America’s birth rate continues to fall, reaching a new record low in 2017, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year, about 3.8 million babies were born in the U.S., which is 2 percent lower than in 2016, and the lowest number of births in 30 years, according to the report.
The “general fertility rate” is the rate of births to women between the ages 15 to 44. In 2017, that rate was about 60 per thousand, which is three percent (3%) lower than in 2016, and the lowest recorded rate since the government began keeping track of the birth rate in 1909.
–Birth rates for teens continued to fall, as they have since the early 1990s. In 2017, they dropped 7 percent from the year before.
–Rates for women in their twenties hit record lows. They fell 4 percent.
–Perhaps most surprising, birth rates for women in their thirties fell slightly, dipping 2 percent for women ages 30 to 34 and 1 percent for women 35 to 39. The birthrate in this demographic had been rising, and women in their early 30s recently became the age group that has the most babies.
–Women in their early forties were the only group with higher birth rates in 2017, up 2 percent from last year. The geriatric pregnancy rate has been rising since the early 1980s, as more and more women put career first and put off having children until the last biologically possible years.
Notably, the CDC found that the current generation is getting farther away from having enough children to replace itself. As recently as 2007, the U.S. was among a small handful of developed countries with a replacement-level total fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman. But no longer. In 2017, the total fertility rate fell below 1.8, hitting its lowest level since 1978. We are still doing better than such nations as Spain, Greece, Japan and Italy, which are in a demographic death spiral with TFRs around 1.3, but as this news indicates we are heading toward those levels, not rebounding toward replacement level.
As Fortune Magazine notes, there is mismatch between the low birthrate and the booming economy, with unemployment at 3.9%--at historic lows for several demographics--and wages rising. Good economic times usually go hand-in-hand with baby booms. But not now.
In the West, we’ve broken something fundamental and necessary to our continued survival. It turns out that sex roles are a precondition of sexual reproduction. The relentless war on sex roles, waged with righteous zeal by every significant institution in the Western world, seems finally to be taking its toll.
And not content with eradicating gender roles, the bien pensants have moved on to a frontal assault on the idea that there are two sexes. Mental illness, in the form of confusion as to one’s gender, has been converted into a civil right that all must respect and pay obeisance to.
With the sole exception of Israel, no Western nation has a replacement fertility rate. If this trend is not reversed, the peoples of the West will slowly die off, and play no role in the future of planet earth.