If only we baby boomers had been a bit more promiscuous, America wouldn’t be in this fix.
Instead, we blundered into an economic crisis of our own making — or rather not making. As in not making enough babies. (It turns out the peace and love generation was proficient at neither.) We started a long, disquieting, downward trend in baby-making.
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, America’s annual birthrate started dipping below “replacement-level fertility” rates way back in 1971. (The same year Disney World opened in Orlando. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.)
Demographers calculate that a society requires 2.1 births for every woman age 15 to 45 to maintain a stable population. Fall below the magic equation, the population shrinks, gets older and considerably more crotchety.
Since 2007, the decline has become precipitous. Nowadays, Americans are cranking out barely 1.6 children per woman, according to the CDC study. Just 3.8 million babies were born in 2020, the fewest since 1979.
These findings indicate that the great ongoing labor shortage crippling America’s economic recovery might well be attributable to this 50-year decline in fertility
