Friday, December 01, 2017

What's good for the president is ...

For various reasons, I chose not to write any op-eds.  It has been months since I sent anything to the editor.  But, ... am thinking that I will send an edited version of this one
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We are rightfully preoccupied with the political theatre in Washington, DC, especially with President Donald Trump’s tweets, and the ongoing developments in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump’s Russia connections.

This also means that we are not paying attention to a number of other issues that will affect the country over the long term, and for which we will need to develop constructive public policies.

One of the trend lines that does not make the headlines is the falling fertility rate in the US. If we do not worry about this now, it will become too late to do anything in the future.

The total fertility rate is the average number of children born to women in a society during their childbearing years. Adjusting for various factors, like kids who might not live to become adults or parents, demographers have presented us with an understanding that the fertility rate has to be about 2.1 children per woman in order for the population to be stable.

Fertility rates higher than 2.1 explain population growth that we see in countries like Nigeria. On the other hand, countries like Japan and Italy are on a path of population decrease because the fertility rates there are significantly below 2.1. In Japan it is 1.46 children per woman and, therefore, the population there is projected to shrink by a third in fifty years. If those trends continue, Japan will have less than half of its current population in a hundred years from now.

Here in the United States, we talk so much about “baby boomers” that we have completely overlooked the fact that we are going through a baby bust. Fertility rates in the US have been staying below that magical 2.1 children per woman. The latest data show that fertility rate has dropped to 1.77 children per woman.

This decrease is not really a surprise. After all, most other economically advanced countries have already experienced such a decline in fertility. The surprise is that the US has been a contrast to Europe and Japan for so long, and is only now showing signs of joining them.

There is, of course, an important reason why the US has been different from Europe and Japan in terms of fertility rates. It is related to a huge public policy issue—immigration.

As reported by the Pew Research Center, “were it not for the increase in births to immigrant women, the annual number of U.S. births would have declined since 1970.” While immigrants accounted for only one in seven Americans in 2015, a quarter of all the births in America were to immigrant women. “Births to women from Mexico, China, India, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, Honduras, Vietnam, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico accounted for 58% of all births to immigrant mothers in the U.S. in 2014.” Even here in Oregon, births to immigrant mothers have offset what would have otherwise been a decrease in births from 1990 to 2015.

In fact, we need to look no further than the White House for these trends. Of the five children that President Trump has, only one was born to his second wife who is from the US, while the other four are the children of immigrant women he married—Melania and Ivana, who respectively immigrated from Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

The facts are clear: Without immigrants, the US too would exhibit the low fertility rates of Europe or Japan.

It has become fashionable, and a politically winning formula, to beat up on immigrants. However, the nativists might not be aware, or perhaps they refuse to acknowledge, that without immigrants and their children, the US population will not grow, but will decrease. And, like Japan, we too will be trapped with a stagnant economy.

The question, therefore, is “so what?”

The research is also very clear that it is not easy to provide incentives to American women to have more kids. Fertility rates are dropping because women, and men too, are intentionally making those choices. People prefer to invest in education and to lead comfortable lives in leisure. Such preferences mean that they choose to have fewer children.

As any parent knows, having children is expensive. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates the average cost of raising a child till adulthood to be about $233,610. USDA notes that housing, food, and childcare account for almost two-thirds of those expenses. If we want women to have more children, then it is clear that higher fertility will not happen unless the American people are willing to pay for those expenses. It is highly unlikely that we will subsidize fertility at such high levels.

The answer to “so what?” is, therefore, obvious and staring at us: Encourage immigration for continued growth and prosperity in the United States.

5 comments:

Ravi Rajagopalan said...

I don't think it is only a question of the expense. Liberating men and women from the linkage between sex and child-birth has had a role to play. The recreational role of sex is more important than its role in sustaining the human race. As we empower women to play a more active role in daily life, they will decline to be relatively unproductive economically between the ages of 25-35 which for a university educated woman, is the best age for reproduction.

Yuval Noah Hariri makes the point that the ability to generate fictions in our mind and sustain them is key to the emergence of Homo Sapiens as the dominant species on the planet, beating out fiercer versions such as H. Neanderthalensis. WE have a fiction in our minds that we are now independent of biology. We aim to be disease-free, live forever, spoil the environment, misuse our bodies - and believe that science (a product of our minds) will find a way to compensate the inevitable pushback from biology.

However there has been little evidence of the law of diminishing marginal returns on this theory. Science has always found a way, but I am pretty certain there are hard limits.

The "connectedness" between us as sentient beings and the existence of the planet needs reinforcing. A child is not a cost centre. A piece of plastic thrown into the bin will one day kill a baby whale. And so on ad nauseum. We know all of this but none of this is internalized.

Until one day, an Anopheles Stephensi mosquito bites us and we contract malaria, and we find that a tiny insect that has survived on the planet from the Cretaceous Period (145 millions years ago)has laid us low.

Sriram Khé said...

1. Am delighted that you too find Harari's observations to be fascinating.
I invite you to catch up on a few previous posts:
https://sriramkhe.blogspot.com/search?q=harari
2. Thanks for reminding me about the killer I hate the most--the damn mosquito. I have blogged in plenty about wiping them out from the face of this planet. These tiny monsters have ruined humans for more than 500,000 years, and it is about time they are eradicated!!!
My earliest note on this is from seven years ago!!!!!
http://sriramkhe.blogspot.com/2010/08/oh-for-world-without-mosquitoes.html

Phew; now, to the content ;)
Your comments are about a couple of different things. Yes, the fertility decline is absolutely related to women deciding that they have better things to do than to be merely barefoot and pregnant.
This "better things to do" means that children do become "cost." I mean, if we employ the first argument that women have better things to do, then we also have to recognize that children are expensive.

Which leads to the other point you seem to make: Children and our existence might be something beyond biology itself. That our existence is about the "connectedness." That goes above and beyond the point of this op-ed. But, that topic always interests me and, therefore, will engage you ;)
As an atheist (well, technically an agnostic because there is no definitive proof for atheism) I still have plenty of support for the religious-minded. Because, I recognize in them the same struggle that all of us have--to explain this "connectedness."
To a large extent, most of us atheists explicitly note the connectedness. As Neil deGrasse Tyson loves to point out, the periodic table elements in the human body is so darn identical to the the elements in the cosmos. Most of us are also the touch-feely people worrying about fellow humans, the climate, the trees and the geese, ... (except the mosquito!)
My point is this: we can talk about children as "costs" and at the same time understand our existence through the "connectedness" ... and we try our best to spread this idea as well

Ramesh said...

When elephants duel, lesser creatures must watch from a safe distance. I am therefore watching respectfully :)

Ramesh said...

A whole day later, I have gathered some courage to come somewhat closer and maybe lob in a shot or two. This is the problem of being opinionated and being unable to stop expressing them !

Te points you have raised are the very reasons why the lot currently in power in your country want to stop immigration. They would be terrified that 58% of all births in the US are to Vietnamese or Guatemalan origin parents. The reason they want to stop immigration is not economic; its cultural. They want "purity". And therefore if your well written op ed is read by powers that be today, it will actually lead to the opposite effect from what you intended.

Sriram Khé said...

Hey, wait a minute ... here at this blog, we have opinions that are based on facts and evidence ... we are not "opinionated" unlike the blowhards over at faux news or at the "White" House ;)

Oh, the powers that be fully understand the demographic dynamics and the urgency to preserve the "white culture" and white supremacy. They also understand that from 2020 on, the White supermacy vote alone will not work for them.

In my case, while I might be a tad political in my blogging or tweeting, I walk a straight line when writing op-eds. I want my commentaries to be logical and evidence-based just like any academic argument will be. All I can/will do is insert adjectives like farcical theatre. Perhaps the only thing the other side can do is claim that these are "alternative facts" ;)