Archive for May 6th, 2009

I have a column in this morning’s USA Today called “Bring on the Baby Boom.” It’s a demographic puzzle: Why does the USA have a much higher total fertility rate than our Western European (and Japanese) counterparts? In some cases, the numbers aren’t even close. An American woman can be expected to have 2.12 children over her lifetime, vs. 1.2 in Japan. We do have high rates of unplanned pregnancies, both among teens and grown-ups who should know better, so that’s something. Perhaps we’re more religious, though Catholic Italy and Spain have very low TFRs of around 1.3. We have a growing Hispanic population, and Hispanic American women have slightly higher fertility rates than white women, but a country like Sweden also has a high immigration rate from countries with higher fertility rates, and they’re still at 1.67. And Sweden is supposedly very child-friendly, with year-long maternity leaves and the like.

Indeed, what’s most interesting about all of this is that, for all people fret about work-life balance and how “hard” it is in America to raise children with limited social support, the reality is that America’s total fertility rate has been rising as women’s workforce participation rates have been rising as well. In 1976, our TFR hit a low of 1.76, and 47.3% of women were in the labor force. In 2007? Our TFR was 2.12 and about 59% of women were in the labor force. These days, increasingly, women think they can have their 2 kids, and participate in the larger economic world as well. I think this is worth celebrating.