I remember, in High School, the topic of family size was once brought up over school lunch. It started with the simple question of “How many children do you want to have when you get married”. Most of the responses were no higher than four, and they were met with many nods of agreement. When it was my turn to answer, I confidently said “six or seven”. The table went silent and everyone stared at me. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and asked, “what?” All the sudden the whole table roar with comment such as, “Girl, that is way too many kids! How would you even provide for them?” as well as “How are you going to give them all the attention that they need?” and “that is more like a preschool than a family”. Slowly, I felt my desire to have so many kids diminish until I found myself agreeing with my friends and I didn’t think about it again, until this past Thursday.
I am taking a family relations class and my professor talked about the fertility rate and how it is affecting our future. Now, I am wondering if desiring a big family isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Let me explain.
Currently, the fertility rate for the USA is 1.76, which is interpreted to mean that each woman is having about 1.76 children in their lifetime. The birth rate had dropped significantly since the baby boom, in which 78.3 million children were born! Now, you are probably wondering what is the big deal. Well, it turns out that the fertility rate affects quite a few things. Economy
- Economies
Economies heavily depend on human capital, or in other words, people with “skills to pay the bills”. They depend on children growing up to be workers, spenders, and investors. This is how economies grow or shrink, so what would happen if the population were to suddenly decrease in the next few years. We are looking at our economy becoming unstable, but not only that. We are also looking at an increase of the work load within our jobs, but not an increase of pay. Why? Because the job of three people will now have to be done by one person, since there will not be enough people to fill the positions. We may even be looking at longer work hours. What a pain!
- Retirement and retirement funds
You can kiss your golden year goodbye, because you will still have to work well past the retirement age. Because of the low fertility rate, there will be no young workers to take you place let alone to fund your social security trust fund. Don’t believe me? Think about this example. When the baby boom happened, there were 41.6 workers to support every retired adult. Now there is 2.9 workers for every retiree and it is predicted to drop down to two by 2030. People are going to be forced to work and retire later in their lives, it is inevitable.
- Relatives
With the increasing trend of smaller families, we are starting to see more and more kids going through out life without cousins, uncles, or aunts. We were given an example of a young boy who both his parents where single children. Therefore, he had no aunts or uncles which meant he had no cousins in his life. He also barely knew his grandparents because he was born when his parents were older. It is quite a lonely life and studies have shown that it can even be a dangerous life. Those who do not have as many intimate relationships are more susceptible to develop depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders which have been known to lead to suicide or self-harming behaviors. On the other hand, studies have shown that children with relations fair better with psychological disorders. There was one study conducted that showed that even just having sisters in the household increased the chances that there would be a better chance of psychological health within the household, but more and more children are being raised without siblings.
Those were just a few of the points that I found the most interesting. There are quite a few other that I would love to share with you if you reach out to me or leave a comment, but the point is to have a stable population and to not suffer in the future, we need at least a fertility rate of 2.1. Who would have thought that having babies might be the thing that keeps the world going spinning?
The Family Lab 