Economists figured the recovery would bring about increased confidence and a rise in the birth rate.
Instead, the rate dropped into a tie with the lowest birth rate on record.
This is yet another surprise for economists to ponder.
Please consider the Wall Street Journal report Behind the Ongoing U.S. Baby Bust.
The newest official tally from the National Center for Health Statistics showed an unexpected drop in the number of babies born in the U.S. in 2015. The report was a surprise: Demographers had generally expected the number of births to rise in 2015, as it had in 2014. Instead, the U.S. appears to still be stuck in something of an ongoing “baby bust” that started with the recession and housing collapse and has yet to reverse.
Baby Bust
Baby Bust by Race
Baby Bust by Age
The Wall Street Journal concludes “There’s still good reason to believe the birth rate will pick up in coming years. After slumping for nearly a decade into the 1970s, births picked up in the 1980s and 1990s (giving us the generation known as millennials.) The most common age in America is 24 or 25, meaning there’s a very large cohort of these millennials who are about to hit the years that people are most likely to become parents.”
No Mystery
I fail to see why any economist should be surprised by this. A record number of millennials are living at home.
- Time: Millennials Living With Parents at Record Rates
- Pew: More Millennials Living With Family Despite Improved Job Market
- Mother Jones: Why Are So Many Millennials Still Living at Home?
This is simply too obvious. So I have two questions:
- Do economists read anything or do they just believe in their models?
- If they do read, how come they cannot grasp simple, easy to understand ideas?
Economists who could not figure any of this out now place their faith in the fact “a very large cohort of these millennials who are about to hit the years that people are most likely to become parents.”
Mish’s Alternate View
Unless the millennials
- Shed student debt
- Move out on their own
- Get a job that supports raising a family
- No longer have to take care of their aging parents
- Have a significant change in attitudes about homes, families, debt, and mobility ….
economists will still be wondering “what happened” years from now.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
And when they fail, and there is nothing for those who expect Government to suppor them?
And when they come for you and extract all you wealth for the underving?
There is an answer. You will be all “useless eaters” so will be slaughtered and your wealth (if any) sent to the state. Dread diseases? Hemlock. No “sanctity of life” but “utility of life”. Why should anyone pay for your collection of “useless eaters” Why not just take what they consider “just”?
This has been tried already. It’s called eugenics and George Bernard Shaw had something to say. What he says, doesn’t ruin My Fair Lady for me. But it comes close.
“We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill,” he wrote. “A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”
He once said, “You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight, and since you won’t, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”
A big step between questioning if there should be any obligation to care for others and suggesting genocide. I don’t see that he has taken any effort to try to bridge that gap with some kind of reason, instead he simply assumes that it would be more convenient to physically eliminate the part of the equation that he judged stood in the way of his version of progress.
I suppose he was exactly what he condemned, he did not produce necessary goods and so he was kept alive by the organisation of society, no matter how he traded his way through it.
Well at the
riskcertainty of nit picking, isn’t anywhere that 25-34 live “home”Millennials need jobs that can support:
1) food,rent/mortgage, and Obamacare taxes that are rising 30%+ per year
2) the cost of their parents unfunded retirements
3) the cost of professors retirements (student debt is not about education, lets stop lying to ourselves by calling it what it is not)
4) the cost of government employee retirements / healthcare (for which the employees contribute nothing)
5) the cost of illegal immigrants “free” education, “free” Obamacare, “free” job placement, and “free” exemption from all regulations
Most cannot afford to own a car — the car payments are a lot less than registration fees, government mandated car insurance, and parking fees.
So millennials compete for social attention by buying $650 smart phones — because that is all they can really afford.
Raising wages by 4-5% (if they are really lucky) will not keep pace with Obamacare (up 30%+), property taxes (which eventually get passed along in rent) or food prices (and farmers are going bankrupt)
When one generation (ahem baby boomers) lives way beyond their means, some other generation is forced to live way below their means.
The problem is that enslaved generation is coming of age and voting for candidates the establishment will not like
The one statement you make that I disagree with is the common misconception that (baby boomers) lived beyond their means. The DEBTS we are currently saddled with are ALL created in the programs of the 1960’s – all of which were put in place by “the greatest generation”. And note that while they got all the payments out, they contributed VERY LITTLE in. Look at the rates of things like SS and Medicare – they all went up on the boomers to PAY for the “greatest generation”.
And all of the government employee payments were put in place, and unionized, by that generation. No, boomers are NOT the problem, we have been paying for it for decades!
Boomers kept supporting the idiocy, though. But you’re generally right.
The specific maladies that can more accurately be blamed on boomers, are financialization and increased judicial activism / rape of the population by law and lawyers.
Regardless, the core failure of both “generations”, was/is the belief that government is some sort of useful organization. More specifically, that government CAN be a force for good. If only “we” arrange it just right.
It can’t. Never has, never will. But once a population fall for the folly that it just, maybe, sometimes, can, it’s over already. You can stick a fork in it. And, the quicker you get to Mogadishu ’91, the better for all unfortunate enough to be involved.
Talking of Indians, our birth rates are as good as it can get (shows up in the teeming millions too!) and see how it measures against Mish’s Alternate View above:
1. Shed student debt — nearly no student debt. This is of great importance.
2. Move out on their own — while nuclear families are more the norm now than earlier, joint families are not out of place in India. In India, it is considered natural for the girl to move into the boy’s family which would constitute his parents and his siblings if they are unmarried. The point is birth rates in India are high whether they stay in joint families or move out on their own.
3. Get a job that supports raising a family — this is the prime requirement which IMO supports birth rates. In fact the norm is 1 child or 2 children, as raising more than 2 children is difficult with both parents working and stresses of the job.
4. No longer have to take care of their aging parents — In India, it is considered one’s duty to take care of their aging parents and seems to have no bearing on birth rates. We look after them and ourselves too!
5. Have a significant change in attitudes about homes, families, debt, and mobility: Our previous generation were thrifty, ran a home on a stringent budget, shied away from debt and inculcated the importance of savings and living within one’s means. Probably the generation which went through Great Depression in the U.S had the same atitude.
Thus birth rates appears to depend on student debt (debt in general), job and a salary which enables one to save something.
@KPL — you support YOUR OWN parents (and those of your spouse.
That is a far cry from saying you support every college professor who teaches one course per semester (while students are expected to take 4-5 courses to be considered full time).
It is a far cry from saying you pay the salaries of an army of government bureacurats, plus their retirement benefits, plus their healthcare costs…. and allow them to retire after goofing off for 20 years while the private sector is required to work at least 45 years.
. . .
And according to my grandfather, during the depression era in the US extended families lived together… meaning the grandparents provided child care and helped with basic cleaning / homemaking, the children helped with yard work. Everyone had to tend to the family garden and clean out the chicken coops / collect eggs. No one gave a rats rear end about safe spaces and all the other nonsense that US universities teach instead of math / reading.
We now have college “graduates” that can recite all sorts of extremist left wing propaganda, but they don’t understand how to balance a checkbook. And the “student debt” you speak of is the direct result of a failed education system.
When US banks issued fraudulent mortgages, they were forced to buy back the loans and incur the losses themselves.
Universities, including the “non-profit” ones, should be required to buy and write off student debt. Same laws the corrupt professors insisted on for banks should be applied to colleges too.
That is how student debt will get solved (even if we don’t agree on when). Its vendor financing for a flawed product. US law is very clear on this, its just not to the academics liking.
But that still leaves a bunch of poorly educated “graduates” competing for paychecks that do not keep pace with the true cost of living.
In short… the situation is very different from what you have in India. That is why the IMF academics should not be running your country into the ground anymore than they should be running the US.
Um, what about all of those “missing” girls in India (and China)?
https://www.newsrecord.co/answering-for-indias-missing-girls-sex-selective-abortion-in-india/
“It is estimated that in India a female fetus is aborted every minute, resulting in skewed sex ratios like 1,000 men for every 618 women in India’s Daman and Diu region.”
Even leaving aside the sheer evil of 60 million girls gone “missing” (http://jezebel.com/where-are-indias-60-million-missing-girls-the-tragic-1091500375), there is going to be serious demographic blowback. I’ve read that women in India are being tricked into marriage, and then finding out to their horror that they are expected to be the “wife” of all the sons in the family, since there are so few women available, and they have no escape.
You would thing the woman shortage would reduce the number of bride burnings, but apparently they are on the rise: http://www.smh.com.au/world/india-burning-brides-and-ancient-practice-is-on-the-rise-20150115-12r4j1.html
I guess there are two ways to increase birthrates per 1000 woman: 1)Have more kids, 2) Have fewer women. And India is burning that candle at both ends…..
Fertility wise, it makes little difference how many “husbands” a woman has. Women are the limiting reagent. Hence, that particular scarecrow is highly unlikely to be real.
A bunch of brothers showing up for dinner once one of them managed to score a wife who can cook decently, doesn’t sound too far fetched, though…
Um, what about the 60 million “missing girls” of India? (http://jezebel.com/where-are-indias-60-million-missing-girls-the-tragic-1091500375). Sex selective abortion is leading to some pretty nasty demographics there:
“It is estimated that in India a female fetus is aborted every minute, resulting in skewed sex ratios like 1,000 men for every 618 women in India’s Daman and Diu region.”
https://www.newsrecord.co/answering-for-indias-missing-girls-sex-selective-abortion-in-india/
You would think the woman shortage would reduce the number of bride burnings, but apparently they are on the increase: http://www.smh.com.au/world/india-burning-brides-and-ancient-practice-is-on-the-rise-20150115-12r4j1.html
This does not sound exactly idyllic to me.
I think you totally missed the biggest factor. It’s better birth control! The biggest drops in the birth rate are teenagers, and it’s clearly shown on graphs. There have been articles of late that show this phenomenon more clearly starting in 2006. These teens always have lived at home and most of them aren’t trying to have kids to begin with.
bring in a million Muslims, they will fix it.
The only group that reproduces are those living off of public assistance. They are paid to reproduce more and so they will. Those who honestly try to work for a living will have to bear the costs of continuing this system and defer raising their own families. This will continue until the system implodes. No politician has the backbone to fix the entitlement system.
You could not have said it better. I talked with a Canadian living in an isolated area, all of the same culture and race. He believed in open borders and thought Obama was a great president. He reminded me of those in Boston back in the 60’s who were for school integration until it happened in their own neighborhoods. The riots and protests there were way more severe than anything you saw in the ignorant south. People want to run other people’s lives but not have their own lives controlled. Thus politicians control our schools, healthcare etc but send their kids to private schools and exempt themselves from obomacare.
@Greg,
“And according to my grandfather, during the depression era in the US extended families lived together… meaning the grandparents provided child care and helped with basic cleaning / homemaking, the children helped with yard work.”
This still happens in India. We help each other out. Grandparents look after the children while parents work (no day care and lot of love too!), children and parents take care of them in return (love returned!!). Basically co-exist amicably with love, understanding and some quarrels.
That was my point. Moving out is not necessary to increase birth rates if all pitch in.
I agree things are different in the US and India but the issue boils down to student debt (also debt in general), job, salary and savings. Since I have some close relatives doing Masters in the US, I personally have a taste of the cost of education and student debt vicariously. Till something is done with regard to student debt this problem of declining birth rate is likely to continue as job and salary depend on education, in many cases, and if a major portion of the salary goes to paying off the debt, it impacts savings.
Inflation is moving Joe average backward. Education inflation has put youngsters into decades of debt slavery to the bank. Housing inflation has kept them with their parents. Food inflation, including baby formula inflation, makes people think they can’t afford children.
Printing confiscates goods from the majority, and transfers those goods to bankers and their allies. Printing also misallocates capital, so there are fewer good to divide up.
You’re all nascent Social Crediters/advocates of Wisdomics/Gracenomics.
wisdomicsblog.com
The real problem ?
Instead of family taking over the life of the parents , the state taking over the life of the family .
Good, but the state taking over the family is merely another symptom.
The expansion of Feminism and the Feminine Imperative has steadily removed the need for men to support women. The State has taken that role to a large degree, with welfare and child support enforcement. A man is simply a tax donkey once he’s entered the system through marriage.
Feminism has destroyed the incentive chain for men, and for women. Why get married, when the financial, social, and other risks are so high? Given divorce rates, increasing marriage ages, and increasing numbers of partners for women it’s no surprise that men choose not to get married and not to have children.
Getting married for a woman between 28-34, after having an average of 10 serially monogamous relationships will result in a less than 20% likelihood that the woman will remain married. Children will probably be produced, but the relationship will end in divorce.
This is especially true if it’s an interracial marriage or relationship. (that’s just statistics, google is your friend).
All that is the result of Feminism.
Want to see birth rates increase? Teach women to get married young to a man 5-8 years her senior, avoid going to time and fertility wasting college, live on one income, and have 3+ children that are homeschooled with a STEM focus.
Simply observe a childless single woman in the late 40’s to see the regret and sadness. Don’t listen to what they say, because to get to that point they had to lie to themselves quite a bit, and they’re not going to stop now. Some rare few are recognizing that and talking about it, but they’re still rare.
This is not economics, it’s basic biology.
Actually, women who regret not having had kids can have them at almost any age now. I know a woman whose husband really wanted a kid, but they had put it off until she was no longer fertile. So they had one with a “donated” egg and his sperm (they injected her with hormones to make her body ready to do the work). She carried the kid and gave birth to it. They are very happy. Soon enough they won’t even need a donated egg with donated DNA; it is easy enough to have one’s own DNA into an emptied egg (it is just not legal yet).
I think that those post-fertility women whom you are imagining who have these deep regrets about not having kids, are just your imagination: since they still could have kids if they wanted. These days elderly women sometimes birth kids for their daughters (e.g. if their daughter has had a medical hysterectomy).
“Want to see birth rates increase? Teach women to get married young to a man 5-8 years her senior, avoid going to time and fertility wasting college, live on one income, and have 3+ children that are homeschooled with a STEM focus” sounds like a single-guy in the basement fantasy, LOL.
@kareninca
Sounds like a typical response from a lonely 40+ unmarried childless feminist.
I’ll take your LOL as concession.
And as for imaginings, perhaps you might like to expand your horizons from the echo chambers of Jezebel or Salon.com?
Try this, for starters: https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2016/06/06/the-unhappy-female-brought-to-you-by-feminism/
Oh, as to your little fantasy in regard to women having children at any age, it’s just that; a fantasy. It may work for an elite 1%er, but it’s a false beacon of hope for women. Like feminism in all its history.
I am fully aware of that side to it , having had to deal with the Female Imperative as you call it , from A to Z . I won’t go into detail , but I don’t think even you would believe how entrenched it is across society and bureaucracy .
Some attitudes I have come across are so obviously , glaringly , distorted that I am left absolutely speechless , and that is all the worse when they come from positions of authority that have the power to destroy your family as you know it with a single signature, or comment even .
Changing a small detail ,such as ‘if you separate we will take care of you’ , has profound repercussions . Those that applaud that detail will always demonstrate its necessity , how difficult or impossible anything would be otherwise , but completely (as in … completely) gloss over any responsibility for adverse effect . Effectively the state empowers itself of people’s families by complicity with parts of them , it is basically evil as far as I can discern… so how people can act as if they are reassured by that I do not know (and bringing up a few extreme cases will not convince me now of anything) .
Your comment on the effect for women is very straight to the point . There are more side effects than you mention as well , you are probably aware of them , they range from mismanagement of relationships, loss of position for the woman due to the eventual lack of moral support from the partner after separation, right through to the effect of all of this on the children themselves …. and how that effects their future views and feelings on relationships.
Home-schooling is fine as long as it is not condemned by people or authority around you – have been through that too . As a person you can laugh in the face of any threat if you choose to , and so there is no real leverage from the get go , no one can really force another … except by threatening to harm those you care for .
That is what it comes down to , and that is how bad it is , because as a parent you will feel the child’s suffering , and you will feel that you have failed them completely . I have watched this reality purposefully introduced as a known theme and then used as an attempted leverage .
I am a peaceful person , I avoid trouble where I am able to , I always state the truth to best of my knowledge , always try to resolve differences or arguments by discussion . A family is the strongest, yet at the same time most vulnerable, ‘arrangement’ I know of , aside from an individual’s relationship with creation itself . That places a lot of leverage in the hands of anyone strong, or calculating, enough to overpower or manipulate a family at will .
So it is all the more disgusting to experience the hypocrisy of state in action , and to watch it (try to in our case) disassemble the very identity that it purports to protect , so as to weaken, absorb, and direct it to its own benefit and purpose.
To my view , more than any of the other influences at work in managing society , this is the one that is the most damaging . People know ‘the rules’ , they play along , ignore , or adapt , in most cases , but the concessions are continuous and increase steadily over time , and on the whole they cut repeatedly into the most intimate and heartfelt realities of our very own existence .
Some might think this is a conversation between misogynists or something similar , I just hope that they read the concern of responsible people for their families , that are undoubtedly made up of both male and female members. The criticism is not of the female , it is of the pervasive
infiltration of government power into relationships, families , and society , and its true cost.
Thanks, Crysangle. That’s a thorough reply. You did not have to add the last paragraph, but I understand why.
Of course the fertility rate has dropped. American adults can barely afford to support themselves. How could they afford to support 3 or 4 offspring? The responsible ones only reproduce according their their financial wherewithal to support a family. The ones who reproduce beyond their ability to provide financial support are the indigents who rely on government welfare. Their reproduction rates remain high – which only adds more welfare babies to the population and taxes the responsible members of society. Allowing foreign indigents to come across the border and saturate society is NOT the answer. It only brings more financial burden and government aid recipients. That’s more fuel for the fire.
Let the population decline naturally. That’s a much better plan than Mother Nature stepping in and creating a God-awful disease to cull the herd or bloody chaos in the streets when the population exceeds society’s ability to allocate needed resources for human survival?
Lower fertility rates are a big plus, not a negative! Be thankful!
No, lower fertility is fine for those cultures and races that have ZFG for the planet.
And I’m tired of this canard that having children can’t be supported. That’s BS. You simply have to live within your means. If that means consume less, produce more, and DIY/hack as much as you can, then that’s what it means. You have the freakin’ power of choice and the brain to make them.
If you’ll note that Western Civilization and it’s associated genetic stock care far more about this planet than others, then you’ll want to see their birth rates go up.
Look for yourself; notwithstanding all the hype westerner’s do more, care more, and can live far more in harmony with nature as a civilization.
If you are a mud-hutter, on the other hand, then remove yourself to the third world to live that way and enjoy.
Westerners have no survival imperative to produce litters of children; the “turd world” does. If civilized people must Self-Actualize (see Maslow’s Hierarchy) it’s a one-and-done, or two if you want the complete set. We’d rather have 2.4 luxury automobiles and a vacation home than 2.4 little humans. If dad had pulled out in 1959 my parents could have had a color TV — I’d never have known the difference.
No survival imperative….Yet.
The reasons for the imperative are rapidly immigrating in, though.
Plenty of foreigners to import to fill the population shortfall. Just as the Fed mandate is inflate (devalue) or die, the mantra of western politicians is populate or die.
Growth, growth, growth. No one in power will allow it any other way.
They will never figure out that demand is unlimited, while resources are limited, until we are out of almost everything but people and fiat money. Then, reset will take place if war hasn’t annihilated the last man standing.
Great Socialist Empires die very slowly, at first,,,,then all of a sudden. 10 years? 50? Who knows?
Oh, wait, I forgot,,,it can’t happen here. Our government will save us. HRC is on the way, and she has been emailing Eleanor Roosevelt for advice,,,on a secure server, mind you.
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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Large numbers of women electing not to have children is one of the clearest signs the US economy is in deep trouble. I guess it’s not terribly surprising with all the young people forced to live with their parents for economic reasons.
It’s not economics, as I replied earlier. It’s about Feminism and the State, and how that has changed the incentive behaviors for men and women.
Its ok, so what if birth rate is down? Its only a matter of time the neocons that control the USA starts a war with Russia and China and everyone end up vaporised anyway. Why bother producing more dead meat?
What recovery? All i see is a lot of obviously falsified statistics, while good jobs continue to depart the USA….
Mish,
To clarify this, what is the birth rate per couple currently in the U,S, Anything below 2.0 and we have a declining population.
Ed
Birth Rate: The ratio of total live births to total population in a specified community or area over a specified period of time. The birthrate is often expressed as the number of live births per 1,000 of the population per year.
Death rate the opposite.
Death Rate stats
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN
I think it’s the fertility rate which is avg. number of children born per women.
Can someone provide the missing denominator for the first two charts? Replacement rate for 1,000 women would be about 2,120 births — 1,000 girls to replace themselves, plus 1,070 boys (that’s biology, not anthropology), plus let’s say a hypothetical 50 or so females die before reproducing. The numerators shown are in the range of 122 to 60; far too low. If it’s ANNUAL fertility for females 15-44 then it’s far too high. Something’s not labeled on the charts.
Relax
Its just time to change the breeding stock.
The ranchers are on it.
What is it about economics that leads to brain death?
I think more people should live with their parents. We have millions of 3,000 square foot McMansions with 4 bedrooms and 2 occupants. Why should people live alone?
What I find particularly interesting is the steep drop in the birth rates of Blacks and Hispanics following the welfare reforms of the Clinton presidency. When the return on birth dropped, there were fewer births.
I found it interesting that there is a slight rise in the late mother birth rate. For too long I, myself, was told I could wait for kids and do all those things I wanted to do after college education and a great job. Well, financially, those things never materialized due to all the above mentioned why Millennials aren’t forming families. Don’t get me wrong, my life is okay, but not that gleaming dream I was led to believe could happen, if you study and work hard. The jobs simply dried up, nothing more.
I found that being a late in life mother is actually far more rewarding than the dream I once pursued. I’d say I’m certainly not the only one who eventually had this occur, according to the data posted above.
Weird how things turn out. And we are very fortunate; I’ll never forget that important aspect of our life, btw. We do not get any government handouts, my husband works a technical job that pays well enough to allow me to drive the family bus, so to speak, and we work hard at digging out from under the debt we incurred from education, despite the fact that both of us were working jobs back then(yes, plural jobs for both of us). Daycare isn’t cheap and leaving it and low-wage jobs behind were actually liberating us from accruing debt as well. My “job” now is rewarding on many levels, though it isn’t a paid position and unrecognized as necessary by most.
This is just anecdotal, but could very well be one reason that you see the mid-30’s to 44 yr old women actually having children.
This has nothing to do with economy. Look at the places with highest fertility rates – all of them are very poor.
The reason why people don’t have children is because women want to “enjoy life” (travel, have careers, have sex with many men, eat themselves into diabetes) and men don’t want the modern responsibilities (or liabilities) of marriage and having children. It’s easier and safer to screw around (there are many willing partners) or play computer games.
I forgot to mention all the speshul genderfluid otherkins that are graduating from American universities. They are the future 🙂
This is an interesting topic and I thank Mish for bringing it up. The comments are extremely informative.
One possible factor of the birth rate decline that hasn’t been addressed here is the US legal system.
This is purely anecdotal and I have no scientific basis to support it. With that said, I’ve had conversations with a good number of young men in their reproductive years over the last decade. Most were self-sufficient financially and able to support a family. I was shocked at the number who said that they had no desire to sire children. When I asked for a further explanation I was told that they saw their fathers or uncles or older male acquaintances get totally screwed by the American legal system in child support/custody matters when their marriages fell apart. As a result, they vowed never to have children.
Could the US legal system have an impact on the birth rate? I think it’s very possible. The female biological drive to reproduce is much stronger than the male’s. If the male believes that the personal risks tied to reproduction are much greater than the benefits gained, it’s very likely that the gender would take serious precautions and slow down its reproductive rates. It still takes 2 to make a baby.
It would be fascinating for a university to study this possibility in more detail. But I won’t hold my breath.
Good luck waiting for a university study. I can tell you the result of such study right now:
Low fertility is caused by white heterosexual males and not enough women in tech.
It may take two, but only one male is needed per population (see Harlan Ellison’s book/film “A Boy and His Dog” [1975]). It apparently helps if the boy has the stamina of a young Don Johnson.
The Nazis tried something similar but didn’t stick around to judge the societal results, but the contemporary underclass have proven this proposition is workable.
One boy who sires a litter of ten might be able to eventually support one financially. Who supports the other nine?
Reference: Any US ghetto.
And there you have the rest of the story.
I really doubt that male paranoia (justified or not) is affecting the birth rate. The marriage rate, but not the birth rate. All of the young women I knew who really wanted to have a kid, simply had one. They didn’t bother waiting to get married or trying too hard to find a guy who wanted to marry. They saw that those of their friends who married, ended up divorced; maybe that is why they didn’t seek some wondrous marriageable male. Women can be discouraged from marriage by the high divorce rate, too.
So how do the single mothers make out? Have they put away savings for the next twenty years, single working moms, rely on family, part time fathers or support rulings? How much of their expenses are subsidized by the state, that would be working fathers and mothers, other women and… men?
I am not sure if you are feminist or not, but if women of that ilk have it so right, why do they spend their time trying to claim what others have, instead of going off and founding their own domain. Of course it isn’t that simple, but generally, existing wealth is adjudicated by its owners, not just confiscated, and so to search the position of adjudicator based on tenets of past unfairness coupled with promises of loyalty and a natural righteousness of purpose, will just have to do.
Hard work typing a few sentences and making a story, but what is that compared to a mother and child without means?
The mistake is to ever consider anyone owes you. The greater mistake is to try to force them to pay. Beg if you must, but don’t send armed men around to dip into some other families earnings to pay for your ideal.
So now you know what many people might actually think of you, if they could even be bothered to spare you the thought, at least have the courtesy to keep how hard done by and important you are to yourselves, and carry the weight of your own submission, which would be the one every other working person has to carry on your behalf.
As far as I am concerned, it is not a happy or fair agreement, it is simply theft.
Again, .Gov is there to play daddy with welfare and enforcing Divorcerape cashNprizes awards.
Without their .Gov daddy, feminism is dead. Women then have to get their support the way they traditionally have, from men in (for westerners anyway) a monogamous relationship.
No worry about dropping birth rates, we can always import more people from Africa and the Middle East, like Germany. All you have to do is promise free stuff and they will come.
Aaaaand its gone….
Good comments and perspectives on this thread. I think many have made points which all apply to pushing the birth rate lower. This is a good thing in my estimation for quality of life. As quantity of life means lesser quality of life for each existing person.
Let’s draw the obvious conclusion: When the women make the choices concerning contraception, family planning, abortion, the birth rate adjusts to the economics. Just let the women decide by protecting access to family, birth control and abortion and the population will always adjust to sustainable levels.
What possible use could an economist have with empirical data? If the real world doesn’t follow the economist’s model, that means there’s something wrong with the real world. QED