United States Birthrate Dips

by Mike James

The United States (U.S.) birthrate fell 4 percent last year, making it the most significant annual decrease in many decades. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show the U.S. birthrate dropping for the sixth consecutive year. The biggest drop happened in the last part of last year, showing some influence by the Covid-19 outbreak.

Before the pandemic, U.S. birth rates were on the decline due to people having fewer children, having children later, or choosing not to have kids.

Only about 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2020. In 2019, there were 3.75 million babies born in this country. This is the lowest number of births in this country since 1979. This is the biggest one-year drop in births, in percentage terms, since 1965, according to Philip N. Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.

The declining birthrate is cause for concern to some. The U.S. is experiencing about 700,000 fewer births per year than it had in 2007. According to Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, "These are magnitudes that sort of rival the baby boom, kind of the opposite of the baby boom, and we know that the baby boom had a huge effect, on economics, on culture, on politics, on just about everything you can think of. Losing that many people, it would be difficult to imagine that doesn't have a large effect in a broad array of dimensions."

Declining birth rates can lead to issues like who will take care of a growing elderly population, fill important jobs, and keep the economy humming along.

Other countries are also experiencing this same problem. In South Korea, decreasing birth rates are causing concern about a shrinking military in the future.

Demographer Lyman Stone warns that a declining birthrate can have far-reaching consequences. Older folks consume more services which can cause the U.S. economy to shift away from manufacturing. Older people also rely more on savings and have less desire for new investments, which can reduce interest rates.

Greece, which has one of the older populations in the world, fell into negative interest rates in 2019.

Why should we even be concerned with birth rates? One of the reasons China's economic fortunes have grown over the last 50 years is its large population. But even Chinese birth rates dropped 18 percent last year. Part of China's problem stems from its one-child-per-family policy it enforced for 30 years. Now China has changed that policy and is calling for incentives to encourage more births.

In the U.S., the rising costs of healthcare, education, and housing may hinder efforts to increase the birth rate. If the U.S. government and corporations don't support families, it may be hard for the U.S. to reverse the declining birthrate trend.

One workaround to declining birth rates is immigration. Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said, "The need for new immigration policy may become clearer because of these demographic trends, but the politics of it is very difficult, and it requires one or both of the parties to get off of where they're dug in currently."

Will these demographic trends force our immigration policies to bring in more people coming from countries with religions other than Christianity? What kind of changes could result from that decades into the future?

William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, says of immigration, "It's really legal immigration which has not been given serious attention. It's clear from these numbers that's going to be the safety valve for us to not even have much more reduced growth than we already have."

As we can see, there are several reasons for our declining birth rate in America. But interestingly enough, God warned His ancient nation of Israel of certain curses that would befall them for failure to be obedient to Him (Deuteronomy 28:15-68). One of these curses was the fruit of their womb (Deuteronomy 28:18). Since the U.S. claims the God of the Bible, we need to take note of this warning.

As to the possibility immigration might help us economically down the road, we also need to take note of what Scripture has to say about the aliens among us. We can also look to ancient Israel as our example. In Numbers 15:14-16 the aliens that lived among the Israelites just had to be obedient to the laws of God to become part of the community. God was concerned with Israel getting involved in false religion, but He was not concerned with foreigners getting involved in worshipping Him.

We know from history that not even Israel managed to be obedient to their God, and they suffered the consequences. Sadly, the U.S. is trending in that direction today. I think foreign religions are not as problematic as the fact that the American people have become disobedient to their God. The influence of other gods is growing in our country as the obedience to YHWH diminishes.

Sources:

"U.S. Birthrate the Lowest in Decades," by William Wan, Tara Bahrampour and Julianne McShane, The Washington Post, May 6, 2021.

"U.S.'s Falling Birthrate is Issue Many Other Nations Face," by Antonia Noori Farzan, The Washington Post, May 6, 2021.

"What China's Population Woes Mean for the Rest of the World," by Hope King, Axios, May 12, 2021.

"Population Stagnation: A Novel U.S. Challenge," by Dan Balz, The Washington Post, May 10, 2021.