I am old enough to remember (as are most of our regular readers) when there was significant concern (if not panic) about the global population. My sense is that this panic probably peaked in the late 1970s, but it did linger for a while. In terms of popular consciousness, Paul Ehrlich dropped his Population Bomb in 1968, and the 1970s were awash in its fallout. By the 1980s it was a kind of background radiation. Of course, other aspects of the environmental movement(s)* were also concerned about the increase in the human population.
I mean, really, the 1960s and 1970s were an era of catastrophization. Charleton Heston seemed to be popping out of every movie warning us of various dooms, whether it was the pitfalls of nuclear holocaust in Planet of the Apes or overpopulation in Soylent Green.** Even the Saturday morning cartoons gave us stuff like Ark II.
I mean, we were all clearly just doomed.***
A new doom appears to be upon us (according to some): too few babies.
Now, before I get into the more ideological (and partisan) aspects of this issue, let’s note some topics of overall relevance. I will also note that while this is not an area of expertise, it is a general topic that I have been aware of for some time. As a student, a key area of interest for me was political and economic development. This meant being well aware of the challenges of population in lower-income countries and the fact that as countries moved up the ladder, birthrates fell. Moreover, I know just enough about comparative social policy to be dangerous and so am well aware of the fact the modern welfare state is predicated, at least in part, on having enough workers earning and paying taxes to fund retirees. I can even throw in that as a (now former) administrator in higher education, I understand how demographic trends can matter in very practical ways.****
All of this is to say that I understand this is a real issue. Too many people is a problem and so are too few. Further, I will state that I do not know what the Goldilocks imperative is for population growth, and, as will be discussed below, there does not appear to be any clear policy guidance on the subject.
I will further state that the only efficacious policy that I am aware of that directly affects the population is immigration. If the United States needs more workers and tax-payers, the easiest solution is to make it easier for people time immigrate to the US. Because, as multiple studies have demonstrated, other policies simply have not had the desired effect of inducing more procreation. Don’t take my word for it, but rather I would point the reader to a recent interview with political scientist and demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba on The Ezra Klein Show.
One is, how do you get a population, if you’re a state, to have fertility rates that go back up above replacement level? Well, you can strip away individual rights. I am not advocating for this. But we have an example of that. Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, he said, I want more Romanian babies specifically. And fertility rates were already low there.
So, what did he do? He kind of did the inverse of what China did during some of its population policies, like the one child policy, taking away contraception and making sure women couldn’t get access to legal abortion. And you did see births increase there. You also saw maternal mortality increase.
This was part of a larger discussion about using policy to increase the fertility rate. The bottom line is that apart from significantly authoritarian actions, there are no policy choices that have demonstrated the ability to increase fertility. It really would require Handmaid’s Tale-esque policy prescriptions to guarantee more babies.
I would note this from the interview as well.
If you just told me about a hypothetical country — you said country X — their total fertility rate is seven children per woman, and that’s the only thing you told me, I could paint a picture of that country for you. And I could tell you a lot of things about that country that were probably not great. I would say, probably women and girls are not being educated. Probably, there’s not great health care. Probably, there are no jobs. And probably, it has poor governance.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you told me that a country had a fertility rate hovering around one child per woman, to some degree, I think that also reflects that there are some things in that society that are broken, that people, women particularly, although I always do hate to put it on the shoulders of women, but in those low fertility societies, it seems to be the case that women are not willing to reproduce the current social structures. They are not working for them to a huge degree, to the point that they are willing to opt out of this idea of marriage and having children, and seek a different path for themselves.
These basic scenarios underscore the importance of the subject at hand.
There is a proximate cause to this discussion, i.e., various claims by J.D. Vance about “childless cat ladies” and that people with children should get more votes than those without. In a broader context, there is global (see, e.g., Victor Orbán in Hungary, among other places) where the notion of fertility has become a major ideological issue.
Two NYT columns this week were what sparked thoughts on this subject, one by Jessica Grosse (Stop Panicking About the Birthrate) and another by David French (Mockery Won’t Increase Fertility).
Grosse’s piece is a combo of anecdotes (old and new) plus references to Sciubba’s work and other empirical findings. It concludes with this:
Rather than generating a panic about birthrates, chiding parents for being honest about their struggles or criticizing those who opt not to have kids, it makes sense to plan for a future in which we continue, in our country, to be below replacement, while still pushing for pro-family policies like universal paid parental leave, because that’s the humane thing to do for parents and children. That’s much more difficult than complaining about childless cat ladies, but it’s smarter policy. It addresses the real way we live now rather than harking back to a version of the past that never really existed.
I think this is essentially correct.
Her PS to the piece is noteworthy because it shows some inherent contradictions in Vance’s (and his ilk’s) position and behavior.
P.S.: I should note that a child tax credit bill that passed with bipartisan support in the House was voted down in the Senate last week. “Republican senators worried that the bill’s expansion of the child tax credit veered into creating a new welfare program, stalling the legislation,” reports my newsroom colleague Andrew Duehren. Senator Vance, who has falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris opposes the child tax credit, didn’t voteon the bill.
French declares himself a “natalist” but also notes the following:
I am, however, skeptical of natalism as a movement. At the political level, it strikes me as mostly futile. It has more promise as a cultural cause, but even then it is often scolding and even malicious. When JD Vance rants, for example, about “childless cat ladies,” he’s not engaged in a coherent cultural argument. He’s mocking those who live differently. When a prominent right-wing activist like Charlie Kirk says that “the childless are the ones that are destroying the country” and adds that “if you’re bad, you probably don’t have children,” he’s doing much the same thing.
And this captures, to me, the way in which a lot of ideologues on this subject come across: basically as trolls in all the negative senses of the word.
Also this:
During my years in fundamentalist Christianity, I also saw a sense of moral superiority develop around large families. Movements like Quiverfull would teach that large families were a sign of religious obedience, and even less extreme believers would often view the single life as somehow suspect — in spite of clear biblical endorsements of singleness.
And then there’s the darkness of natalism as a response to immigration, especially as a response to immigrants of color. The racist “great replacement theory” depends in part on the notion that immigrants are essentially replacing a population that can no longer renew itself. The response is to both shut the doors to newcomers and revitalize the native birthrate.
Like French, I have a backstory that includes many years in fundamentalist churches and I saw the same thing. If you don’t know what the Quiverfull movement is, go here.***** And, again, if you want more people (and not just more white people) I know where you can find them.
Ultimately on a public policy bases, I think Grosee is correct, and it echoes what Sciubba notes in her interview with Klein: society has to adapt to reality rather than trying to force reality to change since no policy options (that are acceptable, at least) exist.
On that point French underscores:
While it’s too much to say that public policy has no effect on the birthrate at all, it’s also the case that there is no clear example of any single policy or suite of policies that elevates the birthrate back to replacement level. When the combination of economic and political equality and access to birth control grants women more control over reproduction, they tend to have fewer children — regardless of their country or culture.
It really needs to be underscored that any policy that guarantees more births is one that controls women and their bodily autonomy (and I don’t just mean abortion).
French is absolutely right to note the following:
It’s also important to emphasize that there is nothing inherently wrong with either singleness or childlessness.
When I think about my immediate family (siblings and siblings-in-law) there is a range, and there is a range for a host of reasons. We range from families with three kids to two to one to none. I come from a family of four, and my wife is from a family of two. Life simply creates different pathways, options, and outcomes. And that is the hallmark of a free society. (My mind also turns to my great-grandparents’ generation and all the children who were conceived and the many who did not make it out of infancy–and it makes me think of my childless great aunt, who I believe lost several children, but who was one of the kindest people I have ever known).
Let me emphasize again: a free society. The notion that others can dictate these choices is about as authoritarian as it gets.
If people have cultural or religious reasons for wanting large families, they have that right. If a person or couple does not wish to have children, they have that right. And, of course, it is often more complicated than simply what a given person or couple wishes.
I also should note that I think this underscores that arguments that marriage is for procreation alone are simply wrong. This is something that was prominent in the anti-same-sex marriage movement and something that I have seen creeping into the discussion of heterosexual couples, along with the notion that there is something wrong with non-procreative sex.
I will go so far as to say that I agree with French on a pronatalist policy agenda:
I support an expanded child tax credit, paid family leave, free school lunches and Medicaid expansion because I believe that each of these policies will help parents and kids regardless of their impact on the birthrate, and if they do have some marginal impact on the number of births in America, then that’s a bonus.
These are inducements and incentives that I think are worthwhile for society.
But if anyone wants to take the notion of limited government and individual freedom and liberty seriously, don’t try to tell people how many kids they should have.
Moreover, denigrating people, a la Vance, for their lack of children is pretty awful stuff.
Look, the fears of over-population in my youth were overblown, and likewise, as per Grosse, it is ridiculous to panic over falling fertility rates now. As with all things, we just need to adapt and, importantly, recognize the importance of individual rights on this subject.
There is a lot more to say on this subject, but this is already a ridiculously long post, so I will end here.
*There really isn’t a monolithic environmental movement, but rather a number of intertwined environmental and conservationist movements.
**I still can’t believe that there is a food product line called Soylent (which I noticed earlier today while checking out this week’s deals on my local grocery store’s app). But I will note that that movie inspired one of my favorite SNL skits of all time.
***On the over-population front I can think of the original Star Trek episode, “The Mark of Gideon” (the image above is from that episode) which is about over-population (although as a kid watching it in re-runs, I wondered why they couldn’t just colonize another planet). Other examples include the movie and TV series, Logan’s Run and Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room! which was adapted into Soylent Green. I am sure that I am forgetting many, many examples. These are just ones off the top of my head.
****Something that is ultimately rather obvious, but is also kind of invisible unless you are paying attention, is that the entire model for higher education in the United States was largely built on the assumption of an ever-growing population. More schools, more programs, more buildings, and so forth, on the assumption that more kids are coming. But if population growth levels (or declines) then they should affect such plans (but many administrators just look for other ways to grow instead of assessing reality). It is a very different thing, for example, to be an administrator at a state flagship, where demand is high versus a regional school, or to be an administrator in Texas or North Carolina versus many New England states.
*****I had some friends who went to church with my wife and I over thirty years ago who had, at one time, subscribed to the Quiverfull movement, so I have been aware of it for some time. By the time we met, they were still very conservative Christians but had rejected the notion of having to procreate a quiver full of children.
