More deaths than births soon to be national problem

Seventy-five years ago, New York held nearly 50 seats in the House of Representatives — 45 to be exact.

It has 26 today.

It’s not news that rural New York has been losing population, with its rural communities being hit particularly hard. That’s a story throughout the Rust Belt. The real issue is that what has been a regional problem is soon going to be a national problem.

According to a report released this week by the Congressional Budget Office, deaths will outstrip births across the country by 2033, seven years earlier than previous projections. The country’s population will shrink and become older because of people having fewer children and lower projected rates of immigration. This will have an impact on the country’s economic growth, productivity and on programs that seniors rely on like Social Security, where fewer younger people will be paying into the program just as more seniors are drawing benefits.

When the day arrives when the United States has more deaths than births, it will be joining Germany, Sweden, China, Scotland, Japan and a host of other nations already confronting the issue. Another report released this week, this one from the McKinsey Global Initiative, concluded that younger workers in countries with swooning population numbers will have to put off retirement and work longer hours if their nations are to keep pace.

Of course, it’s not simply a matter of urging younger adults to have more children, even with the likes of Elon Musk taking to social media and proclaiming, “Just have kids one way or another or humanity will die in a whimper in adult diapers.” People are having fewer children in part because they get married later, both parents work in many households, and many parents have chosen to concentrate resources on fewer children. Plus, anyone who has been a parent can attest that it can be a demanding and exhausting enterprise – having one or two is just fine for many people.

The reality, too, is that the United States doesn’t make it all that easy for people to have children and be parents. There is no guaranteed paid maternity or paternity leave, and child care is very expensive – in this area, it can cost as much as $1,500 a month to send a toddler to daycare five days a week. That works out to $18,000 a year – almost equaling the cost of college tuition at a state institution.

Other countries make it easier to be parents through support for child care and extended leave for new parents, and those are ideas that should be considered here if we are serious about raising the birth rate.

With a country as wealthy and energetic as ours, decline does not have to be our fate.