Newswire: 7/17/2020
- As part of their weekly debate series, Newsweek recently published opposing editorials on the impact of falling birth rates. One asserts that they’re a major societal crisis, while the other downplays the numbers by arguing that the downward trend is the result of fewer teen births. (Newsweek)
- NH: The pessimistic view, linked above, is by two familiar figures I’ve often cited: Lyman Stone at the Institute for Family Studies and sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox at the University of Virginia. The more optimistic take is by Marina Adshade, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia.
- Longtime readers already know where I stand on this issue. I’ve written a lot about declining fertility and how the data indicate that there seems to be no end in sight. (See “U.S. Fertility Continues to Fall” and “U.S. Fertility Passes Another (Ominous) Milestone.”) But even if I weren’t familiar with the numbers, Stone and Wilcox’s argument is far more convincing. Their piece simply recounts the data: Birth rates in America have never been so low, which has profound implications for the economy, public programs, and how we live and age. And it’s not because many more people don’t want to have children. It’s estimated that 25% of today’s women may end up childless; less than 5% say that they want to be childless. They are worried about the costs, the enormous time commitment, and the difficulty of balancing work and family, at the same time that many of the age-old incentives to have children (out of religious motivation, to have a source of labor or protection in old age) have weakened. (See “Where Have All the Babies Gone?”)
- Adshade, in contrast, doesn’t really present the data on fertility accurately. She argues that falling birth rates have been driven by a big decline in teen births. It’s true, teen births have plunged the most--but births among every group of women under age 34 are all down. The “tempo effect” she describes (where women are delaying having children and catching up by having them later in life) is just not happening to a significant degree. In 2019, the only age groups that saw more births compared to the year before were women in their late 30s and early 40s, but the increases were pretty small.
- She ends the piece by emphasizing that men have a part to play in the low birth rates, too. But that feels like it’s besides the point. Stone and Wilcox and other demographers aren’t blaming women when they talk about falling fertility. They’re focused on the societal forces that have made it increasingly difficult for the women and men who want children to have them, and how these people are hurt by policies that disincentivize family formation. It’s true that America isn’t going to fall apart with a smaller population. But if too many people who want kids are put off from having them long enough, the logical conclusion is that you’re not going to have a very happy society, and eventually no society at all.
