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Op-Ed: U.S. birth rate at all-time low

Declining birth rates and fertility issues have been becoming progressively more part of the birth rate debate. Economics are another factor, with new couples more engaged in managing money. This figure is the lowest rate in US history.
The overall birth rate is 6.25 per 1000 people. Let’s put this in perspective — 6.25 percent is going backwards, fast. It’s nothing like a replacement rate. The death rate is 8.215 per 100,000 according to the CDC. At this rate, the US population will drop, significantly, over the next 40-50 years.
The teen birth rate is 26.5 births per 1000 females. That’s “good news” according to the Freakanomics criteria about crime and poor birth rates, good news for moralists, and means that 26.5 people are born in pretty iffy circumstances. Teen motherhood is not a crime, actual or moral, but the economics of being a teen mother have never been exactly stellar. It’s tough.
Ironically, the birth rate is one of the drivers of the economy. It’s an assumed factor. Constant growth is the theme of most economic policies, and fewer people runs counter to that theme.
That situation poses a problem for the very simplistic arguments about population numbers. There are two basic, fundamentally opposed, views about the birth rate and population in general. One is that birth control is out of the question. The other is that the world is overpopulated and can’t support the existing population.
At the macro level, the Baby Boom and various aftershocks in population spikes were always considered signs of economic success and prosperity. It follows that a declining birth rate reflects the exact opposite of prosperity. This is at least theoretically a Baby Bust.
If you read enough history, you’ll soon realize that it’s a maze of rationales for things that didn’t go right, as well as an ongoing horror story. Population economics and policies have been in the too hard basket, all the way back to the caves, and running out of mammoths or money is still the same problem for humanity.
The incredible cost of raising a child is rarely mentioned in the massive tomes regarding lower population growth. Economic disasters aren’t mentioned. Unemployment is mentioned, but it’s treated like a head cold, not a serious disadvantage in the mating game. Rising cost of living and declining real wages aren’t factored in except in theory.
In the Baby Boom days, even relatively low wages, which were far less than generous, were liveable. Now, much higher wages don’t make the cut. Even success is subject to real terms deflation. Money and assets become less valuable relative to prices. Your big assets can only be sold in a much more expensive market. If you buy back in, you have to pay those higher prices. It’s no wonder that Generation Y is finding it so hard to have kids.
A million today is has the buying power of roughly $100,000 25 years ago for housing, for example. Most families prefer to have a roof over their heads. To buy in this market is also a long term commitment in a short term job market. Most people experience job loss during the mortgage years.
Debt at this level is dangerous in an increasingly uncertain economic environment. It creates more problems, and ties people in to a very destructive process of decades of work for dubious returns. Economic policies, particularly austerity policies, make life a lot harder for everyone in the mortgage phase of their lives.
The birth rate decline is the symptom of real economic and social failure, in so many ways. It doesn’t matter how many euphemisms you throw at the issues; relying on population growth for economic growth is over. It’s now a hallucination, not a basis for planning. A “good comeback” in births won’t change the fundamentals, it’ll make them worse.

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Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

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