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Not that the chart particularly supports that until about 1995. If the chart only showed 1972 to 1995, you would have a hard time indeed claiming that it showed a trend. There are other statistics and graphs, of course, that support the view better.
There might be too many confounding variables to be sure; reminding me of a debunking Julian Sanchez gave to a Heritage Foundation study about divorce rates and pre-marital sex.
For instance, is there some value set X that gives rise to both flexible-labor-markets Y and high-birth-rates Z, such that Y is not causation for Z? Conservatives tend to value both; we are certainly more conservative then Europe.
In addition there might be pessimism in this country about other things that yields higher birth rates for whiteys. Because the State plays a lesser role in old age perhaps more people conclude that having children might be a good insurance policy for retirement in case something goes wrong. (I should note I don't really buy this one very much myself). This also might be an extension of the first argument.
Other then that, sounds like its time for some tequila.
That is a really interesting conclusion on the trends you pointed out. I never would have seen that. And yes I agree, it would be a terrible idea.
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_... for the data I'm relying on.)
But non-Hispanic whites make up 70% of the U.S. population.
RE: Niger, Mali, Somalia et al, developing country birthrates are falling as incomes rise from very low levels. The American TFR is exceptional only relative to other developed, high income economies. Obviously fertility is a complicated process impacted by multiple factors which btw most likely interact in non-linear fashion.
Interesting to me that while very generous pensions encourage individual choices which produce systemwide low fertility, over time the low fertility is almost certain to produce dependency ratios which ultimately bankrupt the generous pension scheme.
As far as Mexicans go, that's false. They're not leaving Mexico behind, they're turning the U.S. into Mexico.
The US population as it grows wealthier buys privacy, or more to the point, isolation. Increasingly, one's immediate family are the only companions one has. Hence the need for more of them.
The essay also said that about 80% of the kids follow their parents' world view, i.e. about 80% of the liberals' kids will be liberal.
Applying this to the conservative Christians, that means that about .6 kids will become not conservative Christians. They'll either become conservative but not particularly Christian, or liberal, or something else.
As Mark Steyn says, the future belongs to those who show up for it.
Maybe we're not so religiously optimistic. Maybe our birth control isn't working.
Whereas in Europe, the bulk of the poor is mostly immigrants, and they are the ones having children.
I mean, part of the way a family accumulates wealth is via inheritance. Family home and what not. In Europe, white families go back 100s of years. In the US, maybe 1-2 generations at least, maybe 200 years at most (except in parts of the east). Longer in rural areas, but they also tend to have lower property values.
Until this recent bubble, housing in the U.S. has tended to be substantially cheaper than that of Europe, with the exception of places like Coastal California, New York City, and what not.
The places where housing is as expensive as Europe? They have the same low birthrates as Europe. Touchy-feely explanations like religion and optimism for the future are just so much horse puckey.
If the cost of housing in the rest of the U.S. rises up to the levels that it is in the so-called "blue" states, expect the U.S. birth rate to decline to the same level as that of Europe and Japan. The American "exceptionalism" will disappear.
"Old-age pensions" leading to higher birth rates is one example of a pessimistic predictor.
Then again, maybe Americans breed "more" or "better" simply because we're sexier ;-)
And this is a very important issue.
What comes through is that we don't know the answer, but we need to know. I would guess that international comparisons can't give us the answer - because of the problem of controlling too many variables. The US is indeed exceptional, and in too many ways to control for.
For long term viability the birthrate of the most successful people in the most modernized societies does indeed need to increase. And I think it will, by technological advances (including new forms of childcare) hich reduces the costs (especially time costs, which are the main cause of economic costs) of reproduction.
But probably there also needs to develop an awareness of the reproductive imperative, and then a social ethic which specifically values and awards high status to large and nurturing families.
And this links back to optimism - because only people who value their modernizing way of life and wish it to continue will be likely to embrace such an ethic.
But the kick start for change will, I think, have to be technological - human reproduction will need to be more 'efficient' is high status women are going to start having kids (more than a third of women college graduates do not reproduce, and the proportion is rising), and then start having more kids. .
In societies lacking these (or where they are inaccessible, or taboo), higher status leads to more sex leads to more reproduction; but when the link between sex and reproduction was broken by technology we moved into a new era with new problems.
For example, in the UK women in the 'underclass' have a lot more children on average than educated and successful women. Presumably this is substantially due to less effective use of contraceptive technologies among the poorest, rather than greater optimism among the poorest.
So the optimism equals fertility link may (if correct) apply only to the sector of the female population which effectively controls its own fertility, and which decides if and when to reproduce.
In my example, I am signifcantly more religous than I was 10 years ago, but due to time and other constraints, I go to church less often.
Measuring attitudes regarding religion must be tricky business. I remember all the Christians that came out of the closet after the fall of the Berlin Wall... and that was a society that had blatantly squashed religion for the past 70 years or so. You know they weren't going to service often.
But among middle-class families, there's a cultural and an economic difference. In the U.S., it's pretty much a given that a "middle-class" familiy will have a single-family house; in Germany, single-family homes are rare, and apartments give you much less living space for children. And once smaller families have become the norm, and a three-child family is considered to be a "large family," it doesn't even occur to most couples to imagine they would want more than one or two.
I think the biggest factor in large families is having one spouse stay home. And in our area we do have more than a few stay-at-home dads. Most of the smaller families I know (1-2 kids), both parents work.
Here's how you really boost birthrates--make childhood vaccinations illegal and do away with antibiotics, neonatal intensive care units, children's hospitals, and all the other advancements that make childhood deaths unusual in the developed world.
I'm kinda worried about the Islamist explosion--with very high birthrates in the poorest muslim countries. Somebody's got to make more warm bodies to stand against the sharia nonsense.
You see the exact same process in the U.S. in the last two Presidential elections: Bush carried 25 of the 26 states with the highest white total fertility rate (babies per woman), while Kerry won the bottom 16. Same with measures of years married among younger white adults. Similar for housing costs and housing inflation.
A quick look at a map shows that the Blue States are located along oceans and Great Lakes, so suburban housing expansion can't proceed in 360 degrees the way it can in inland Red States. That's the bottom line.
You can read all about how Affordable Family Formation drives American voting here:
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2005/05/08/affor...
The tightly packed population and increasing poverty of Europe may be factors, but the full story is obviously more complicated than that.
We've got it pretty lucky over here. Most breeders live in the 'burbs and own a car and can zip around however we damn well please. I always thought this explanation was a little more common sensical than all that religion/happy people stuff.
Europeans expect their government to do much more for them but reliance breeds at best a luke warm appreciation. When it comes down to the biological desire to make sure your children are provided for, they don't trust the government nor do they particularly desire to be indebted to the government for raising their children. They just take a pass on the whole venture hoping someone else will produce the next generation. Maybe the government should figure out a way to do that for them too.
One factor people are overlooking I think is the acceptability of motherhood in the United States. Motherhood as a calling has withstood the onslaught of "modernism" in America in a way that it did not in Western Europe. America has a nostalgia for its roots and I think we underestimate how many people, young women especially, still hope for and work toward the nuclear family ideal.
Seattle is often cited these days as a "blue-state" place with a low birth rate, compared to Salt Lake City being a "red-state" place with a higher birth rate. Guess what guys? 25 years ago Seattle used to be a "family" town with a Salt Lake City like birth rate. Today, it is not. Why? Because housing is way more expensive compared to income than it was 25 years ago. 25 years ago, Seattle housing was comparable to Salt Lake City. Today, its like California.
I can cite example after example. California's Central valley (often called the Sam Juaquin Valley) has become expansive as well. What cost $200K now goes for $400K. The trend is not limited to major cities. Even Bend, Oregon (population 50K) has a median house price of $350K.
Of course, much of this is based on a speculative bubble and does not reflect the "fundamental" value of real estate. But does anyone here really expect real estate values to return to 1995-2000 price levels (If you do, I've got a hot deal on a bridge for you)?
The muslims in Europe do not have their "third world" birth rates. They have birth rates slightly higher than current U.S., but are falling almost as fast as the white European levels. Indeed, even much of the third world no longer has "third world" like birth rates. Both Turkey and Iran are below replacement and Egypt is falling fast. India's at 2.85 kids per woman (the muslim rate is around 3) and is falling fast. Only sub-Saharan Africa has really high birth-rates and even these are starting to decline in some countries.
Back to the U.S. If housing prices continue their long term trend of rising faster than income, you can donuts to dollars that the U.S. will have European (and East Asian) birth rates within the next 20 years (I think within 10 years).
There is no one reason why the birth rates are higher here than in Europe, it is a combination of factors that make child rearing more favorable and attractive. However, once you have attained what you want in life on a material level, which is easy to do in America, most find that they are still not content with life and will try to increase there relationships with other humans. Children also give one a feeling that their time on this mortal coil was not a complete waste of time and that they are leaving behind a legacy that will live on after their death.
There may be social trends at work that aren't happening simultaneously on either side of the Atlantic. For instance the explosion in pre marital sex we've seen in the west didn't start everywhere at once. The same could be true for birth rates. Whatever factors that are at work in Europe might start revealing their hand in the USA in a decade or two (if ever).
Why is it assumed that Americans are more optimistic by the Harris Poll (Nearly two-thirds (65%) of adults in the United States say they expect their lives will improve in the next five years)
Maybe the other countries are already happy/content and don't think it can get any better - whereas the American respondents are not currently happy and need to hope for a better future.
I am a happy Canadian and would answer the Harris poll as 'not expecting the future to improve' because I can't see how my life could improve.
A lot of the explanations for why Americans have a higher birth rate also apply to Canada (more 'dirt', lots of immigration, descendants of immigrants) but Canadians have a low birth rate. Exploring the differences between these two similar countries may help answer why Americans are so fertile.