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Half a million fewer children? The coming COVID baby bust:
The COVID-19 episode will likely lead to a large, lasting baby bust. The pandemic has thrust the country into an economic recession. Economic reasoning and past evidence suggest that this will lead people to have fewer children. The decline in births could be on the order of 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births next year. We base this expectation on lessons drawn from economic studies of fertility behavior, along with data presented here from the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the 1918 Spanish Flu.
[...] When the public health crisis first took hold, some people playfully speculated that there would be a spike in births in nine months, as people were "stuck home" with their romantic partners. Such speculation is based on persistent myths about birth spikes occurring nine months after blizzards or major electricity blackouts. As it turns out, those stories tend not to hold up to statistical examination (Udry, 1970). But the COVID-19 crisis is amounting to much more than a temporary stay-at-home order. It is leading to tremendous economic loss, uncertainty, and insecurity. That is why birth rates will tumble.
[...] There is ample evidence that birth rates are, in fact, pro-cyclical. This is shown, for instance, in the work by Dettling and Kearney (2014) described above. Their analysis of birth rates in metropolitan areas finds that all else equal, a one percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a 1.4 percent decrease in birth rates. Schaller (2016) analyzes the relationship between state-level unemployment rates and birth rates, and finds that a one percentage-point increase in state-year unemployment rates is associated with a 0.9 to 2.2 percent decrease in birth rates. Other evidence shows that women whose husbands lose their jobs at some point during their marriage ultimately have fewer children (Lindo, 2010). This suggests that transitory changes in economic conditions lead to changes in birth rates.
[...] What are the likely implications of the COVID-19 episode for fertility? The monthly unemployment rate jumped from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent in April and to 13.3 percent in May. Note that the BLS also indicate that technical issues in collecting these data likely mean that the actual unemployment rates in those months were likely 5 and 3 percentage points higher, respectively. That would bring them to about 19.7 and 16.3 percent. Although it is difficult to forecast the 2020 annual unemployment rate, assuming a 7 to 10 percentage-point jump to 10.6 to 13.6 percent seems reasonable. Based on the findings presented above, this economic shock alone implies a 7 to 10 percent drop in births next year. With 3.8 million births occurring in 2019, that would amount to a decline of between 266,000 and 380,000 births in 2021.
On top of the economic impact, there will likely be a further decline in births as a direct result of the public health crisis and the uncertainty and anxiety it creates, and perhaps to some extent, social distancing. Our analysis of the Spanish Flu indicated a 15 percent decline in annual births in a pandemic that was not accompanied by a major recession. And this occurred during a period in which no modern contraception existed to easily regulated fertility.
Combining these two effects, we could see a drop of perhaps 300,000 to 500,000 births in the U.S. Additional reductions in births may be seen if the labor market remains weak beyond 2020. The circumstances in which we now find ourselves are likely to be long-lasting and will lead to a permanent loss of income for many people. We expect that many of these births will not just be delayed – but will never happen. There will be a COVID-19 baby bust. That will be yet another cost of this terrible episode.
Journal References:
1.) Melissa S . Kearney, Phillip B . Levine. Subsidized Contraception, Fertility, and Sexual Behavior, (DOI: rest.91.1.137)
2.) Melissa S. Kearney, Riley Wilson. Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, and Nonmarital Fertility: Evidence from the Fracking Boom, Review of Economics and Statistics (DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00739)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @03:23AM (12 children)
There's a bit of a trick that I think you are missing. Starting in 1972, white, black, and Native American's fertility declined. However, we were already being told that Latinos were the fastest growing demographic.
a. We had our own already native Latino population.
b. We had a massive surge of Latino immigrants.
c. We saw a pretty massive increase in Latino citizens, through naturalization, and through anchor baby programs.
Add that together, and now, today, you have a rather robust birth rate among Latino citizens today - while white, black, and Native Americans continue to decline.
I don't make the mistake of Democrats, in that, I don't expect Latinos to be a monolithic bloc, politically, religously, or even ethnically. But - the end result is, Latinos are displacing white, black, and Native Americans. We have fewer babies, they have more babies.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 04 2020, @03:42AM (10 children)
So, it's an "Us vs Them" thing?
"Us" having fewer abortions isn't a good answer for any of that.
I watched Central Florida move from migrant workers hiding in the fields in the late 1990s to openly moving into the cities in the 2000s, there was quite the boom then and while it was easy to say "oh my how things have changed so much in such a short time," looking back not much really changed besides the fact that the latinos are more visible than they used to be. Drug problems, illiteracy problems, underemployment of white layabouts problems - they're all about the same today as they were back in the 1980s.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @03:51AM (6 children)
It always has been something of an "us vs them" thing. What do you think the whole anchor baby game was about? "They" found a loophole in our legal system, and took full advantage of it.
Note that I don't blame Latinos for taking advantage. I blame the idiot Americans who "interpreted" the 14th amendment to allow it. The author of the 14th was very careful to exclude the children of illegal aliens from citizenship, but lib/progressives had thir own ideas.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @04:08AM (1 child)
Yeah, like defeat the Nazis. Of course we had to be attacked first, so I guess we'll see how many domestic attacks it takes before we purge the domestic Nazis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @07:41PM
You're not going to purge shit, you stupid Bolshevik's bitch.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @06:44AM (1 child)
Like goddamned Polacks, coming over here just to escape poverty and, well, Poland. And then they started dropping bambinos like there was no tomorrow! One of them, a few clicks down the road, was our own Anchor Baby, Runaway1956. Time to call the gig, and deport him back to his ancestral European (almost) homeland!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @02:48PM
Yes the US has a lot to answer for, not the least is its treatment of White Negroes of Europe. The ways in which the US fucked my country by letting it languish behind the Iron Curtain are huge. Add to it the nonsense that is EU and we have a present day disaster.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 04 2020, @03:00PM (1 child)
One man's loophole is another man's intended result.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @05:21PM
Can't argue that.
Historically, the congress and senate have promised almost every year since 'Operation Wetback' to address immigration. And, historically, congress and the senate have kicked the can down the road.
I've made this statement in the past, I'll repeat it here:
Had congress ever bothered to pass legislation that codified a real immigration policy, it would actually be law. Some of us may like or dislike such a law, but it would be law. Quotas would have been set, and policies given for exceptions, policies for asylum, etc ad nauseum. There would be a working protocol for any and all to follow.
My PRIMARY complaint regarding immigration is, we have few laws and few clear policies, and we are generally unwilling to enforce those laws and policies that exist. That leaves our borders wide open for anyone who cares to walk across. We can't reject known criminals, because we don't know who walks across the border. We can't document those people, so we have no idea who is desirable, and who is not. As a rule, documentation only exists when that outsider wishes to conform with documentation laws, OR, that individual runs afoul of the law.
However much I might like or dislike any particular law or policy, the law should be observed and enforced all around.
No matter how liberal or conservative our immigration policy, I can't understand any position that approves of undocumented people just wandering in, and doing as they wish, with a total disregard for the rule of law.
We don't even know how many immigrants have entered the country in the past 50 years. Since we don't know how many have entered, we can't possibly know how many have left, how many have stayed, how many live legal lives, how many are full time criminals. We can't possibly address human trafikking effectively, because we can't know who came willingly, or who came under threat of - whatever.
The most liberal minded, progressive person in America should agree with me that every immigrant should be documented, screened for health, screened for criminal background, and questioned about why he/she even WANTS to be here.
Liberals are all for the census - why wouldn't those same liberals want to carefully document every person who crosses the border?
Congress has failed us. Each and every congress for the past fifty years has failed to address immigration, they have failed to reform immigration into any sensible set of laws and policies.
Being a conservative minded person, I want to limit immigration, of course. More importantly, I want to see that immigration is handled in a lawful manner.
Immigration in the US sucks ass all around, I think that almost all of us can agree on that.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Troll) by crafoo on Friday December 04 2020, @03:16PM (2 children)
"So, it's an "Us vs Them" thing?"
That depends entirely what you believe a country is and if you share Values and Culture with the illegal invading latinos or not.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 04 2020, @03:53PM (1 child)
Growing up, I wanted to own/operate an orange grove.
After growing up, as I looked into the proposition of actually owning/operating an orange grove I came to the realization that: in order to make the operation financially feasible (even slightly profitable, rather than a hobby/money loser) it would have to be approached at scale: 10+ (preferably 100+) productive acres, financing, insurance, etc. and to make all that float a key component of the entire system was harvesting labor. Without using "illegal" harvesting labor, no citrus groves in Central Florida in the 1990s would have been even break-even profitable. This was due to competition among grove owner/operators which drove the margins down until "illegal" harvesters were a required component of any profitable operation, even break-even.
It's not a choice. The grove owners and operators, most of them 6th generation and later 'Muricans, all of them considerably wealthy, have dictated the necessity: anyone who grows citrus for profit at any kind of scale requiring hired harvest labor must support the presence of illegal migrant farm laborers in their groves.
Furthermore: the State (at the urging of the citrus industry) has repeatedly taken actions to wipe out "backyard citrus" further ensuring that the only significant citrus grown in Florida is grown in large scale commercial operations, or by those who "swim upstream" and spend far more growing their own citrus than it can be purchased for at retail.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @07:48PM
Whites should kill every White company owner who hires non-whites, after one warning. Kill any politician that tries to allow non-White competition in.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @06:42AM
Racist motherfucking Runaway asshole! Get back in yer hole, you idiot! No one is fooled by your fake statistics. We are going to vote to give Arkansas back to Mexico, but not all that confident they would accept it.