I’m immersed in enjoying a new grandbaby right now. And this
past week a niece and nephew both had their first babies, so there’s a sudden
rise in little second cousins.
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| New granddaughter, Little Social Sphere II |
In contrast, someone shared an article with me about the
rather sudden drop in fertility rates here in the US. I’ve written about this
issue before, but it has been a while. Principles are still true, but there’s
updated data since I wrote these:
If you’re new to the idea that declining birthrates are a
bad thing, let me repeat this scenario on Greece that I refer to in “Demographic Winter.” This is from a 2010 United Families International article, using
Greece’s 2008 population of 11,237.074.
If you consider that a generation is about 27
years, and you have a fertility rate of 1.4 (Greece’s is actually 1.37), then
you’ll lose a third of the population every generation:
Generation 1 11,237,094
– 3,745,698 = 7.491,396
Generation 2 7,491,396 – 2,497,132 = 4,994,264
Generation 3 4,994,264 – 1,664,755 – 3, 329,509
As I explained in
“Demographic Winter,”
In a little over half a century the population
is likely to decline to under 30% of its current population. Without disease or
war. Voluntarily.
The cutoff seems to be a fertility rate of
1.4. In the history of the world, no population has ever recovered once hitting
that level. Right now the following are at, near, or below that level:
United Kingdom 1.66
Portugal 1.49
Austria 1.42
Russia 1.34
Spain 1.31
Japan 1.27
Czech Rep. 1.24
South Korea 1.21
Hong
Kong 0.97
OK, so we’ve established that decline is looking bad
mathematically. For the social and economic impact, read that whole piece.
In the piece I read this week, “The Great Baby Bust of 2017,” blogger on demographics Lyman Stone
talks about a sudden drop in US fertility rates. For many years, while other
countries declined, we held steady at replacement levels. However, a closer
look showed that immigrants had been bumping up our fertility data. US-born citizens have
been a little over 1.7, which isn’t as bad as much of Europe, but it’s sure not
good. But now even the immigrant rates can’t pull us up to replacement.
 |
| Screen shot of chart in Stone's article |
Stone
uses the latest data, along with some extrapolation:
If you google “USA Total Fertility Rate,” you will see a
graph from the World Bank, with the most recent data showing 2015
TFR of 1.84. As such, many people wrongly believe that U.S. TFR is 1.84.
I’m here to tell you
that U.S. TFR is actually 1.77, and falling with alarming speed.
We have provisional-but-complete fertility data for 2016 showing a total fertility rate of about
1.82, so slightly below the 2015 level. However, since then, fertility has
fallen still further. We have monthly birth data through June of 2017 which
allows us to estimate total fertility over the previous 12 months. Remember,
total fertility is demographically-controlled, so it is not impacted by the age
composition of the population, simply showing age-controlled birth rates….
Fertility has fallen sharply over the last 6 months or so,
even as the economy has picked up steam. The most plausible forecast for 2017
calendar-year total fertility is 1.77; which, by the way, I’m not the only
person who thinks that; professional demographic consultancy firms independently arrive at the same conclusions.
To be clear, in 2008 and 2009, the U.S. had replacement-rate
fertility. Since then, we’ve fallen to about 0.3 kids below replacement.
Stone uses a helpful illustration of what this means.
Here’s an example of what their fertility might look like in
2008 vs. 2017:
 |
| Screen shot of chart in Stone's article |
In 2008, your friends Emma-thru-Emily all would have had
about 2 kids if their lifetime fertility followed 2008 age-specific birth
rates. Harper and her husband, however, decided to go for a 3rd, because they
wanted to have the best of three children and name him Lyman, named for the
demographer who inspired them to do society a favor and have a third child.
But in 2017, things have changed. Emma ended up breaking up
with the guy she thought she might marry because he turned out to be kind of a
deadbeat, so she didn’t have that kid she hoped to have in her 20s. Olivia got
a great job… which has really long hours, and she really loves the job and she
loves how comfortable it has made her and her husband’s life, but there’s no
way she and Bob can care for a kid right now: life is just too busy. And
Harper? Well, Harper and her husband were enticed to take a few extra vacations
by generous credit card rewards programs and super-low mistake fares online, so
they used up their vacation time and their disposable income, and so a third
kid just isn’t in the cards anymore.
The important thing to understand here is these are big
changes in your friends’ lives, and they happened really fast. This is not some
gradual easing into lower fertility, but a pretty speedy change.
Something else caught my attention in Lyman’s piece. He uses
a graphic showing rates in all 50 states:
 |
| Screen shot of chart in Stone's article |
This chart is messy, I know, and there are no labels, but the
point is to see that there are lots of “down” trends in 2016 and 2017. And by
the way, that highest line that declined a lot… that’s Utah.
Guys.
It’s even happening to the Mormons.
That’s my people. We love families. We love children. We
value children. But something cultural is happening. I’m hypothesizing that it
has to do with a combination of reasons: less value of marriage in society,
less value of children in society, less confidence in being able to afford
children, and maybe less willingness to sacrifice comfort and financial
stability for more children when a couple already has one or two.
The decisions of Stone’s Emma-to-Harper example is pretty
realistic. The economy is a big factor when it has been so uncertain for so
long. Add in the societal pressure defining children as a burden instead of the
character-building joy that they are, and people weigh having another child
against having a better home or car or travel experiences for them and the
child or two that they do have.
I’m wondering whether a consistent improvement in the
economy will bring back the confidence to have more children. But I think we
need more cultural shift than economic.
In “Why Civilizations Die” I refer to David P. Goldman’s
book How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam
Is Dying Too). Goldman proposes that loss of faith is the underlying cause
of fertility decline:
“The truth is that humankind cannot survive without faith,
specifically faith that our lives have meaning beyond the mere span of our
years. Civilizations that lose their faith also lose their desire to continue
and fail to reproduce themselves” (p. 16).
Goldman saw the US and Israel as exceptional, because they
are countries of faith. And faith is tied in with seeing ourselves as covenant
people—with inalienable rights granted by God. Cultures that see government or
the collective as the giver of rights, in general, see themselves as being
owed, rather than purposely connecting themselves to a future. As I summarize
in “Why Civilizations Die,”
Our children pay a rising portion of their wages to the
government, which doles out elderly care as it sees fit. So there is a
disconnect between the number of children an individual has and the amount of
care he receives in old age.
The disconnect means there is no incentive to personally have
more children. We look at the quarter million dollars it costs to raise a
child, and think about whether we would prefer to spend that income on
ourselves instead. The only social reason to have children who contribute to
collective elderly care is altruism; there is incentive to freeload.
Those who have a “faith” reason for having children, however,
still have them. On the individual and national/cultural level, people who
believe only in themselves fail to find something worth caring enough about to
reach into the future.
We need more babies.
More important, we need more faith so
we will grasp the life-affirming choice and civilizational need to have more
babies.
[1]
The title “Demographic Winter” refers to a documentary by that name, which I
link in the blog post about it.
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