Tag: birth rate
Billionaires Rant About Falling Birth Rate (But They Won't Fund Child Care)

Billionaires Rant About Falling Birth Rate (But They Won't Fund Child Care)

When Elon Musk and his first wife talked about how many children they would have, Justine reportedly said she wanted one or two. "But if I could afford nannies, I'd like to have four."

Musk reportedly replied: "That's the difference between you and me. I just assume that there will be nannies."

And that's also the difference between the tech billionaires up in arms about flat birthrates and the many Americans who feel they can't afford children.

JD Vance, father of three, famously launched into the political opposition, complaining that the country was being run by "a bunch of childless cat ladies." He had a net worth estimated north of $10 million. His wife Usha is a high-powered corporate lawyer.

The Vances' use of nannies has been a tightly controlled secret. Usha didn't leave her demanding job until mid-2024, when JD became Donald Trump's running mate. She stated she wanted "to focus on caring for our family."

Do the math. By the middle of 2024, their oldest child was about 7, and the youngest was at least 2. We don't imagine that JD changed a lot of diapers or that Usha routinely brought her babies into the offices of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Musk is too weird to hold him to the same hypocritical standards as Vance. Let it be noted, however, that he has married and divorced two other women since Justine. He now has an estimated 14 children. They surely have no shortage of nannies, but fatherly attention may not be in great supply. It would be no surprise that his adorable son X, on display in his father's Oval Office visits, served mainly as an accessory. (We look forward to X's memoirs.)

Suffice it to say, the sight of the super-rich waving fingers of disapproval at the one-child or childless middle-class families is unappealing. Still, it's worth pondering why so many younger men and women don't want children.

The discussion is a long one, but it could include a growing materialism and stress. Many young people don't wish to forgo vacations and free time to pursue family life. It could be that many were the product of a stressful divorce or no marriage to begin with. They may have suffered related trauma they don't want to deliver on anyone else.

It could even be prohibitions on abortion, which has made problematic pregnancies potentially life-threatening. (Blaming abortion itself doesn't work. The abortion rate in the U.S. is well down from the level of 50 years ago.)

A lack of affordable child care may be a factor, though countries with that and other bountiful government benefits are seeing a notable drop in births. The right-wing, allegedly family-friendly Project 2025 failed to advocate for child care programs. It even called for ending Head Start.

Young people are said to be suffering widespread depression for a number of reasons. The result, some studies say, is little hope for a future that children represent.

However, there is also debate about whether the falling birth rate is a serious crisis, especially in a country with a housing supply unable to keep up with demand. The U.S. now has about 350 million people, 60 million more than it had in 2000. The population has almost doubled over the last 50 years.

Meanwhile, the rich princes of tech or finance can "phone in" fatherhood from their beach houses or country chateaux, knowing that wherever their kids may be, professional child care will be abundant. It doesn't even matter whether the mother — a wife-, ex-wife or never-wife — is available to cover play dates.

There will be nannies. Those well down the economic scale from the Silicon billionaires know there won't be.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why We Need Not Obsess Over Declining Birth Rates

Why We Need Not Obsess Over Declining Birth Rates

Americans have this big obsession over population numbers. One reason is that reports related to population come with numbers. Numbers give politicians and journalists something concrete to either agonize or crow over.

The problem with this approach is that the numbers don't necessarily reflect the living reality of people being counted. Americans felt OK with their country in 1960, when the population totaled 179 million. But with birthrates falling and population growth flattening, there's allegedly a crisis even though the number of Americans today, 336 million, is almost double that of 1960.

The Boston Globe frets that cities like Omaha, Nebraska, and Bakersfield, California, are producing far more babies per capita than Boston and Seattle. The reason is that highly educated workers are more likely to delay starting a family until their 30s. About 53 percent of Bostonians aged 25 and older have at least a college degree, compared with just under 40 percent of Omahans in the same age group.

Needless to say, Boston and Omaha are both wonderful cities, each in its own way.

This counting also fails to consider land area. Older coastal cities have tight city limits whereas the newer ones in the interior tend to have large land areas. Omaha has about 500,000 people living in an area of about 145 square miles, while Boston's 675,000 residents squeeze into 90 square miles. Thus, one can more easily live in a suburban-type setting — where many families prefer to raise kids — in a place like Omaha than in Boston. Boston has huge far-flung suburbs outside the city limits that don't make it into this kind of count.

There are problems attached to fewer babies. Many argue that falling birth rates combined with rising life expectancy will lead to economic crisis as fewer young people are available to support growing numbers of retirees.

Another word for problem, however, is challenge. One reason for higher life expectancies is that Americans are healthier at older ages. It's undeniable that for many, 65 isn't what it used to be.

Picturesque rural areas like Sevier County, Tennessee, are now growing rapidly as older Americans, who once hiked there on vacation, now want to hike there in retirement, The Wall Street Journal reports. Long-time locals may resent the heavier traffic, but robust younger retirees need relatively little health care, and they tend not to have kids in school. Thus, they go light on use of public services.

Furthermore, retirement is not what it used to be. The older workforce — defined as Americans 65 and up — has nearly quadrupled since the mid-1980s, according to The Pew Research Center. Those 75 and older are the fastest-growing age group in the workforce. Their participation has more than quadrupled in size since 1964.

Of course, these numbers also reflect there being more older people. And many have not saved enough for a long retirement and must continue working. But many healthy "retirees" simply want to stay engaged.

Today's older Americans tend to have higher educational levels than their parents. Their jobs are less likely to require heavy physical labor, which can wear out a body. That brings us to "phased retirement," a trend whereby a worker stays with the same employer but puts in fewer hours.

There's the related phenomenon of "bridge jobs" — jobs in the same industries that involve a different kind of work or fewer hours. An example would be a manager moving into a sales position.

In the last century, the global population nearly quadrupled from 1.6 billion to 6 billion. Continuing that trend would have led to environmental catastrophe. Today's flatlining birth rates should be far preferable.

They come with challenges, yes. But it can all be worked out,

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

America’s Declining Population Is No Reason To Worry

America’s Declining Population Is No Reason To Worry

Total births in the United States fell last year to about 3.79 million, the smallest number in 32 years. The fertility rate hit a record low of 59 childbirths per 1,000 women. Americans are not having enough children to replace themselves.

This supposedly is bad news. Headlines are crying about a “Shortage of Americans” and “Demographic Decline.”

I don’t know. There seem to be plenty of Americans to go around. If population growth were the mark of national greatness, Oman, Equatorial Guinea, and Angola would be the stars.

Of course, a sharply falling population would be cause for concern, but that’s not the situation here. The United States has been below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman for decades. The total continues to grow because of immigration.

Fewer workers, we are told, can be problematic for an aging society. An expanding elderly population needs more taxpayers to support its health care and, in many cases, more caregivers to make meals. This is true, but these demographics were totally predictable. It’s odd to see handwringing over the need for more tax revenues shortly after our leadership pushed through deep tax cuts that will drain the Treasury of said revenues.

As for who will fill caregiving jobs, the answer may be those whose previous work was taken over by robots. And if caregiving pays too low to attract workers, the answer is to pay more.

Meanwhile, there are nuggets of very good news embedded in the U.S. population numbers.The birthrate among teens and unmarried women has plummeted. More women are having children when they’re older and, presumably, better able to support them. Also interesting, women with college degrees are having more children.

And thank you, Affordable Care Act, for making birth control, especially the long-acting kind, more available to women. That, not abortion, is behind the drop in unwanted pregnancies. Abortions are now at their lowest number and rate since around 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade.

Some causes of falling births were expected. The birthrate among Hispanic women — once high relative to the rest of the population — is now more in line with that of other groups.

Fewer Americans would be a welcome relief for those living in our highly congested urban corridors. One can argue that America’s big, open spaces provide room galore for a far bigger population, but somehow natives and the foreign-born alike choose to shoehorn into densely populated areas.

Sadly, the habit of associating a dipping headcount with decline still plagues city leaders unable to deal with the numbers they already have. New York Mayor Bill De Blasio was so upset by the census report showing that his city’s population shrunk by 40,000 — a mere drop in a sea of 8.4 million souls — that he questioned its methodology. At rush hour, some of the subway trains get so overcrowded the doors won’t close because passengers can’t get their hands and legs inside. And we can light a candle for the drivers consigned to the flames of perpetual gridlock.

Some take falling birthrates as a sign of lost confidence in the future. But those fretting about the millennials’ lack of enthusiasm for reproducing might investigate deeper. They might start addressing the onerous burden of student debt. Babies are expensive.

They might look into today’s crazy work schedules and, for those without college degrees or specialized skills, low pay. There was a time when parents could come home at 5:30 in the afternoon.

What makes for a strong society is healthy people, prosperous people, and happy people — not more people. Americans can put low birthrates at the bottom of their worry list.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: A packed New York City subway car.

Teen Birth Rate Falls In U.S.

Teen Birth Rate Falls In U.S.

Miami (AFP) – The birth rate among US teenagers has continued to decline, but health authorities said Tuesday that even greater strides could be made if more teens used long-acting forms of contraception. More than 273,000 babies were born to mothers aged 15 to 19 in 2013, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The teen birth rate in 2013, the most recent year in which data is available, was 26.5 births per 1,000 teenagers. This was more than double that in 1991, when the birth rate was 61.8 births per 1,000 teens.

“Improved contraceptive use has contributed substantially to this decline,” said the CDC Vital Signs report. A key strategy for further reducing teen pregnancy is increasing awareness, access, and availability of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), specifically intrauterine devices.”

Nearly 90 percent of sexually active teens surveyed said they used birth control the last time they had sex. The most common forms of contraception were condoms and birth control pills.

However, relatively few teens are opting for implants and intrauterine devices, which are the most effective kinds of birth control. Long-acting reversible contraception use among teens was 0.4 percent in 2005 to but rose to 7.1 percent in 2013. Of the 616,148 female teens the CDC studied in 2013, 17,349 (2.8 percent) used IUDs, and 26,347 (4.3 percent) used implants.

“LARC is safe to use, does not require taking a pill every day or doing something every time before having sex, and, depending on the method, can be used to prevent pregnancy for three to ten years,” said the CDC report. Less than one percent of LARC users become pregnant during the first year of use.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have endorsed LARC as a first-line contraceptive choice for teens, the report added. However, the CDC stressed that LARC does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

“The good news is that teens are taking responsibility for their reproductive health needs,” said Lisa Romero, a health scientist in CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. We also know that teens using birth control do not often choose intrauterine devices and implants –- the most effective types of birth control. Parents and teens are encouraged to talk with their health care professional to learn about the various types of birth control, including long-acting reversible contraception.”

Photo: Loic Venance via afp.com

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