There is no baby-boom – there is a birth-dearth. And, yes, there is economic stagnation and looming long-term economic decline, but this is exacerbated (or perhaps caused by) the decline in birth rates. We have witnessed this in the disastrous economic situation throughout Europe, which is due in part to extremely low birth rates. Europe’s fate appears increasingly likely for the United States. We are not having enough babies to replace our current population levels.

In view of the many public efforts to increase access to contraception and sterilization, it is reasonable to suppose that we face a baby-boom crisis of epic proportions. An impending critical situation would make the proposed economic stimulus plans in 2008 more reasonable. The proposed plans included tens of billions of dollars for contraception and sterilization.

Surely a looming demographic explosion justifies the Affordable Care Act, and its oft-critiqued HHS mandate that offers contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs with no out of pocket costs. Supporters of the stimulus plans stated that fewer births would lead to cost savings for financially strapped states, and the HHS mandate was justified by the Institute of Medicine because “cost savings due to contraceptive use [are] estimated to be 19.3 billion.”

These initiatives might be indicative of a society that is having way too many babies, a burdensome road that cannot be continued. Economic crash, poverty, and a loss of freedom must be averted, so turn on the lights, use “protection,” but whatever you do, stop having babies, America!

Unfortunately, this perception is far from reality. There is no baby-boom – there is a birth-dearth.And, yes, there is economic stagnation and looming long-term economic decline, but this is exacerbated (or perhaps caused by) the decline in birth rates.

We have witnessed this in the disastrous economic situation throughout Europe, which is due in part to extremely low birth rates. Europe’s fate appears increasingly likely for the United States. We are not having enough babies to replace our current population levels. More specifically, married couples are having too few children, and increasingly, babies are being born outside of the stable environment of a home with a mother and father.

This is made clear by the Centers for Disease Control’s gloomy numbers from a recent report on preliminary data of births for 2011. Comprehensive analysis of the entire report is beyond the scope of this article, but we should note two troubling trends that merit greater discussion and response from society.

Total Drop in Births

Preliminary numbers indicate that 3,953,593 babies were born in the United States in 2011. This is a drop of 1% from 2010 and nearly a 10% drop since 2007. Last year, the general fertility rate was 63.2 births per 1000 women, which is the lowest rate ever reported for the United States.

The total fertility rate (estimated number of lifetime births per woman) was 1,894.5 births per 1,000 women. This drop in total fertility rate is critical because for a population to replace itself, a minimum of 2.1 children must be born for every woman. Additionally, this past year women gave birth to a first child at the lowest recorded rate in the history of the United States.

These numbers are suggestive of troubling trends that indicate that we are moving further toward European birth rates and away from the level necessary to avoid having an upside down family tree that cannot support the elderly.

A nation with a burgeoning number of social assistance programs (Social Security, Medicare, Affordable Care Act, etc) simply cannot survive economically if there are too few of “the next generation” working to support prior generations. Josh Sanburn recently notes in Time Magazinethat “we’re becoming Europe. At least, that’s what a long line of U.S. birth-rate figures seems to be telling us. And that’s bad news for the future of the country.” That bad news is the collapse of the social safety net and perhaps even, the economy itself. The birth dearth is simply unsustainable.

Unmarried Women

A staggering 40.7% of all births to women in the United States were to unmarried women. While this is a slight decline (1%) in the percentage of births by unmarried women, the number remains historically high. For the sake of comparison, 33% of children in 2000 and 18.4% of children in 1980 were born out of wedlock.

While these are unsettling numbers as a whole, they are even more startling when broken down by race: 17.2% of all births by Asians/Pacific Islanders and 29.1% of all births by non-Hispanic whites are outside of marriage. Additionally, 53.3% of all births by Hispanics are outside of marriage, and 72.3% of Non-Hispanic Black children born in the United States last year were born to unmarried women.

These numbers point to a number of distressing trends in American society.

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