Mike Marge
Last week, policy experts on the right and left finally found a topic they could agree on. It’s just that kids don’t have kids anymore (as much).
Specifically, by 2025, teen pregnancy in the United States will have decreased by another 10%. This is an acceleration of a trend that started 20 years ago. Teen births peaked in the United States in 1991 at 62 per 1,000 girls/women ages 15 to 19. By 2025, that rate has decreased by 80% to less than 12 per 1,000, most of which (72%) has occurred since the Great Recession of 2008.
Clearly, this is “good news” for these young women, according to the congressional report. And most people agree that the causes are multifactorial, including increased health education, decreased sexual activity among adolescents, access to birth control and Plan B contraceptives, and expanded economic and occupational opportunities for women in society.
But leaders in societies around the world are watching anxiously as their countries’ birth rates are crossing replacement lines and deaths are exceeding births. this ““Replacement rate” The number of births per woman is approximately 2.1. The CDC recently reported that without immigration, the total fertility rate in 2023 would be just 1.6 births per woman (1,616 births per 1,000 women in their lifetime).
Since 2007, the trend line has been clearly pointing downward. That year, 4,316,233 babies were born in the United States. In 2025, U.S. women would give birth to 3,606,400 newborns, a decrease of 23%.
Demographers generally agree that this trend was initially most pronounced among young women entering college. But now it’s becoming evident across all demographics, with concerns about jobs, housing, child care costs, political instability, and more leading prospective parents to wonder whether having children is a wise choice and economically achievable, dividing society into “those who have it and those who don’t,” according to UNC sociologist Karen Benjamin Guzzo.
Culture warriors like Katie Miller texted“Our biological destiny is to have babies. Not slaves chasing a job behind a desk while our civilization falls apart.” But she is fighting a downward trend.
Currently, about half of 30-year-old women nationwide are childless. The total fertility rate immediately after World War II was surprisingly high at 3.5. With the introduction of the birth control pill, that number plummeted to 1.7 in 1976 and then slowly recovered. However, it exceeded the replacement figure of 2.1 in 2007 and has been steadily declining since then.
One of the countering trends is ‘delayed motherhood’. While the birth rate under 30 has plummeted, women over 30 are having more children, but not enough to make up the difference. Over the past 30 years, the birth rate among women aged 35 to 39 has increased by 71%, and the birth rate for women aged 40 to 44 has doubled. But the numbers are still small and not enough to cover the “smoke”.
As the expert report points out, education has a dual impact. “Key Insight: Women are not simply delaying childbearing; they are having fewer children overall… The average American woman with an advanced degree is 1.8 children; compare 2.25 For women with a high school diploma 2.7 It’s for women who don’t have a high school education.”
We have clearly entered an era where women think twice before getting pregnant. The nation as a whole has shown little appreciation for the sacrifices necessary to choose parenthood compared to other nations. Why take risks in a country with problematic health coverage and services, a housing crisis, unsubsidized child care, and a job market shaken by AI?
As women’s education and careers improve, the ‘opportunity cost of child care’ has increased dramatically. Sociologists classify this as follows: success penalty. Taking a career break is a derailment of growth opportunities, including promotions, raises, and promotions. This doesn’t even take into account the debt pressures associated with housing and student loans, as well as the direct costs associated with raising children. Not surprisingly, as housing costs and student debt rise, birth rates decline.
Martha Bailey, an economist who directs the California Population Research Center in Los Angeles, California, doesn’t blame women for protecting themselves. She summed up her feelings this way, “People are having as many children as they want and can afford at a time that suits them best. I don’t think anyone agrees with that. maid‘story “It is the type of policy regime that seeks to persuade families to have children they do not want.”
Mike Magee MD is a medical historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Healthcare Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)
