Is This How It Ends? Planet Earth's Baby Boom Goes Bust
I’m gonna let you in on a not very secret fact: people don’t want to have kids any more. And the people who like things the way they are aren't particularly happy about it.
The Brookings Institute is out with a report demonstrating the impact of the pandemic on population shifts in the United States. The bottom line is that some of our biggest urban cores have lost people. Some of that comes from de-densifying as a result of more people working from home. Another part of it has to do with the fact that the Former Guy’s administration did everything it could to discourage immigration.
The Big News here is that the country as a whole is headed toward a decline in population. And this trend started before COVID. If you’re rooting for an ever expanding economy as a ticket to economic salvation, think again. We’re getting older, and not having babies.
The nation’s natural increase (births minus deaths) component for 2019-20 of 677,000 represents a substantial dip from 921,000 and 996,000 in the two previous years and levels of well above 1 million annually in years prior (download Table A). This clearly reflects a sharp rise in deaths due to COVID-19, which has continued through 2021. At the same time, the downsizing of births for 2019-20 represents childbearing decisions made before the pandemic began—a pattern consistent with delayed fertility of young adult women exacerbated by the previous decade’s Great Recession. The lower birth and higher death totals for 2019-20 were notable for the nation and most areas within it.
Together, low immigration, more deaths and fewer births led to a national 2019-21 growth rate of 0.35%—the lowest in at least 120 years. This sets the context for growth patterns in most regions and metropolitan areas throughout the U.S., leaving domestic migration—movement within the U.S.—as the factor which can either exacerbate or reduce these areas’ further population downturns.
We’re not alone in this change of course population-wise. One estimate has humanity, made up of 7.8 billion souls today, will be hard-pressed to get to 8.5 billion before it starts to shrink.
It’s a world wide phenomena, according to an article in the New York Times:
...according to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
Their model shows an especially sharp decline for China, with its population expected to fall from 1.41 billion now to about 730 million in 2100. If that happens, the population pyramid would essentially flip. Instead of a base of young workers supporting a narrower band of retirees, China would have as many 85-year-olds as 18-year-olds.
https://twitter.com/cliffordlevy/status/1396509163174383625?s=20
The rate at which babies are being born around the world started falling in the middle of the 20th century. Only sub-Saharan Africa is defying this trend.
The Times story is packed with doom and gloom scenarios including ghost cities, empty schools and closed maternity wards.
Count me in as skeptical when it comes to predicting the consequences of changes in population growth. I remember Paul Ehrlich’s doomsday predictions about population growth from the 1970s, almost all of which were wrong.
(This isn’t an argument about sustainability; whether we have 1 billion or 10 billion people on Earth, the way we treat our planet sucks.)
Both the Bookings Report and the Times dance around the questions about why this is happening. The Times gets down to the second-to-last paragraph before it quotes an Italian woman afraid her salary might not be enough to consider having a family.
Among the wealthy Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations births per woman have fallen, on average, from 2.8 in 1970 to 1.7 in 2016, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.
The Prospect Magazine:
The chief driver of falling fertility rates appears to be the changing economics of the household. Everywhere that the “sole-male breadwinner” model is breaking shows fertility falling in turn. Even in emerging economies, including those where religious authorities exhort women to adopt “traditional” roles in the home and have more children, fertility is falling. Prime examples of this include Iran and Turkey.
It is not only that each new baby represents another “mouth to feed,” raising household costs. For educated and skilled mothers in particular, each new baby also carries an “opportunity cost.” Women who have invested time, effort and capital in obtaining skills are forced to limit their participation at work, curbing future income. The longer and more consistently women withdraw from work, the more severe the earnings penalty is likely to be.
That is not to say that public policy does not matter. Among countries where fertility has been falling for decades—and where female participation in both higher education and training is high—the pace at which it has done so has varied. Countries such as France and several Scandinavian nations with robust childcare systems in place have seen less notable declines. Other factors, such as the ability and willingness of institutions to adjust to mothers at work, also make a difference.
The words “changing economics of the household” politely mask the real problem, namely that growing inequality makes it increasingly impossible for a single parent to fulfill the child rearing role. Having children = poverty and/or deprivation caused by a deteriorating environment.
An economy subject to the whims of corporations and the disgustingly wealthy has pushed exploitation to the point where the basic functions of life have become unattainable. Like a frog in a pot of water slowly heating, we’re mostly inured to that reality.
I suspect we’ll learn someday that the stresses of “civilization” as we know it are responsible for various genetic traits manifesting themselves, while others are repressed. Mental illness, susceptibility to various diseases, and basic cognitive dysfunctions are all candidates in the area, along with the expressions of the urge to mate.
This is a difficult area to get into, mostly because the research has long been dominated by men with agendas associated with retaining or acquiring power. Certainly eugenicists, nativists, racists, advocates for patriarchy and/or theocrats have all used arguments about overpopulation as the basis for some horrible visions for the future.
Those who see infinite economic growth as a redemptive path for the excesses of civilization are alarmed about prospects for declining populations.
Lisa L. Kirchner’s essay, The Sexual Politics of Population Decline tackles this head on:
In what amounts to a capitalist pyramid scheme, pundits are predicting a dire economic future unless we produce more human widgets. And in a twist that could fit comfortably into the new season of The Handmaid’s Tale, 2021 is shaping up to be one of the most regressive for women’s reproductive health since abortion became a federally protected right in 1973.
Population-based appeals for more children are not moral but financial — fewer people will mean shortages of workers and taxpayers. But the idea that population growth is key to economic growth is in fact controversial, and not agreed upon by contemporary economists. The juggernaut of our current economy includes the Gen X population slump.
Yet there’s no denying that the current downturn in birth rates corresponds with the expansion of, and improvement in, birth control. Since the 1960s, as women’s health care options have increased, from oral contraceptives prescribed only to married women to chemical abortions available by mail, birth rates have fallen steadily. For those of us born prior to this era, the difference is personal.
In a 1975 survey, Ann Landers asked parents if they’d choose to have children again. Seventy percent said no.
It’s the economy, and has been for a long time. I’m not saying we need more babies. I’m saying we need to take better care of the babies here and all over the world.
Coming out of the pandemic we are offered the opportunity to reshape our world in ways not leading to more chaos and misery. This is about more than public policy; all the daycare in the world won’t stop the treadmill to nowhere.
As my friend Jim Miller says in his essay Are We Living Through the Beginning of the Great Unraveling? (also published today--we did not know what each other were writing) we can begin the process of writing a different ending to our societal story.
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FYI
https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1396555310727196675?s=20
Yes, we pay a sunshine tax in the form of housing costs. On the other hand, we don't have tornados, hurricanes, and a Governor that thinks voter suppression is a good idea.
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