While the US Government can try and help things by introducing family-friendly policies such as a family tax code, flexible working hours or reducing the cost of college, these won’t change the cultural shift in the US.

Decline in Child Rearing – “Late-Modern Exhaustion”

Marcus Roberts

A very good piece from Ross Douthat that appeared in the New York Times a couple of days ago is well worth a read. In it, he discusses the Unites States’ advantage that it has historically had over its rivals: a robust birth rate and expanding population.  As he states:

“It’s a near-universal law that modernity reduces fertility. But compared with the swiftly aging nations of East Asia and Western Europe, the American birthrate has proved consistently resilient, hovering around the level required to keep a population stable or growing over the long run.

America’s demographic edge has a variety of sources: our famous religiosity, our vast interior and wide-open spaces (and the four-bedroom detached houses they make possible), our willingness to welcome immigrants (who tend to have higher birthrates than the native-born).”

However, that is the historic position. Douthat goes on to cast doubt that this demographic advantage will continue for the US. 

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