The US fertility rate is decreasing: What it means for the nation’s future
https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/the-us-fertility-rate-is-decreasing-what-it-means-for-the-nations-future/article
The US fertility rate is decreasing: What it means for the nation’s future
https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/the-us-fertility-rate-is-decreasing-what-it-means-for-the-nations-future/article
27 Comments
From the article
>The declining fertility rate became more concerning following the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, when fertility rates dropped below 2.1 children per woman. That is the so-called “replacement rate” needed to maintain population numbers from one generation to the next.
>The share of Americans over 65 [grew faster from 2010 to 2020](https://apnews.com/article/census-demographics-population-age-race-ethnicity-3bf63785a69db2a96a13eb70767c5f5e) than in any decade in more than a century. The youngest boomers are now 59. As more of them retire and therefore no longer pay into Social Security, funds for supporting retired elders are at risk. But there’s time to act. The 2022 annual report from Social Security’s board of trustees found that at current rates of contribution and withdrawal, the program can [pay full benefits until at least 2035](https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2022/).
>But elders’ needs are more than financial. To provide enough elder care will require more workers—which will likely include encouraging immigration. Additionally, Axios reports that [robot helpers](https://www.axios.com/2018/07/21/the-aging-childless-future) may be utilized to care for aging boomers.
When a generation realized they shouldn’t have children if they can’t give them a better future than they have this will happen.
Probably nothing much. We’ve gone from 6 to 2 so going from 2 to 1.5 is nothing in comparison.
Maybe time to rethink the infinite growth paradigm on a finite resource planet?
it means population will decrease, housing supply will increase, inflation will drop and then people will have kids again.
hopefully the overly greedy oligarchy will realize that if they squeeze too hard they’ll lose it all.
fucking parasites.
Can we have a cooldown on this topic? There’s nothing new to discuss
All fertility is basically a function of education duration and prophylactic access. Some of the hardest hit states for birthrate are post soviet/communist states that made huge investments in general education access. If societies want to fix it, they will need to restructure general education to be complete by about 15-16, and minimize the need for higher education.
I’m not worried about America though, the infinite wisdom of the Amish have a birthrate of 6-8 per woman. They will act as stem cells for the rest of America eventually.
I wouldn’t have guessed the Amish as the overall winners of society, but the math shows them doubling their population every 10 years.
It means nothing. Unless you’re a racial supremacist.
It’s perfectly fine, population is a self-controlled feedback loop
If you want to increase the birth rate, all you have to do is increase child mortality. We are declining because more children are surviving childhood
I will take it upon my self to make sure the USA population grows.. I will go to every town and start making single mothers there.. I’ll make sure our population grows by millions soon
Why do they always mix up fertility with natality? Not that fertility is going up, but we are talking about natality here.
I wonder how much of it has to do with a high amount of younger men being on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), and the reduced sperm counts associated with it.
There will never be a problem with the population in the USA. Plenty of immigrants lining up to come in.
It means we continue being a country of immigrants. I see no problem here honestly. People who want to come here and have something to provide should be able to do so, and we should build strong policy around welcoming immigrants in making our country even more productive and inclusive.
Honestly might go up over the next 4 years as peoples’ outlook on life and the future gets better. Also if we could get some good social programs in place it’d do wonders for planning future parents. Subsidizing the cost of birthing and daycare would be huge! I know finances aren’t everything, but people’s perception of the future matters so much and theres a lot of hope that may be injected into the population in three months
Considering that everyone has microplastics in their brains and all of their other organs, that might just affect fertility rates.
Not to mention the fact that nobody can afford having any fucking kids these days.
People like Musk demand a high birth rate because capitalism fails if growth isn’t perpetual. Unfortunately when us peasants can no longer afford our own lives, let alone afford kids, the birth rate is going to drop. This will probably make people mad, but I’d rather have less people and us normal folk be able to afford homes and college than ensuring billionaires can keep making billions.
Not going to be an issue, after the humanoid robots begin to take all the work. Then we will not need the human workers and productivity can skyrocket. It’s dropping world wide. Usa, is, noticing now because immigration is down.
Could be a pretty cool inflection point in human history, if we’re able to advance and harness AI and robotics and fusion to bring about a post-scarcity society, throwing off the constraints of the consumerist capitalist global economy that has dominated for centuries, tossing it aside before the widespread demographic decline causes it to collapse catastrophically in on itself.
But that would require cooperation and leadership and altruism by those with the most ability to implement the changes necessary, and uh, I’m not gonna hold my breath.
I really don’t see that as a problem. America will likely just ramp up immigration.
Well apparently the 99.9% want every single crumb and good old trickle economics isn’t trickling down s***
We basically from a demographic standpoint become more like Brazil and I don’t really care lol. It’s the European and Asian countries that should be concerned as many of them are very gung ho about blood.
When the richest most powerful nation on earth thinks it’s okay not to have universal HEALTHCARE (something even third world nations consider cruel to deny)
When it’s considered okay that the top 1% doubles their wealth in the middle of the pandemic while people were losing everything
When it’s considered okay to price gouge INSULIN to the point that people either ration and die or go to Canada
When it’s considered okay for elected government officials to own individual stocks despite the conflict of interest and brazen corruption
When it’s considered okay to have THIS LITTLE regard for your working population then guess what they stop playing the game as they should
Idk why hate that it’s called fertility rate, it’s birth rate. This isn’t an indication of lower fertility in people. Living is just too fucking expensive and people are making an actually responsible choice by not having kids they can’t afford. If billionaires like Elon are so obsessed with this issue maybe they should support living wages and sharing the wealth instead of being union busting edge lords.
It would be interesting to see this along side infant mortality rates
It depends. And it has been decreasing ever since the late 60s. It just been slow, but it has been at accelerated over the last five years. We have slight bump during the pandemic and you know why, but it went right back down. And as I said wolf questions like this yes there is an economic portion to this problem but also I think there’s a biological issue going on. This is happening in all of the other continents except for Africa.
Education is too expensive. Healthcare is also too expensive. Buying a home is expensive. Your mother doesn’t have one year of paid leave to be with kids…
Childcare is way too expensive. Wages are too low for 50% of the working class and workers are one paycheck from being homeless and you can’t understand why young people don’t make more children???
That’s one part of the problem. Second part is that men can’t provide alone for the family. So how can they risk to have more kids?
Why even bother to have kids if you can afford them a education, food, clothes, toys and vacations.
How to raise kids if both parents work 50 or more hours on the job-without traveling?
It means the nations people will make it into the 22nd century instead of a massive die off eeking out an existence in a hell scape.