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https://www.sciencealert.com/us-birth-rate-hits-record-low-fertility-plummets-uncharted-territory-cd

Dittohead not!

Dittohead not!

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US Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why
The US birth rate has hit a new record low, with women in nearly every age group giving birth to fewer babies than a year ago.


New figures show just 60.2 babies were born in 2017 for every 1,000 women of 'childbearing' age (15-44) – a low not seen in the US since officials began charting national birth rates decades ago.
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There are other key measures to track birth rates in addition to the GFR, but each of them suggest essentially the same thing: that fertility in the US is falling significantly, and for reasons that researchers don't entirely understand.
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Is this a problem to be solved, a blessing to be enjoyed, or somewhere in between? What do you think?
 
What did everyone think was going to happen when we ended up creating these socioeconomic standards (lack of a better way to put it) of how we educate youth saddled with debt, assumptions of career, assumptions of home ownership, etc.

We fundamentally changed how we looked at the family and added in enough economic standards that changed the game drastically on decisions for today’s target ages to have kids.

That plus generational changes was just enough to send this downward, I suspect that will continue.
 
Dittohead not! said:
US Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why

Is this a problem to be solved, a blessing to be enjoyed, or somewhere in between? What do you think?
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The more progressive, non-religious, and anti-traditional people become the lower the birth rate. In Spain, Russia, Japan, and Italy, among others, the birth rate has fallen to the lowest lows, below 1.2 children per couple, beyond which recovery of the population is not to be expected, and the populations have started to decline.

Darwinism in action. If your goal is to get rid of modernist progressive cultures and replace them with archaic religious, conservative cultures then you could not do better than what these nations are doing to themselves.

The human race has just one job. The only thing that really matters in the long run where human affairs are concerned is whose descendants show up.

Ironically, those peoples who are concerned about population growth and think that there are too many people will be replaced by people who don't don't know and don't care. Getting off this planet? Ecology? Scientific advancement? Enlightened governments? All of that will recede into the background.
 
People on here are always saying that folks shouldn't have kids unless they are financially stable enough to do so, on abortion and "working family" threads.

This is what that looks like.
 
LowDown said:
The more progressive, non-religious, and anti-traditional people become the lower the birth rate. In Spain, Russia, Japan, and Italy, among others, the birth rate has fallen to the lowest lows, below 1.2 children per couple, beyond which recovery of the population is not to be expected, and the populations have started to decline.

Darwinism in action. If your goal is to get rid of modernist progressive cultures and replace them with archaic religious, conservative cultures then you could not do better than what these nations are doing to themselves.

The human race has just one job. The only thing that really matters in the long run where human affairs are concerned is whose descendants show up.

Ironically, those peoples who are concerned about population growth and think that there are too many people will be replaced by people who don't don't know and don't care. Getting off this planet? Ecology? Scientific advancement? Enlightened governments? All of that will recede into the background.
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That's an interesting take on the situation. Those who adhere to archaic religions will populate the planet, and the rest will eventually die out. So, back to the middle ages?
 
Dittohead not! said:
That's an interesting take on the situation. Those who adhere to archaic religions will populate the planet, and the rest will eventually die out. So, back to the middle ages?
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That's what they're trying to do, not that they have any idea what the consequences will be.
 
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I keep wondering who will fill those 25 million new US jobs Trump promised on the campaign trail.
 
KevinKohler said:
People on here are always saying that folks shouldn't have kids unless they are financially stable enough to do so, on abortion and "working family" threads.

This is what that looks like.
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What's wrong with that?
 
Dittohead not! said:
That's an interesting take on the situation. Those who adhere to archaic religions will populate the planet, and the rest will eventually die out. So, back to the middle ages?
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It's probably more complicated than that since those from religious countries tend to change when they move to a more modern culture. It depends on how well the host country assimilates the new arrivals. In France, where the assimilation is very poor, they are having big problems with immigrant populations and the immigrants are very forward about them replacing traditional French culture with their own culture. In America it's very different for Muslims but a problem with Latinos who don't want to assimilate or can't because they're illegal.

Suffice to say that the utopia of a nation where reason reigns supreme in enlightenment, butterflies and unicorns ain't going to happen.
 
LowDown said:
It's probably more complicated than that since those from religious countries tend to change when they move to a more modern culture. It depends on how well the host country assimilates the new arrivals. In France, where the assimilation is very poor, they are having big problems with immigrant populations and the immigrants are very forward about them replacing traditional French culture with their own culture. In America it's very different for Muslims but a problem with Latinos who don't want to assimilate or can't because they're illegal.

Suffice to say that the utopia of a nation where reason reigns supreme in enlightenment, butterflies and unicorns ain't going to happen.
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The tradition of separation between church and state serves us very well in the USA.

The sheer number of immigrants from south of the border makes assimilation a bit slower, but it is happening. What I see here in California is a state with a long history and tradition of culture that originated in Mexico. California started out being a part of Mexico in fact. The architecture, the music, the food, all have a strong Mexican flavor. Spanish is seen and heard everywhere. At least here, I see assimilation going both ways.

But, that doesn't mean that California is adopting some archaic religion.
 
Greenbeard said:
What's wrong with that?
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It’s wrong because, in the long term, you end up with an aging population that is shrinking.

Also, the people who are not having kids are not necessarily happy about not doing it- they just realize the financial strain. Better family-friendly policies like family leave, child care, etc may go a long way to helping correct this trend.
 
 
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Threegoofs said:
It’s wrong because, in the long term, you end up with an aging population that is shrinking.

Also, the people who are not having kids are not necessarily happy about not doing it- they just realize the financial strain. Better family-friendly policies like family leave, child care, etc may go a long way to helping correct this trend.
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Falling fertility rates in general seem to be a fairly natural result of societies progressing through agrarian to industrial to post-industrial phases. As countries get richer and better educated and see their infant mortality rates fall, folks seem to tend to have fewer children and have them later in life. People complete their educations, get their careers started and their finances in order, and then very deliberately have a smaller number of children than in ye olden days. If there's a tradeoff between people completing their educations, making sound financial decisions, and purposefully planning parenthood vs. a higher fertility rate, I'm not sure I'd call the former "wrong." It's the nature of life and the family in the First World.

Nations with more family-friendly policies, e.g., the Scandinavian countries, don't seem to have appreciably higher fertility rates than the U.S., so whatever the merits of such policies that one doesn't seem to unequivocally be one of them.
 
LowDown said:
It's probably more complicated than that since those from religious countries tend to change when they move to a more modern culture. It depends on how well the host country assimilates the new arrivals. In France, where the assimilation is very poor, they are having big problems with immigrant populations and the immigrants are very forward about them replacing traditional French culture with their own culture. In America it's very different for Muslims but a problem with Latinos who don't want to assimilate or can't because they're illegal.

Suffice to say that the utopia of a nation where reason reigns supreme in enlightenment, butterflies and unicorns ain't going to happen.
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Wanted to unlurk on this topic as I've worked in Europe for over a decade and often have to address some misconceptions about it. A lot of what you say is correct and no doubt France has struggled with assimilation a good deal over the years esp. with its "banlieues" around Paris. But I definitely wouldn't say France's assimilation of immigrants is very poor.

The news headlines distort an important reality, which is that a big majority of France's immigrants are actually European, in fact that's even more so today than in the past past. Traditionally France has always had large numbers of Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards. But with the EU formation and expansion, and now even more so with Brexit removing the UK as an option, France is taking in huge numbers of Poles, Bulgarians and other east/central Europeans from rest of the EU. In fact more and more north Africans are leaving France these days while fewer and fewer come in (North African countries' birth rates have been among the fastest falling in the world, esp. Algeria), whereas EU immigrants ore the majority, and then on top of that France gets a lot of migrants from non-EU Europe like Russia and the Ukraine. These immigrants actually assimilate extremely well, as do the Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Chinese and Indians (France has a big and growing south Indian population), and also Filipinos and Brazilians who are coming in greater numbers to France.

Even a solid majority of the North Africans and other majority-Muslim populations who come to France-- whose numbers are actually closer to about 5% of the population not 10% when the numbers are crunched-- assimilate reasonably well. The women don't wear the veil (and are often banned from doing so), the men work and get good jobs, and more and more, French Muslims convert to Catholicism (or occasionally to evangelical denominations). We see this even more so in places like Germany and Sweden, where the Syrians, Albanians, Iraqis, Bosnians, Kurds, Turks and Persians convert in heavy numbers, in some communities the majority, to Christian denominations. And since many of these groups, esp. the Turks, Syrians, Iraqis, Kurds and Albanians but even many North African subgroups don't really look that different physically from the surrounding European population (I've seen many Syrians and Turks who are blonder than the Swedes), they assimilate very quickly into the host populations after conversion.
 
I guess another way of saying this is that what you're seeing in France is a "aqueaky wheel" effect where the unassimilated immigrants in reality are a small minority, but they make enough noise and troublemaking that they give the impression that assimilation has collapsed overall, when the big majority of immigrants assimilate so well that you just don't notice them, and they blend in with the host population. This isn't to say France is problem-free, and clearly they're dealing with significant problems. But in terms of overall demographics I'd say France is if anything one of the healthiest European countries. The French birth rate is higher than that of the US, and contrary to the "Eurabia" meme most of the young mothers in France are native Catholic French-- their subsidized daycare, healthcare and family leave policies make things much easier for them. (My American sister also moved to France and just had a child with a naturalized Russian-French husband-- she said she'd never consider moving back to the US because there's no way she could support a family there.) The birth rate of the North African immigrant population in France has actually fallen sharply, just as it has in North Africa itself. And more and more, the North Africans who refuse to assimilate to French culture are either being kicked out or leaving. Macron despite his supposed differences from Marine Le Pen and the National Front, is actually pretty close to them when it comes to immigration and integration (if anything he's even tougher than they were on cracking down on and removing African immigrants). His security law has made it all but impossible to be an openly practicing Muslim in France, has led to the deportations of thousands of unassimilated Muslims and, along with things like tough public observance and religious wardrobe laws, is leading hundreds of thousands of French Muslims to self-deport, either back to North Africa or in some cases to Britain or North America (both Canada and the USA). Ironically with Brexit, the UK is becoming if anything less European, while French and other continental Muslims more and more move there since Britain is considered much more Muslim-friendly than the continent.

As for what you point out with Latinos in the USA, I agree with a lot of it though I think the historical context is different. The main difference that in America as opposed to say, the UK or France, the Anglo population is an immigrant population too, and the continent has hosted a lot of different cultures and populations so assimilation doesn't really mean the same thing here. I grew up in southern Texas and my family shuttled between there and Arizona and California, and in each of those places esp. south Texas, the population has been Spanish-speaking Latinos since long before the Anglos came in All of us where I grew up in Texas basically had to get good in Spanish to do business there, whether Anglo, Latino or a different immigrant group, because that's long been the traditional culture of the region, in fact by that standard the Anglos in that region should be assimilating to Latino culture in general. Obviously there's more to it than that, but the point, there's been a long-settled Latino and native American population, so when Latinos maintain their Latino culture there, it's not that they're "not assimilating", it's more that the USA has long had a diverse culture and population over such a large landmass, and so assimilation in a multicultural, long heavily Latino area like California or Texas doesn't mean the same thing as it does in, say, eastern Connecticut let alone in France with a settled culture anchored there for nearly 1,500 years.
 
Greenbeard said:
Falling fertility rates in general seem to be a fairly natural result of societies progressing through agrarian to industrial to post-industrial phases. As countries get richer and better educated and see their infant mortality rates fall, folks seem to tend to have fewer children and have them later in life. People complete their educations, get their careers started and their finances in order, and then very deliberately have a smaller number of children than in ye olden days. If there's a tradeoff between people completing their educations, making sound financial decisions, and purposefully planning parenthood vs. a higher fertility rate, I'm not sure I'd call the former "wrong." It's the nature of life and the family in the First World.

Nations with more family-friendly policies, e.g., the Scandinavian countries, don't seem to have appreciably higher fertility rates than the U.S., so whatever the merits of such policies that one doesn't seem to unequivocally be one of them.
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This is basically true, although the family-friendly policies in these countries actually do have a more significant birth rate boost effect when you dig a bit deeper into the numbers. The only reason the U.S. appeared to have a higher fertility rate in comparison to the Nordics-- despite our family-unfriendly lack of affordable daycare, maternity leave and healthcare in the US-- is that at least for past 20 years, the U.S. has had an immigrant Latino population with a much higher birth rate than any European or European-descended group in the United States. Despite all the headlines about Sweden's integration struggles, its immigrant population is actually quite low esp. compared to the US. The Syrians, Afghans and Somalis have only very temporary status in Sweden and are expected to leave after temporary asylum, and even the comparatively small numbers there have been facing heavy deportation recently (or some just emigrate again to England or to the USA or Australia). In fact almost all of Sweden's immigration has been from other Nordic countries or, more and more lately, from eastern Europe and even the UK for some reason.

So when you separate the population sub-groups in Sweden and do a more apples to apples comparison, ex. between native born Swedes and native born European-descended white Americans, the fertility boost among Swedes from their more pro-family programs becomes more obvious, while the sharp drop in US fertility becomes clearer. It's even more apparent when comparing to Sweden's situation a decade ago, with the family-friendly childcare, maternity leave and general universal healthcare policies having a more pronounced effect. France and most recently, Germany are seeing an even more pronounced impact, with the native populations seeing a birth spike in part thanks to such policies (though it's leveled off in France). Many Americans who move to Sweden, France and Germany, when interviewed, say they've started families there that they couldn't back in the US.

I think that a lot of the birth rate drop from the lack of such family friendly policies in the US, is only now just starting to become apparent, and it'll become more pronounced in coming years. This is partly because the economic pressures on Millennials and Gen Z are becoming much harsher with the costs of student loans, housing and health care going up so much esp. in the urban areas where most jobs are. Meanwhile the echo effect from higher religious observance in previous generations is fading-- the US has had the sharpest drop in it's evangelical Christian and general religious population of any developed country in the past decade. Plus, immigration to the US is also leveling off-- fewer and fewer international students as well as skilled workers esp.-- while more Americans seem to be going abroad. So in practice, we're only now just starting to unmask the effects of lack of good daycare, affordable healthcare and family leave in the US, as the confounding factors of higher religiosity and a much higher fertility immigrant population start to level off.

Although I do agree with you on the broader point. Lower fertility seems to be a function of overall development, education, wealth and urbanization levels. Even the most family friendly policies can only do so much.
 
Dittohead not! said:
That's an interesting take on the situation. Those who adhere to archaic religions will populate the planet, and the rest will eventually die out. So, back to the middle ages?
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Actually that's a possibility. It seems the people that are procreating are often the people that should least procreate.

Meanwhile.. college educated, self supporting and driven people are choosing to have 1 child and in some cases,, none.

We could actually see a dumbing down of the world. In fact.. if recent history is an indicator.. we already may be there.
 
Dittohead not! said:
US Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why






Is this a problem to be solved, a blessing to be enjoyed, or somewhere in between? What do you think?
Click to expand...

It is not a problem, we need fewer people not more. That said, many are having fewer children because it is the smart thing to do, others are not having children because they do not want to bring children into this world as it is and that things looks like they may get far worse in the future.
 
Casper said:
It is not a problem, we need fewer people not more. That said, many are having fewer children because it is the smart thing to do, others are not having children because they do not want to bring children into this world as it is and that things looks like they may get far worse in the future.
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Nah, we need lots of kids that can grow up to keep feeding into Social Security and Medicare Ponzi schemes.
 
Bullseye said:
Nah, we need lots of kids that can grow up to keep feeding into Social Security and Medicare Ponzi schemes.
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Nope, just need to make the government pay back the money they "borrowed" and keep their hands off that money from here on.
 
Casper said:
Nope, just need to make the government pay back the money they "borrowed" and keep their hands off that money from here on.
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But that's basically just one hand paying the other. It's going to take a lot more than that to keep the system running. SS is already using the income from the bonds to cover shortfalls in FICA.
 
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