Birth is on the Agenda!

The issues associated with the global decline in fertility rates have occupied us almost since the beginning of this blog (see the Jim Foreit Guest Blog: How Does Population Decline? on January 14, 2014, the follow-up blogs on January 21 and 28, 2014, and the more recent “Fertility Below Replacement Rate” posted on January 30, 2024). The new UN 2024 revision of world population prospects is bringing the data up to date. World Population Prospects – Population Division – United Nations

The activity that brought the issue of births to the center of the approaching American presidential election has very little to do with data. As described in last week’s blog, the presumed Democratic candidate, VP Kamala Harris, has adopted her husband’s two adult children and doesn’t have children of her own. The newly chosen VP candidate of the Republican party, Senator JD Vance, and his wife have 3 children, all of them under 10 years old. Vance called women without children “childless cat ladies,” and tried to make the case that they should be given fewer benefits from the state. Certainly, he hinted, one should not be a proper candidate for president of the United States. He only referred to ladies; he didn’t appear to have any thoughts on childless men or their fitness as candidates. The comments gave rise to a massive response. Below are two paragraphs from the NYT on this issue:

Mr. Vance has come under fire in recent days from elected officials, celebrities and Taylor Swift fans for his past comments condemning Democrats without children, which have resurfaced in the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign. It is a moment when many women, in polls and at the ballot box, are defending their right to make their own choices — about abortion, birth control, access to fertility services or not having children at all.

In an earlier policy speech, an excerpt of which Ms. Kelly aired on her show, Mr. Vance denounced the “childless left,” and named Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as one of her party’s next generation of leaders who he said did not have a “physical commitment” to the future of the nation. In another clip, from a 2021 interview with Fox News, Mr. Vance contended that the United States was being run by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” He again named Ms. Harris.

Well, to put the record straight, Table 1 shows the offspring of all the US presidents (all males!). If Harris were elected, she would join six other presidents with adopted children.

Table 1 – Children, adopted children, and alleged children of American Presidents (Based on data from Statista)

Meanwhile, presidential families aside, there is the serious global issue of declining fertility, which some countries are slowly moving to address. The global example seems to be Sweden, as summarized by a Forbes article written by Elizabeth Bauer, titled “Is Sweden Our Fertility-Boosting Role Model?”:

The conventional wisdom goes like this:

Countries which have traditional cultures (and which lack access to modern contraception) have high fertility rates.  Countries in which women want to build careers but there is no social welfare support structure in the form of parental leave, subsidized daycare, and the like (and in which, as a recent Foreign Policy article, “How to Fix the Baby Bust,” demonstrated, workplace culture demands long inflexible work hours), have fertility rates well below replacement.  And countries such as Sweden, with its heavily subsidized, always-available daycare, generous parental leave shared by both parents, and a culture ordered around community and family life rather than work, hit the “sweet spot” of replacement-level fertility rates.

Further, that conventional wisdom goes, the United States had maintained a replacement-level fertility rate due to the high fertility of immigrants, and the high rate of unintended pregnancies.  Now that women are increasingly using LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives such as IUDs and implants), we will need new strategies to boost our birthrate and prevent unwanted consequences such as an imbalance in young and old and an insufficient supply of young people to support the aged, and we will need to adopt the generous policies of a country like Sweden to induce more couples to procreate.

Except that the notion of a replacement rate fertility in Sweden is itself a bit of a fantasy.  As of 2018, the total fertility rate in Sweden was 1.76 children per woman.  Among native-born Swedes, it was even lower, at 1.67.  To be sure, this rate is higher than that of such countries as Germany (1.59 in 2016, or 1.46 among women with German citizenship), and even slightly higher than the record low rate of 1.72 recorded in the United States in 2018, but it’s still not the replacement-level of 2.1.

As I mentioned in the January 30, 2024 blogJanuary 30, 2024 blog, Japan and South Korea have the lowest fertility rates (0.8 in South Korea and 1.26 in Japan). Both countries realize that they are in a dire situation; below is what they are starting to do:

Japan Launches Plan to Tackle Falling Birth Rate

Japanese officials are reaching out to young people to try to understand why they’re not getting married as the country struggles to reverse its declining birth rate.

“We know that the issue of declining population is the greatest strategic challenge for Japanese society,” Foreign Ministry assistant press secretary Masashi Mizobuchi told Newsweek. “The government has been working to increase productivity, expand labor participation and achieve the desired birth rate.”

He said Kishida’s government had “laid out a road map for putting a sustainable economy and society on track by the year 2030.” This plan includes measures related to aging and the birth rate, such as expanding child allowances.

In June, Japan’s parliament updated laws to make it easier for some foreign

laborers to stay longer in the country and change jobs within the same industry.

South Korean Job Aims to Tackle Population Crisis

You Hye-mi, an economics professor at Hanyang University and mother of two young children, has been tapped for the job, which Yoon announced in May.

“The population problem is the biggest challenge facing the Republic of Korea,” Yoon said Thursday at an event in the western province of South Chungcheong, using South Korea’s official name. “Rapid population decline will have a major impact on not only economic security, but also society as a whole, and threaten a sustainable future.

The president mentioned his plan to launch a new ministry tasked with demographic-related issues such as aging, birthrate, immigration, and housing. He pointed out his administration proposed amendments to the legislature on July 11 to expedite the process.

Yoon also highlighted local government efforts such as Gyeongsangbuk province and Gwangju city’s moves to incentivize small- and medium-sized enterprises to shorten work weeks of parents with elementary students by one hour.

On a global and national level, the prospects of demographic changes are important presidential issues. However, on an individual level, the makeup of a family is personal (and no one else’s business)!!