US fertility rate drops to lowest in 100 years
US fertility rate drops to lowest in 100 years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FrV7i0_Ma0
Tag: fertility
The solution to “differential demography” is more migration
“In 2020, the general fertility rate in the US hit its lowest level on record, and provisional data for the first six months of 2021 showed a 2 percent decline in the number of births compared to the same time period in the previous year.
And what’s happening in the US is taking place in much of the rest of the world, as people are slower to marry and slower to have children.
That trend has helped contribute to what will be one of the dominant themes of the 21st century: the slowdown of population growth, especially in developed countries, and the eventual shrinking of the number of human beings on the planet.”
U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Lowest Level Ever
“American women are choosing to have fewer babies and the result is that America’s total fertility rate in 2020 has fallen to a record low of 1.64 births per 1,000 women between 15 and 44 years of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Demographers define replacement fertility as 2.1 children per woman over the course of her lifetime; one to replace her, another to replace the father, and a tenth extra to account for children who die before reproducing and those who churlishly refuse to make their parents into grandparents. Populations with sustained sub-replacement fertility will eventually begin to shrink.”
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“As recently as 60 years ago, the average American woman gave birth to 3.6 kids during her lifetime. Following the introduction of effective birth control pills, the U.S. total fertility rate began to fall steeply from 1960 to a nadir of 1.74 children per woman in 1976. Fertility rose again to hover just below replacement until 2007 when it began its contemporary drop to the lowest rate ever recorded. The U.S. fertility rate is now basically the same as that of other rich developed countries.”
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“modernity offers people a multitude of life options that compete with the bearing and rearing of children. Evidently, the trade-offs between work, travel, socializing, entertainment, sports, and parenting that people are making reduce fertility. The upshot is that modern people considering their options are voluntarily choosing to have fewer children.”
The real state of the union
“If you didn’t know American politics had been turned upside down by Trump’s election win, nothing in the macroeconomic data would suggest that anything at all happened in January 2017”
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“That’s not to deny Trump any credit. He made a sensible selection for Federal Reserve chair and has presided over a healthy dose of fiscal stimulus, and his trade policies haven’t been as disruptive as the most alarmist critics warn. But at the same time, his tax cuts haven’t delivered the kind of investment boom he promised, and in general, all his record-setting economic numbers are continuations of previous trends.”
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“Under Trump, we have seen a sharp slowdown in net immigration that has helped reduce US population growth to a trickle. The foreign-born share of the population, however, is not falling despite the immigration crackdown because American women are also having fewer babies.”
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“The number of babies women say they’d ideally like to have isn’t declining; we are just seeing the gap between ideal fertility and actual fertility get bigger and bigger each year. According to surveys, the main reason is the high (and growing) cost of child care — a problem that a “good economy” alone doesn’t fix, since child care is so labor-intensive.”