We need more kids
How many do we need to keep America growing?
Growth is important for the United States. A growing economy, a growing population, and a growing workforce all support the American lifestyle. We expect that things will get better and cheaper all the time. We assume that our standards of living will improve generation after generation. Growth is what makes good things happen.
A growing economy means that there are more jobs, and more high-paying jobs, in the country. It means paychecks are growing. And it means more companies are inventing more new things: new phones, new cars, new movies, and new flavors of Bud Light hard seltzer.
A growing population means there are more workers and more consumers. You’ll have more inventors, scientists, doctors, whiskey distillers, organic farmers, sports analysts, and chocolate chip cookie makers. You’ll also have more buyers, clients and customers for everything we produce. A growing population means more revenues to fund everything companies make, and more taxes to support everything governments do. A growing workforce means that you and your family can afford more things.
Growth supports our technology, our economy, our arts and culture. The future of our country depends on growth.
But we’re not growing. Putting aside immigration for now, the population of the United States would be falling. We are not having enough births in a year to make up for the deaths we have in a year. Families aren’t having enough kids for the population to grow. After taking into account people dying young, it takes 2.1 children per family to see our population increase, and we’re below that level.
It’s something that all wealthy societies face, and America is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. As people get richer, and survival isn’t a top issue anymore, people tend to slow down on childbearing, invest more in each child, and have fewer kids. Raising kids is hard work, for at least 18 years and closer to forever, so families in wealthy countries tend to prioritize the success of each child over size of their family.
As people raise their sights for what they want in their own lives, they also raise their expectations for their children. Getting their kids ahead of the rest of the pack becomes harder. Only half can be above average, so parents spend more time, effort and money, trying to get their kids into the top half, or higher.
As the amount of effort to succeed goes up, parents start to calculate whether they can afford three, four, five or more kids. The result is that families do, on average, reduce the number of kids they have.
It’s not just a modern or a US problem. It happens in most wealthy societies. European countries are all below the 2.1 kids per family number. The ancient Romans experienced it as well and tried to solve it with a law called “ius trium liberorum,” that provided special benefits to parents having three children. (It didn’t work.)
Even worse for us, every single state in the United States is experiencing the same shortfall. Without counting immigration, each of the 50 states would see its population decrease. As recently as ten years ago, we had nine states that were growing on the basis of births alone. But now, even the most baby-making state, South Dakota, would be shrinking.
With not enough births to grow, there are consequences for us. On Wednesday, I’ll show the downside of not growing for my hometown of Buffalo, the state of New York, and other cities. Buffalo’s fallen from the 8th to the 76th largest city in the country. New York State was #1 in the US for 150 years but has now dropped to #4. Shrinking hasn’t helped Buffalo or New York. It won’t help the United States.
We don’t want to live in a world where we aren’t the largest and most successful economy. Being smaller than China, or other regions, would hurt our way of life.
Our leadership in the world depends on growth. Our social security system depends on a growing population. Our money system depends on growth. We don’t realize how lucky we are that the rest of the world does business in dollars. Having the best things, and having them first, depends on growth. In a very long time, not growing would also hurt our safety. I’ll dig into those implications more on Friday.
It’s unlikely laws will help - the Roman one mentioned above didn’t make a dent. And growth doesn’t mean that having a family will be right for everyone - nobody should be a parent if they don’t want to. But for the country as a whole, it will be better if we grow in the 21st century.
Otherwise, we’ll find “we’re #1” slipping to “we’re #4” or “we’re #76.” And that’s not a place America ought to be.
I’m rooting for you,
Marc
@cenedella
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The last thing we need is to continue growing world populations, including the US. The type of growth you mention is responsible for driving carbon emissions, the loss of natural habitat and related species and cleansing plants, and severe disparities in education, income, food, water, and healthcare. Already, there simply isn't enough to go around sustainably, if the population were to continuously grow without fixing certain things first. As you mention, and as others have also proven, you CAN NOT grow your way out of the social security problem, nor any of the other things mentioned above.
Without responsible decisions to improve land use, energy and food sources toward more sustainable options, and to improve living standards and education for existing population, growing the number of people on this planet makes no sense at all. Having lived for 22 years in many different countries outside the US, this is painfully obvious. To pretend it is beneficial is reckless.
To answer another comment: overpopulation is not a real concern. We used to hear about it in the media A LOT in the early 90’s. That was a lot of media propaganda used to push rightwing policy against social support systems. Your Reagan and Thatcher era politics- neoliberal economic ideas like “trickledown economics” that simply aren’t based in facts and economically, were shown to not yield what was pro-ported. The idea that making the people at the top rich with then matriculate down is naive, at best. Jeff Bezos isn’t trickling down and those policies mark a turning point that can directly linked to where we find ourselves today.
To Marc:
You are irresponsible for putting this idea out there without any additional consideration for why this is occurring. Population growth is essential, but until you have a strong infrastructure and social support system to enable it, it’s irresponsible and reckless. Look at the socialist style systems that Roosevelt put in place to alleviate depression and unemployment, what followed? Baby boomers. The end of the war, our position as global industrial leaders (partly because everyone else was destroyed), and the support systems allowed for young people to have families without fear. We don’t have that right now. Telling people simply “have more babies” is how you get people who are ill equipped to handle the reality and finance of babies which become a tax on the system, not fueling it. The United States is barely the richest country ahead of China and unlike China, we haven’t been doing the global infrastructure development that they have for the past 15 years. (New Silk Road project). We also haven’t “raised the floor” like china. They successfully moved a significant amount of their country out of poverty via socialist principles while pressing forward with capitalist initiatives. This country is headed towards the same fate as the Roman’s unless we get back to our greatest export-war. We sell war and it makes us rich. People don’t want it anymore and we don’t produce much else besides IP, that we improperly tax making a few mega rich but fails to fuel the rest of the system (but we also know trickle down economics is a fallacy). Adding more children, if anything, adds more to the lowest echelons of the socio-economic brackets and this country (as many others) profit and was built upon slave labor and cheap labor. But as mentioned earlier, we no longer manufacture. So, maybe think a bit more about how and why population growth should occur, what is necessary for it to do add, and yield what you had in mind when you sent out that blanket directive without much thought other than a privileged perspective. I’d also suggest reading some graduate level economic development books.
Rachel