A mother and child. IStock has an Alamy Stock Photo.
The US birthrate has been declining for a long time. The number of babies born in 2020 was the lowest in American history. The percentage of people who said they were very likely to have kids fell from 32 percent to 26 percent this year, while the percentage who said they were not too likely or not at all likely increased from 37 percent.
There are many reasons to think that these trends will only get worse. The American population is likely to start falling in the next decade or two if no major changes are made.
The U.S. had a high birth rate for a long time due to our horrible welfare state. I explained a few years ago that this was due to teen pregnancies and immigration from other countries with higher birthrates. All that is over now. Birthrates in America's main sources of immigrants are also declining, as teen pregnancy has been falling steadily for decades.
It's important to note that fertility has fallen across the world, even in countries with generous welfare states for parents. It's a good thing that this has something to do with changing norms for what people expect in marriage, a decline in social connections of all kinds, and feminist liberation of women from repressive traditional gender roles.
There is a link between enforcement of rigid gender norms and lower fertility. South Korea and Japan have some of the lowest birthrates in the world, with an estimated 1.4 and 0.9 children per women respectively. Germany used to have a very patriarchal welfare state and paid for it in the form of a low birthrate, though it seems to have made some progress in this area recently. Sweden and France have kept their fertility rates relatively high by embracing gender equality and generous welfare benefits, as it's harder to raise a child by yourself.
We are not immune to those global cultural shifts. We don't have European-style public benefits to make up for the blow. If you're on the bottom half of the income ladder, the American welfare state will penalize you for having kids. The health care system in the rich world is the worst. We don't have paid family leave, public child care or pre-K. Our income distribution is not evenly distributed. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, we have a child allowance of sorts, but it's not reaching many people who need it the most.
That's part of the reason why the American birthrate is 1.7 children per woman, and without some change, it will keep falling, possibly down to Korean levels. At that point, our population would be halved.
Immigration probably won't make up the difference. The rate of new American residents increased from the 1940s to the 2006s, but has declined a bit since. The rise of the Republican Party and the decay of the U.S. will cause immigration to fall in the future. America is less and less the land of opportunity and more the land of medical bankruptcies and mass shootings.
President Biden's agenda would make some progress on the welfare problems, but not much. The paid leave program is a joke and the child care and pre-K programs are incomplete, according to Matt Bruenig at The Atlantic. The last two may not reach a lot of Americans and may not even get off the ground at all. The American welfare state will not be able to fix these problems in the foreseeable future, let alone jump to a Swedish standard of generosity.
Biden's agenda would change the American welfare state from one of the worst in the world to the worst among rich countries. It is not easy to convince modern people to have kids. You have to give parents cash from the time their child is born until they graduate from high school.
Old-fashioned environmentalists who stoke panic about overpopulation often argue that a declining population is good because of climate change.
The line of argument is still false, despite the fact that predictions from the 1970s were totally mistaken. When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, economic structure is more important than population. A population of single family McMansions on big lots with coal-based electrical power can emit five to 10 times as much greenhouse gas as the same number of people living in the area.
Rapidly declining population causes a lot of social problems. Detroit became a synonym for economic disaster because of its population falling by two thirds between 1950 and 2010 as a result of de-industrialization.
Population collapse means that services and infrastructure designed for a large population have to be downsized or left to rot. It means a strain on the tax base and intergenerational tension as a smaller proportion of workers have to shoulder the tax and work burden of caring for a larger population of retired people. The way America loads a terrific financial burden on families makes it hard for people to have kids until they're older. Middle-aged parents often have to care for both babies and declining parents at the same time, which is where young parents can usually tap grandparents for free child care. Is it any wonder that so many young people don't feel like they are procreating?
It would be bad to force people to have children. Abortion and contraception are fundamental parts of a good health care system. America's crummy welfare state effectively does that by forcing people not to have children. Depopulation is what's going to happen when you make it impossible for people to reproduce themselves.
You may like it.
There are 7 cartoons about Thanksgiving inflation.
Who pays America's taxes?
The November 26, 2021 issue of Crossword and Sudoku has solutions.
The Mexico state of Zacatecas has been overtaken by a wave of violence.
The lack of working-class elected officials in the statehouse is what led to the Texas legislature killing a bill to expand Medicaid.
The highly transmissible variant is just a trick to push mail-in ballots, insisted GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson.
The city of Shanghai stopped outpatient services at 20 hospitals and canceled 30% of flights from two major airports after three cases of COVID-19 were identified.
Several left-leaning student organizations at Arizona State University want the administration to withdraw Kyle Rittenhouse.
"Stop the Steal" is a movement that is being led by a network of Trump supporters, according to Wood.
Black Friday shoppers spent slightly less online this year, with many going back to physical stores despite the coronaviruses fears, tight supplies and retailers' efforts to encourage earlier holiday purchases. Spending online on Black Friday fell for the first time ever, reversing the growth of the past few years, according to data from Adobe Analytics, a wing of Adobe's business that specializes in data insights and tracks transactions at 80 of the top.
Clooney talked to The Times of London about his new movie, "The Tender Bar," which he is directing.
When she heard that Minneapolis was going to integrate its schools, she looked around and thought about all the people who would be affected. The hallways at North Community High are made of blue and white. The curriculum was updated to make it easier to get to advanced levels.
My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell held a 96-hour marathon from Thursday to Sunday, where he pushed debunked election fraud conspiracy theories.
The reality star shared a photo of her kids with their backs to the camera.
Everyone has jokes with Joe Buck.
Kirk would like to forget the moment.
A South African doctor who was one of the first to suspect a different coronaviruses strain among patients said on Sunday that symptoms of the Omicron variant were so far mild that they could be treated at home. According to Dr. Coetzee, seven patients at her clinic had symptoms that were different from the Delta variant. South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) announced the variant's detection and designation by the World Health Organization on Nov. 25.
He thought it was related to my brother's financial aid, but found out that he had taken out thousands of dollars in loans to pay for college. They told me to stay out of it when I told them I was going to confront my brother. My brother should not have gone to the school if he couldn't afford it.
The father of a football player who posted a video on social media to get his son out of Cleveland denied that he was compared to the player's father.
I don't like being a mom.
Mac Jones, New England's first round draft pick, is making other teams look bad for passing on him.
Ed underwent neck surgery in 2019. They say he quit his job in theAerospace industry, left his wife and kids, and started street performing and preaching as "Cowboy Tygg." Charles believes that Ed's mania was brought on by his excessive alcohol use, his failed marriage, and the intense pressure of his job. He says that Ed was threatening the family over a period of months. Ed's use of medical marijuana was blamed by other family members for his shift in personality. His niece says that he snapped after smoking medical marijuana. It brought out an underlying mental illness. Does Ed's family say they noticed any issues with his state of mind before he used medical marijuana? Find out in the video above. This episode of Dr. Phil is called "From Businessman to Cowboy Tygg." If you want to watch it, check your local listing to find out where to watch it.
After calling on House leadership to take action against Boebert, she said that anti-Muslim bigotry has no place in Congress.
