When quarantine was still early, there were thoughts that because couples would be trapped inside with nothing else to do, a Covid baby-boom would result. With the lock downs starting around March 2020, the results should have been evident in December.
There may be a chance that January and February see a rise, but the data thus far is not promising. Familiarity breeds contempt? Other reasons?
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The number of US births rose for the first time in seven years in 2021 to nearly 3.7 million, up ~1% from 2020; the projected total fertility rate rose to just over 1.66 per woman, still below the 2.1 replacement level.
We also find that the COVID pandemic resulted in a small “baby bump” among U.S.-born mothers. The 2021 baby bump is the first major reversal in declining U.S. fertility rates since 2007 and was most pronounced for first births and women under age 25, which suggests the pandemic led some women to start their families earlier. Above age 25, the baby bump was also pronounced for women ages 30-34 and women with a college education, who were more likely to benefit from working from home. The data for California track the U.S. data closely and suggest that U.S. births remained elevated through the third quarter of 2022.
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Matthew Yglesias points to the need for population to maintain American hegemony in One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger (2020). Scale is required to compete with China geopolitically. He proposes population growth via immigration, pro-family policy, and denser, better-connected cities. [1]
Yglesias is technocratic in his approach – focusing on transportation logistics and per acre density comparisons to argue that America can support density (if we were to triple the population, the USA would still be less than half as dense as Germany). To achieve growth, Yglesias argues we would need massive increases in immigration and aggressive housing and urbanization. And while Trump gravely tarnished the moral standing of the United States, America remains the destination of choice for migrants across the globe. Germany is a distant second choice.
Immigration is necessary because fertility rates continue to decline. Although American families claim to want (on average) 2.7 children, the trending number of children per household is 1.8 – and the replacement rate (to maintain a stable population) is 2.1 children. America is not unique: The global trend is a shrinking population.
The negative consequences to population growth are manifest – resource extraction, energy use, congestion, etc. – but the alternative, as Yglesias notes, is “a shrinking, aging, inward-looking America.” America fades, following Italy and Japan into senescence.
In The Western Canon, I point to the deep ideological divide that separates Asiatic despotism from Western individualism. This post makes the normative assertion that action is required. The simple fact is we have always been at war with Eurasia.
I am not sure Orwell would subscribe seriously to his assertion, but I do. There is an insurmountable ideological gulf between the East and West that will be resolved only through assertive defiance. Witness, the conflict between Greece and Turkey, the capitulation of Taiwan, the expansion of Russian influence, and China’s dream of dominance.
Simplify the choice: would you rather be under the surveillance-capitalistic state in America, or the direct control of authoritarian China? Neither choice is ideal but China as the world hegemonic power would be disaster for individual liberty.
It is all-too-easy for the West to be critical of its accomplishments.
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Kipling wrote to inspire America to take responsibility for the Philippines, but the burden is greater than any given territory. We have the moral obligation to prevail. Kipling can be derided for political incorrectness, insensitivity, and abject racism only by moderns living under the protection of the West. The vacuous arguments of cancel culture is only possible in the West. In the West we look critically and discuss openly differences and dissenting opinions. In China, one is re-educated. For all the cultural insensitivity and horrible actions of the British and then the Americans who inherited the global empire, we can rest assured it was the best possible world. (Has history ever seen a mass exodus from West to East?) But the West is losing its confidence, it started in Europe and is spreading to America. The hand-wringing over wealth-disparity and internal political divisions has distracted us from the Great Game.
Axios
https://www.axios.com/2019/05/09/birth-rate-every-country-population-demographics
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/animated-map-the-comparative-might-of-continents/
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-yuxi-circle-the-worlds-most-densely-populated-area/
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[1] China is Not Ten Feet Tall, as covered in Foreign Affairs, March 3, 2021 – and largely because of pending demographic challenges:
China is at risk of growing old before it grows rich, becoming a graying society with degrading economic fundamentals that impede growth. The working-age population is already shrinking; by 2050, China will go from having eight workers per retiree now to two workers per retiree.
Thank you despotic one-child policies!
The overall global fertility rates are falling and projected to drop precipitously:
BBC coverage, the Atlantic presents a less dire prediction for the United States, and this overview from the Institute for Family Studies.
India has fallen below the replacement rate in most provinces
Protective Arts 