Americans aren't reproducing ourselves.
Fertility rates are well below replacement levels in the U.S. and in other developed countries.
We aren't dealing with why, but we are feeling the effects.
Women in prosperous, developed countries are having fewer children. Replacement rate is approximately 2.1 children on average for every woman. In the USA, back when I was born about 1950, American women had 3.0 children on average, meaning a natural increase. That rate fell steadily until 1972, when it crossed below 2.1 and fell to 1.75, rising to 2.0 in year 2000, but falling again to its present level of 1.77 children per woman on average.
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| Click: Interactive map |
This is a world-wide phenomenon in developed countries. In some places fertility rates are even lower than the U.S., falling far below replacement levels, especially in crowded, prosperous Asian countries--Singapore (0.83), South Korea (1.14), Hong Kong (1.19), Japan (1.41)--as well as all over Europe--Germany (1.44). Roman Catholic countries show the same trend: Italy (1.44) and Poland (1.35.)
People may be less fertile; we may be poisoning ourselves by accident. There is a pronounced worldwide decrease in sperm counts over the past fifty years, measured by the numbers of healthy motile sperm necessary for conception. Are the pesticides, herbicides, and plastics we are using affecting us? Something apparently is. Obesity appears to be a factor, especially in North America and Europe, but my observation of people in East Asia is that obesity is much more rare there, and yet they experience the same reduction in sperm counts. (I know from personal experience that an American who buys a size "medium" Nike brand running shirt in the U.S. needs an "extra-large" in Hong Kong.)
Click: American Journal of Health
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| Click: Scientific American |
The trend line on sperm production seems relentlessly downward. Human males were "over-engineered" for sperm production, with far more than were necessary, but that was based on the idea of young men impregnating young women. In developed countries that is not who is attempting to get pregnant. People in the U.S. and elsewhere in the developed world are delaying marriage. Women want to establish a career before starting a family, and they have access to reliable contraception, which means they can have an adult sex life without bearing children, and are choosing to do so. They are delaying childbearing into their thirties and forties when they are less fertile and pregnancy less likely. Add her age to the partner's lower sperm count--perhaps a count that was more than sufficient when both were age 20, but less so for him when older--the result is fewer pregnancies.
The economies of prosperous developed countries have changed, making childbearing more "expensive" in the broadest sense, both financially and in overall career opportunities and lifestyle. The jobs are in the cities, where space is expensive. "Family wage" jobs require education, and men and women need to delay childbearing during their twenties to get the education necessary to support a family. Social norms have changed. People delay marriage because cohabitation and pre-marital sex is more acceptable. Given widespread reliable contraception, children are a choice, an expensive one. People who choose not to get married or to have children are increasingly common and therefore the behavior is normalized, creating a feedback loop.
Meanwhile, national policy in the U.S. is not "family friendly" in the arena of health care, tax deductions for children, or public support for day care. Elizabeth Warren's proposal for universal day care is condemned by the right, and many on the left consider it wishful thinking, too big a stretch to possibly get passed and a sign of her political extremism. American couples recognize that childbearing means that one or both partners likely take time off of careers, at a time when housing costs frequently require 30 to 40% of a median worker's income.
Put together declining fertility, delayed marriage, separation of adult sex from childbearing, urbanization, educational requirements for family wage jobs, tax policy, entitlement policies that benefit the elderly and not young families, and we have a situation in which native born Americans are not reproducing themselves.
Who is having babies in the world? People in poor, crowded countries in the Middle East and Africa.
The reality of fertility will have profound effects on America but it happening so slowly that it is easy to miss. Most people who are of "retirement age" have purposely arranged their lives to be unproductive, as measured by Gross Domestic Product. As the number of young people decline, there are more retired people as a percentage of the working population. They are, overall, an expense.
Seniors vote. Older people vote themselves health care via Medicare, paid for by people who are of working age, and for whom Americans do not supply health care. Expensive health care for young working people is yet another impediment to childbearing.
America will adjust. We may become more welcoming of immigration; there will be a worker shortage and the people available to do the work will be immigrants. Americans, like the Japanese, may become more accepting of automation and robots. We might choose to make childbearing less financially burdensome via public support for healthcare and childcare.
Younger, working Americans may develop a political consciousness that they are being taken advantage of by the older generation, the people sitting on all the assets whose prices has been inflated by monetary policy. As young people become both more rare and more important, the balance of political power may change. A charismatic leftist politician may make the case that the world does divide--as Mitt Romney had observed--between "makers" and "takers." That leftist politician will make the case that it is time for the people who do the work to get the benefit of it.
4 comments:
At 7.7 Billion people, the world population is still too much for the resources. Each of us in the more developed countries uses a greater percentage of the available resources, per person. Humans are the "takers" on this planet. Encouraging more children is not the solution to the problem.
It is obvious that some immigration policies will change in the countries that need more young people.
Let's look at the "makers/takers" trope.
How about "producers" and "consumers"? Can we have either without the other?
Republicans represent those with wealth, and of course it's a virtue, so they promote the idea that unless your labor produces more value than you personally can use, and god forbid less, you are a lessor person.
Shame on you, you worthless parasite!
The shame is particularly useful in coercing those who in fact have no vested interest in tax policy to align themselves with the wealthy. It's quite a neat trick and made even easier if you can convince them that people with a different skin color are why they are struggling.
Wealth inequality in America is somewhat unique among developed countries, and I think it's due in a large part to our history of racism, but also to the Regressive idea of "freeloaders". I'd just point out that until very recently women were exclusively consumers, in fact excluded from creating wealth, so the whole idea of "takers" is nonsense, like most Republican economic babbling.
Today's post is actually about overpopulation. Developed countries are controlling it, others are not. The result is starvation. Climate change threatens food production, especially in equatorial regions. All the factors you mention certainly contribute to lower fertility, but I believe the main reason is that children are a luxury in a society that is stressed economically. Responsible people want to be able to provide financial security for them so "I can't afford children" is heard more often than "I don't want them".
There apparently isn’t any topic that can’t be used as fodder for the claim that “Republicans are bad.”
Let’s all sing along!
That's because Republicans are bad is so many ways.
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