Texas’ population is booming. But you still should have more babies. Here’s why | Opinion
It would be easy, in a place like Fort Worth, to ignore the alarms about declining birth rates.
After all, the population here is booming: Nearly half-a-million new residents flocked to North Texas between January 2020 and January 2023.
Last year, Fort Worth added to its population more than any other area city; Texas has increased its population more than any other state.
But even in a place like Texas, which is attracting not only immigrants from the south and a heap of political and economic refugees from other states, the national birth crisis is bubbling just below the surface.
Declining birth rates aren’t really novel. They’ve been on a downward trend in the U.S. and elsewhere for decades (even centuries), as the economy has evolved, medical care has improved, economic opportunities (particularly for women) have increased, birth control has become more accessible, and views about marriage and children have dramatically changed.
But the U.S. birth rate had, until relatively recently, always remained above replacement level — roughly 2.1 — which is the number of children per woman a society must average to stave off population decline.
In the grossest terms, that level ensures there are enough young workers to support the aging population, enough taxpayers to fund social welfare programs, enough consumers to keep the economy humming.
In 2007, the U.S. fertility rate dropped below replacement for the first time, and it hasn’t crossed that threshold again.
Today, it’s hovering somewhere between 1.6 and 1.7.
That may not sound alarming, at least not yet, but that birth rate is barely above nations like Japan, where the average woman has only 1.26 children in her lifetime.
Many young people (all over the world) cite economic uncertainty as a primary reason for delaying or choosing to forgo pregnancy and child-rearing altogether.
Which is why countries such as Japan, where births dropped 5% last year while deaths rose 9%, are scrambling to provide incentives to women and families to have more babies.
Japan’s frontal assault on the declining birth rate includes generous childbirth and rearing allowances and increased subsidies to help parents afford higher education as their children grow.
Similar financial tactics have been used in South Korea, where the birth rate is a bleak 0.78.
The South Korean government has for years provided substantial stipends to the parents of young children and poured billions of dollars into extensive paid parental leave programs.
In Europe, where the decline in births is also a looming concern, nations like Germany offer up to three years of paid parental leave to ensure that having a child isn’t an economic hardship.
But even in social democracies where government-managed health care and mandated parental leave are the norm, fertility rates are low and declining, and in many cases even lower than in the U.S.
And in the U.S., the generous financial support from the government and work-from-home incentives offered by businesses during the pandemic did not result in a baby boom, as many experts had predicted.
Texas has been able to keep the crisis somewhat at bay; births in the Lone Star State rose about 4% in 2022, no doubt due, at least in part, to its general population growth and specifically the influx of immigrants.
Some policy makers see immigration as a way to address population decline.
But women younger than 30, including second-generation immigrants, are increasingly delaying motherhood, so this won’t be a long-term answer.
It all suggests that modern culture’s collective reluctance to grow and nurture families — and its collective desire to have smaller families later in life — stems from something much deeper than the perceived financial burdens of raising children.
We can debate exactly what the other causes may be: Delayed maturity, increased selfishness or a pervasive anxiety about the future may all play some part in reducing our desire for more babies.
One thing is clear: Something has to change in our culture if we want to ensure its long-term health.
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