Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-guys-know-what-the-solution-is dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Fertility Rate in U.S. Hit a Record Low in 2018

The rate of births fell again last year, according to new government data, extending a lengthy decline as women wait until they are older to have children.

The number of births per 1,000 women in the United States has been declining even as the economy has recovered from the downturn of 2007-8. 

The fertility rate in the United States fell in 2018 for the fourth straight year, extending a steep decline in births that began in 2008 with the Great Recession, the federal government said on Wednesday.

There were 59.1 births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age in the country last year, a record low, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate was down by 2 percent from the previous year, and has fallen by about 15 percent since 2007.

In all, there were 3,791,712 births in the country last year, the center said in its release of final birth data for 2018.

Fertility rates are essential measures of a society's demographic balance. If they are very high, resources like housing and education can be strained by a flood of children, as happened in the postwar Baby Boom years. If they are too low, a country may find itself with too few young people to replace its work force and support its elderly, as in Russia and Japan today.

In the United States, declines in fertility have not led to drops in population, in part because immigration has helped offset them.

The country has been living through one of the longest declines in fertility in decades. Demographers are trying to determine whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a new normal, driven by deeper social change.

Fertility rates tend to drop during difficult economic times, as people put off having babies, and then rise when the economy rebounds. That is what happened during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this time around, the birthrate has not recovered with the economy. A brief uptick in the rate in 2014 did not last.

"It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down," said Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.

Mr. Johnson estimated that if the rate had remained steady at its 2007 level, there would have been 5.7 million more births in the country since then.

The decline in 2018 was broad, sweeping through nearly all age groups, and reflected a long, gradual shift in American childbearing to later in the mother's life. The rate fell most steeply among women in their teens — down 7.4 percent from the year before. Births to teenagers have fallen by more than 70 percent since 1991.

Women in their 20s had fewer babies last year as well. Historically, women in their late twenties usually had the highest fertility rates of all, but they were overtaken in 2016 by women in their early 30s, reflecting a trend of later childbearing throughout American society.

The only age groups that recorded increases in fertility rates in 2018 were women in their late 30s and early 40s.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:05PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:05PM (#925641)

    > people aren't having kids they can't afford to have

    Additional possible reasons that they aren't having kids:
      - They don't see any way that a kid born today could have it better than the parents (many aspects--money, class, etc).
      - Possible infertility from recreational drug use
      - The whole "incel" problem (my theory--starting with helicopter parents??)
      - Too busy with their phones to notice the other sex (the phones are designed to be better than sex in terms of dopamine hits)
      - More??

    I live in a former Rust Belt area with stable or slightly declining population. While it's not that easy to find a job, if you have one this is a pretty pleasant place. Infrastructure isn't over-loaded, traffic jams are infrequent, housing isn't very expensive (compared to the coasts).

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Troll=1, Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 28 2019, @09:49PM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday November 28 2019, @09:49PM (#925783) Homepage

    They don't want White babies because White people demand higher standards of living and want to do more with their lives than be consumerist debt slaves.

    That's why they bring in the culturally inferior who are willing to live packed into housing like clown cars. Put it this way: a Jewish property owner rents a small single-family home. He can rent it to a quiet and respectful White family for (pulling the number out of my ass) $2000 a month. But when more Mexicans move in, the property owner along with the other greedy property owners know that they can raise rents to $3000 a month because Mexicans like to pack. So with a White family you have a husband, wife, maybe a kid or two. With a Mexican family, you have mom, dad, 6 kids (3 of whom are old enough to work part-time jobs or under the table to chip in), abuelita, maybe a couple tios or tias and 1 or 2 primos or primas. They don't mind living in situations where they're constantly stepping over each other inside the house, but when they need toom they hang out in the front yard drinking cerveza and listening to banda music.

    And you know, besides the noise, when you see a single-family home with 5 cars (Chevy sedans and GMC SUVs) overflowing out of the driveway. Now imagine such a scenario involving multi-family housing and the problem grows exponentially.

    There are occupancy laws limiting amount of people to given square footage, and other quality-of-life laws designed to tamp down on this, but those laws only apply to White people in rich neighborhoods.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by number11 on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:18PM (2 children)

      by number11 (1170) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:18PM (#925796)

      I'd say "culturally inferior" refers to the government employees who tortured prisoners after 9/11, and those who defend that and the corruption in the head office.

      But that aside, every wave of immigrants has been pretty much the same. That "Jewish property owner"'s ancestors were living in a cramped apartment over the candy store. Immigrants tend to not have much (that's why they came) and consequently live poorly compared to the established. The established have always disliked/feared the newcomers, whether that was the Irish, Germans, Norwegians, Italians, Russians, Chinese, Jews, Somalis, Mexicans. The newcomers have always been bad for property values. But, ya know, a couple of generations and their descendants are just like everybody else (and just as ready to dump on the newbies). And there are always politicians ready to stir fear by divide and conquer, all the while sucking up to their paymasters.

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:37PM (1 child)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:37PM (#925803) Homepage

        " But, ya know, a couple of generations and their descendants are just like everybody else (and just as ready to dump on the newbies). "

        Disagreed. If that were true, then each generation of these families would have their own dwelling with only a couple and their 2-3 kids living in it by now, and they'd be a hell of a lot more quiet. They might also run an A/C unit rather than putting tinfoil or cardboard behind the windows.

        " And there are always politicians ready to stir fear by divide and conquer, all the while sucking up to their paymasters. "

        Partially agreed, but only people like Trump tell it like it is even if he also profited from cheap labor. The rich profit not only from the cheap labor but the "divide and conquer" principle that keeps Whites mad at Mexicans rather than the rich Whites in government, who should be the real target of the disenfranchised Whites' anger. This is why Trump is so popular now.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @10:13AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @10:13AM (#925976)

          people like Trump tell it like it is

          No, he does not. He just plays to your fears and fake fantasies. Nothing to do with reality.

          Disagreed. If that were true, then each generation of these families would have their own dwelling with only a couple and their 2-3 kids living in it by now, and they'd be a hell of a lot more quiet. They might also run an A/C unit rather than putting tinfoil or cardboard behind the windows.

          And here you are, with your fantasies again. The people that do this are not "them", it is *YOU*. The Trumpsters that do this because

          1. are poor and can't afford AC
          2. still haven't heard that there is no tinfoil

          What number11 wrote was 100% correct. What you write is just your fantasies. Most immigrants will do better in their new countries than the non-immigrants. That's the statistics (but who needs reality when you can have fantasies?) And the only place I've ever seen aluminum foil on the windows is in the house of some non-immigrants. Actually, in a house of a gun-toting rednecks.

  • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday November 29 2019, @04:47AM

    by epitaxial (3165) on Friday November 29 2019, @04:47AM (#925928)

    More like because its finally socially acceptable to say you don't like children.