Don’t Call It a Crisis: The Natural Explanation Behind Collapsing Birth Rates

• Nathanial Gronewold
• July 13, 2021
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
• 1 Comment

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Don’t Call It a Crisis: The Natural Explanation Behind Collapsing Birth Rates
An NPG Forum Paper
by Nathanial Gronewold
July 2021

Americans are having far fewer children than in the past, as a recent report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows. The media has declared this a “crisis” that demands government attention. In reality, the plummeting birth rate is a natural and inevitable result of overpopulation and overcrowding. Science has already proven this. Therefore, the only correct action U.S. policymakers should take is no action whatsoever.

Is overpopulation a problem that fixes itself? Let’s consider the evidence.

The total fertility rate for the United States has fallen to an all-time low, according to a May report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1 The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged millions of women and couples to delay having children, pressing childbirths to 4% below last year’s figures.2 Of course, the birth rate has been falling lower for some time now – the pandemic merely exacerbated a pre-existing phenomenon. But the recent news brought out the usual panicked voices. Pundits and the press have declared this trend a “crisis” that demands urgent government action. It’s no such thing, and no government intervention is warranted.

The reality is these statistics and others like them are signs that nature is now enforcing upon the U.S. a natural law that Negative Population Growth has long advocated for as a goal: slowing population growth, to be followed by an ultimate cessation to U.S. population expansion. It’s a rule of nature: nothing grows forever. It’s definitely not a crisis. Rather, in the face of the collapsing birth rates trend – and a possible future decline in U.S. population that may ensue because of it – the only proper response by the U.S. government is no response whatsoever. The same goes for the world as a whole – governments everywhere should avoid all attempts to manipulate birth rates, period.

Why? Because research published from 2002 to 2017 has uncovered incontrovertible evidence that falling human fertility in the U.S. and globally is a natural phenomenon with a natural explanation behind it: rising human population density. Average birth rates are falling nearly everywhere because they must fall, per a natural law governing nearly all animal species, and humans are no exception. The effect is known to ecologists as “density dependence”. Why this can be so confidently asserted is explained here, but density dependence is the explanation. Data unveiled by economists, ethologists, and one of the world’s leading demographers reveal how average birth rates correlate most strongly to average population densities. Moreover, this connection is stronger than any other factors mentioned as probable causes for why women and men are deciding to have fewer children. The Japanese have already noticed the link between population density and plummeting birth rates;3 we Americans have yet to catch on. Because it’s natural, inevitable, and inescapable, it cannot be fixed, so governments should avoid trying to fix it. But others are demanding that they do just that, even though they can’t.

As noted, in May the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released an update on U.S. birth and fertility rates. When the pandemic first forced millions to lock themselves indoors early last year some foolish commentators cheekily predicted a COVID baby boom. More sensible thinkers knew better and foresaw the exact opposite – an impending baby bust. The CDC’s latest data vindicates those serious prognosticators: the pandemic seems to have encouraged Americans to give birth to the fewest number of babies since 1979. The total fertility rate (TFR) for the U.S. in 2020 was about 1.64 births per woman, “another record low for the nation” as CDC reported.4 The total fertility rate was “again below replacement – the level at which a given generation can exactly replace itself,” CDC added.5 The replacement TFR is put at about 2.1 births per woman (the replacement TFR value would fall lower with higher life expectancy, but there is no guarantee life expectancy will rise indefinitely).

Again, the trend is not new for America; the pandemic only exacerbated it. There may be a recovery in TFR later this year, but it won’t change the underlying fact that Americans are increasingly having fewer children. Economists fear dire consequences for the nation’s Social Security system given that its function is to take care of the elderly by taxing the young – with numbers of elderly rising and of youth falling, that math no longer works, right? Thus, the plunging birth rate is deemed a “crisis”,6 and not only in America. The New York Times calls it China’s “time bomb” and “looming demographic crisis”7 using the same loaded language whenever this topic pops up.

There is nothing abnormal about collapsing birth rates in the U.S., Europe, East Asia, and much of the developing world. Rather, this is an expected and predicted outcome of rising population density, especially in colony-forming species like ours. To understand how, let’s consider some fundamentals of population dynamics.  Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.

One Reply to “Don’t Call It a Crisis: The Natural Explanation Behind Collapsing Birth Rates”

• Cecily Westermann

  July 13, 2021

  The Social Security Old Age Benefits funding “problem” can be fairly fixed.
  In order to collect Social Security Old Age Benefits Should require a 100 Quarter
  (25 year) pay-in instead of the current 40 Quarter (10 year) pay-in. Women are
  increasingly in the work force for more than 25-35 years, and the logistics of working
  for decades with more than two children, in itself, can encourage stopping at a sustainable number of children.