No Kids to Stick the Bill To
The pandemic - or likely the response to the pandemic - has not helped our falling birth rates.
I take the title of this piece from the epic 2006 non-fiction book by Mark Steyn, America Alone. Mark notes that the incredible falling birth rates across the world mean that your can either choose lavish social spending programs or no kids - not both. I mean - who are you gonna stick the bill to?
Along with terrible job reports numbers - equally concerning are the latest birth numbers from the CDC.
They always do these numbers in difficult ways by using a rolling 12-month ending period measure. If we average those births over 12-months we get roughly the monthly live births for the country. It’s not a pretty sight.
(source)
There are 167 million women in the United States and so the birth rate bottoms out at 1.7 births per female. If you understand the logic then you know that you have to have 2.1 births to keep up with deaths. Most EU countries are at the lowest low of 1.3 - from which no society has ever returned.
By comparison - these monthly birth numbers are lower than monthly birth numbers in 2008 - with fewer people in population.
I’ll leave you with this little ditty. Interpret as you will. Google searches for the word infertility over the last 5 years. The pandemic, the pandemic response and maybe something else are NOT helping with child bearing.