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Americans aren't making enough babies to replace ourselves

Rogue Valley

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Americans aren't making enough babies to replace ourselves

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1/10/19
Americans are having fewer and fewer babies, a new government report finds. In fact, we now aren’t making enough babies to replace ourselves. For the population to reproduce itself at current numbers, the “total fertility rate” needs to be 2,100 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age over their lifetime, researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in their report, released early Thursday. But the latest data show a current rate of just 1,765.5 per 1,000, or 16 percent below the number needed to keep the population stable without additions through immigration. The total fertility rate has been declining steadily for seven years, but the numbers for 2017 represent the biggest drop in recent history. The rate for 2016 was 1,820.5; for 2015, 1,843.5; and for 2014, 1,862.5. The CDC offered no explanation for why the American fertility rate is dropping so precipitously. Experts say the decline isn’t due to a single cause, but rather a combination of several factors, including changing economics, delays in childbirth by women pursuing jobs and education, the greater availability of contraception, and a decline in teen pregnancies.

One of the biggest factors is the decline in teen pregnancies, Rowe said. “We’ve been seeing, year after year, a precipitous drop in the number of births to teenage girls,” he added. “That’s good news. Not only are these children not having children, but they’re also getting a chance to finish high school. And that makes a huge difference to their lives.”The trend seen in the United States is also seen in much of the developed world, including Western Europe, said Dr. John Rowe, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. One important factor driving this is the changing roles of women in society, Rowe said. “In general women are getting married later in life,” he explained. “They are leaving the home and launching their families later.” But there’s no guarantee that things will work out as planned. The new report didn’t just look at the nation as a whole. It also broke down total fertility rates by state, which ranged from a high of 2,227 in South Dakota to a low of 1,421 in Washington, D.C. Another possible explanation for the variation may be that women with more education tend to live in particular states, Strobino said. Washington, for example, tends to attract more educated women “because of the job market,” she said.

One of the remedies for negative population growth is immigration.
 
We're not having babies because we can't afford to. And neither can the majority of immigrants who are coming here and having them.
 
I guess this happens because a lot of couples are not yet financially stable to raise a child.
 
It says one of the biggest factors is the decline in teenage pregnancy. Kind of hard for me to feel bad about that.
 
The whole planet could use some negative population growth for a while.
 
Which is why we need to increase immigration, or we will end up with a stagnating economy like Japans

Japan’s timing was wrong. Right now the plans are being laid to replace many low skilled repetitive tasks, along with other higher skills like truck drivers, assemblers, fabricators, etc. so our human labor demand does not require a massive influx of low skill, low educated immigrants.

5G is going to do a lot more that bounce your headphones on your skull, the interconnections will make the chain of material to product assembly much less labor intensive.

Case in point: Not only did our C&C machines speed up production, they didnt make mistakes. Once it set up right, its golden unless a human didn’t do its job right.
 
The entire world's fertility rate is declining.
 
Which is why we need to increase immigration, or we will end up with a stagnating economy like Japans

I hope with all my heart that Japan sticks with its strict immigration policies (I have read that the government is relaxing its restrictions a bit).

If Japan wants to avoid the unpleasantness that exists in the States and now in Europe, the government must stand firm. The harmony of Japanese society is literally at stake.
 
I've got just 1 word to say about this: GOOD!!!

The progressives here should support my opinion 101%, especially if you TRULY give a damn about the environment, because humans are the 1 aspect here that screws up the whole environmental dynamic! We need LESS humans, not vastly more! However, this is the obvious plan being carried out by the worldwide leftist elites, who are pushing mass migration of mostly poor, uneducated people, who are having VASTLY more children than ANY other other people in western countries! Worse yet, their cultures generally don't share the opinion that we should be trying very hard to protect the environment. Why else are Mexican govt officials and their people continuing to destroy rainforests? Those realities are not helpful for the environment, OR for endangered species. It proves that the wealthy leftists elites aren't really as concerned about the environment as they claim(it's just another superficial political propaganda tool to them).
 
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Japan’s timing was wrong. Right now the plans are being laid to replace many low skilled repetitive tasks, along with other higher skills like truck drivers, assemblers, fabricators, etc. so our human labor demand does not require a massive influx of low skill, low educated immigrants.

5G is going to do a lot more that bounce your headphones on your skull, the interconnections will make the chain of material to product assembly much less labor intensive.

Case in point: Not only did our C&C machines speed up production, they didnt make mistakes. Once it set up right, its golden unless a human didn’t do its job right.

I remember my 1st job at a small, privately owned machine shop. It was 1984, and not long after I started working there, primarily with manual lathes, drill presses, milling machines etc, the owner bought his first ever CNC lathe. It was made by Hitachi-Seiki, and had a rudimentary programming panel. They sent a technician to train my boss on how to program it. Some times I would work with it. All I had to do was install a piece of bar stock into the chuck, press start, and remove the finished piece when the process was finished. I had to occasionally take measurements, adjust the coolant nozzle, sweep debris from around the chuck and turret, replace broken or dull cutter bits etc. Those machines have come a long way since 1984. Now they can load themselves with stock, self-measure, self-detect dull or broken bits, adjust coolant flow and direction etc. Now 1 technician can run multiple machines!
 
Who and from where is this immigration? Do we want a million felons from countries that don't keep good records?

Immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born Americans. Maybe we should deport American citizens and replace them.
 
I think we're over populated as is. I worry about all the farmland we're losing to the suburbs, housing, shopping malls and the like. Farmland replaced by asphalt and concrete.

What if that is the future: an entire planet devoid of farmland.

It would be like the planet Couracent from the Star Wars prequels: a planet dominated by a massive city.
 
The current way our economic model works, between negative population growth and the possible massive disruptions to labor that AI will cause, one wonders how anything will even work, I mean we will adjust, but it seems the current economic model that demands more growth, more and more consumption... Just can't be sustainable.

Except Africa, pretty much everywhere else in the world, population growth has slowed drastically or stopped and Africa is behind, but will follow this trend as far as it appears.

We need a new economic model for this coming age, because the current one isn't sustainable.
 
The current way our economic model works, between negative population growth and the possible massive disruptions to labor that AI will cause, one wonders how anything will even work, I mean we will adjust, but it seems the current economic model that demands more growth, more and more consumption... Just can't be sustainable.

Except Africa, pretty much everywhere else in the world, population growth has slowed drastically or stopped and Africa is behind, but will follow this trend as far as it appears.

We need a new economic model for this coming age, because the current one isn't sustainable.

I think the only way forward is to get ourselves some space colonies and find ways of making new homes amongst the stars
 
The current way our economic model works, between negative population growth and the possible massive disruptions to labor that AI will cause, one wonders how anything will even work, I mean we will adjust, but it seems the current economic model that demands more growth, more and more consumption... Just can't be sustainable.

Except Africa, pretty much everywhere else in the world, population growth has slowed drastically or stopped and Africa is behind, but will follow this trend as far as it appears.

We need a new economic model for this coming age, because the current one isn't sustainable.

You are correct.
 
The current way our economic model works, between negative population growth and the possible massive disruptions to labor that AI will cause, one wonders how anything will even work, I mean we will adjust, but it seems the current economic model that demands more growth, more and more consumption... Just can't be sustainable.
Except Africa, pretty much everywhere else in the world, population growth has slowed drastically or stopped and Africa is behind, but will follow this trend as far as it appears.
We need a new economic model for this coming age, because the current one isn't sustainable.

And yet if we identify one, the nutters will oppose it and not believe it, even if there is a consensus among experts. It may leave either collapse, or exodus.
If it were up to me, I'd invest in AI for the goal of singularity, and then have it solve all this stuff for us. Some problems are just beyond us as a species, no shame in that. We're smart enough to solve it though (via singularity). Our minds evolved for some pretty mundane stuff...sex, social stuff, food, sleep, shelter acquisition...we need an OS update.
 
And yet if we identify one, the nutters will oppose it and not believe it, even if there is a consensus among experts. It may leave either collapse, or exodus.
If it were up to me, I'd invest in AI for the goal of singularity, and then have it solve all this stuff for us. Some problems are just beyond us as a species, no shame in that. We're smart enough to solve it though (via singularity). Our minds evolved for some pretty mundane stuff...sex, social stuff, food, sleep, shelter acquisition...we need an OS update.

Well, there's also the possibility the theorized singularity kills us all, so there's that to maybe look forward to.
 
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