Prosperity and the Birth Rate

Lately, much has been written about the "Birth Dearth," the point at which we as a nation or a world fail to replace our dying population with new births. The fear is that we'll be a country of old people without enough young working people to pay into the fiction we call social security. As tempting as it might be for some to point the finger of blame for this dilemma at the childfree, it's not that simple.

In his article 300 Million and Counting, published in a recent edition of Smithsonian Magazine, Joel Garreau rightly points out that the more affluence and education a person attains the fewer children she will likely have, and he credits immigration for the fact that the U.S. has managed to avert the "Birth Dearth:"

"The United States' population is growing at the rate of almost 1 percent per year, thanks in part to immigration…Not only does the United States accept more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined, but these recent arrivals tend to have more children than established residents…"

That is true, but their children may not. The native born children of immigrants, encouraged by their parents to achieve success in their home country may go to college, delay childbearing, and as a result have fewer kids. Just like their fifth or sixth generation American peers. They may be busy working two jobs just to pay the mortgage, or, as Garreau observed, helping to "create companies such as Intel, eBay and Google."

So if you’re looking for someone or something to blame for declining birth rates and populations, look beyond the childfree. Blame education, opportunity, and prosperity.

The reality is: global birth rates decline as populations find their own versions of the American dream. The children of those who had three or more children are having two, one, or none.

In the short term, it’s unlikely we will see an increase of families with three or more kids and many countries in the developed and developing world will face declining and aging populations in the coming decades.

That's the reality. So let’s stop the blame game and just deal with it.


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