If California really is America’s coming attraction, then the future looks bleak.
California’s fertility rate dropped nearly one child per woman since 2007, falling way below replacement level and dragging what was once America’s growth engine towards the back of the pack. In less than a decade, deaths here are expected to outnumber births.
The Golden State is not alone. Only one state is anywhere near replacement level. We’re running out of children and there’s no obvious fix in sight.
The math is simple: Mom and Dad each need to replace themselves, plus a little extra to account for children who don’t survive to adulthood. That puts the ideal number, or replacement level, at 2.1 kids per woman. When society falls below that average, it grows old and shrinks.
That greying and dwindling of society causes major problems. Public schools, for instance, are funded largely based on attendance, and California’s public school population is projected to shrink by 630,000 students within about a decade, which means layoffs and closures. Many schools districts are experiencing the same.
Below replacement, the work force dries up, straining Social Security and pension systems. State budgets buckle, because its tax base leans heavily on income.
It’s a mess, but the exact cause is unclear. However, we can make some reasonable assumptions.
U.S. births peaked in 2007 at 4.3 million. Then the Great Recession hit, and births plummeted with the economy. This wasn’t unprecedented; births fell during the Great Depression and the 1970s oil shock. But unlike those earlier dips, this one never recovered. The birth rate just keeps falling.
A team of researchers from University of Maryland and Wellesley College looked at the problem and couldn’t find a specific economic or policy cause for the persistent decline. Instead, they suggested it was due to “shifting priorities across cohorts.”
In plain English: preferences, aspirations and norms had changed from one generation to the next. The problem was cultural. That’s at least partially true. More women were delaying families to build careers. Marriage rates fell. The drop was especially sharp among Latinas, making assimilation a possible culprit.
Meanwhile, after falling for decades, abortions have been on the rise for about a decade, while religious participation keeps falling. The share of people identifying as LGBT climbed. Some of the most popular free pornography sites launched around this time, and consumption spiked.
But technology started to take hold in this same window. The iPhone launched in 2007. Social media usage took off. Teens started spending less time together in person.
So while the economy was making family formation much more expensive and prohibitive, our culture was doing everything to drive us away from it. We began prizing individualism and self-fulfilment over family and obligation – a society built that way will struggle to reproduce itself.
We’re hardly the only nation facing this problem. Governments around the globe have tried either coercion or cash, but neither is working.
China’s effort to control population is central planning at its worst. In the 1980s, as its population rapidly expanded, China’s communist leaders imposed a “one-child” policy enforced through mandatory, and sometimes forced, abortions. Because sons were prized over daughters, a disproportionate number of female babies were aborted. Decades later, China now has 30 million more men than women, and its population is shrinking.
Japan is facing a birth problem as well, with marriages plummeting amid a corporate culture that leaves little room for family life. In response, the government stood up an agency to play matchmaker and push people toward marriage and babies. But that treats the symptom, not the disease, and has failed to turn things around.
Hungary has invested heavily in economic solutions to its fertility crisis, spending approximately 5% of GDP on family subsidies. After an initial bump, those efforts are faltering too.
California, for its part, hasn’t even tried to boost the birthrate, though it has done some things that might pass as pronatal, like expanding paid family leave, subsidizing childcare, and launching a wasteful free diaper program. But as others have learned the hard way, you can’t subsidize or command your way out of a culture shift.
It’s worth noting that the populations of both California and America are growing, because you can prop up a population by importing new citizens, which is why California has the highest share of foreign-born residents of all states – more than a quarter of the population. America’s immigration system is strained at the moment, but immigration is the only thing keeping our numbers afloat. Immigration should continue to be an essential part of our population, for many reasons. Still, if Americans don’t start reproducing at a sustainable rate, we face a future with even fewer multigenerational Americans, which would be an genuine shame.
So what’s the solution? So far, nobody really knows.
But since making babies is as fundamental to the human experience as breathing, sleeping and eating, it stands to reason that the real fix is a turn toward our humanity. Policy can’t do that job. A pronatal agenda could at least frame the conversation the right way, and society can lead where government can’t: Fewer tablets and more outdoor play, less social media and more playdates. Hollywood and celebrities can make families look joyful instead of burdensome.
I am married and have two little kids. Believe me, they get in the way of everything I want to do. Have I watched the newest prestige show everyone is streaming? No – I watch Disney and Sesame Street. Tried the hot new restaurant? No – I eat Costco pizza if I’m lucky. Cool vacation this summer? Anywhere free within driving distance. I change diapers, I haunt splash pads and my Instagram feed is a steady diet of things to build with magnet tiles.
And I love it. I love them. I miss them when they’re gone, and my life would be empty without them. They are worth the noise, the lack of sleep and the surrendered autonomy. I didn’t have kids until my 40s, and was convinced I didn’t want them. Now I can’t imagine my life without them, and I get to do it all with my best friend and love of my life.
If the country followed California into this mess, then maybe the enduring cultural force that California has always been can lead us out of it.
We need to start making more babies, y’all.