
US Birth Rate Hits New Low – A Nation of Singles - moocow01
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/12/us-birth-rate-hits-new-low-a-nation-of-singles/
======
usaar333
> To get a sense of how powerful the marriage effect is, not just for women
> but for men, too, look at the exit polls by marital status. Among non-
> married voters – people who are single and have never married, are living
> with a partner, or are divorced – Obama beat Romney 62-35. Among married
> voters Romney won the vote handily, 56-42.

I'd be interested in seeing these numbers adjusted for age, various SES
indicators, etc.

~~~
tomjen3
Agreed. Young people and single mothers are both very unlikely to be married
and already known to hugely favor Democrats.

~~~
mtoddh
Interesting, my guess is this is the demographic the Obama campaign was
courting with the Life of Julia [1] slide-show a while back-

<http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia/>

~~~
dnu
But if everybody lives like Julia, who the hell will do the hard work anymore?

~~~
throw_away
Are you saying that web design and starting your own small business (as did
Julia in the ad) isn't hard work?

~~~
boboblong
I think his comment was more along the lines of, "Who will dig the ditches?"
I'm sure HN's response is, "Robots, if all goes as planned."

------
eli_gottlieb
Everyone said, "Bail out the banks and you risk turning into Japan."

You bailed out the banks. Now you're turning into Japan.

Mazal tov, America! You're committing national suicide!

~~~
prostoalex
Assumption here being that US needs more younger people.

Let's see a couple trends here though:

1) US life expectancy is on the rise, I guess one of the most expensive
healthcare systems in the world is good for something.

2) Average retirement age is moving farther ahead - Reuters recently ran an
article about startup founders who are 60+ y.o.
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-valley-
ageism-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-valley-ageism-
idUSBRE8AQ0JK20121127)

3) Rise of robotics outsourced a good portion of typical physical jobs to
machines - iRobot, Kiva Systems, Tesla's car-manufacturing robot arms

4) Youth unemployment is on the rise

5) Youth STEM skills, the only applicable skills that matter in current
economic climate, are declining

Why does the country need large amounts of young people again? A bunch of the
assumptions - you need younger people to slave off to contribute taxes towards
the retirement of the elderly - are a bit shaky to say the least. Most of the
youth employed at various menial jobs are earning low enough income to qualify
them for tax credits, so they're not a huge revenue source.

~~~
varjag
> 3) Rise of robotics outsourced a good portion of typical physical jobs to
> machines - iRobot, Kiva Systems, Tesla's car-manufacturing robot arms

This is really of no consequence. Do you know any janitor who lost a job to
roomba?

CNC have been there en mass since 1970s, and robotics since 1980s. A robotic
assembly line is featured in final scene of Terminator (1984), and it was very
much state of the art then.

However, contrary to doomsday prophecies of the time, what replaced American
jobs were not the soulless machines in Japan, but penniless workers in China.
The future never seems to play out in the coolest sci-fi way.

~~~
prostoalex
It's just the matter of cost. Soulless machines are just more expensive to
design and slower to roll to market. Some of the technologies (like self-
checkout registers at supermarkets) make no economic sense until a certain
price point is reached.

~~~
antidoh
Interesting question: is it cheaper to use a low-skill, uneducated workforce
for low-skilled work, or a smaller but somewhat higher-skilled and educated
workforce to maintain the mechanized workforce replacement machines, as well
as the smaller set of workers to design and program the machines? It's usually
easier to point a guy to a corner and tell him to sweep, than it is to program
a machine to do it and to get politely out of the way when a customer walks
by.

Who pays for those higher skilled workers?

Can you get enough of them?

~~~
lotsofpulp
There's a lot of overhead (liability, benefits, dealing with people) that's
removed when using machines.

~~~
antidoh
Benefits are easy: don't offer them, or make sure you structure the work week
so the employee doesn't get enough hours to qualify.

People deal with unplanned for interactions with people better than a machine,
they're much more flexible.

Liability, you can go either way on that.

I think it's an open question still, when you get down to low enough skill and
pay.

Edit: People are the ultimate low skilled contingent worker. A pre-programmed
AI-equivalent in every box.

------
ThomPete
Wow that might be a little premature. The US do not have anything close to the
problems the European countries are facing.

~~~
aes256
Indeed, the latest figures (2012, CIA World Factbook) show the United States'
13.68 births per theousand persons is still higher than most of Western
Europe.

The demographic-economic paradox [1] is fascinating.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox>

------
ars
One interesting thing is that this seems a bit self-correcting.

Assuming there is any genetic component to the desire for having children and
religiosity (and I believe there is), that means that non-religious people,
and people who are not interested in having children are breeding themself out
of existence.

It'll probably be many generations before the results are large, but it should
cause a dramatic shift eventually. (Which will probably eventually get too
large, causing yet another shift in the other direction.)

~~~
lkrubner
"Assuming there is any genetic component to the desire for having children and
religiosity (and I believe there is)"

The genetic argument should cancel itself it out. After all, if genetic
factors should eventually cause people to have more children, then how is it
possible for us to have a 55 year trend toward less children (as the article
says, since 1957)? If genetics can eventually correct this trend, then why
hasn't it already done so? For you to make this argument solidly, you'd have
to establish at least 1 of 2 dependent arguments:

1.) there is some critical number that triggers a reaction

2.) there was, in the past, some force that allowed people to defy the genetic
impulse to have children, but whatever that force was, it will no longer have
as much power in the future

Here on Hacker News I have, several times, seen people invoke the idea that
child-raising is a genetic impulse and that therefore the trend toward less
children should be self-correcting. The people who advance this idea don't
seem to get the irony of the suggestion.

Here is a bit of personal history: my great grandmother had 16 children. My
mother had 4 children. Of the 4 of us, we are mostly past the age where we
would consider having children. The 4 of us have so far had a total of 3
children, and I don't think there will be any more children, so my mom has
less grand-children then she had children. This surprises her.

There are some powerful forces pushing the trend towards less children. My
feeling is that some people are glib in their dismissals of the trend. A
poorly thought out genetic argument would fall into my category of glib.

~~~
hitechnomad
Agreed. You could easily argue that in an agrarian society children are an
economic benefit (because your wealth is based on working the land), whereas
in an urban society having children is an economic burden.

------
rdl
Assuming we can handle the "421" problems, a world population in the 1-2
billion range, purely through low fertility rate, would solve a lot of
environmental problems. You could have first-world quality of life for
everyone, with reasonable technology advances, and still have a much lower
impact on the environment than we have now.

Under 2b seems like the right number unless space colonization is seriously in
force.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Unless we see huge advances, I think we are doomed with space colonisation,
since we put more energy in than we can take out, i.e., it produces non-self-
sustaining space colonies reliant on Earth.

~~~
antidoh
We may _wish_ we're doomed to space colonization.j

"The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere
else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit,
yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we
make our stand." \- Carl Sagan, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot>

What he's saying is that anything viable is too far away. Forget about the
Moon or Mars, we cannot protect a population against radiation, and if we
could we may as well build that same habitat here on our then presumably
inhabitable planet that we're already on.

Don't just use the planet up and walk away from it, because there's nowhere to
go.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Mostly OT:

I used this fact to consider a plausible simulation hypothesis. I had assumed
you would need a universe larger than ours to simulate ours. However, assuming
that since all the other places are far away, and we have found no other
intelligent life, then it may be possible that we live in a simulated world in
a Universe that is the same size or smaller than ours, since they would only
need enough space to simulate the complexities of Earth at a low level, and
the rest of the entire Universe could either be simulated at a very high
level, or simply filled in.

------
chriscool
The marriage rate is lower than ever because we are in a transition from a
patriarchy to a matriarchy. See my blog post about it:

<http://blog.couder.net/post/2012/06/30/Sex-and-Power>

~~~
lifebar
Marriage is also lower because feminism made all women paranoid, made them
want to be victims. Man can't approach woman as easily these days - will be
accused of rape, harrasement, day rape if he tries. Example - suggest cup of
coffe to woman in elevator - instant rapist (I hope everyone still remembers
that incident) . By the way, was't there some statistics that it's men don't
want to marry thesedays (for obvious reasons - women start most of divorces
and takes almost everything. And men that stars divorce are famous for getting
their pen1s cut off and thrown in garbage disposer.) Why it's hard to approach
feminism indoctrinated wiman (victim syndrome)
kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-
schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-
women-without-being-maced/

~~~
hazov
When I lived in the US I had no problem to call girls for a beer, even one
that called herself a feminist and studied feminist literature in her MSc...
maybe this is just a moral panic where you live, rape is not that common in
New England and people are not paranoid about it, at least this was true in
the cities I lived.

But I never approached strange women on the street, only people that I knew or
was introduced before.

~~~
lifebar
"But I never approached strange women on the street, only people that I knew
or was introduced before." Good for you to have broad circle of friends.

Also rape is not common in any first word country, but feminists claim 1 in 4
women will be raped... (had nice link about that claim but can't post it now).

------
WalterSear
very interesting, but the part about singles being less concerned with the
future is more than slightly ridiculous. IMHE, parenthood brings on a set of
priorities that override longer term, less tangible issues in favour of
supporting children.

~~~
hype7
Thank god someone else picked up on this. I'm willing to take the article at
face value in its description of the results of the research; but the analysis
is all nut job territory.

The singles not caring about the future is one perfect example. If it were
true, and it were only the regions with high concentrations of parents caring
about the future, then you would see much stronger support for actions to
prevent climate change in areas where there are higher birth rates. The thing
is, you don't - it's the cities - the places that the author is bemoaning for
the lack of kids (he even calls cities "pleasure centers") that are at the
forefront of trying to fix the big problems. The areas with the high birth
rates are the ones that seemingly don't care about the future.

So yeah, take every last bit of his analysis with a grain of salt. He strikes
me as a "America has been going backwards since the 1950s" type and he's
trying to back the data in to fit his preconceived notions of how the world
should work.

------
tomwalker
Why do we need to continue to increase or maintain the population?

~~~
DanBC
To pay and care for the current population.

People live longer; diseases of old age are not cured yet and are considerably
expensive and labour intensive. You need lots of people earning money and
paying taxes to provide for that older generation. You also need lots of
people to do the physical care of that population.

~~~
hype7
You are promoting the economic equivalent of a Ponzi scheme that by its very
definition is not sustainable.

~~~
DanBC
People pay small amounts of money into their pension (401k?) schemes
throughout their life.

The growth of those schemes requires people to continue to pay money into
them.

This ponzi scheme is either my poor communicating, or is a feature of many
pension systems around the world.

([http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/a-look-
at-p...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/a-look-at-pensions-
plans-worldwide-517579.html))

I agree it's not sustainable. What do you suggest? How should people fund
their old age?

Prisoners are already being used to care for other old age prisoners. This
moving NY Times article is fascinating.
([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-
dement...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-
among-aging-criminals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0))

Fun sci-fi noodling would have criminals being sub-contracted into
institutions that care for poverty stricken old people. The prison / elderly
care industrial complex grows to a huge evil empire. (Throw in a bit about
making and selling coffins and it's complete.)

------
hayksaakian
Birth rates are low but population continues to grow. The US is still a nation
of immigrants, once we accept that with our Immigration laws we'll be fine.

------
gte910h
I was pretty good then got all ideologue at the end with unfounded assertions.

------
loceng
The problem is health-related - physical, mental, and emotional - along with
not getting the proper support of the community that it takes to raise a
healthy child, not just for the child, but for the parents.

------
Ygg2
I have a question. How does one solve negative birth rate effectively? What
are possible cases in which the trend was reversed?

------
pasbesoin
Personally, anecdotally, I would find it exhausting to try to catalog all the
ways in which child-rearing has been disincentivised in my own life.

I find this all another instance of the outsized hypocrisy in the U.S.
Bemoaning something, while simultaneously taking seemingly every action to
reinforce it.

(There are a lot of secondary effects, that I won't go into here, that seem to
trigger... "outrage" in some of the very people contributing most strongly to
the primary condition. Deceit, or stupidity. Seems to be some of each.)

------
rorrr
So? It's not like we're running out of people.

------
lucian303
Less stupid people being brought into the world? I see nothing wrong with
that. It's about time.

EDIT: And seriously: "The US birth rate has continued to decline to a record
low since the recession of 2007-2009. This is alarming."

This is not alarming. The depression never ended. It'll be 2013 soon and we're
still in a depression. This is supposed to be a serious educated article?
Fail!

~~~
tsotha
>This is not alarming.

It's certainly alarming if you have pay-go pension schemes like Social
Security and Medicare. The way things are going either the young will live
under a crushing tax burden or people who paid into social welfare programs
for fifty years won't see any benefit. That's not a recipe for a stable
society.

~~~
dnu
The pay-go pension system is a huge ponzi scheme because it needs more and
more people into the game with each generation. It lasted less than a century
and it's on the edge of collapse now. Why should we postpone the inevitable?

~~~
tsotha
>The pay-go pension system is a huge ponzi scheme because it needs more and
more people into the game with each generation.

Depends on the ratio of the people paying in to the payout. Social Security
would be pretty easy to fix by reducing the payout a bit and raising the tax a
bit. The big problem, of course, is Medicare, and I expect that's why a single
payer plan is inevitable in the US.

These programs have problems as currently constituted, but they're fixable
even if the population isn't growing. However, whatever problems we have will
be exacerbated if the number of people working is actually falling.

