The D-List Vet
Being in a recommendation system.
African women in Africa
A woman just gave birth to 9 babies, lord bless that woman for doing her part
Automation is coming
- Thread starter Wiseborn
- Start date
What happened? Lemme catch up.
Edit: oh never mind. This is one of them threads about shyt I’ve been saying on this website for centuries. While dudes get in their feelings about it.
It’s pretty simple to understand. Most of this has to do with women having different or better opportunities besides fulfilling traditional roles like they did in the past.
Access to higher education and employment for women means decreases birthrates. There maybe some countries able to balance it out probably because they didn’t have toxic ass cultural standards against chicks in the first place. But for the most part, that’s the trend.
Economics impacts this as well because materialism is rampant and people think they need a gazillion dollars to live well. So they think they are too poor to have kids. Also a lot of millennials are lazy AND our economy and job market sucks. It’s a perfect storm.
But for people with hustling spirits, you can thrive.
This is my point. I called it "feminism" but a better less politically charged term would be Female Choice.
Again it was goofy for that chick to say I hate being a Mom But that is the sentiment for a lot of women past and present. Younger women have taken heed.
As for the underlined, expectations has risen. in 2021 James and Florida would not be married. they'd see themselves as "too broke".
You don't even hear rap songs talking about growing up poor as a virtue anymore;
Songs like this wouldn't be made today and really isn't most people's reality:
Here's my other point. In the 80's people were talking about Japan "taking over the world" like how they're talking about China now. And the Japanese were making big investments in america. But then 1989 happened.
Lost Decade (Japan) - Wikipedia
Japan never really recovered and China took over the spot as the 2nd largest economy.
This happened because there's not enough young spenders to buy the shyt that they produce. yes they make great electronics that they export all over the world but they need to be developed and tested in the domestic market first and that's not happening for many reasons one being not enough young people.
It will happen here not now but in a Gen Z kid's lifetime.
By the time late Z's turn 80 China might not be 2nd any more there's a possibilty that a Southern Country might take over.
People matter.
Lost Decade (Japan) - Wikipedia
Japan never really recovered and China took over the spot as the 2nd largest economy.
This happened because there's not enough young spenders to buy the shyt that they produce. yes they make great electronics that they export all over the world but they need to be developed and tested in the domestic market first and that's not happening for many reasons one being not enough young people.
It will happen here not now but in a Gen Z kid's lifetime.
By the time late Z's turn 80 China might not be 2nd any more there's a possibilty that a Southern Country might take over.
People matter.
It’s not gonna change because men are never going to look at their behavior and what they did to contribute to this mess, and women are stubbornly closing up shop. They don’t think the reward is worth the risk.
Except for a few considerate, reasonable individuals who will figure it out, it’s gonna be a shyt show.
Oh well.
Scott Larock
Its hard leaving thecoli but I gotta find a way...
this
COL for a actual family living securely is at least 125k for 2 people, both need to make at least 60k to really survive out here.
They keep on coming out with these articles to scare people but they don't regulate capitalism at all so it runs rampant and people are priced out.
But let's focus on race all day and watch the left vs right beef while they all screw over the middle man/woman for money.
It’s not gonna change because men are never going to look at their behavior and what they did to contribute to this mess, and women are stubbornly closing up shop. They don’t think the reward is worth the risk.
Except for a few considerate, reasonable individuals who will figure it out, it’s gonna be a shyt show.
Oh well.
I'm gonna challenge you on the bolded. I'm not saying it's not still a problem but nikkas trying to holla at UA chicks has essentially stopped. I remember I used to date a chick when we were 16 and we broke up and she started dating a bearded man. She said buddy was 26!!! duke would pick her up from school.
Dude's generally know that any attempt at applying paws will send you immedately to the slam if she or anyone else picks up a phone.
Dude's don't even make power simp stakling songs like this anymore:
By the way you gotta admit this is some macking ass shyt while being super simping at the same time Breh says If any chump tries to rip you off from me....I wouldn't be responsible for my actions thereafter Most nikkas know that if you're chick bushes you to let it go now.
Then there's all the appliances that dudes made to make housekeeping easier to the point that the average bytch needs a recipe to boil water.
Shhhhh. Keep that on the low.
Why it matters:
China’s ‘Long-Term Time Bomb’: Falling Births Stunt Population Growth
Only 12 million babies were born last year, the lowest number of births since 1961, providing fresh evidence of a looming demographic crisis that could complicate Beijing’s ambitions.
Grandparents picking up children from a school in Shanghai. China’s population is aging rapidly while the number of births is falling.Credit...Lorenz Huber for The New York Times
By Sui-Lee Wee
Published May 10, 2021Updated May 11, 2021, 9:19 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
China’s population is growing at its slowest pace in decades, with a plunge in births and a graying work force presenting the Communist Party with one of its gravest social and economic challenges.
Figures for a census conducted last year and released on Tuesday showed the country’s population at 1.41 billion people, about 72 million more than those counted in 2010. This was the narrowest increase recorded since the Communist Party conducted its first census, in 1953.
Only 12 million babies were born in China last year, according to Ning Jizhe, the head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the fourth year in a row that births have fallen in the country. That makes it the lowest official number of births since 1961, when a widespread famine caused by Communist Party policies killed millions of people, and only 11.8 million babies were born.
The figures show that China faces a demographic crisis that could stunt growth in the world’s second-largest economy. China faces aging-related challenges similar to that of developed countries, but its households live on much lower incomes on average than the United States and elsewhere.
delaying marriages, which have declined since 2014. China is not willing to rely on immigration to boost its population. The divorce rate has risen consistently since 2003. Many millennials are put off by the cost of raising children.
turned to robots because they cannot find enough workers.
While most developed countries in the West and Asia are also getting older, China’s demographic problems are largely self-inflicted. China imposed a one-child policy in 1980 to tamp down population growth. Local officials enforced it with sometimes draconian measures. It may have prevented 400 million births, according to the government, but it also shrank the number of women of childbearing age.
As the population gets older, it will impose tremendous pressure on the country’s overwhelmed hospitals and underfunded pension system. China also continues to grapple with a huge surplus of single men that has driven problems such as bride trafficking, an unintended consequence of its family planning rules.
These trends are proving difficult to reverse. Three decades after the one-child policy was introduced, attitudes about family sizes have shifted, with many Chinese now preferring to have only one child.
eased to limit couples to two children. Already, many local governments are allowing families to have three children or more without making them pay fines.
In the decades to come, Beijing will face the difficult task of maintaining strong economic growth — and staying globally competitive — as the labor pool shrinks.
“China’s economy might not in the foreseeable future overtake that of the U.S. as the largest economy,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, a senior China economist at Capital Economics, a research firm. “And the key reason for that is demographic differences.”
China is also maturing far more quickly than most countries, a rate that is rapidly outpacing the government’s meager investments in health care and social services catering to an older population. A central challenge for Beijing is how to help the country’s younger generation care for the swelling ranks of retirees. People under the age of 14 made up 18 percent of the population, up only slightly from 17 percent 10 years ago.
The government wants to raise the retirement age, among the world’s lowest at 60 for men and 50 for most women, to ease pressure on the underfunded pension system. China’s main state pension fund, which relies on tax revenues from its work force, risks running out of money by 2036 if policies remain unchanged, according to research commissioned by the party.
But having people work longer creates its own set of problems, and opposition to delaying retirement has been widespread. Many young Chinese adults worry such a move would make it harder for them to find jobs, and those with children fear they would not be able to rely on their parents for child care should they be unable to retire. Some older adults worry that it would be hard for them to find or hold on to jobs in a society where younger workers are often preferred.
Elsie Chen contributed reporting. Claire Fu contributed research.
China’s ‘Long-Term Time Bomb’: Falling Births Stunt Population Growth
Only 12 million babies were born last year, the lowest number of births since 1961, providing fresh evidence of a looming demographic crisis that could complicate Beijing’s ambitions.
Grandparents picking up children from a school in Shanghai. China’s population is aging rapidly while the number of births is falling.Credit...Lorenz Huber for The New York Times
By Sui-Lee Wee
Published May 10, 2021Updated May 11, 2021, 9:19 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
China’s population is growing at its slowest pace in decades, with a plunge in births and a graying work force presenting the Communist Party with one of its gravest social and economic challenges.
Figures for a census conducted last year and released on Tuesday showed the country’s population at 1.41 billion people, about 72 million more than those counted in 2010. This was the narrowest increase recorded since the Communist Party conducted its first census, in 1953.
Only 12 million babies were born in China last year, according to Ning Jizhe, the head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the fourth year in a row that births have fallen in the country. That makes it the lowest official number of births since 1961, when a widespread famine caused by Communist Party policies killed millions of people, and only 11.8 million babies were born.
The figures show that China faces a demographic crisis that could stunt growth in the world’s second-largest economy. China faces aging-related challenges similar to that of developed countries, but its households live on much lower incomes on average than the United States and elsewhere.
delaying marriages, which have declined since 2014. China is not willing to rely on immigration to boost its population. The divorce rate has risen consistently since 2003. Many millennials are put off by the cost of raising children.
turned to robots because they cannot find enough workers.
While most developed countries in the West and Asia are also getting older, China’s demographic problems are largely self-inflicted. China imposed a one-child policy in 1980 to tamp down population growth. Local officials enforced it with sometimes draconian measures. It may have prevented 400 million births, according to the government, but it also shrank the number of women of childbearing age.
As the population gets older, it will impose tremendous pressure on the country’s overwhelmed hospitals and underfunded pension system. China also continues to grapple with a huge surplus of single men that has driven problems such as bride trafficking, an unintended consequence of its family planning rules.
These trends are proving difficult to reverse. Three decades after the one-child policy was introduced, attitudes about family sizes have shifted, with many Chinese now preferring to have only one child.
eased to limit couples to two children. Already, many local governments are allowing families to have three children or more without making them pay fines.
In the decades to come, Beijing will face the difficult task of maintaining strong economic growth — and staying globally competitive — as the labor pool shrinks.
“China’s economy might not in the foreseeable future overtake that of the U.S. as the largest economy,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, a senior China economist at Capital Economics, a research firm. “And the key reason for that is demographic differences.”
China is also maturing far more quickly than most countries, a rate that is rapidly outpacing the government’s meager investments in health care and social services catering to an older population. A central challenge for Beijing is how to help the country’s younger generation care for the swelling ranks of retirees. People under the age of 14 made up 18 percent of the population, up only slightly from 17 percent 10 years ago.
The government wants to raise the retirement age, among the world’s lowest at 60 for men and 50 for most women, to ease pressure on the underfunded pension system. China’s main state pension fund, which relies on tax revenues from its work force, risks running out of money by 2036 if policies remain unchanged, according to research commissioned by the party.
But having people work longer creates its own set of problems, and opposition to delaying retirement has been widespread. Many young Chinese adults worry such a move would make it harder for them to find jobs, and those with children fear they would not be able to rely on their parents for child care should they be unable to retire. Some older adults worry that it would be hard for them to find or hold on to jobs in a society where younger workers are often preferred.
Elsie Chen contributed reporting. Claire Fu contributed research.
Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications
Fewer babies’ cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.
A family eating hotpot at a restaurant in Beijing. China’s population is projected to contract sharply this century.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
By Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun
May 22, 2021
All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.
Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.
Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.
A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments.
spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff.
“It becomes a cyclical mechanism,” said Stuart Gietel Basten, an expert on Asian demographics and a professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “It’s demographic momentum.”
Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the “demographic time bomb” that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off.
South Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.92 in 2019 — less than one child per woman, the lowest rate in the developed world. Every month for the past 59 months, the total number of babies born in the country has dropped to a record depth.
schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children.
even iPhones.
To goose the birthrate, the government has handed out baby bonuses. It increased child allowances and medical subsidies for fertility treatments and pregnancy. Health officials have showered newborns with gifts of beef, baby clothes and toys. The government is also building kindergartens and day care centers by the hundreds. In Seoul, every bus and subway car has pink seats reserved for pregnant women.
But this month, Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki admitted that the government — which has spent more than $178 billion over the past 15 years encouraging women to have more babies — was not making enough progress. In many families, the shift feels cultural and permanent.
projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
municipalities have been consolidated as towns age and shrink. In Sweden, some cities have shifted resources from schools to elder care. And almost everywhere, older people are being asked to keep working. Germany, which previously raised its retirement age to 67, is now considering a bump to 69.
Going further than many other nations, Germany has also worked through a program of urban contraction: Demolitions have removed around 330,000 units from the housing stock since 2002.
recently increased to 1.54, up from 1.3 in 2006. Leipzig, which once was shrinking, is now growing again after reducing its housing stock and making itself more attractive with its smaller scale.
“Growth is a challenge, as is decline,” said Mr. Swiaczny, who is now a senior research fellow at the Federal Institute for Population Research in Germany.
Demographers warn against seeing population decline as simply a cause for alarm. Many women are having fewer children because that’s what they want. Smaller populations could lead to higher wages, more equal societies, lower carbon emissions and a higher quality of life for the smaller numbers of children who are born.
But, said Professor Gietel Basten, quoting Casanova: “There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”
The challenges ahead are still a cul-de-sac — no country with a serious slowdown in population growth has managed to increase its fertility rate much beyond the minor uptick that Germany accomplished. There is little sign of wage growth in shrinking countries, and there is no guarantee that a smaller population means less stress on the environment.
Image
Children in Munich, Germany. The fertility rate in Germany has increased after the country expanded access to child care and paid parental leave, but it remains below the rate of replacement.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
Many demographers argue that the current moment may look to future historians like a period of transition or gestation, when humans either did or did not figure out how to make the world more hospitable — enough for people to build the families that they want.
Surveys in many countries show that young people would like to be having more children, but face too many obstacles.
Anna Parolini tells a common story. She left her small hometown in northern Italy to find better job opportunities. Now 37, she lives with her boyfriend in Milan and has put her desire to have children on hold.
She is afraid her salary of less than 2,000 euros a month would not be enough for a family, and her parents still live where she grew up.
“I don’t have anyone here who could help me,” she said. “Thinking of having a child now would make me gasp.”
Elsie Chen, Christopher Schuetze and Benjamin Novak contributed reporting.
Fewer babies’ cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.
A family eating hotpot at a restaurant in Beijing. China’s population is projected to contract sharply this century.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
By Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun
May 22, 2021
All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.
Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.
Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.
A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments.
spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff.
“It becomes a cyclical mechanism,” said Stuart Gietel Basten, an expert on Asian demographics and a professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “It’s demographic momentum.”
Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the “demographic time bomb” that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off.
South Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.92 in 2019 — less than one child per woman, the lowest rate in the developed world. Every month for the past 59 months, the total number of babies born in the country has dropped to a record depth.
schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children.
even iPhones.
To goose the birthrate, the government has handed out baby bonuses. It increased child allowances and medical subsidies for fertility treatments and pregnancy. Health officials have showered newborns with gifts of beef, baby clothes and toys. The government is also building kindergartens and day care centers by the hundreds. In Seoul, every bus and subway car has pink seats reserved for pregnant women.
But this month, Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki admitted that the government — which has spent more than $178 billion over the past 15 years encouraging women to have more babies — was not making enough progress. In many families, the shift feels cultural and permanent.
projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
municipalities have been consolidated as towns age and shrink. In Sweden, some cities have shifted resources from schools to elder care. And almost everywhere, older people are being asked to keep working. Germany, which previously raised its retirement age to 67, is now considering a bump to 69.
Going further than many other nations, Germany has also worked through a program of urban contraction: Demolitions have removed around 330,000 units from the housing stock since 2002.
recently increased to 1.54, up from 1.3 in 2006. Leipzig, which once was shrinking, is now growing again after reducing its housing stock and making itself more attractive with its smaller scale.
“Growth is a challenge, as is decline,” said Mr. Swiaczny, who is now a senior research fellow at the Federal Institute for Population Research in Germany.
Demographers warn against seeing population decline as simply a cause for alarm. Many women are having fewer children because that’s what they want. Smaller populations could lead to higher wages, more equal societies, lower carbon emissions and a higher quality of life for the smaller numbers of children who are born.
But, said Professor Gietel Basten, quoting Casanova: “There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”
The challenges ahead are still a cul-de-sac — no country with a serious slowdown in population growth has managed to increase its fertility rate much beyond the minor uptick that Germany accomplished. There is little sign of wage growth in shrinking countries, and there is no guarantee that a smaller population means less stress on the environment.
Image
Children in Munich, Germany. The fertility rate in Germany has increased after the country expanded access to child care and paid parental leave, but it remains below the rate of replacement.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
Many demographers argue that the current moment may look to future historians like a period of transition or gestation, when humans either did or did not figure out how to make the world more hospitable — enough for people to build the families that they want.
Surveys in many countries show that young people would like to be having more children, but face too many obstacles.
Anna Parolini tells a common story. She left her small hometown in northern Italy to find better job opportunities. Now 37, she lives with her boyfriend in Milan and has put her desire to have children on hold.
She is afraid her salary of less than 2,000 euros a month would not be enough for a family, and her parents still live where she grew up.
“I don’t have anyone here who could help me,” she said. “Thinking of having a child now would make me gasp.”
Elsie Chen, Christopher Schuetze and Benjamin Novak contributed reporting.
China said on Monday that it would allow all married couples to have three children, ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country’s declining birthrates and avert a demographic crisis.
The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world’s toughest, have jeopardized the country’s future. The labor pool is shrinking and the population is graying, threatening the industrial strategy that China has used for decades to emerge from poverty to become an economic powerhouse.
But it is far from clear that relaxing the policy further will pay off. People in China have responded coolly to the party’s earlier move, in 2016, to allow couples to have two children. To them, such measures do little to assuage their anxiety over the rising cost of education and of supporting aging parents, made worse by the lack of day care and the pervasive culture of long work hours.
In a nod to those concerns, the party also indicated on Monday that it would improve maternity leave and workplace protections, pledging to make it easier for couples to have more children. But those protections are all but absent for single mothers in China, who despite the push for more children still lack access to benefits.
China Says It Will Allow Couples to Have 3 Children, Up From 2
The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world’s toughest, have jeopardized the country’s future. The labor pool is shrinking and the population is graying, threatening the industrial strategy that China has used for decades to emerge from poverty to become an economic powerhouse.
But it is far from clear that relaxing the policy further will pay off. People in China have responded coolly to the party’s earlier move, in 2016, to allow couples to have two children. To them, such measures do little to assuage their anxiety over the rising cost of education and of supporting aging parents, made worse by the lack of day care and the pervasive culture of long work hours.
In a nod to those concerns, the party also indicated on Monday that it would improve maternity leave and workplace protections, pledging to make it easier for couples to have more children. But those protections are all but absent for single mothers in China, who despite the push for more children still lack access to benefits.
China Says It Will Allow Couples to Have 3 Children, Up From 2
PHOENIX — Luz Portillo, the oldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, has many plans. She is studying to be a skin care expert. She has also applied to nursing school. She works full time, too — as a nurse’s aide and doing eyelash extensions, a business she would like to grow.
But one thing she has no plans for anytime soon is a baby.
Ms. Portillo’s mother had her when she was 16. Her father has worked as a landscaper for as long as she can remember. She wants a career and more control over her life.
“I can’t get pregnant, I can’t get pregnant,” she said she tells herself. “I have to have a career and a job. If I don’t, it’s like everything my parents did goes in vain.”
especially in big, coastal cities. Highly educated women put off having a baby until their careers were on track, often until their early 30s. But over the past decade, as more women of all social classes have prioritized education and career, delaying childbearing has become a broad pattern among American women almost everywhere.
since the 1930s, and a profound change in American motherhood. Women under 30 have become much less likely to have children. Since 2007, the birthrate for women in their 20s has fallen by 28 percent, and the biggest recent declines have been among unmarried women. The only age groups in which birthrates rose over that period were women in their 30s and 40s — but even those began to decline over the past three years.
“The story here is about young women, whose births are plummeting,” said Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College who analyzed county-level birth records for The New York Times. “All of a sudden, in the last 10 years, there’s this tremendous transformation.”
A geographic analysis of Professor Myers’s data offers a clue: The birthrate is falling fastest in places with the greatest job growth — where women have more incentive to wait.
Continue reading the main story
From 1996 to 2007, birthrates grew fastest in small cities and rural areas and slowest in major metro areas.
But one thing she has no plans for anytime soon is a baby.
Ms. Portillo’s mother had her when she was 16. Her father has worked as a landscaper for as long as she can remember. She wants a career and more control over her life.
“I can’t get pregnant, I can’t get pregnant,” she said she tells herself. “I have to have a career and a job. If I don’t, it’s like everything my parents did goes in vain.”
especially in big, coastal cities. Highly educated women put off having a baby until their careers were on track, often until their early 30s. But over the past decade, as more women of all social classes have prioritized education and career, delaying childbearing has become a broad pattern among American women almost everywhere.
since the 1930s, and a profound change in American motherhood. Women under 30 have become much less likely to have children. Since 2007, the birthrate for women in their 20s has fallen by 28 percent, and the biggest recent declines have been among unmarried women. The only age groups in which birthrates rose over that period were women in their 30s and 40s — but even those began to decline over the past three years.
“The story here is about young women, whose births are plummeting,” said Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College who analyzed county-level birth records for The New York Times. “All of a sudden, in the last 10 years, there’s this tremendous transformation.”
A geographic analysis of Professor Myers’s data offers a clue: The birthrate is falling fastest in places with the greatest job growth — where women have more incentive to wait.
Continue reading the main story
From 1996 to 2007, birthrates grew fastest in small cities and rural areas and slowest in major metro areas.
In more than two dozen interviews with young women in Phoenix and Denver, some said they felt they could not afford a baby. They cited the costs of child care and housing, and sometimes student debt. Many also said they wanted to get their careers set first and expressed satisfaction that they were exerting control over their fertility — and their lives — in a way their mothers had not.
“I can not have a kid and not have to feel bad about it,” said Eboni McFadden, 28, who grew up in rural Missouri and is now two weeks from graduating as a medical technician in Phoenix. “I feel powerful that I can make that decision with my own body. I don’t have to have a kid to be successful or to be a woman.”
The biggest shift in birthrates is among women in their 20s.
“I can not have a kid and not have to feel bad about it,” said Eboni McFadden, 28, who grew up in rural Missouri and is now two weeks from graduating as a medical technician in Phoenix. “I feel powerful that I can make that decision with my own body. I don’t have to have a kid to be successful or to be a woman.”
The biggest shift in birthrates is among women in their 20s.