 and then begin to fall.

The story of the coming decades is not simply one of dwindling and aging. There is a great deal of variation in the baby bust. The most surprising trend may be one that has overturned basic assumptions about fertility rates. Where once it was thought that people—and, by extension, countries—with higher levels of income and education would have lower fertility rates than those who were poorer and less educated, the inverse is increasingly true. Many wealthier people and countries boast higher fertility rates than many poor people and countries.

The inversion is revealing of why governments have had a hard time coming to grips with the fertility crash. The best explanation for why people are no longer having babies is that child-rearing at the scale necessary to maintain populations is fundamentally at odds with the structures of modern life and modern societies. Once an economic necessity, children are now an economic luxury. That portends a world in which economic inequality is accentuated by demographic inequality, with widening fissures within countries and among them...

Five years ago I predicted that within 10 years population collapse would eclipse climate alarmism and every other topic in news media. We're on track. The impending loss of the Social Security reserves in 2032 for example is a direct result of decades of abortion and thus missing workers entering the economy.

As population shrinks the larger cohorts of elderly folks will continue to demand welfare and social security and medicare because they paid in their whole lives expecting to receive what past generations have enjoyed. This will drive taxes ever higher on remaining workers who already complain they can't afford children. Interest rates will continue to grow as government deficits snowball to cover the retiree benefits, making housing less and less affordable. And the sense that they can't afford children (and are generally unqualified and lacking life skills to achieve healthy family formation) will only drive birthrates lower.

But immigrants will save the day! Nope, because the supply pipelines are drying up, whether Trumpism remains a thing or not. Many of the 'source' countries (like Mexico and Guatemala) for our migrants have lower birthrates than we do. So we can expect significantly lower migration in the future regardless of whom is in power.

Which they are entitled to since they paid into it their whole lives.

But funny how the same people blaming the boomers for collecting what they were promised, don't ever stop to blame the government for handing out social security, food stamps, free education, healthcare, phones, rent, and Medicaid to illegal aliens and who refuse to deal with decades of ss and medicaid fraud.

No, it's easier to blame the previous generation who had no more choice about paying into ss than the younger generation does.

Nor is it the fault of the older generation that the government mismanaged the funds so badly.

Nor is it the fault of the older generation that the government mismanaged the funds so badly.

Well, in terms of generations, whose generation is at fault if not the older generation? They were the ones who were around and could have prevented this. It's not like the children still in the womb are at fault. So this is a battle you are going to lose, if you insist on framing it in these terms in public debate. And telling the survivors of the next generation - the ones your generation didn't kill off in the womb - that they have to work like slaves to maintain your benefits is not going to help matters.

I knew this was the real reason roe was over turned. How ever it came too late in now they must compete with the abortion pill.

Same problem in China. They over turned the one child policy but abortion is still legal and no one can afford children. Plus most females were aborted in the past so there are not enough women to have children. Most females are picky and only want the best husbands and since there are not many of them they can be choosy. It’s one big hot mess.

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