http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/12/us-births-decline/1880231/ We have a surplus of people with not enough jobs for them since more jobs in the US are either outsourced or replaced by technology. So it seems a declining birthrate makes sense, as people are unable to afford a family due to a declining middle class, you should see a downtrend in births and immigration. This will happen until we reach some sort of equilibrium where there are now enough jobs for the population and the economy supports the ability of families to have children and raise them.
The bad part is that you have a declining labor force (old people retiring).... that results in less people "pulling the cart" and more people "in the cart" so to speak. Also, as you have a large generation like the Baby Boomers retire, they will reduce their spending substantially, which sort of causes more harm to the labor markets. So even though we have a lot of people leaving the work place, jobs are still hard to come by because they are evaporated with lack of demand (from the reduction in spending). I think this is why you'll see QE to infinity, trying to counter balance the deflationary forces that are inherently due to demographics. Maybe it will work, maybe not. I have no clue.
1) The "bad" thing is that the decline in birth rates is occuring most notably amongst "better educated" people who are more likely to advance the economy. :eek: 2) Warehouse workers and dishwashers won't propel things "forward and upward".
Economy is bad, people do not feel safe to have a baby Marriage rates are all time low Birth rates are all time low Marriage age is all time high Non white population is gaining percentage everyday. Except for Asians, most non white people are not as economic contributors as whites. The statistics are started on 1963 so we don't know what happened before, but even though, it is pretty bad in terms of demographics. Can you believe even the illegals' birth rate is going down big time. Who could have imagined that? USA has to import more people who would pay into the Soc Sec system but then there not enough jobs. Also, budget deficit is booming. It is growing 10% every year even with the ultra low interest rates. As a result, we are in a down spiral. You should be crazy to have a child now.
Couldn't have said it better myself. That echoes my sentiments. The birthrate issue is always interesting and we've seen in the past the same sort of "blips" during recessions, etc...and that is the natural rationale for people who actually have to PAY for the child's upbringing. OTOH, when you have such a large segment of "takers" who actually BENEFIT from having more children, then you start to see how the US is slowly, but surely, transforming into a 3rd world country. The bottomline is that we need the most capable and responsible citizens having children, not the LEAST capable.
What is interesting is the low quality/low educated people are popping out kids left and right. Why? because they are rewarded for not studying and not working.Marriage is penalized as well, so you incentivize bastard children because married couples are much hard to qualify. This is one reason you see in the hood lots of welfare queens with 9 illiterate halfwit bastard kids in tow and no man around. And those who do study and do work are penalized. They are penalized by high college debt, they are penalized by high cost of daycare,medicine,food etc. So you actually create a disincentive for those who are educated and did the right things. So what happens is a big drop in birth rates in the class of people you do want having children. And you create an incentive for the fuckups/lazy and the halfwits to produce more children. So what you are seeing in America is a form of Dysgenics.
The culprit for all of this is student loan debt. People are putting off marriage, having less children and putting off buying a house because they can't affort these and pay their student loans at the same time.
Increasing human population creates many problems - but doesn't solve any. Falling birthrates might make things difficult for a generation or two as the population actually shrinks and some way must be found to care for the 'bulge' of geriatrics, but from a long run perspective it's desperately necessary and we ought to be jumping for joy. It means that (assuming we also cut off immigration at some point) the U.S. will top out at a huge but endurable 450m people or so, rather than become a jam-packed hellhole with a totally polluted and destroyed environment, teeming with billions of people living in abject poverty, like India or China.
Glad to see the subject of my thread ("A demographic whirlpool, too ?) started some weeks ago continuing receiving traction. It is an incredibly significant subject that is easily overlooked. With respect to your link... (1) I made reference at my post "Wake up call !" (in the link I provided below) some days ago to Jonathan Last's book within the context of Lou Dobb's t.v. show interview of the author Last (which my comments about the book on my post came from that interview).... http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3738372#post3738372 (2) even though it is redundant to my post, I would like to use your link in a fresh post at my thread.