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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.
In developed countries we've seen the birth rate decline over the last several decades. I suggest that young people are reacting to negative conditions for having kids, by having less kids. Student debt, declining real wages, the rising cost of housing, expensive medical insurance, politics, religion shown to be empty, cultural Marxism; all are perceived by the primitive layers of our brains as the kind of resource scarcity and adverse social conditions that make having kids unwise.
That even today's relatively poor people have more goods and better health care than the rich did a hundred years ago is irrelevant: the reptile layers of our brain translate our collective worry and disconnection into less offspring.
This is positive news, because the birth rate should rise if conditions improve. I ascribe the declining prosperity of recent decades to declining energy returned for energy invested in the extraction of fossil fuels, an effect ameliorated somewhat by automation's productivity increases. Things will continue to get worse until the exponential increase in cheap solar and wind energy overwhelms the decrease in the value of fossil energy; which should happen in the next few years. Once this happens, everyone will start getting wealthier fast, as increasing energy and automation will improve people's lifestyles in tandem.
Cheapening energy means financial security for the young, which leads to affordable housing, health care, food security, reduced conflict and increased social cohesion. Under these conditions, the birth rate will rise.
// DevsVult: The Machines Will It
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.
Are there more people in the US, Japan, Italy, the UK, Germany, etc than there were 100 years ago?
Yep.
After this population decline will there still be more people?
Yep.
Was the US, Japan, Italy, the UK, Germany under populated 100 years ago?
Nope.
so... Problem?
Constantly we get "because there are too many people the EARTH is going to die"... then we get this stupid shit with "Because there are fewer babies freak out."
Which is it? Seems like the newsies just want to turn anything into a story. Numbers go up and the world will eat itself to death... numbers go down and the world will empty of all people.
Both narratives are stupid.
There is no under population or over population issue in the industrialized Western world. We have HOUSING shortages... stressed schools... stressed water and power infrastructure. So... under population? Not really possible.
The story out of Japan is that they have a big problem with low birth rate. Have you seen Japan? Does it "look" under populated? And here you might say "but in 30 years it will be"... no it won't. The trend would have to continue for several generations to actually cause a problem. And whilst it is fun to just take a trend line from a statistic and project it out 500 years a projected statistic gets increasingly less reliable the farther you project it.
Populations are going to go up and down in the future as our societies, our economies, our cultures change.
I mean, who wants to be packed into a coffin apartment in Mega City 1? I don't. Fuck that noise. I want a lawn and a dog. I want a garden where I can putter around in my old age growing tomatoes or something just for fun. If you want to die in a tiny apartment, that's great. Everyone should have what they want. But I think a lot of people want a little space.
I want to spread out a bit. Big concentrations of population have all sorts of statistical problems. The worst schools, the worst crime, the worst corruption, the least political agency, the highest stress... there are reasons to not want it. There are also good things. The best hospitals, the best schools, the most economic opportunities, wonderful museums, concerts, plays, wonderful shops, etc.
Just let what is going to happen happen.
We have a lot of stuff that has changed in our society. The entry of women into pretty much every profession. The changing notion of when you have a family. The changing notion of what it means to be married in the first place. All of that. How could it not have an impact on birth rates? Of course it will.
And this is just going to play out. Probably the most aggressive career seeking women that spend the least energy on trying to get a family will statistically have fewer children. That will play out in time in the population. With the cultural tropes that push that below replacement rate becoming less and less common such that AT LEAST there is replacement. Who thinks that when we made all those changes we got everything 100% right? Of course we didn't. This is an experiment.
We'll see what happens. But there's no population problem up or down in the modern industrialized West. We're fine. And that's before even talking about immigration which is its own little shit show.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yep. Reasonable working hours, parental leave, sick/personal days, vaca time, so people actually have TIME to care for their families.
Here in Norway we have all that in abundance and we still are below reproduction rates. The primary reason is that we start having children later, in the last 30 years the average age of first motherhood has risen from 25 to 29 years old. It's got nothing to do with teaching kids about condoms and such, teen pregnancies haven't been statistically significant in ages. Through the pill and legalized abortion women generally have children when they want to have children and no sooner, the change is intentional.
One of the reasons is modern day equality, apart from some immigrants no Norwegian woman thinks housewife is a career or want to settle for less than men but pregnancy and the first months of a child's life can't be split 50-50. So most women want to be done with their education and have an established job before they start a family. And with their economic independence it's not about "catching" a man and rushing to get the ring on his finger and pop out a kid so he's stuck and even then divorce and finding a new partner is not the scandal it used to be.
The effect of this is that even established couples are living out their responsibility-free lives for years until the woman is approaching thirty and the biological clock starts ticking, because once it starts it's diapers, babysitters and wailing toddlers for the next five years. And most typically stop at two, some have three but almost never four or more because you start running into either time or money constraints. Like if the woman is going back to work as most do then three is a bundle on top of two working parents, if she (sorry, it's usually she) does part time or stay-at-home then the money runs short.
Not like the kids go hungry or freezing short, but like "we can't afford to let you participate in the things other kids do" short. It's hard not unintentionally acting like a dick when it's loose change for your two high income, one kid family while to a single income, three kid family it's an expense they can't afford on a really tight budget. And admitting you're poor well that's still a taboo, we've gotten rid of a lot of other social taboos but that one still hurts. And if you get like five kids, you're pretty much guaranteed to end up there these days.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
But we don't need to be racist towards our Indian brethren.
A banker, a worker, an immigrant and a politician are sitting around a table with 10 cookies on it. Without warning the banker grabs 9 cookies and shoves them all in his mouth. Everybody looks perplexed and is silent for a second, then the politician leans over to the worker and says "Watch out, that immigrant is eyeing your cookie".
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.