The WaPo has an article discussing reasons for falling birthrates. OK, yeah. Lots there. But the story is never the full story unless the lens of generational change is laid over the data. (That’s my stance, at least.)
Societal moods (or what we also call eras) affect birthrates, which always go down in Fourth Turnings, or “the winter of our times.” It’s a cycle, and the current “fourth turning” is 2008 to about 2032.
FWIW, the Boomer generation wasn’t/isn’t the massive generation it’s played out to be. It was massive vis-a-vis the generation BEFORE it (the Silent generation, and the children who were born during the last Fourth Turning of, essentially, the Great Depression through V-Day and the close of WWII).
GenXers coming after Boomers were actually 26% larger than Boomers, but they are the Lost, neglected, kicked-to-the-curb and ignored generation, and don’t get much societal attention. But it’s the shift “out of the dark” and out of winter and into “Spring” (for this cycle starting, likely, around 2033, the prior cycle, starting in 1943) that will bring birth rates back up.
Put it on your calendar if you don’t believe. Check the birthrates in 2037 and you’ll likely see an uptick starting. By 2045, it’ll be a veritable “boom,” once again, for in spring, the desire to nest, procreate and celebrate newness and freshness and fecundity becomes the societal mood and era of the times.
Want more on this? Read demographer Neil Howe.
https://www.demographyunplugged.com/p/on-cat-ladies-and-fertility-rates
https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/98487-will-us-fertility-rates-ever-rise-again?single_item=true
