Fertility rates have declined across much of the Western world, and if one word explains why, it’s this one: Gloom.
Financial and migrant crises, terrorism, and a general sense of foreboding have all contributed to the rise of protest political candidates in Europe and America. But it’s not just in the voting booth that people are registering their despondency; it’s also happening in the bedroom.
It’s long been known that Europe is going through a demographic crisis. But so is the United States, or at least it has been until very recently. The Economist investigated this trend in last week’s issue.
For several years, the U.S. fertility rate (the number of children a woman can expect to have in her lifetime) stood at around 2.1, which is right at replacement level.
But since 2008, the fertility rate in the U.S. has dropped, to 1.86 in 2014. That may not seem like much, but, according to one estimate, that difference came to about 2.3 million American babies. Looking forward, U.S. Census Bureau estimates of America’s population in 2050 have been reduced from 439 million to 398 million, a loss of some 41 million people.
What’s vexing demographers is not that birthrates fell immediately following the 2008 financial crisis — that was to be expected — but that they didn’t recover.
One explanation is that as immigration rates have declined, so have birth rates. According to a separate Economist article, “Between 2006 and 2013 the fertility rate among Mexicans in America fell by 35 percent, compared with a drop of 3 percent non-Hispanic whites.” But birth rates are down not just among immigrant women but across all ethnic and income levels.
In the U.S., though the economy has improved there are still millions of young people in their 20s and even 30 who can’t find meaningful work or a decent place to live outside their parents’ basements and thus are delaying marriage and parenthood.
It is often said that this generation of young people will be the first that will be less well off than their parents. According to a Pew poll cited by the Economist, nearly two-thirds of people polled in 11 well-off countries believed today’s children will fare worse than their parents. This doesn’t bode well for parenthood as an institution. Who wants to bring children into a hopeless world?
The good news is that the birthrate may finally be edging upward again. In 2014, the fertility rate rose ever so slightly, from 1.858 to 1.862. That’s another 60,000 babies.
If that trend continues, the Census Bureau will have to revise its estimates once again. Which means the gloom may finally be lifting.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
