Red Wins In The End?

I recently wrote a blog post in which I referred to the declining birth rate in China.

This is despite the fact that in 2016 China abandoned the one-child policy it had in place for almost 45 years. In fact, recent data from China's National Bureau of Statistics shows that births in that country dropped to the lowest level since 1961---15.2 million births. That is 2 million less than China had in 2017.

Final data on births in the United States for 2017 has recently been reported and the number of births in the United States hit a 30-year low according to this Wall Street Journal article.

3,853,472 births were reported for 2017. That is down 2% from 2016.

If you read my last post, these declining birth rates are great news for anyone concerned about man-made climate change. Fewer children and fewer people means lower carbon emissions. If we can get it down to zero we know we will be fine!

The total fertility rate for women is now estimated at 1.765. That is the average number of babies that a woman is projected to have over her lifetime. A fertility rate of 2.100 is required in order to maintain a stable replacement rate for the population over time. That is the lowest TFR since 1978.

However, most of our biggest economic and geopolitical competitors are worse off than we are on this score.

Here is a graphic of U.S. births since 1950.

You can see the "Baby Boom" period that followed World War II and reached its peak between the years of 1953 and 1964. In each of these 11 years births exceeded 4 million.

This was followed by what I call the "Baby Dearth" years between 1971 and 1979. 1970 was the only year in the decade of the 1970's that births exceeded 3,600,000.

We had a "Baby Boomlet" that started around 1989 and lasted until 2010 with a slight pause between 1994-1999.

Since a high of 4,300,000 births in 2007 we have seen a decrease of almost 500,000 births per year compared to 10 years ago.

The highest numbers of babies are born to mothers between the ages 25-29 (1,123,024). That works out to 97.9 births for every 1,000 women in that age group.

There were 1,091,395 babies born to mothers aged 30-34. However, due to the fact that there are fewer females in this age group, this age group actually has a higher fertility number than the 25-29 age cohort---100.3 births for every 1,000 women.

Another way to look at it is that for every woman you see in a year between the ages of 25-34 there is about a 10% likelihood she will give birth during the year.

For women age 35-39 the number of births per 1,000 women is cut in half to 52.2 (5 in 100). At age 40-45 it is 11.6 (1 in 100).

Part of this decline is choice. Women at this age have already had children and do not want more. However, the biggest factor is age.

There is a direct correlation between maternal age and fertility and there is a pronounced downward rate of fertility beginning at age 30. It takes a very sharp dive after age 35 as this chart from The Women's Eye website shows.

Although women are generally marrying later due to career choices and other reasons, the biological science regarding fertility has not changed. This is also a factor in the reduced numbers of births. Later first births necessarily limits the subsequent number of births for that woman.

Age is also a factor regarding male fertility but that process begins about 10 years later and is not as severe as this chart from the British Fertility Society shows.

On the other side of the age spectrum, teen births continue to decline. The teen birth rate in 2017 was 18.8 (2 in 100) which is the lowest ever recorded. By comparison, it was three times higher in 1990.

This is particularly good news regarding Medicaid spending.

43% of all the babies born in 2017 were paid by Medicaid. However, 77.5% of births by mothers under the age of 20 are paid by Medicaid.

The other interesting item I found in the data is that women in red (conservative) states are having more babies than in blue (liberal) states.

Here are the states (and D.C) with the lowest total fertility rates--- all less than 1.7 births per woman.

California
Oregon
Colorado
New York
Vermont
New Hampshire
Maine
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Pennsylvania
District of Columbia

Every one of these states (and D.C.) voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 with the exception of Pennsylvania..

Here are the states with the highest total fertility rates---all higher than 1.9 per woman.

Alaska
Idaho
Utah
North Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska
Kansas
Texas
Iowa
Arkansas
Kentucky

Every one of these states voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

I was also surprised that states like Ohio and Indiana had higher total fertility rates than Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

If these trends continue it is pretty clear where this takes us. After all, demography is destiny.

Red wins in the end if conservative women continue to outproduce liberal women. Of course, that also assumes that the education system along the way does not totally brainwash the kids who have conservative parents.

Now you also know why the Democrats so desperately want to continue allowing so much illegal immigration to occur.

Who would think you could learn so much from birth statistics?