Are childless people a problem?
The Republican candidate for vice president in the United States, JD Vance, has on various occasions said that he doesn’t think much of people who remain childless, because nothing says “vote for me” like offending half the population.
But his concern is shared by many at a time when the U.S. fertility rate is at a historic low. Is Vance right to worry? And if so, can anything be done about it? I’ve collected all the facts you need to join the discussion about whether or not childless cat ladies will spell the end of civilization.
Vance is somewhat extreme in his views, but the fear that people just aren’t having enough babies is not so uncommon. Elon Musk, for example, has said that underpopulation is a much bigger problem than overpopulation and he has certainly done his part to populate the planet. Not that his fellow Americans care all that much.
According to a report from Pew Research Center, an increasing share of childless adults under 50 say they’re unlikely to have kids. The percentage is now at 47%, that’s a whopping 10% more than 2018.
And of those who said they’re unlikely to have children, 57% said the reason is that “they just don't want to.” The next common reasons are that they wanted to focus on different things and the generally miserable state of the world. Turns out, sleep deprivation and diaper changes aren’t as appealing as Instagram makes them look.
A century ago, women had five, six, seven children. Now the fertility rate, that’s the average number of children per woman, has dropped below 2 in all industrialised countries. This means that populations decline unless countries accept immigrants.
It’s interesting that in the United States, the fertility drop happened much later than in all other industrialized nations. Up until 2000 or so fertility was at about 2. Just exactly why is hard to tell, there were probably several contributing factors.
One is that the United States had a lot of Hispanic immigrants and those had on average more children than the rest. In the early 2000s or so, the fertility rate of the Hispanic population rather suddenly dropped, plausibly because they became better integrated, and is now comparable with the average.
The other reason is probably that for a developed country, the US used to be a surprisingly religious nation. However, atheism in the United States has more than doubled since the late 1990s and that might have dampened enthusiasm to be fertile and multiply.
This decline in fertility makes some people uncomfortable and has given rise to the pro-natalist movement who basically see their task as having as many babies as possible. Works better if you’re a billionaire.
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