US fertility rate drops for the fourth year in a row, may forecast a 'demographic time bomb'

Everywhere in the west people are having fewer kids.

This exactly why we need tons and tons of immigrants. It’s the same in Europe.

Economies are a reflection of the number of people actually working.

With a birth rate of close to zero, who else will do all the work?!!

Fortunately, we have the full quiver folks like the Duggars having 19 or 20 children to make up for it.

We now know that their goal is to have the US literally be one big happy (extended) family.

Some future Mother Pence will truly be the mother of us all.

R2, machines will. Eventually a lot of us won't be necessary anymore.

by refusing to invest in schools, infrastructure, health care and environmental preservation, and by siphoning public wealth from the middle and working classes to the uber rich, the rethughlicans have created a dystopian america where young people have little hope for the future and lack the financial wherewithal to start families.

Young people are not going to have children if there is no entry level work, have no prospects for ever buying a home or find affordable housing, and have a ton of student debt.

Boomers are working longer than ever, into their late 60s, not freeing up jobs and income for young people. The result be a huge population of boomers being cared for in their old age by immigrants, and young people not making a decent wage until age 45.

Interesting that they show a black baby on the cover for this story.

Birth control is cheap and readily available, which means anyone who thinks parenthood sucks ass has an easy opt-out.

[quote]Interesting that they show a black baby on the cover for this story. —Anonymous

possibly because of this:

"Baby Bust: Fertility is Declining the Most Among Minority Women"

Having a child is a financial disaster for most people.

Republicans and conservatives have worked tirelessly for 40 years to make sure the decent paying jobs and the benefits that went with those jobs disappeared offshore.

If you're working two jobs and by design, there is no affordable day care,you can't afford medical care and the public school system is collapsing why would any thinking person want children?

Everyone is reproducing below replacement levels in the US, except for Hispanics who are basically at replacement now, but will likely fall below soon.

Children have become a luxury item for the upper middle class. They are too $$$ to have.

This is the best thing that could ever happen to our country, not to mention the entire planet. And it'll be great for the economy, too.

The truth is, we're losing jobs to automation. The trend is going to steeply increase over the next couple of decades.

We don't need more people. There won't be jobs for them. Having to provide welfare to all the unemployed would crash the economy a hell of a lot faster than a declining workforce ever will.

People already realize this. It's why so many people are turning to drugs and suicide, especially in the rural areas. There's no jobs for them. No future for them.

Things like this is why capitalism doesn't work. But also communism DEFINITELY doesn't work. Perhaps were entering some type of pre-apocolypstic post modern future. I do plan to have kids, but who would want to bring a kid into the world today unless you are filthy rich or an ignorant poor welfare recipient. The latter won't know better. Will the singularity happen already.

r13, If you read the post and what any economist or sociology major will tell you, it won't be great for the economy. The economy will suffer. Old people do not work service industry jobs. They retire, keep working high income jobs, or die. High birth rates are destructive to world resources but heaven sent for individual nations. Capitalism has to figure this shit out.

Is it really a mystery? Almost impossibly non-affordable housing + crushing student debt + an impossibility to save for both retirement and a child's future eduction = the perfect storm for this scenario.

The only people having a lot of kids are poor people who make bad life choices. Smart people don't reproduce.

R17 Tell that to Trump and his constantly reproducing children.

We all know their all dumb as shit.

May the Lord open!

r13, lower population might ease the effect of automation. But we will have a major crisis when boomers enter their elderly years and there aren't enough people to care for them.

Boomers have a longer life expectancy than their parents, so they will probably live well beyond their 70s and into their late 80s and 90s. You think the healthcare crisis is bad now. The US healthcare system will be at the absolute brink of collapse in 20 years, and we have yet to figure out a solution. The system will be pushed to the limit by this huge segment of the population needing special healthcare in their final years.

With the rapid increase in automation, the birth rate will need to fall even further and immigration curbed if we are to have any hope of prosperity.

[quote]But we will have a major crisis when boomers enter their elderly years and there aren't enough people to care for them.

That's why some are proposing the equivalent of a payroll tax on every automation machine.

R15, you forget, and the article doesn't factor in, the results of climate change. We are going to see movements of climate refugees on a scale this planet has never seen before. Entire countries and regions will become well-nigh uninhabitable. The people living there aren't going to just give up and die. They're going to flee. And when you have millions and tens of millions of people on the move, no borders and no armies will be able to stop them.

We'll eventually be overrun by more immigrants than any country will be able to cope with. Policy papers by the US military and the Australian military forecast that as the deciding factor leading to the collapse of modern civilization. And they're saying it's going to happen really soon. Between 2030 and 2050.

So no - the last thing this country and this world needs is more babies.

I thought this was the only way to curb global warming. What's the problem.

R23, I wonder what * civilized* Western countries will do as the Unwashed Masses encroach upon their door? Continue to let in a select few for agricultural and assistive medical care, or literally set up Military Defensive positions as Trump has attempted to do? And BTW OP, I say the Right-Wings's entire assault on Womens's Reproductive choice in this country is nothing but a cover to increase baby-making across the population.

If you need young people to care for you, that's nature's way of telling you that it's time to die.

[quote]And when you have millions and tens of millions of people on the move, no borders and no armies will be able to stop them.

If there is sufficient willpower and the border is sufficiently armed, they can be stopped

This will have some negative, unintended consequences for future, older Americans entirely reliant on programs like Social Security...

Well the r26, the US Surgeon General better start putting that ads all over America now because it will be a reality for millions of boomers.

r28 it shouldn't. That program is supposed to be funded by the government regardless of the "trust fund" myth.

Thank god

At what age is life no longer worth living? If you read a biography on a famous person who lived to be 90+, it almost always says that their last decade or more was spent with shitty health and just waiting for their body to give up.

Tell the Boomers that they are on their own.

Don't look at me, I've done my share!

r33 you realize that many Boomers are already in nursing homes, right?

Good. Thin the herd.

I think a lot of people finally realized that having a kid can be expensive. It's cheaper to get birth control, condoms, etc. And if you really want get a dog or cat.

First world countries that offer incredible benefits to families also have low birth rates, so the expense of having children isn't the only, or even the main, factor. People being poor and ignorant is the number one driver of having large families. At least part of this is lack of knowledge about birth control methods, and I think it's also partly due to poor people who lack gainful employment essentially having nothing else to do with their lives. Middle class and wealthy people put off having children because children cramp their style.

Although anyone who's having a lot of children with the hopeless future we're all staring down are either stupid or psychopathic. I ultimately chose not to have children because I couldn't bear the thought of them suffering after I'm gone.

Actually it's also because the male fertility rate has been falling since the 1970's. Who knows why?

r23, Yes we will to fight the the others. Illegal immigration has got to stop. I'm one of those weird liberal minorities who realize no nation can survive without an ethnic majority. Its not racist, but true.

Yes everyone who is blaming it on American specific problems is far too myopic, this isn't an American thing, its happening everywhere in the first world.

The logical conclusion is when you have women who are empowered to have the same life as men and are no longer sitting around the house being baby makers and caretakers as their lot in life, you get fewer kids.

This is a good thing. Fewer people less carbon in the atmosphere.

CROP REPORT ISSUED: Crotch Fruit Yields down significantly.

The male fertility rate is also down in first world countries since the 1970s. Significantly down.

I blame PrEp. The millennials are using it to abort all of those ass babies.

[quote]Tell the Boomers that they are on their own.

Ok, Zoomer, we'll be fine, cause we got all the wealth and will he happy to pay Juanita and Diego to take care of us, instead of leaving it to our broke, lazy, whining grandkids.

R29, there are currently enough younger people/caregivers to still counterbalance an aging population. I think where you really have to start worrying is with the current middle-aged and younger. With so few babies born, you might eventually see a Japan or Italy situation -- an elderly-heavy population with not enough caregivers or young adults to keep entire towns alive.

It's scary to think about the later generations will probably try to steal the wealth that the Boomers have worked for and saved.

It will be your just desserts for your tax schemes which impose future debt on younger generations just so you can get your tax breaks R48

More globalist bull shit. Japan is doing fine with a decreasing population. Globalists want open borders to reduce labor costs. Smart economies don't need large families or mass immigration.

R20 - this is why we need euthanasia to be available. Many of those being cared for in their last years are being kept alive against their own will. Have seen this with my own parents. If you have got to the point you need young people to care for you as R26 points out, its pretty likely you will want to opt out anyway. People need to be able to take that option if they want to. Giving people that option will definitely help relieve the shortage of caregivers, as those needing the most care are most likely to also be the most likely to want to take the euthanasia option

On a different subject, R50 is exactly right - Japan is doing just fine, I know people there and have spent a fair bit of time there

Wasn't it just a decade ago or so that all of the alarmists were shrieking about the impending overpopulation Armageddon?

The situation isn't so wonderful in all of Japan. Especially outside of Tokyo and the major cities.

[quote] When it comes to Japan’s economy, there’s actually two of them.

[quote] In Japan A, an urban-industrial corridor stretching about 300 miles from Tokyo through Osaka, you’ll find cutting-edge businesses and world-class wealth. In Japan B, which is just about everywhere else, small cities and towns are dying as people move to Japan A in search of opportunity.

The Japanese economy has been considered stagnant since the 1990s, I have no idea what the poster at 50 is talking about, but I had him on ignore anyway so I'm sure there was a season.

[quote]later generations will probably try to steal the wealth that the Boomers have worked for and saved.

lotsa luck with that pal, at the rate the rethuglicans are stealing it to give to superwealthy, won't be anything left for the young pikers

Low birth rates plus the ticking time bomb that is boomers coupled with Chumps 70% cut in immigration its very possible we're headed into negative territory in the next 20 years.

Tons of ancient Italian villages are at risk of dying because of this same demographic situation. Some towns are offering money or other incentives to get people to stay there. Oh well, I guess such is life, but it would be a shame for all of these places to become ghost towns..

But the US life expectancy is decreasing so this time bomb won't happen.

The real problem is that smart people are cutting back on children while the idiots are breeding away.

And so it's begun.

r59 it's industrialized nations where the fertility rate is dropping. By which I mean men's fertility. They have less ability to father children. It's a symptom of our lifestyle, plastics, hormones, etc.

People aren't having fewer kids because men are having sterility problem. People are just choosing to have fewer kids, and there are also just more single people.

A smaller population is overall a good thing, even if it causes temporary difficulties.

I think for a lot of both gay and straight couples my age -- mid-30s-- DINK (Dual Income No Kids) is just the better, smarter way to go. This is an age where people have finally paid off or made major dents into loans, moved up the career ladder, and can start to afford nice things on a combined income. Few people seem interested in enslaving themselves for the next 18 years on yet another debt. (Although I'm not a woman in my '30s -- they may have a different perspective/priorities...)

Dear Lord in Heaven!

This is better for the globe.

[quote]Fortunately, we have the full quiver folks like the Duggars having 19 or 20 children to make up for it

I would actually prefer that, as opposed to Muslims like in the UK.

R67 probably hasn't met any Muslims in its life

The silent killer of tubes is...damn! It is that std that everyone gets!? I love it, a girl can get it at 15 and never have a teen pregnancy. I wonder if our government developed it?

R52

Environmentalists are worried about overpopulation. Economists and politicians are worried about declining birth rates.

While a shitty economy causes a lot of pain, the extreme global contraction as we exceed the planet's carrying capacity will be much, much worse.

Good. Hopefully it'll be even lower next year. At this point you have to question the sanity of breeders (of any variety). Why bring a life into this world?

Sure as hell hope all you gay men going on about over population have some sort of ironclad help lined up for your dotage years.

Without children y'all are going to be left to the mercy of home help aides or some type of nursing home/assisted living. The latter two also depend heavily on nursing assistants/care techs of which already there is a shortage. The really good ones get snapped up by families who can afford to pay well above current local wages (which usually aren't much better that minimum wage).

Children are number one care taker of elderly in this country, and or at least largely responsible for supervising, managing and making decisions about care. Without family people are left to their own devices or local government social services ....

I don't think young parents before used to think of children as such an expense. You clothed, fed them, gave them shelter and they went to public school and got a job. Now there is so much more cost and expectations involved.

yay

less beasts on welfare, I see them ev day, hair done alll up.... with fancy fingernails, and 3 strollers with babys….

I don't have anything to say on the subject, except the baby in OP is adorable. Love her iddle nose. That profile.

The world needs fewer people.

R72 - euthanasia. Once I reach the point where I need young people to take care of me, I want out. I'll be able to look after myself until I'm pretty old, I take good care of my health, and I can shop online etc. Once I start losing my mobility or my mind whats the fucking point of living any longer anyway?. I dont want young people to feed me or get me on the shitter. Just gimme a fuckin injection

Population will decrease even more when next pandemic hits.

R59, even "idiots" are breeding less. The only people still having tons of kids are mostly "quiverfull" weirdos

One of my uncles died from Spanish Flu.

this is a gay site, OP, who gives a shit?

R80

Leaving aside such famous gay fathers as NPH, Ricky Martin, Matt Bomer, Elton John, Andy Cohen, Tyler Perry (yes, I went there), Clay Aiken, Raphael Miranda, etc... there scores if not hundreds of other gay dads just in United States alone raising children alone or married.

Sorry to break this to you my dear; parenting/fatherhood is now a legitimate part of the gay "experience".

R39, I've created threads in the past re why there's a decline in male potency and natural aggression. Essentially men are becoming less masculine because of Monsanto and pesticides. Research the Black scientist who made land breaking studies on frogs in CA agricultural regions.

The thing is that the population of Latin America, traditionally the largest contributor of immigrants for the US, is expected to drop even faster than the US. I think I read that by 2050 ALL Latin American countries will be either at zero or negative population growth.

I think only Africa is going to have natural (non immigrant) population growth.

R84 Yeah, just look at how many Latino men are gay!

This is wonderful news. There are too many fucking people on the planet.

[quote]I don't have anything to say on the subject, except the baby in OP is adorable. Love her iddle nose. That profile.

Do you like the pierced earring her trashy, child abusing baby momma gave her?

R87 is Trump trash.

[quote]Research the Black scientist who made land breaking studies on frogs in CA agricultural regions.

Uh, no. Why don't you provide a link, lazy ass? And why do you have to make a point that he's "black". Just "scientist" is all you need to say.

There are still high birth rates in other parts of the world. I know some people (ahem) don't want a bunch of African immigrants, but that's an easy way to get younger people into your country.

I'm not one of the anti-capitalism trolls per se, but people have more babies when they feel more financially secure. The birth rate plummeted during the Great Depression, and they didn't even have reliable birth control. If typical Americans had a piece of the billions just being hoarded by the very wealthy right now, they would produce more children.

World wars had a drastic effect on population growth too. Millions of young men died before they could procreate.

R72, there are plenty of elderly parents rotting away alone in nursing homes. Having kids just because you think they’ll take care of you in your dotage is a big gamble.

Yeah the US especially is has a ton of seniors whose kids outsource their eldercare, its a huge industry. If you are still working there is no way you can take care of aging parents around the clock. This upcoming generation will definitely not be able to do so if they are going to have to work to age 70.

Only somewhat related to the topic, but yesterday, I found out my 70 year old father who is still working isn't sure of if he'll be able to retire or not due to lack of funds. That devastated me to hear that.

I read an article a couple of days ago that said a lot of hospitals had a new policy of forcing mothers of newborns to care for their infant 24/7 in the hospital with no break. They eliminated the nursery unless the baby had to go to the NICU.

So mothers were writing in saying they had gone through thirty hours of labor, or had a C-section and anesthesia, and the baby was put into their arms unsupervised after being awake for days. Sometimes the mother had no food for a long time (because they’re not supposed to eat during labor) .

Then a breastfeeding consultant was sent in to force the new mother to breastfeed, no matter how tired or sick she was. They wouldn’t even give children formula at all and people had to have a partner there doing all the babysitting every minute. Keep in mind the partner may have been up for days too, and has a job.

There were pregnant mothers writing in saying they were scared to give birth, because if they were too exhausted to care for their infant, nobody cared or would help them. A few said a kind nurse would take an infant to the nurses station for an hour or two, because there was no nursery or any place to put the baby.

WTF? Who would want to have a baby in those circumstances? Others said they were expected to leave the hospital three hours after birth. Several others said their baby had a medical emergency after birth and would have died if they weren’t still in the hospital.

This is what happens when there are Republicans in office and no regulation. No wonder newborn and mother deaths are so high in the U.S.

You’d be crazy to want to give birth under those circumstances.

Rooming in for newborns with their mothers is being pushed by medical community; not GOP. That being said politicians have weighed in, including DL fave Mike Bloomberg who forced breast feeding upon NYC mothers giving birth in city hospitals.

Normal vaginal birth with no complications and healthy infant both mother and baby are discharged in <48 hours, usually within 24; so we're not talking about several days of rooming in anyway.

Mr. Nanny State mayor of NYC, Mike Bloomberg

The mothers in that article described very difficult labors, nearly dying on the table, being under the influence of morphine or anesthesia. Not normal births. The baby might be healthy but the mother wasn’t.

If a mother was at home, high on drugs with an infant, what would they do if she was supervising an infant alone? Put her in jail and take the child away. But in the hospital they demand it.

Idiots like r98 who whine about the "nanny state" are the ones who wanted to ban gay marriage

and women's rights to choose.

libertarian choice for me, but not for thee........the rethuglican mantra for decades now.

you can't tell people they can't eat all the shit that causes them to become obese and diabetic, collecting disability and "free" health care that the rest of us pay for. But you can tell doctors that they must reimplant rogue zygotes to make sure women don't naturally abort.

[quote] If typical Americans had a piece of the billions just being hoarded by the very wealthy right now, they would produce more children.

This! For couples my age (in my circle at least), you'd have to juggle student debt repayment, a mortgage or rent, healthcare, retirement savings, car payments, your usual bills, and then to tack on a growing child weighing you down like an anvil and all of the costs and uncertainty associated with that? It's just too much.

The US Is a shithole country

if only we could take impure women and force them into sexual servitude for the purpose of bearing children.

[quote]I'm one of those weird liberal minorities who realize no nation can survive without an ethnic majority. Its not racist, but true.

The US will have an ethnic majority, pendejo. It just won't be YOUR ethnicity.

[quote]I'm one of those weird liberal minorities who realize no nation can survive without an ethnic majority. Its not racist, but true.

curious as to what "liberal" remedy you're advocating:

genocide? native americans, jews, armenians etc

expulsion? greeks, albanians, moors, muslim/hindu

forced sterilization? a novel, human and very american solution.

R100 and R101

Really is a stretch going from opposing mandatory breast feeding and other nanny state actions to being against SSM. The two have nothing in common and only the most dim would eve make the equation.

By your rationale all gay men who smoke in NYC who were pissed off when Bloomberg banned that act in bars, nightclubs, etc.... were also against gay marriage.

Is ban against plastic bags, paper bags, foie gras, and any of the other things banned in NYC under Bloomberg and now BdeB some how equally against gay marriage?

so it's not ok to tell people they can't vape, but it's ok to tell men they can't fuck each other? got it

R107, I hate to break this to you, but most of the people who whine about the nanny state are conservative dudebros who hate gays and want to ban gay marriage and gays in the military. They think freedom only applies to them.

Countries like the US and Canada have the advantage of being able to open their doors and floods of people will come. Not the type of people like Trump wants but enough people to head off a demographic time bomb.

This is awful! Won't anybody think of the children!

R110

GOP/conservatives would open up immigration in a minute if they thought hordes of white, straight Christians from western Europe would flood in; but that likely wouldn't be the case.

Western European countries are all in same boat pretty much , chasing and or looking for white populations that are declining. If it wasn't for those coming in from eastern Europe like Poland, things likely would be much worse demographically for western European countries. Then they'd be totally at mercy of the hordes of Africans, Muslims and others flooding in via Italy and other southern areas.

Truth to tell world over white/Europeans simply aren't having large families as they once were; days of couples arriving on American shores from western or even southern Europe with five or more kids in tow are long over. Nor will they proceed to breed heavily once arrived either.

[quote]This is awful! Won't anybody think of the children!

meh. since they are yet unborn....and likely to ever be.......hard to get exercised about it

USA could follow example of Israel and certain Scandinavian countries offering free or low cost IVF to all women, men, straights, gays, etc... But that would cause too many heads to spin... *LOL*

R112 Most Western Europeans are reluctant to even visit the USA due to the health insurance situation. Jobs and benefits are better in Europe. The environment less polluted, the general quality of life better. You have literally nothing to offer us.

Yeah, just what we need, R114....more babies born of over-the-hill parents, funded by health care dollars that can’t even cover the needs of people who already exist.

No thanks.

R115

That must be just in your neck of woods in Europe. Here NYC we are over run with French, German, British, Italian and others from Western Europe