“If we want to continue leading the world, we simply must figure out a way to have more babies"

Fertility: 

Some of Us are Just More Productive

by David Paul Deavel

My wife and I are part of the 1 percent—so we’re used to criticism. We’ve made a bundle—heck, a number of bundles—and while the rest of the nation seems to be in a slump, we’re just making more. We’re part of the false cult of quantity at the expense of quality. Our consumption hurts the environment. Our ridiculous tax breaks reward our selfishness at others’ expense. To give us larger breaks is so ridiculous a suggestion even the Wall Street Journal calls us tax “gangsters.” But we, I reply, are the makers. It’s right that our tax burden is lower, since we ultimately provide the raw material for jobs, innovation and future tax revenue.

Of course, when I say we’re in the top 1 percent, I mean kids. I can’t prove conclusively that we’re 1-percenters, but given that 2010 census data showed that only 1.9 percent of American homes had seven or more members, I think it’s likely. Many seven-plus households are surely multigenerational, and 2012 census data shows the average number of children under 18 per household living with parents was 1.88.

We ended 2012 with five. No. 6, God willing, will emerge from the womb in late summer.

Jonathan Last’s new book What to Expect When Nobody’s Expecting is the latest report on a world in which there are fewer children, more old people and a soon-to-be shrinking population. He emphasizes the negative effects of this trend on innovation, tax revenue and trade. One needn’t be a Keynesian economist to realize that some demand is necessary for an economy to function. 

Last warns that we now face economic consequences seen more drastically in Japan’s two-decades-plus slump. “If we want to continue leading the world,” he writes, “we simply must figure out a way to have more babies.”

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