birth rates

The CDC reported last week that births increased by just 1 percent in 2024 with the fertility rate (TFR) remaining level at about 1.6, well below the 2.1 level needed to maintain the population level through births alone (i.e. without immigration).

At the same time, the Guttmacher Institute estimated that clinician-provided abortions in 2024 in states without a total abortion ban increased also by slightly less than 1 percent from 2023. There were additional abortions of an undetermined number that were not clinician provided.

The Trump Administration is considering ideas to increase the birth rate, among them a $5,000 baby bonus, tax credits for children, increasing the availability of IVF, and awarding medals to mothers of a certain number of children. Worldwide incentives of this sort have been largely money wasted. My October 16, 2024 post talks about Norway and Hungary’s futile efforts to increase their birthrates. At most, incentives have speeded up childbearing but not increased the number of desired children. Russia awards an Order of Parental Glory to parents of large families. It hasn’t stopped the decline in the Russian TFR. A similar award in France has had no effect either.

The Administration’s cutting of Title X funding for family planning and threatened cuts to Medicaid program (as well as criminalizing abortion if they seek a nationwide ban) will perhaps serve to increase unintended childbearing, especially among teens. The decrease in the national TFR has come because of a reduction in teen pregnancy over the years largely due to better and longer-lasting contraception. Teens and young adults are also reporting having less sex. Criminalizing abortion further and reducing access to contraception may serve as further deterrents to sex and hence pregnancy, but I suspect the pregnancy and childbearing rates will rise among those without access to private family planning services, i.e. the poor and minorities, exactly the groups that the conservative White Replacement Theory folks don’t want to reproduce.

The issues around infertility and IVF are tying the Administration in knots given the sway of absolutist anti-abortion people in policy circles. The imperatives of couples wanting a child by any means often outweigh their beliefs on abortion.

The causes of infertility in males and females are debated, but one thing is sure: sexually transmitted infections can cause infertility. And the Administration by cutting reproductive health care programs will be increasing STIs and hence infertility.

Who ever said politics makes sense.

Amid the din about childless cat ladies, you may have missed the NY Times and Washington Post’s articles this week on the movements in Russia and the US to increase the birthrate, or rather the birthrates of some segments of their populations.

There have long been calls in America, starting in the mid 19^th Century, for white America to increase its birthrate. The Know-Nothing Party rose in response to Irish-Catholic immigration of 1848 and the fears of white Protestants that they would lose power. Hence the criminalization of birth control and abortion because white men didn’t want their white wives using them (the fact that women of color would be banned also didn’t initially matter in their cradle competition). The white Protestants went all in on their eugenics when they later targeted poor or immigrant women with hysterectomies, and legislation requiring sterilization for unfit women.

The Great Replacement Theory that many US conservatives tout is old whine in a new bottle. It is immigration again that is the political lever that these conservatives are using to raise white fears of being replaced. Since they have already succeeded in criminalizing abortion in much of the country, birth control is next. Count on it.

In Russia, the Washington Post reported that Putin said the following: “Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven or eight children, and maybe even more,” Putin declared to an audience of ultraconservative religious and political figures who had convened in the State Kremlin Palace in November. “We should preserve and revive these wonderful traditions.”

Russia has a TFR of 1.4. The US is 1.6 (the rate for white women is slightly less than that of African-American and Hispanic women). Russia is fighting a war, and men are leaving the country. Russia is kidnapping Ukrainian children to replenish the youth of the country. Putin, like US conservatives, seeks a country based on Orthodox Christianity and nationalism. Putin said, “Making sure Russians have as many children as possible is the underlying goal of our state policy.”

Women are a means to this end for both US and Russian nationalists. Women’s rights are disposable.

See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/30/russia-putin-antifeminism-women-children-society/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3e88816%2F66a9b812b115535658dc2a42%2F60a4ff32ae7e8a50b536ca00%2F36%2F61%2F66a9b812b115535658dc2a42

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/why-jd-vance-worries-about-childlessness-00bb96cb