A Politico journalist, quoting vice presidential candidate JD Vance, has commented on the “dangerous and destabilizing” effects of America’s falling birth rates, such as social security insolvency, less economic growth, and a smaller, older workforce.
The article explained that the replacement rate for a stable population is 2.1 children per woman, and the current United States rate average is far below this rate, at 1.6 children per woman. The US birth rate peaked in the 1960s and has steadily decreased since then, with a 3% decrease since 2022.
The president and CEO of the Population Reference Bureau, Jennifer Sciubba, said, “I get three or four journalists calling a week now about low fertility and shrinking populations.”
“People are now seeing that this trend is real and speculating about the impacts,” Sciubba remarked.
Vice presidential candidate JD Vance has expressed concern regarding the dropping birth rates, saying the issue is “catastrophic.”
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“If your society is not having enough children to replace itself, that is a profoundly dangerous and destabilizing thing,” Vance stated.
Another demographer, Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute, has built a model showing projected population growth. Without the influx of immigrants, and just accounting for births and deaths, the US population will start falling in the 2030s.
The falling birth rate would affect Social Security because there would be more retirees than workers, making it more difficult to fund the program. It also will decrease economic productivity due to the shrinking number of workers, who will be mostly older.
The article mentioned that immigration currently offsets these effects, but if immigration is significantly reduced, the effects will become more noticeable, Sciubba stated, “What’s on my radar is, ‘If immigration falls but there’s a growing awareness about population aging and low fertility, what are the government policies that follow to encourage more births?’”
LifeNews Note: Grace Porto writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
