Jump to content

So this is interestin'... Births are lower than they've been since the late 1970s


Recommended Posts

Posted

For reasons unrelated to anything, I was in a discussion today and learned that locally, preschools are struggling to get full enrollment. Which reminded me that I'm Gen X and that this can be a problem if kids aren't born. So I looked it up.

image.thumb.png.3883205a19de1b9260e0868a8ce612c5.png

Kids aren't being born.

It's not as bad as that extreme low point, the nadir of Gen X when Nicole and I managed to scream our way out of our mothers' guts, but it's low.Note that this is the absolute number of births, not even the birth rate. Which is as you'd expect.

Spoiler

 

 

image.thumb.png.8f4a3e09242b7ea9f733bf129bfe5cb8.png

 

The rate is abysmal, as you'd expect.

Anyway. Pretty dang interesting to me that the actual number of births is so low. This will have some pretty severe economic implications a quarter of a century from now.

But we're already seeing it affect preschools.

Posted

That's wild.   We had waiting lists to get in with the first, and just brought in a nanny with the others because they were still packed.  Local anecdote I know, but I would have never guessed. 

Posted (edited)

Our grandkids are 3 and 1.  There's absolutely still waiting lists for quality daycare and preschools.  It's expensive AF and the 2nd kid makes the equation increasingly difficult to justify both parents working full time when it comes to the intersection of diminishing returns financially and investing that extra time directly into the kids..

Both of their parents are post grad educated, gainfully employed, pay their taxes, never been arrested etc.  I'm sure that's somehow undesirable for some of your assessments on here.  All is not lost, our other son and DIL are equally educated but 5 years younger and insist they are not having chil'ren...yet.

 

Edited by Iceman
Posted
1 hour ago, Jkwellborn said:

Plenty of people out there have no business with kids. Hopefully, they are at least some of the ones not having them.

Maybe you're right...

How has the distribution of ages in Oklahoma changed?

The share of the population that is 0 to 4 years old decreased from 7% in 2010 to 6.1% in 2022.

The share of the population that is 65 and older increased from 13.5% in 2010 to 16.4% in 2022.

Posted

I don’t doubt that birth rates are down and etc etc etc but also I can tell you that in Wake Forest at least (I guess think Round Rock for Raleigh) you can spend years on the waitlists for the good daycares. We had our 2 year old on the waitlist for where he is now since my wife was pregnant and he only recently got in, I know that a couple of the other ones nearby are similar. And then there are other places where they consistently have vacancies.

Posted
6 hours ago, chainsaw said:

Nobody has the money for it.

This isn't fully accurate: they don't have the money to raise them to the standards they have today, which are far higher than all previous generations. 

6 hours ago, Jkwellborn said:

Plenty of people out there have no business with kids. Hopefully, they are at least some of the ones not having them.

The people having kids are probably not the ones you'd have highest on your list of desirable parents and gene pools and the people having the fewest children, or none at all, are probably highest on the list. 

Posted
11 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

This isn't fully accurate: they don't have the money to raise them to the standards they have today, which are far higher than all previous generations. 

I read the context of the comment you quoted as saying nobody has the money to afford childcare. Did you read it differently? Because in my experience just being able to find any kind of daycare that has openings is almost next to impossible, and of course the prices reflect the scarcity. I seem to recall that there was some sort of change with the ACA that increased insurance requirements or something along those lines for providers to the point that a lot of churches that offered childcare services had to get out of the business. Whether it was a real or percieved change in policy, there was a definite exit of churches and other religious institutions from the childcare marketplace, which has left us with a demand rich and supply poor marketplace to the detriment of young parents. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
7 hours ago, chainsaw said:

Nobody has the money for it.

33 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

This isn't fully accurate: they don't have the money to raise them to the standards they have today, which are far higher than all previous generations. 

 

Is this were Gen X'ers come in to brag about being raised ferel?

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
37 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I read the context of the comment you quoted as saying nobody has the money to afford childcare. Did you read it differently? Because in my experience just being able to find any kind of daycare that has openings is almost next to impossible, and of course the prices reflect the scarcity. I seem to recall that there was some sort of change with the ACA that increased insurance requirements or something along those lines for providers to the point that a lot of churches that offered childcare services had to get out of the business. Whether it was a real or percieved change in policy, there was a definite exit of churches and other religious institutions from the childcare marketplace, which has left us with a demand rich and supply poor marketplace to the detriment of young parents. 

I see that your first comment was regarding child care but I didn't take his broad comment as specifically related to child care costs. 

To attempt to answer your question, I imagine church- specific child care availability is pretty dependent on the state, region, or city due to cultural and regulatory variances among other factors, though I don't doubt there's been an overall decline in these providers. The majority of the decline, however, has been in small home- based child care providers: 

image.thumb.gif.b296e598faee648bd81767198b6676ed.gif

This obviously impacts lower income families the most but also probably drives prices higher for all income levels. My larger point, however, is that our expectations are higher than ever. People used to rely far more heavily on stay at home parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors for child care. These don't meet most parents' standards anymore (we need/want 2 incomes to achieve the lifestyle we want, we don't want to move near family who could help, we see the friends, neighbors and home-based care options as substandard), and they don't meet government standards either, as regulations have cut out many of the in-home providers and driven up prices at centers. I'm not saying, especially in this specific example that this is all bad! I'm only saying it's a higher standard. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Posted
10 hours ago, Rimbo said:

For reasons unrelated to anything, I was in a discussion today and learned that locally, preschools are struggling to get full enrollment. Which reminded me that I'm Gen X and that this can be a problem if kids aren't born. So I looked it up.

image.thumb.png.3883205a19de1b9260e0868a8ce612c5.png

Kids aren't being born.

It's not as bad as that extreme low point, the nadir of Gen X when Nicole and I managed to scream our way out of our mothers' guts, but it's low.Note that this is the absolute number of births, not even the birth rate. Which is as you'd expect.

  Hide contents

 

 

image.thumb.png.8f4a3e09242b7ea9f733bf129bfe5cb8.png

 

The rate is abysmal, as you'd expect.

Anyway. Pretty dang interesting to me that the actual number of births is so low. This will have some pretty severe economic implications a quarter of a century from now.

But we're already seeing it affect preschools.

Well, I guess you've never watched a Peter Zeihan video on youtube. Every third one relates to various demographic catastrophes happening around the world, but particularly in Russia and China.

Long story short, there's almost nowhere in the world where births and birth rates AREN'T declining. It's not a US problem, is a worldwide problem. Now there's plenty of reasons. As many posters here have pointed out, there's a very large trend with the young here in the US where they don't feel they can afford a family, what with the housing costs, the cost of living, and the cost of health insurance, unsteady job market, etc. This is also reflected dual income households...both parents need to work. This has existed for awhile.

Another relevant point is that...we're not an agrarian culture anymore. Families aren't having kids anymore because they don't need free labor. Then you've got the social ineptitude/disinterest things you're starting to see here in America, and which has exited in Japan for awhile. Kids don't want to fuck. 

There's dozens of different reasons, and they're somewhat different in each country. But The last thing I read is that while America is in decline for births and birth rates, we're actually one of the countries declining the least rapidly compared to much of the rest of the world. Another interesting point is that, demographically, it also makes sense for America to increase immigration to combat this issue. Of course, we don't have any jobs or manufacturing to support that, but it's a thing to consider. 

image.png.9f9818eab21241a4d5bd8f78048621ea.png

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

 

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted

This is pretty simple.

Tone Loc releases Wild Thing in late 1988.

Birth rates have their last notable peak in 1990.

Science.

Sure, some biologists and scholars still try to tout the "Take My Breath Away" effect of 1986.

But come on, we know it's Loc.

  • Haha 1
Posted

Expansive access to contraceptives, later marriages, fewer forced marriages, education and professional opportunities for women, formal social safety nets for seniors, plunging childhood mortality. All leads to a rational choice for high investment, high intensity parenting of fewer kids as opposed to low-investment production of lots of kids. Holds true across cultures.

Whats interesting is that things like parental leave and subsidies for kids probably further incentivize “invest more in fewer kids” as opposed to “have more kids.” 
 

There should be no beating about the bush: this is going to cause some short and medium term pain even if over the long term it will create more stability and be more sustainable. 
 

More interesting than declining birth-rates is to track what this model of parenting (high-investment, fewer kids) does to sex ratios. The picture is not pretty for big swathes of the world where they have adopted this model but retain a bias in favor of men. Fewer young people and more of them males with literally not enough women to pair off with. 

  • Hook 'Em 4
Posted (edited)
47 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Well, I guess you've never watched a Peter Zeihan video on youtube. Every third one relates to various demographic catastrophes happening around the world, but particularly in Russia and China.

Long story short, there's almost nowhere in the world where births and birth rates AREN'T declining. It's not a US problem, is a worldwide problem. Now there's plenty of reasons. As many posters here have pointed out, there's a very large trend with the young here in the US where they don't feel they can afford a family, what with the housing costs, the cost of living, and the cost of health insurance, unsteady job market, etc. This is also reflected dual income households...both parents need to work. This has existed for awhile.

Another relevant point is that...we're not an agrarian culture anymore. Families aren't having kids anymore because they don't need free labor. Then you've got the social ineptitude/disinterest things you're starting to see here in America, and which has exited in Japan for awhile. Kids don't want to fuck. 

There's dozens of different reasons, and they're somewhat different in each country. But The last thing I read is that while America is in decline for births and birth rates, we're actually one of the countries declining the least rapidly compared to much of the rest of the world. Another interesting point is that, demographically, it also makes sense for America to increase immigration to combat this issue. Of course, we don't have any jobs or manufacturing to support that, but it's a thing to consider. 

image.png.9f9818eab21241a4d5bd8f78048621ea.png

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

 

 

8 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Expansive access to contraceptives, later marriages, fewer forced marriages, education and professional opportunities for women, formal social safety nets for seniors, plunging childhood mortality. All leads to a rational choice for high investment, high intensity parenting of fewer kids as opposed to low-investment production of lots of kids. Holds true across cultures.

Whats interesting is that things like parental leave and subsidies for kids probably further incentivize “invest more in fewer kids” as opposed to “have more kids.” 
 

There should be no beating about the bush: this is going to cause some short and medium term pain even if over the long term it will create more stability and be more sustainable. 
 

More interesting than declining birth-rates is to track what this model of parenting (high-investment, fewer kids) does to sex ratios. The picture is not pretty for big swathes of the world where they have adopted this model but retain a bias in favor of men. Fewer young people and more of them males with literally not enough women to pair off with. 

Two spot-on posts.  It's a complex issue, and there needs to be some complex approaches to addressing both the issue of low birth rates AND the impact they will cause (because, spoiler: we aren't going to completely reverse the trend and get back above replacement rate anytime soon).

I'll suggest that our American policy and social approach of "hate immigrants," "try to force women to be submissive baby factories again," and "make society and the economy hostile to any chance of a healthy economic future for young people" is both doomed to fail and actually even backfire.  Just a thought.

Edited by Brisketexan
  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
30 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

I didn't know there were so many people that hadn't noticed this already. 

 

yeah same here.

And actually, the rate of the rate has been slowing down since the 1970s in most of the (then) developed, western world. 

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...