Deciding to know if he has children or not children is a deeply personal choice for any individual, but an increasing resistance to become a parent now presents challenges to society as a whole.
The gross birth rate in the United States has dropped more than half since the 1960s. By the Fed of Saint-LouisSixty years ago, around 24 babies were born for 1,000 people, in 2022, this figure was 11.
This decrease – combined with the fact that the national population lives longer – is a serious concern for economists who wonder how savings will work with fewer people available to do the work.
Melinda Mills is professor of demography and health of the population at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford. Mills explains: “Low fertility sustained combined with a longer life expectancy leads to aging populations.
“This causes strains on the labor market such as health care for older populations, the closing of schools, rethinking housing and infrastructure, and rethinking retirement systems and retirement age.”
The drop in GDP resulting from this aging population could reach 4%, James Pomeroy, the World HSBC economist, previously said Business Insider.
Have the Americans have fewer children?
Previously expert believed that economies would see a post-comfortable “baby bump”, stimulated by a brief rise in births in 2021.
But the data of 2022 and 2023 clearly made births come back to their pre-parasal trend with couples increasingly choosing a double-income lifestyle (DINK), as the CDC reported last year that American fertility rates in 2023 fell to a low level lower from the bottom of the CDC last year in 2023, the American fertility rates fell lower lower level of stockings About 55 births For 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.
“In a low fertility, the number of people of the traditional working age could start to fall within 20 years,” wrote Pomeroy in his last note on the subject, although Mills have warned the tension between less births and an older population is already felt.
She explained that many countries already had trouble providing health care positions, which had previously supported themselves on migrant workers to fill.
“This happened in the United Kingdom, for example where, in 2022, around 33% of migrants had to work in the health system,” said Mills, director of theLeverhulme Center for Demographic Sciencesaid Fortune.
“This has also caused political tensions, countries are increasingly faced with choices linked to the maintenance of labor and retirement systems while thinking of reskilling or the exhortation of existing inactive populations on the labor market.”
For Pomroy de HSBC, it will have concrete efforts on people’s daily life: “You will have a hard time finding someone to cut your hair, make your nails, set up X -ray machines in the hospital. The drop in the number of people … becomes a problem.”
What do millennials have fewer children?
Young people have many reasons for not wanting children at the moment: expensive childcare, an unaffordable housing market, high costs of grocery store and essential elements of households, career disturbances and concerns for the future of the planet.
A Pew research study From July 2024, more than 3,000 people who have not had children or who do not plan.
Among those aged 18 to 49 – who mainly fall into generation Z generations and millennium – who said they did not plan to have children, the most important reason is simply that they did not want or wanted to focus on other things.
In addition, 38% said they didn’t want to have children because they were concerned about the state of the world, and 36% said they could not afford to raise a child.
Additional 26% said they didn’t want to have children due to environmental concerns and 24% said they would not have children because they had not found the right partner.
A factor with an impact on birth rates is also the growing power and influence of women within the economy.
Mulls explains: “The main reasons are the multiple, in particular the changes of these women obtaining higher education and remaining on the labor market, the reconciliation of family work, but also housing problems, gender equality and uncertainty for the future.
“Age at first birth is also greater than 30 in many countries for women and even higher for men at 32 and over. This also causes increasingly organic fertility limits.”
Couple ask if they can have a career and a baby
Another consideration for many Dink couples is the freedom they can enjoy in their careers if they do not have the pressure of children to provide for their functions.
Heather Maclean and her husband Scott Kyrish saidFortune in 2023 that The choice of not having children allowed them to have a “pink and gardener” approach to their career – the idea that if a person can cultivate and take risks, the other remains the stable supporter.
“I never thought I would have left my job to try to write a book. It was never something that I saw as an option,” said Maclean.
“But then, I took the time to think about what I really wanted to do if I could do anything, and it took a lot of months and months of insurance that I could take the time and allow myself, to decide to do it.”
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com November 19, 2024.
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This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
