America: The death rattle of a culture?

There are occasions when facts emerge that convey underlying truths that focus one’s attention. One such set of facts has emerged from global data gathering concerning fertility rates.

Globally, the fertility rate is 2.25 births per woman — one child per woman less than the fertility rate in 1990. A fertility rate of 2.1 babies per woman is necessary for a static population or zero population growth. Any rate less than that and you have a general population decline.

However, the fertility rate varies widely across the globe. Europe has the lowest fertility rate with 1.4 births per woman. If it were not for immigration, most European countries would be depopulating. The highest fertility rate since the 1950s has been in Africa—which has a current fertility rate of 4.07 births per woman. The lowest fertility rate globally occurs in South Korea and Japan.

The fertility rate in America has fallen to its lowest level ever within the last year, falling by 3% between 2022 and 2023. This decline continues a decades-long decline in American fertility rates (currently American rates are approximately 1.6 births per woman of childbearing age).

What accounts for what appears to be a seemingly perpetual decline in childbirths per woman? In America, the introduction and widespread use of oral contraceptives in the 1960s, followed by the widespread legalization of abortion certainly were major contributing factors. After the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, which struck down most of the various state restrictions on abortion, abortions increased from approximately 400,000 per year in 1972 to approximately 1.5 million abortions per year by 1976.

Now, with the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe, the issue has been returned to the states. Recent Gallup polling shows that a significant majority of Americans oppose both very restrictive laws banning abortion as well as opposing abortion without reservation for all three trimesters of pregnancy (only 35% support the Kamala Harris-Timothy Walz position of abortion on demand up through the moment of birth).

While opinion on the abortion issue varies widely from state to state, a plurality of Americans nationwide are opposed to abortion of viable babies in the womb up to the point of delivery. It should also be noted that if America adopted such a policy nationwide it would be one of only a mere handful of countries (less than 10) that sanctioned such radical abortion policies.

Unfortunately, both the abortion debate and the declining fertility rates are indicative of a broader, more culturally denying rejection of a life-affirming culture.

As my colleague Michael Brown has noted the U.S. birthrate varies widely within the country’s various subcultures. Research shows that “conservative” women average higher birth rates than “liberal” women (2.5 vs. 1.5 per woman).

More specifically, “religious” Americans tend to marry and stay married at higher rates than “non-religious” Americans. Pew Research reported in 2015 “that Evangelicals and Catholics averaged 2.3 children per family (Mormons averaged 3.4), while atheists averaged 1.6 children per family and agnostics 1.3 children.” 

Demographers have noted this fertility disparity for decades, with sociologist Arthur Brooks asserting in 2006 that statistics revealed a 41% “fertility gap” between conservatives and liberals.

However, the declining birth rate has significant implications for all Americans as we move forward. First, America is older than it has ever been in terms of the population’s median age, and we as a nation will get older every year going forward. Second, we have a lower percentage of Americans who are married and more Americans who are living alone than ever before in our history. The last of the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) turns 60 this year. The “Boomers,” the huge post-World War II generation, are aging out and they will ever more rapidly exit the stage.

Generation Z (1998-2012) is a generation where young women are less interested in having children than young men. This indicates that birth rates will decline even further. If it were not for immigration (legal, of course), the U.S. situation would be even more dire.

I fear that when you assess the situation indicated by all these trends, one must conclude that as a nation, we have lost our faith in the future and a life-affirming approach to it. This conclusion saddens me beyond description.

I am now in my eighth decade of life upon this Earth, and the most fulfilling and most rewarding thing I have done is to parent my three children in partnership with my wife, and the most rewarding title I have ever possessed is “father.”

I grieve for the ever-growing number of Americans who have rejected the desire for parenthood as well as for all those Americans who consequently will never be born. We will never know the unique, never-to-be-duplicated human beings each of them would have been.

Make no mistake, a child-denying, life-denying America is a spiritually bereft America. If we do not turn this around and reaffirm life, both we and future generations will pay a ghastly price in loneliness, emptiness, and despair.

May we repent in sackcloth and ashes before it is too late.