The U.S. Birthrate Has Dropped Again. The Pandemic May Be Accelerating the Decline. “Over all, the birthrate declined by 4 percent in 2020. Births were down most sharply in December, when babies conceived at the start of the health crisis would have been born.”
In the old days, this would have led to more kids. But now that everyone has birth control, simply jamming couples together with nothing to do doesn’t lead to more births. And economic uncertainty and social fear don’t help.
Of course, this is just a worsening of an existing trend: I was blogging about the coming global baby bust when InstaPundit was shiny and new…
A roundup of links at Instapundit.
As Steyn has noted, there is quite a bit of variability in birth rates depending on which demographic you look at. 3.5 children per woman of child bearing age comes to mind.
There has been some brilliant analysis of why a population stops having more children. One is that when people are prosperous they wish to do other things while young, other than looking after rug rats that they can no longer control because government won’t let them. Logic is so freaking difficult for people these days. When I was kid a 15 year old had more sense and knowledge that the average college/BA university graduate.
Teach girls to read, there is a correlation to female literacy and family size. I’m sure it’s underpinned by the social changes required to make that happen.
Using legislation to shoe-horn women into the workforce was the best idear evar!
What about voting…
The state has replaced the family for old age security, taking away any personal “need” for larger families. Green theology and Malthusian hysteria has replaced traditional Christianity and its “preference” for larger families. Rational preference for larger families is found in an insignificant minority.
According to demographic trends, the US and its largely Hispanic future population will exceed the drastically shrinking population of China by the end of this century (barring decisive war) at somewhere around 425 million.
Indeed it has, and this isn’t new. Birth rates have been dropping in all OECD nations for decades. All are now below replacement rates; Japan is the lowest with a fertility rate of just 1.3 This means that in essence Japan’s population halves with every generation. It’s the reason why there are entire empty subdivisions around some Japanese cities with housing which has no buyer.
“”We need a soft landing,” argues Prof Murray.”
History is the story of hard knocks.
As a woman I can contest that fertility issues have increased in the past 15 years or so. Having had to go through 6 years of fertility treatment to have just one living child, I sat in countless waiting rooms packed with women my own age and younger who were unable to have children as a result of one or both partners infertility. It seemed odd to me at that time and I have a lot of personal theories on the matter. I was quite surprised to be told by a doctor when I was 30 years old that I had no viable egg count, even though I maintained a healthy life and was not in menopause. I was more surprised to find forums full of women with the same situation even in their 20’s. There was also a marked increase in lowered sperm counts in men. The generation before me seemed to have no major issues and neither did those who had lesser access to health care growing up, just all seems a little strange. Of course I am a generation raised on GMO, hormones and processed foods along with a childhood of being over vaccinated and over medicated (they gave antibiotics for literally everything when I was little). Again I do not know what the cause could be but I can’t help but wonder if some scientific advancements might have caused this damage.
As the @very old white guy mentions, there is a population on top of this that illogical to start and are avoiding responsibilities. They love their selfie, self-love, selfish lifestyles and would be put out of sorts if that was interrupted by a child, Abortion is fast, cheep, and easy compared to the way it once was. No one bats an eye much anymore over such things. Family responsibility is a term of the past… much like the traditional family unit. No matter how hard you try you just cant get knocked up by your spouse in a same sex marriage.
Lastly there are those either living in fear or living with logic… The fear says they shouldn’t have children because it is a scary world. Logic asks why bring a child into such a f*&#ed up world?
Your post reminded me that the elites plans for a great reset have been in progress for decades, going back to G.H.W.Bush’s time and further. Eugenics were being considered by the elites in the late nineteenth century. If you are a member of the peasant herd, as we all are, then you don’t count, and it would not surprise me one iota if your lack of fertility were caused deliberately by the elites plans. The UN, the WHO, UNESCO, Planned Parenthood, etc are all products of the elites plans to control the world for their own futures, not ours, or our offspring. We the herd, (or is that Hoard) are using up to much of our planetary resources that they want to reserve for themselves and their offspring, not for us deplorables! Lately, I have been reading explanations of the elites efforts by a gentleman named Mathew Ehret of the Rising Tide Foundation out of Montreal, his words are a real eye opening account of all of the elites disgusting plans. You might want to check him out. An SDA regular, AKA as steakman, posted something a short while back that led me to Ehret, and I am grateful that he did.
I thought that way – that it was bad to introduce children into this f’d up world. My wise mother pointed out that, as a highly educated, intelligent and privileged person I had a societal responsibility to have children that would contribute to society. After all, she pointed out, the undereducated and poor will still have lots of children. Now that I’m 70 yrs old, we will have 2 grandchildren born this year, our first, and my mother who is 100, will have her first great grandchild. Pretty wide spread, but at least better than zero.
As Mark Steyn points out, the people having all the children in the world today tend to be Islamic, and the native Canadians are contributing lots of children too.
As I get older I’d also add to my mother’s comments that the richness of life comes from family and friends, and all should be cherished.
My theory of rising infertility rates has nothing to do with “chemicals” in our food or GMO tomatoes grown to be so hard they can be shipped thousands of miles … or vaccines. I blame the fashion and diet industry that has made women frantic to lose enough weight to slide into those size 4 skinny jeans. Diets they were put on by their mothers long before puberty. THAT … has screwed with many a woman’s biology. Even IF these women never achieved the size 4 … their bodies have still been ravaged by cyclical starvation diets. Oh! And veganism …
I have several women friends who are infertile … and fall into that category. On top of that … they were highly-paid women executives in high stress jobs.
Let’s not forget, the closure of bars, restaurants, and other social gathering places for 20 somethings, has also contributed to the drop in birth rate.
The booty calls came to an end across the board for a year, for fear of getting Covid, and as a result, “accidents” havent happened.
Saying this as a dad of a 20 something, who has seen the result on their social lives being severely curtailed
Not to mention how insanely difficult its been on stable healthy relationships, dating with the intention of getting married and starting a family was already really hard, then Covid came along and made things even more complicated
In searching for good fishing, camping and hunting spots, I’m ok with less people.
Let’s face it, the quality of people doing the breeding these days ain’t exactly contributing to the gene pool. (Cue “Idiocracy” reference)
You reminded me of a cartoon that a fellow forester had hanging in the logging office where I worked. Two guys in a little boat fishing in a lake all to themselves. In the background, a distant mushroom cloud rises above the mountain silhouette. One guy asked the the other, “you know what this means, don’t you? No”, the other replies. First guy again, “No limits!”
I’m an old guy, so is my spouse. We don’t have kids and don’t regret it. The world has lots of people. Because we don’t have kids, we have had a life where did a lot of things our parents couldn’t afford to do. Are we selfish? Maybe. The world doesn’t care. Neither should anyone else.
Could be a result of general compliance. Surprisingly wearing 2 masks or going to a glory hole isn’t that enticing for many people.
It’s not just the closure of bars during Covid.
Over the last 20+ yrs since I came of the age I could partake in the bar scene, I have watched a steady decline of the youthful participants. Changing culture and far reaching DWI law has pushed people away from what was the most normal social scene. Instead of going out & making a few bad choices, young people stay in with their small social cliches where things are safe & secure and socialize electronically if they dare reach out.
“..,young people stay in…where things are safe and secure.”
That’s part of the problem and parents are partly to blame. If the Chinese Plague has shown us anything, it is how risk averse we have become. Life is messy. Making choices, good and bad, is part of that messy life. Young people need to leave home and make a life for themselves, take chances, make mistakes, live and learn. Courting and mating weren’t on their radar pre-COVID so not much has changed.
Any woke mother who puts their kids into a safety bubble is intentionally crippling their children. Although their precious little eggs will never fall out of a tree and sprain their wrist … or get exposed to gutter water … they will remain biologically-fragile for their entire lives. The compulsive cushioning of them, ensures their fragility. Which will extend to their emotional fragility. Which we have already seen for a couple generations.
Are these retards ever right about anything? Remember the baby boom that would come from all this crap? No you don’t bigot because they’ve retroactively said they didn’t say that would happen.
“….simply jamming couples together with nothing to do doesn’t lead to more births”
Not allot of baby-making with the new PS5’s sitting in moms basements around the country.
So whats a couple anyway? No +30 man-child with half a brain would risk a divorce or incur child support along with all the other baggage that comes with in this day and age………..
The problem with globalism is that eventually you run out of other people’s children.
The only exception to the collapse of birth rates in the industrialized world: Israel, with three births per Jewish woman.
Arguably the Jews are the only nation that deserve to endure in any case.
For five decades they’ve been pushing the population bomb on us. I learned about it in second grade in 1972. Four billion starving souls at war over scraps in the year 2000.
Since then every statistic quoted by the intelligencia still sits at the population bomb blade-end of a UN population hockey stick.
Yet many populations are in decline worldwide.
Capatilism requires infinite population growth for infinite market growth and population growth for infinite workers and their wages (here come the robots).
Governments will become increasingly hungry to shore up their tax base. Countries like Canada who allow high migration will survive the longest.
At this rate xenophillic Canada will be young and crest 100million at 2100. Xenophobic, one child, China plunging below a billion elderly.
Did a short list of family and close friends, 39 adults, 27 kids, not good.
My immediate family of children well-into their child-bearing years (late 30’s) … 4 adults, 1 child
Which is why I want to treat my one grandson as a fragile egg, protecting him in a cocoon of safety … then my sane self overrules.
Don’t worry, America….aII the MusIim’s and other 3rd worId foIks you imported wiII take up the sIack.
One thing they never mention when talking about infertility is …..birth control pills. At what age did women start taking them and for how many years until they decided they wanted to have a child ? Would be interesting to know about that reason for infertility. We are quick to blame our food ,our air, our water, our vaccinations, but we never say a word about what we are putting in our bodies to stop getting pregnant .
(applause)
It is one of the things that are part and parcel of the destruction of the family but no one points it out.
The pill is, bar none, the most destructive fruit of human ingenuity.
The atomic bomb doesn’t come close. It saved a lot more lives than it took.
For sure! In my day, we took the pill for only a couple of years and had “instantly-conceived” planned children.
Today, women expect to conceive after being on it for a decade or two. With no pill, normal women can have babies until age 43, if you look at census records. It works for some into their low 30’s.
Biology matters.
The Epoch Times has a commentary along the same topic. Highlighting how Paul Ehrlich warned us about over population and the ghastly policies he wanted to implement like forced sterilizations and mandatory abortions.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/suddenly-the-population-bomb-is-a-population-bust_3839949.html
“Boom, Bust & Echo” written in 1997 by demographer David Foot described this problem. He said at the time that the only Canadians that were exceeding their replacement numbers were the Indians (aboriginal, not asian). He suggested prospective employers look to this population for the workforce of the future, and that educating and motivating them would be a challenge. I mentioned this to someone (in very early 2000’s) who was well-acquainted with the natives, and he rolled his eyes, and said it would never happen. Additionally, in 1997, the mooselimbs having many children were not yet seen as a problem by David Foot. He may have rethought that.
I really liked that book, but yes he forgot to mention huge immigration. When my family arrived back to Canada after 5 years, landing in Vancouver, I said to my husband, “did we really leave Asia?”
Perhaps some indigenous Canadians do not like schools or regular jobs. Lots do in BC and are very successful.
Three-child policy: China lifts cap on births in major policy shift
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-each-couple-can-have-three-children-change-policy-2021-05-31/
Worried about falling birth rates and ageing populations? A good start would be to stop murdering defenseless, innocent unborn. Since 1980, 1.6 billion abortions have been carried out worldwide — by non-Muslims. One abortion is a tragedy, a billion is a statistic.
http://www.numberofabortions.com/