U.S. birth rates slide as Millennials enter the age of marriage and childbearing

[Indy Texas]

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/millenials-not-having-babies/391721/#disqus_thread

Is this cause for concern? If so, what, if anything, should or can the government do to increase the number of children being born?

Another question, mainly for Forumites between 22 and 30 -- how many people within your peer group who are within that age range have children? Are they married?

While I know many people who are married (some of whom have been married since shortly after finishing college), none who I can think of off the top of my head have children. One co-worker is pregnant, so that number will increase to one soon.

[DC Al Fine]

Among my group of friends:
24, married, one child
29, married, three children
25, married, two children
26, single, no kids
24, married, no kids (plans on starting after med school)
21, married, wife's pregnant
30, married, six children
22, single, no kids

Me: 21, getting married in 8 weeks.

This is of course, not remotely typical.

[DC Al Fine]

Oh and to answer the policy question, there isn't much the government can do. This is more a cultural and really broad stroke economic thing more than anything else.

Young people need stable finances, and have to want to settle down in order to raise birth rates. Sure, longer maternity leaves and childcare subsidies will help alleviate worst of the symptoms, but birth rates won't rise substantially unless those bigger issues are solved. I'm not sure the government can do that.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Among my group of friends:
24, married, one child
29, married, three children
25, married, two children
26, single, no kids
24, married, no kids (plans on starting after med school)
21, married, wife's pregnant
30, married, six children
22, single, no kids

Me: 21, getting married in 8 weeks.

This is of course, not remotely typical.

We already knew this... but you and your friends are odd

No one in my immediate social circle has children... or really wants them. I do have friends, mostly from school, that have kids.

[Ebsy]

Immigration will be more than enough to continue growing the country's population at a healthy clip. The countries that have to worry about demographic decline are mostly in Eastern Europe.

[Mr. Morden]

I'm over 30, so of course I have friends who have children (both here in Oz, and among my friends in the US).  However, the max. number of children that any of my friends have is two.  Some have zero, some have one, and some have two, but that's as high as it goes.  So no, you can't count on Mr. Morden's social circle to keep up with replacement levels.

[Indy Texas]

Immigration will be more than enough to continue growing the country's population at a healthy clip. The countries that have to worry about demographic decline are mostly in Eastern Europe.

Even assuming they do, immigrants to the US tend to be (by US standards) relatively poor people looking for a ground-floor fresh start. If you have a population of children that is overwhelmingly poor and overwhelmingly of foreign origins, how do you convince native adult voters to be willing to part with their tax dollars to invest in their human capital? We're already having that problem as old white voters elect politicians who seek to slash funding to the local public schools that are now full of "little brown ones."

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Immigration will be more than enough to continue growing the country's population at a healthy clip. The countries that have to worry about demographic decline are mostly in Eastern Europe.

Even assuming they do, immigrants to the US tend to be (by US standards) relatively poor people looking for a ground-floor fresh start. If you have a population of children that is overwhelmingly poor and overwhelmingly of foreign origins, how do you convince native adult voters to be willing to part with their tax dollars to invest in their human capital? We're already having that problem as old white voters elect politicians who seek to slash funding to the local public schools that are now full of "little brown ones."

This is a nice canard that is quite inaccurate. For one, immigrants are not "relatively poor people". In fact, many immigrants are on upper end of the income distribution. A more accurate statement is that immigrants are a diverse body that has a relatively uniform distribution of education and wealth.

Furthermore, immigration isn't important because immigrants have more kids or whatever the canard is: immigrants tend to be younger than the average American. Therefore, they contribute their income to the FICA tax base. If we allowed for "mass immigration", we could immediately overcome the problems caused by the baby boom.

At the rate this country is changing, most Americans will be of recent immigrant origin in ~20-30 years. I, for one, welcome this change and do not fear the xenophobic backlash. We've largely weathered the storm, the old bigots are dying and young multiracial voters enter the voting pool everyday. It's time to reap the rewards of a sane immigration policy that is not tainted by nativist bigotry.

[Senate Minority Leader Lord Voldemort]

I also think that Millennials waiting until they're older to have kids has to factor into this somehow.

I also just said that and didn't read the report.

[angus]

Is this cause for concern? If so, what, if anything, should or can the government do to increase the number of children being born?

Finish your education, see the world, sow your wild oats, enjoy the hedonistic pleasures of a misspent youth.  Don't rush into marriage till you're ready.  I didn't get married till I was 37.

Hopefully the government will not strong-arm people into having children before they're ready.  That's not really something that any society needs.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Anecdotally, most people wait until being 27 or older until the marry, with most getting there at 29 and 30 after dating for a few years.


The exception is work, where they're all fundamental Baptists, and get married at 20 - 24, and get preggo about a year or so after tying the knot.


I don't really see a problem with the overall trend. We don't really need a whole ton more people being born, even if we (here in the U.S.) could accomodate them.

[King]

We probably just need to redefine "the age of childbearing and marriage."  I don't know very many people who never want children, but I do know plenty of people don't/didn't want children in their mid 20s.

[memphis]

Most people I know are in their 30s and have 0, 1, or 2 kids. Obviously, we're talking about a birth rate that is well below replacement level.  I don't necessarily see this as problem. Populations cannot increase forever and immigration will continue, like it or not. We have limited resources for everybody. Overpopulated regions of the country (you guys know who you are) face enormously expensive infrastructure problems, to say nothing of the costs for the individual to live there. We need a sustainable population.

[Simfan34]

Among people I know, most are married within 2-3 years of finishing their education and finding relatively stable employment, and all but a few have children within a couple of years of marriage.

A few people I knew in high school had children out of wedlock, but so far the general pattern is surprisingly similar across levels of educational attainment. Those who were able to find work without going to college or grad school just have a few years head start on those who spent more years as students, and (so far, at least) are more likely to have more than one child. (I'm not particularly keen on getting married, and I'm even less enthusiastic about children, so all of this is a bit discomforting.)

Obviously, none of this accounts for my former classmates - both from high school and from college - who have fallen into the unemployed (or marginally employed) underclass, most of whom are so totally detached from social life that they've essentially become invisible.

Does this make you more enthusiastic than you were previously?

[The Mikado]

Late to this point, but I think everyone saying that this generation is just redefining the "ready for childbearing" age from early-to-late-20s to late-20s-to-mid-30s are pretty much on the mark. I don't think that this is going to be a childless generation, just one late to the childbearing party.

TL;DR I think that we will see 20something women's fertility continue to slowly decline, but 30something women's fertility will stay steady or even increase somewhat.

[Thunderbird is the word]

Why is a low birthrate a bad thing and why should anything be done to reverse it? It'll probably be better for the environment in the long run.

[King]

Why is a low birthrate a bad thing and why should anything be done to reverse it? It'll probably be better for the environment in the long run.

An aging population is bad for the economy.

[DemPGH]

I'm under the impression that declining birthrates have been the trend in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere in the first world for some time. I think people are just choosing not to have kids because of the time, the money, the sacrifice. Most of my friends don't have kids and one of my colleagues didn't get married until he was 49. At the heart of it, I think social expectations with regard to marriage and children are changing due to a host of factors - not the least of which is that it's much more a social norm now not to have children, but also more people are getting more education, changing careers, etc. When my parents were young people actually didn't leave their hometown quite often, for e.g. Now it's all but required.

[Mercenary]

All of my friends are within the ages of 20~33 or so.
Granted they aren't all American, but some are.

None of them have kids, none are even married yet. None are against having kids though, none have the view "I don't want kids." They are either "not sure" or "later". I personally want kids, but I am in the "later" category. Maybe around 35 or so.

I don't think it is a big problem yet. The population of the U.S. and the world in general is pretty high and I don't think it'd be a bad thing for it to decrease. Of course with our flawed economic system being so dependent on younger workers, it will cause problems with things like social security. So I think those issues need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Eventually having children will become en vogue...the way it did in the late 1930s after 3 decades of delaying and having fewer children...and there will be a baby boom.

[Beet]

Modern life is not suited for reproduction. In ancient times, having children was inevitable, and it increased one's wealth, for children would work on the farm and male children would inherent your property. Nowadays children are just a time and money sink with no benefit.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Modern life is not suited for reproduction. In ancient times, having children was inevitable, and it increased one's wealth, for children would work on the farm and male children would inherent your property. Nowadays children are just a time and money sink with no benefit.

What a sad way to look at life.  Please never have children, Beet. 

When were ancient times by the way? 1960?

The pendulum is already swinging in the other direction.  The most childless age cohort were those born 1951-1955.  Preliminary data shows the number of children women born after 1970 have is increasing at a pretty impressive pace. 

The most childless female cohort in the US had 1.9 children...yet the total fertility rate was below 1.9 from 1972-1988 or so.  This is a momentum effect.  Boomers who delayed in the 80s popped out kids in the 90s resulting in far higher birth rates than had been anticipated as late as 1990, especially among over 30s.  As usual the predictions just extrapolated the current situation into the future with no actual research done into family size desire or expectations or the timing of growing families...so when there were loads of 20 somethings in the 80s not having kids, the prediction was for a downward spiral.  But then the 90s and 00s happened.  How many baby boomers just wanted to have that third or fourth kid in the 90s during the minivan/suv craze?  Joe Sixpack and Sally Soccer Mom were definitely the progenitors of that.

Minnesota was expected to see births fall below 60,000 by 1995 and never go back above it.  Births crashed from 90,000 in 1959 to 55,000 by 1973.  They anticipated depopulation of large areas of the state by 2025 with county consolidations required and an aged population like modern Germany.  They extrapolated the 80s rural farm crisis into perpetuity...and here we are in 2015 and those very areas are the engines of growth. In fact 1994 was the trough year at 64,000 births and they rose again to 73,000 by 2007.  Since they've been right around 70,000.  I suspect that will rise potentially to 80,000 at some point in the next decade barring catastrophe.  Keep in mind births never rose above 70,000 between 1965 and 2004...and with general outmigration of young people, Minnesota women simply had a lot more kids than the demographers so seriously predicted.  Some 15,000 more per year.  Quite an error!

The birth dearth children of the 1970s have tended to have more children.  Certainly more than people seem to have expected.  And the early 80s cohort, from what data there is, is continuing the upward trend.

I've looked into this more than anybody sane probably should.  But the ebb and flow of something as complex as family size and timing is the most intense wiggle matching their is.

[Del Tachi]

This is most certainly a problem.

The government should start paying educated people to have children. 

[Ebsy]

This is most certainly a problem.

The government should start paying educated people to have children. 

No.

[Adam Griffin]

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