The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population – POLITICO
Concern over declining fertility rates is a far right, Christian fundamentalist, racist, anti-woke effort of bigots, says this report.
The author of the article is a 2016 graduate of elite NYU, with a degree in history of the Americas. She focuses on immigration, so all topics look like immigration issues. In college, she did an internship abroad in Argentina.
My town has just announced plans to merge the town’s two high schools – because of declining enrollment. School mergers and closures are going on all around the country. I was surprised to see this here as the area has been among the fastest growing (percentage-wise) communities in the state. Which means people who are moving are not having kids or as many kids as they once did.
I have been following population demographics since 1996. Regardless of one being left, right, independent or something else, the declining fertility rate is leading to difficult decisions and changes – especially in terms of school closures across the country. But it also impacts the labor market – and why today we have a remarkably low unemployment rate. It also impacts the decline in college enrollment (now down about -10% during the past decade or so) as the new generation, young cohort is approaching or now in college. The labor shortage will become worse.
Many government policies have been de facto implemented based around a continually expanding population. Social Security and Medicare were intended to be pre-funded by worker contributions made throughout their careers. But in real life, the government chose to spend and allocate more money than they had and are gradually spending down those trust funds – such that Social Security and Medicare end up being funded more as transfer payments from current workers. This is what happens when the post WW2 era baby boom – very large – collides with a declining fertility rate (see chart below).
The U.S. fertility rate has been low for a long time and continuing to fall – this is not a recent phenomenon, as some are quick to blame contemporary economic situations for the decline. Not shown in this chart, which goes to 2020 – as of 2023, the U.S. fertility rate has fallen to 1.62. The population replacement level is 2.1 – so this means that the native born population is decreasing. The reason our overall population is not shrinking is because of immigration, which now accounts for the majority of the U.S. population growth.
This issue is also a global phenomenon, not just the U.S.
Dozens of countries have said that they intend to import more skilled immigrants to address their declining population growth – or shrinking populations. However, there will not be sufficient numbers of skilled immigrants willing to relocate to fulfill all of the labor demands.
I am not anti-immigration, which should be obvious if you have read my Coldstreams Travel and global issues blog.
