Happy Mother’s Day to all you “birthing people.”
I was born into a classic baby-boomer family. My mother married at 22 in 1949 (Dad was 27) and had the first of four children in 1950. There are six grandchildren and (so far) no great-grandchildren.
Photo: Laura Garcia/Pexels
The U.S. birth rate has been falling for years, and the Covid lockdown didn’t help, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Amid health worries, economic insecurity and Zoom, couples turned to Netflix rather than sex.
Births declined by 8 percent in December, nine months after lockdowns started. That doesn’t bode well for babies in 2021.
The developed countries of Asia and Europe have had a “birth dearth” for decades now. The average woman in Taiwan will have one child, Statista estimates, with South Korea and Singapore not doing much better.
Pew’s Amanda Barroso summarizes the U.S. fertility trends.
Until 2007, the U.S. was one of the few developed countries with a birth rate higher than 2.1, the replacement rate. That was largely due to Hispanic immigrants, who have more children at younger ages. However, immigration has declined and the Hispanic birth rate has fallen faster than the decline for other racial and ethnic groups.
In addition, women are getting more education and starting families later in life: The average age at first birth is 27, up from 23 in 2010.
The teen birth rate, which has been falling for years, declined even more in 2020, the CDC reports.
Americans say they want bigger families, writes Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post. When asked about the “ideal number of children,” the average response in a 2018 poll was 2.7.
Yet the CDC estimates the average woman will have 1.6 children.
“Other countries whose demographic time bombs have already detonated, such as Japan, have demonstrated how challenging it is to have a swelling number of retirees dependent on a shrinking number of workers,” writes Rampell.
President Biden’s “families plan” would guarantee free or low-cost child care and paid family leave, among other programs, she writes. Making workplace cultures friendlier to parents would help.
However, many birth-dearth countries have offered child care benefits or baby bonuses, writes Rampell. “They’ve generally been unsuccessful at lifting birthrates.”
The other option is to admit more immigrants from high-fertility countries, she writes. “If the United States wants more working-age people to contribute to our economy, there are millions of strivers around the world ready and eager to pitch in.”