For the first time ever, the global population will enter a period of sustained decline according to the New York Times. Brad Wilcox, professor at the University of Virginia and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently went on the Faith and Law podcast to discuss the issue of falling birth rates in America and his assessment that Congressional Democrats’ proposed American Families Plan will not help to alleviate the problem. Some Christians have advocated for subsidized family policy to take a more central role in potential bipartisan legislation.
Wilcox began by discussing the structural changes which are bound to occur in an aging society. Surprisingly, American fertility rates (1.68 births/woman) are at the same level as Japan in 1988. They have continued to fall in Japan since then, and as a result Japanese society has experienced a terrible rise in social isolation and corresponding despair.
China has also seen a recent reduction in births, leading to a scrapping of the former One Child Policy. Wilcox added that he suspected all efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to depress birth rates will soon be reversed to instead increase them. The Chinese are also implementing a “masculinity curriculum” in their schools as well to strengthen their culture around masculinity. Wilcox observed that in South Korea men tend to be more feminine and that the Chinese government likely doesn’t want their own citizens going down the same path.
Sadly, in the United States it’s the poor and middle class that have been the hardest hit by declines in fertility. Those with only a high school diploma or some college education have seen the sharpest drops in childbearing rates since the 1970s. Wilcox criticized Republicans for “talking a big game” about the importance of the family in American life but failing to prioritize families in the policy realm.
“Too many Republicans are stuck in a Reagan style approach to public policy where you want to talk a good game but not advance the ball when it comes to working and middle class families,” Wilcox charged.
The University of Virginia professor said one major problem with the American Families Plan is that it presupposes a “workist” paradigm of what’s good for Americans.
“Democrats and progressives today, unfortunately, are more ‘Workist,’ and what I mean by that is there’s this idea that work is the source and summit of our lives, work is where we get our status, our meaning, even our happiness, more so than family or faith,” Wilcox described. “This is given an explicit voice by Susan Rice (White House Domestic Policy Advisor) in talking about the American families plan when she says she wants parents to be in the workforce, especially mothers.”
The reason for the “workist” perspective taking priority is that “our policy discussions are driven by well-educated white people.” While households with dual professional earners tend to prefer subsidized childcare and paid leave, families that are middle income, lower income or Hispanic prefer a situation where one parent can stay home with the kids. As Wilcox described: “Elites tend to prefer workist policies like daycare and paid leave, but ordinary Americans are more likely to prefer direct cash assistance for their families and also wage subsidies as opposed to things like daycare.”
Wilcox also cautioned optimism about the limits of what subsidized daycare can accomplish. In the 1990s Quebec introduced inexpensive daycare, but the result was a litany of social problems associated with the child care centers. In the long term, children who spent significant time in government-sponsored daycare had worse health outcomes, lower life satisfaction, were more likely to exhibit social and emotional problems and had higher crime rates.
Although the state-subsidized facilities were supposed to be of high quality, the reality was that excellent child care is hard to mass produce. Many of the children would have been better off being looked after by their parents.
Against the Biden proposal and what he viewed as Republicans’ empty rhetoric, Wilcox proposed some solutions. “I’m in favor of a family allowance that looks like this: we would give families $4,000 per year per child. I would give more money to younger kids than older kids, given the way in which parents are at home with younger kids more than older kids. I would have it paid out monthly to cover expenses as they come up for rearing kids whether it’s rent or mortgage or whatever. I would look for policies that don’t penalize marriage as unfortunately the EITC and Medicaid tend to do, and I would look to policies that could cover a broad swathe of American families, including working and middle class families.”
Although these programs would expand the role of the Federal government, Christians will have to weigh having a smaller government against reversing declines in childbearing and fertility. While a bigger government isn’t ideal, it may be the only way to stop our demographic crisis.
Comment by David on June 16, 2021 at 6:09 am
While women entered the workforce during WWII, the big shift came when US wages for men stagnated for a whole generation and more. A second income became a necessity if you wanted to educate your children. In some ways, this was a byproduct of the decline of unions. State universities, even medical schools, in other advanced countries are often free. New York City had its “Free Academy” (now the City University) in 1847, though the financial crisis of the 1970s caused tuition to be imposed. This was recently reversed.
I watch NHK World, the Japanese equivalent of the BBC in English. Population decline there is treated in a matter of fact way. Rural villages have been abandoned, transit lines eliminated for lack of passengers, schools and even colleges have closed, and worker shortages exist for truck drivers and other occupations. The use of immigrants there is still limited. Japan also has a very large elderly population due to their longer lifespans and financing pensions and healthcare is more difficult with fewer working age people. China imposed its population restrictions for fear that population growth would overwhelm food production. The one child policy has produced a serious gender imbalance with families preferring males. These excess men are now unable to find mates.
Comment by Diane on June 17, 2021 at 1:15 am
My mother went back to work after all four of her children were in public schools. Her salary was needed to help with college expenses for my parents’ four children.
I chose not to have children, having been bullied by a teacher for an entire year in high school. I am a red-head and said teacher refused to call me by my preferred name. Instead, he focused on this one biological trait and whenever I was called upon, I was “Carrotop” or “Reds”. Afraid that any children I might have would inherit my hair color and face bullying, I used contraception while married for more than a decade. I add this story because some evangelical teachers think they should be able to refuse to call a student by the student’s preferred name.
My cousin has no children – she had an abortion because her child would be biracial and discriminated against in the 1960s. Racism has a cost.
I know young married women who’ve chosen not to have children, fearful the state will not allow them to have an abortion if fetal testing indicates serious development issues. They don’t want to be put through the emotional stress of being forced to continue the pregnancy against their will. Forced-birth policies come with a cost: lower pregnancy rates.
Just sayin’
Comment by Dan W on June 17, 2021 at 9:14 pm
So… hair coloring never occurred to you as an option?
Just askin’
Comment by Diane on June 17, 2021 at 11:30 pm
Absolutely not. Parents wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. If you recall, when Princess Diana gave birth to son Harry, Prince Charles expressed displeasure with Harry’s having red hair.
The point is teachers can harm students when they intentionally refuse to use a student’s name, substituting it for another.
Comment by Steve on June 18, 2021 at 7:51 am
Diane, you told a different story previously (why you didn’t have kids). Anybody can look it up that cares to. At the time, I said it sounded like you’d tried your best. I can’t say that about your new story. I don’t even believe the new story; yeah, your teacher may have called you names, no, I can’t believe that’s the reason or even a minor reason you didn’t have kids.
Comment by Barbara on June 18, 2021 at 9:54 pm
The birth rates in America have been going down since at least 1900. But, people still had bigger families in the 1950s than today. One reason would be it was easy for a husband to support his wife and four or five children. A man could have a low paying job and still be able to put food on the table and pay the rent and make it to a job, while the wife might do part time work or just stay at home. The schools and churches were pro-family and no one on TV was telling anyone any different. Today, the kids are told in school that the Christian family is not good at all. Most of the sex ed books aren’t family oriented, but are perverse. A whole bunch of problems came about for the Christian family after the 1978 California No Fault Law, a law backed by the Communist Lenore Weitzman, who said the law was about getting rid of Christian marriage, which it has. Something like 15% of the marriages in America today are Christian, according to Weitzman- a plus in her view. And, we’ve been brainwashed regarding the population bomb. So, we have little support for families, we’ve de-incentivized marriage, and done so many things anti-family and anti-child that there is no room to list them all here. We’re in a mess. There are ways out of the problem besides giving more money to poor people, which we have been doing for years and years. We’ve had welfare, free housing, free maternity care, and free clinics, and you name it for years and it hasn’t worked. There are answers, and one of them is to stand up for Christian values and pass them down to our children.