Darwin’s End

Between 1990 and 2000, every region in the world saw the total fertility rate decline. Among nations with rates above the “replacement rate,” only two countries saw a rise in fertility: Suriname and Israel, whose rates increased by 0.17 and 0.01 children per woman, respectively. We see the same trend in nearly every country of every size in every climate and with every conceivable political, religious, and economic system–which suggests a complicated set of factors at work. It raises at least the possibility that the root of the problem may involve modernity itself. But for our purposes, let’s look at why America’s fertility rate has fallen from just over 7.0 to 2.09 over the last 200 years.

IN THE EMPTY CRADLE, his indispensable book about falling birthrates, Phillip Longman postulates a number of forces influencing American birthrates.

Some are obvious: the spread of abortion, contraception, divorce, and women’s work opportunities. Another factor is the decline of religious belief (or at least practice) in America over the last 200 years. As Longman writes, 47 percent of those who attend church weekly “say that the ideal family size is three or more children, as compared to only 27 percent of those who seldom attend church.” The birthrate in pious Utah is nearly double what it is in secular Vermont.

There are a host of other small, hidden influences. The social acceptance of homosexuality surely plays some part. And Americans have become more geographically mobile over the years. People now settle farther from their families than ever before – which cuts off a traditional source of support for day-care costs: grandparents. For a variety of reasons, American women have also been putting off childbirth until later in life. Longman notes that “recent studies show that a woman’s fertility begins to drop at age 27, and by age 30 can decline by as much as 50 percent.” And for practical reasons, the chances of having multiple children decline with age.

Amid the clutter of small influences, two gigantic ones loom: the evolving costs of children and the welfare state.

From the founding of America–indeed, throughout most of history–children have been an economic boon to parents. Children consumed few resources, other than food and clothing, and from a very young age contributed to the household economy by working. Children were once a prime source of nearly-free labor.

By the end of World War II, the expectations for children were beginning to change, and within a few generations, children disappeared almost entirely from the workforce. Today, children are not expected to labor for the family business–they are expected to go to school, and eventually college. Part of this change stems from evolving views of the sanctity of childhood; part of it stems from simple necessity. Small hands, so helpful during the agrarian and industrial ages, are useless in the information age.

As the economic benefits of children began to disappear, the costs of child-rearing began rising geometrically. A child born in 2001 typically cost $211,370 to raise for the first 17 years – and that assumes that both parents work full time. If a parent making $45,000 were to give up her full-time job and work part-time to raise a child, she would be forgoing $823,736 of income.

The information age comes into play here, too. As our economy matures, it takes more and more education, and higher and higher credentials, to secure successful employment. Thus, the length of children’s economic dependence has also grown to include college (and increasingly graduate school). In 2001, the average four-year private college cost $23,000 per year. Instead of children helping their families economically, one child can easily cost parents $1 million. That’s a sizable disincentive.

The other great economic benefit of children has typically been a delayed one–they care for parents in their old age. But that long-standing arrangement, too, has gone by the wayside with the invention of the modern welfare state. Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by the work of young people, provide for the elderly. “[W]e have largely socialized the cost of aging . . . ,” Longman explains, “but we still leave it to individuals to bear (in both direct expenses and forgone wages) nearly all the growing cost of raising the children who sustain the system, while allowing those individuals to retain a dwindling share of the value they create.”

Which is to say, why bother going through the expense of having children, since you’ll be provided for anyway?

In modern America a host of circumstances have combined to discourage family formation. Cultural forces have pushed the window for bearing children far past its biological optimal. Having children is more economically burdensome and less economically rewarding than it has ever been in the course of human history. We have reached a point where children are actually an impediment to economic and social success.

In short, modern American society has created–quite unintentionally–an anti-Darwinian system where reproduction is a hindrance to economic and social success. Those who thrive are almost by definition those who have few, or no, children.

Seen in this context, our plummeting fertility rate is an apparently rational response to our changing lives–and therefore is even more worrisome than it might seem at first blush. Our failing fertility is not a fad or fashion. It is the logical consequence of a culture that cannot hope to sustain itself.

Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard and a weekly op-ed contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer. This essay originally appeared in the July 9, 2006 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.