EDITORIAL: Governor, demographer express concerns of dwindling workforce

May 18—Colorado needs more children and policies to support them. This is a matter of demographic, physical and mathematical fact.

"We can't waste a person, we're going to need them more and more," said Colorado State Demographer Elizabeth Garner at the Adams County Regional Economic Partnership's State of the Region event this month.

Gov. Jared Polis joined her in explaining the state's need for a larger workforce — a socioeconomic demand that will grow over time. Garner said people over 65 comprise most of Colorado's growth.

Young people struggle to afford Colorado's taxes, fees and housing costs artificially inflated by political regulations. They avoid or leave our state in unprecedented numbers. Most who stay can barely afford to support themselves, so they avoid creating, adopting or fostering children.

When elderly persons outnumber the labor force, we have a weak demographic pyramid.

Stood upon a flat side, pyramids withstand tornadoes, hurricanes and other destructive forces. Conversely, the slightest counterforce easily topples triangles that rest on one point. The base of a structure must be larger and heavier than its top to defy gravity's insatiable appetite for mass.

Triangle physics applies to everything in life.

— Topside-heavy vehicles roll on sharp curves and slopes.

— Topside-heavy debt ends in financial collapse.

— Topside-heavy cash devalues capital when chasing a lighter value of products.

— Topside-heavy families, with one child providing for 10 inactive senior relatives, burden the young and struggle with scarcity.

— Topside-heavy pensions (i.e., Social Security) face failure when beneficiaries consume more funds than workers contribute.

Though Polis has done his part to weaken Colorado's long-stable pyramid, he understands the burgeoning dilemma. He signed bipartisan House Bill 20-1158 three years ago to mandate insurance coverage of fertility treatments. We need more children, he explained in writing, for "compelling reasons" related to "our state's future economic success."

Polis recently told a Gazette editorial board member he would likely sign any future bill requiring full coverage of prenatal care, labor and delivery with no out-of-pocket costs. He understands a properly written law to reduce financial barriers to procreation — much like the fertility mandate — would sturdy the base of our population pyramid.

Conventional wisdom says population growth — through immigration, migration or procreation — means less to go around. Facts prove otherwise.

Few can eat a loaf of bread. Yet nearly anyone can bake dozens of loaves with minimal effort. A thousand workers can drive 1,000 electric cars. They can produce tens of thousands of similar cars for others to drive. A person who plants one tree might provide a thousand future apples each year for generations. One American farmer feeds 166 people in the U.S. and abroad.

Individuals born into egalitarian capitalist economies produce considerably more than they consume. United States residents comprise about 4% of the world's population and produce more than 15% of the world's gross domestic product. That means American children mature to produce goods, services and commodities for themselves and hundreds of millions of others around the globe.

Brought up in capitalism, children provide the future's global health care, nutrition, shelter, energy, education, transportation, and more. Colorado's innovative population ranks 21st in size and 15th in its contribution to the country's GDP. More Colorado children means more wealth for the world.

Not everyone can or should have children. Doing so ranks among life's more challenging, rigorous and costly endeavors. For the sake of our future, the state should incentivize and reward those with the ability and will to parent children.

"Dwindling population growth," says an article in Money, "can spell economic doom. Financial incentives and bonuses are one way to support parents and boost birth rates."

Finland's village of Lestijärvi pays a "baby bonus" of $10,000 to couples who become parents. Finland's national government provides each new baby with a "Baby Box Starter Kit" and pays parents $100 a month for bringing up a child.

China, reeling from 37 years of the communist party's decommissioned one-child-only law, pays couples to have children.

"Financial incentives for having children are increasingly appearing as a response to low birth rate numbers in places like Finland, Estonia, Italy, Japan, and Australia," Money reports.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Brookings Institution report the cost of one child from conception through high school ranges from $200,000 to $310,000. Yet, no other investment can provide for, sustain and advance humanity's quality of life.

Colorado needs more children to reverse our most understated and unrecognized liability. State lawmakers can change the trajectory with policies that invest in and help couples who procreate or adopt and care for children — the highest assets societies have.

The Gazette Editorial Board