Can U.S. birth rates recover?
Even so, the trend toward fewer births is likely to continue long-term, mirroring what’s been going on overseas for decades. “I would suspect that fertility rates over the long-term would start to resemble those of Europe,” says Mather.
Europe’s birth rates have been declining for decades, and especially so in the continent’s most economically stable country. Germany’s birth rate – 1.36 children per female – is the lowest in all of Europe and one of the lowest in the world. There were fewer German births in 2011 than at any other time recorded.
Even before the euro crisis, experts were sounding the alarm over Europe’s gloomy demographic future. How is the continent supposed to take care of an aging population when its birth rates are pointing toward a shrinking workforce in the decades to come?
Blowback
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Stop abortions. Problem solved.
Charlemagne on October 4, 2012 at 10:39 PM
Europeans are on the road first to conquest by their Muslim populations, then enslavement, then extinction.
Charlemagne on October 4, 2012 at 10:41 PM
Hey, I’m doing my part! We’ve just got the one so far, but we’re planning on five. We’ll out-breed these Socialists yet!
Unfortunately that’ll just leave us with the Muslims. Friendly ones AND unfriendly.
Living4Him5534 on October 4, 2012 at 10:42 PM
Four incredible kids. I did MY part.
skydaddy on October 4, 2012 at 10:42 PM
Lorien is our last hope.
Bishop on October 4, 2012 at 10:44 PM
Or the U.S Navy.
Bishop on October 4, 2012 at 10:45 PM
I have six.
besser tot als rot on October 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM
Four kids here! Q
Charlemagne on October 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM
My personal theory is that the current low birthrates of the Western World are a product over, “over correction.” The birth rates during the baby boom likely would’ve been economically unsustainable in the long term, and the economic pressures of having a large family, combined with the availability of birth control, created a correction that is likely a little excessive.
Eventually however, you’ll get to the point where economic pressures start pushing for slightly larger families. Hopefully this will happen BEFORE the population of the western world collapses completely due to the sheer number of elderly citizens passing on. The relatively sudden absence of so many individuals would have economic consequences of their own, especially if there were not younger generations coming in behind them prepared to take up some of the slack.
WolvenOne on October 4, 2012 at 10:51 PM
I suspect that these “kids” are not going to be covering the checks that the elderly have written to themselves in the “kids’” names.
besser tot als rot on October 4, 2012 at 10:52 PM
Sorry peeps. Not pulling my weight, got no kids. But if I ever trick a woman into marrying my butt I wanna have 3 to 5 kids.
El_Terrible on October 4, 2012 at 10:52 PM
This.
davidk on October 4, 2012 at 10:57 PM
Roe is the gift that keeps on taking.
Personal example: I used to go past a store that catered specifically to pregnant women. In the past couple years it went from normal 9-to-5 hours to “by appointment only” to being closed entirely and being repainted as…something. (I can’t tell WTF the new business is supposed to be)
I’m a bit of a horror-seeker and don’t scare easily…but suddenly going by one day to see the store emptied of all merchandise was Creepy. As. All. Hell.
MelonCollie on October 4, 2012 at 11:04 PM
They’re not. The aging population will be rationed away.
Revenant on October 4, 2012 at 11:06 PM
No fault divorce leads to marriage instability, abortion is obvious, collapse of civic virtues makes people question the wisdom of child bearing, women marrying later in life drastically reduces fertility, men deciding that marriage is a bad deal leads to further drop in fertility and economic productivity.
The financial cliff is approaching a lot faster than many realize.
The future will obviously belong to those who actually live in it, and that will mostly be Islam.
sharrukin on October 4, 2012 at 11:08 PM
Nice job. You’ve correctly identified every major cause of the coming population bomb in a single paragraph.
MelonCollie on October 4, 2012 at 11:12 PM
Now I just need to correctly identify the solution and we’re set.
sharrukin on October 4, 2012 at 11:19 PM
So the planet will be saved. Yay.
SouthernGent on October 4, 2012 at 11:27 PM
Islam lives in the past. So the future belongs to those who live in the iron age?
Kelligan on October 4, 2012 at 11:29 PM
The first one is pathetically simple: throw no-fault divorce in the trash can permanently.
If you wanna dissolve bonds that are supposed to last “till death do us part”, SOMEONE has to be at fault for something very bad. And I mean anything short of abuse, adultery, or wrecking the home by chemical addiction/gambling/etc. gets told “go home and deal with it.”
The second…overturn Roe (not at all likely) or try to do an end-around to get the issue back to the state level. More likely but I don’t know just how; any legal experts are welcome to chime in.
The third one is complicated. Way more than I’d care to address tonight in one post.
The fourth we can’t do anything about directly, IMO.
And the last one is again because divorce laws are in severe need of reform. Currently our courts automatically award everything to the spouse with boobs unless she has majorly f*cked up. When marriage basically requires the man to put his balls on an anvil, hand his bride a hammer and hope she never takes a swing…guess what? Less men are gonna marry!
MelonCollie on October 4, 2012 at 11:29 PM
Yeah. Goes back even further than the age of the dinosaurs actually.
If a life form does not reproduce and will not act in its own defense, then it will vanish along with the many others form of life that failed.
sharrukin on October 4, 2012 at 11:33 PM
Simple in the sense of what to do. Not so simple to accomplish.
Fully agree with this.
I think overturning Roe VS Wade would be easier than getting rid of no fault divorce.
If marriage and child bearing is restored it will repair itself.
Its a function of feminism, the welfare state and the artificial economies created for basket weaving and Womyn’s Studies. A lot of the women (and men) employed by the government are not terribly skilled at anything.
Exactly. It’s a high risk, low gain bargain and men are increasingly shy of signing onto it. When men decide to not marry they also become much less productive because they are working for only one easy to please bachelor, rather than a wife and two kids.
sharrukin on October 4, 2012 at 11:41 PM
I’ll take “stuff us ka-razy wacky conservatives (especially Mark Steyn) have been saying for years” now for $500, Alex.
Welcome to the party, Time magazine. Over there, you’ll find the appetizers of government debt and dysfunction, followed by the main course of demographic decline, and we’ll finish up with a total societal collapse sundae.
Hawkins1701 on October 4, 2012 at 11:43 PM
There is no shortage of workers willing to move here, so I don’t see what the problem is.
WisCon on October 4, 2012 at 11:46 PM
Besides the fact that the workers are barely more skilled than a trained circus monkey and are as compatible with American culture/values as an Atari 2600 is with Halo?
Or were you being sarcastic?
MelonCollie on October 4, 2012 at 11:52 PM
I agree with all of the above except on overturning Roe. We’ve been banging our heads against that wall with no measurable progress, and the massive move we’d need to repeal it has never materialized. IMHO it’s time for new tactics.
MelonCollie on October 4, 2012 at 11:54 PM
The problem is that democracy doesn’t seem to work in all that many places in the world. Those who arrive are no longer being assimilated or even expected to be assimilated. That means that they do not embrace the values that allowed democracy and the economic engine of the west to flourish. Governments increasingly pander to fractured multi-cultural communities rather than citizens. The common bonds are dissolving as are the commonly held moral assumptions.
Absent those common community bonds, a leviathan government must impose the standards of behavior that the various communities cannot agree on.
sharrukin on October 4, 2012 at 11:55 PM
I also think its a waste of time, primarily because the Republicans have no actual interest in repeal any more than the Democrats do.
sharrukin on October 4, 2012 at 11:56 PM
Our second one is coming this month. No more contraception for us… I actually have to thank Obama and Sebelius for creating the impetus for people to start talking about Humanae Vitae and letting me discover the moral arguments for that. I pray that we’ll be blessed with several more children. If their generation and ours together can destroy abortion and make contraception shameful again, maybe we can turn things around yet.
joe_doufu on October 4, 2012 at 11:58 PM
That too. And since they’re not all that ‘fixable’; without a viable third party influence repealing Roe is basically hopeless.
This is a pretty good argument for keeping things at the state level…we’d have never lost this battle nationwide if Roe had been compartmentalized to a single state!
Oh please. There’s no reason to become a fundie fruitcake just because our culture has gone screwy. Part of this collapse was inevitable – Roe or no. Or do you think baby booms can go on forever?
MelonCollie on October 5, 2012 at 12:06 AM
I wonder if repealing Roe will have a positive effect.
I mean, the kind of people who would abort their own children are already of dubious enough moral character that its legal status won’t stop them from getting an abortion.
Besides, it’s had some pretty awesome side effects, demographically. Our problem is that the kind of people who are likely to get abortions would’ve produced otherwise healthy and normal future taxpayers while the poor breed like rabbits.
If Democrats want to tax our children, shouldn’t they also penalize women who abort future taxpayers by shifting the potential future tax burden of that offspring onto the woman? Someone’s got to make up the difference! 5 trillion! Balanced approach!
mintycrys on October 5, 2012 at 12:17 AM
This is all nonsense, it’s the progressives trying to scare us into abandoning border security and getting the illegals out of the country, now that it looks like the 0bama regime’s pandering might not pan out.
Rebar on October 5, 2012 at 12:21 AM
Oh well. We had a good run.
portlandon on October 5, 2012 at 12:37 AM
We won WW II with a population about 1/3 of what we now have, so there is no particular or magical advantage to mere numerical increases.
The country could do fine with 200,000,000 as the constant population level, unless you want an ever-expanding entitlement state which then needs a continuous increase in taxpayers to support its metastatic growth.
How frikkin’ crowded do some people want things?
Or is it a mere desire for more consumers to swallow more geegaws?
profitsbeard on October 5, 2012 at 1:17 AM
Can’t believe many commenting on here are focusing on Roe V Wade as the reason.
There isn’t a huge number of abortions on Europe or Japan, and their birthrates are declining rapidly.
What’s next, blame Obama? or Todd Akin?
V-rod on October 5, 2012 at 1:24 AM
If the population stabilizes at that point, but why would it? With an aging population having fewer children you would obviously have fewer capable of child bearing. That would escalate the population drop. That means the increasing number of elderly will be on their own because those who are left will not generate enough revenue to support them. We let the old folks starve in the street, or we could round them up and turn them into Soylent Green, but the economic system will collapse given current trends even assuming Medicare and Social Security are reformed. Not enough workers.
sharrukin on October 5, 2012 at 1:31 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/04/Moroccan-navy-blocking-Dutch-abortion-ship
davidk on October 5, 2012 at 1:52 AM
20 30 years ago, feminism considered raising children a waste of time…marriage a waste of time…the world was going to starve itself to death so don’t have babies…only minorities and Catholics have lots of children…
The message was constant, from the first days of schools, to every liberal commentator…if you had more than 1.5 children, you were un-American, if you wanted to be a mother, a house wife, you were not a woman…
So what do you expect?
right2bright on October 5, 2012 at 7:44 AM
Yeah, like the MILLIONS of abortions aren’t responsible…oh yeah, and we’re not Europe or Japan you moron.
MelonCollie on October 5, 2012 at 7:54 AM
This times a trillion.
BigGator5 on October 5, 2012 at 9:08 AM
Middle-income parents who welcomed a new child last year can expect to spend nearly $300,000 over the next 17 years, according to a new report.
…
The report has been compiled since 1960, when adjusted for inflation, a middle-income two parent household would have spent around $192,000 over 17 years in 2011 dollars to raise a child.
This.
Sokrovenno on October 5, 2012 at 9:39 AM
I don’t think it proves anything. Budgets expand to fill your income. If you wait until 35 to have a child, both parents work, and you only have one or two kids, you’ll spend a lot of money on them. If you earn less and have more children, you’ll learn to live within your budget, shop at thrift stores, etc. Some things like strollers, cribs, hand-me-down clothes are one-time costs that become cheaper on a per-child basis when more kids share them. We’re preparing for our second baby now and I was delighted to learn that even dependent health insurance is a fixed rate regardless of how many dependents you have (at least until Obama destroys health insurance permanently). All of these factors drive up the apparent, per-child cost of raising children as the average family size gets smaller.
joe_doufu on October 5, 2012 at 10:22 AM