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US Births Dip To 30-Year Low (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The birthrate fell for nearly every group of women of reproductive age in the U.S. in 2017, reflecting a sharp drop that saw the fewest newborns since 1978, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 3,853,472 births in the U.S. in 2017 -- "down 2 percent from 2016 and the lowest number in 30 years," the CDC said. The general fertility rate sank to a record low of 60.2 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 -- a 3 percent drop from 2016, the CDC said in its tally of provisional data for the year. The results put the U.S. further away from a viable replacement rate -- the standard for a generation being able to replicate its numbers. "The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971," according to the report from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. "The decline in the rate from 2016 to 2017 was the largest single-year decline since 2010," the CDC said. The 2017 numbers also represent a 10-year fall from 2007, when the U.S. finally broke its post-World War baby boom record, with more than 4.3 million births.
nah, most feminists have children, 86% of women do. they're just not having more than 2, instead about 1.86 kids on average. That's not enough to keep a population growing.
Does the population need to grow? We keep hearing about how robots are going to take over manufacturing and agriculture and AI will take over service industries, that there will be fewer jobs for humans. Maybe America doesn't need to grow further, but has instead reached a technological level where the machines can sustain our standard of living while we reach a more sustainable population equilibrium with nature.
Oh, wait, the underclasses will breed like rabbits and immigrants will flood our country because we're rich. Fuck.
Or give people an incentive to have kids instead of importing more people and driving down wages so couples can't afford to have kids.
Yep. Reasonable working hours, parental leave, sick/personal days, vaca time, so people actually have TIME to care for their families.
Maybe the ecahhhhnamy needs to be restructured so it can function even without continuous growth, sprawl, and environmental depredation.
No one is obligated to breed kids for the good of the country. If women want to work, eat, pray, love whatever, it's their business -- you can't choose others' path in life for them.
We live on a planet of finite size with finite resources, and it's very unlikely that we'll have the means to ship billions of people into space over the next century. So the exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely, and we might as well start looking for a better economical model today—one that doesn't break down if the population stabilizes.
Look, I know the MBAs sold us out. They shipped half the jobs in the software industry to India. Then lied to Congress so they could import hundreds of thousands of Indian indentured workers to drive down wages for the remaining domestic software jobs.
So definitely, let's see the rich private school Progressive capitalists as enemies of the people. But we don't need to be racist towards our Indian brethren. Have you never even once met a *nice* Indian person? I have, many times. They, like us, are but pawns in a bigger game.
Weirdly, that's the one taboo I've never felt: living below my means/being "poor", whether it's used cars, used furniture, computers bought off Craigslist. I just don't like the Joneses enough to want to keep up with them - I'd rather watch them run like hamsters and get a coronary before the finish line while I walk comfortably and enjoy the views.
No one is obligated to breed kids for the good of the country. If women want to work, eat, pray, love whatever, it's their business -- you can't choose others' path in life for them.
That s correct. One of the oddest things about this whole matter though is that in all of the stories about the falling birth rate, the focus is very gynocentric.
Which is a little odd - if you don't consider the other half of the equation, you don't get the whole picture.
The only time we get any mention of the male aspect of this birth issue is attack pieces on this so-called MGTOW movement, men who have dropped out of the relationship game. And as passive avoidance, it is becoming a problem.
I guess you might consider "types' of men involved. The divorced and now indigent males who are no longer attractive as support providers, the traditional nerds and otherwise males unattractive to women come to mind.
But there is a new sub-group of normal men who have simply chosen to opt out of relationships because it offers benefits like less financial drain, avoidance of the divorce trap, and greater overall freedom.
Coupled with the new demographic in Universities of female to male ratio, largely in favor of the females, and still growing, there are a lot of well educated women in high paying jobs that simply cannot find a male that measures up to their standards. They aren't freezing their eggs because there are men lined up to mate with them. A lot of ladies, and a much smaller pool of acceptable men.
I suppose the issue of men choosing to remain childless and out of relationships with women doesn't fit the narrative, but not addressing it at all except in hit pieces describing these men alternately as selfish jerks and pathetic weasels isn't helping the women's cause.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.