Ryan Streeter
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Amidst all the bad economic news these days, we hardly hear about our childbearing demographics as an economic issue. Getting married and having children is usually considered a "soft issue." This is a gross mischaracterization. The cards are stacked against childbearing today, and that poses a grave threat to our economic future.
Our main problem is twofold: the costs of childraising are going up, and the birth rate is going down. These are obviously related, but each has its own set of separate causes as well. Costs are going up in a number of areas essential to raising children on the one hand, and the rising generation of young adults is less inclined to have children, for reasons that go beyond the recession, on the other.
To the first point, CNN reported this week on the increasing cost of raising children. While finding an average cost is tricky given the diverse habits and practices among families, it's hard to argue with this conclusion from the following chart: the cost of raising kids has been accelerating a whole lot the past decaded.
Given what we know about the flatness of wages over the past decade for the majority of American families, the upward slope in the foregoing chart is doubly worrying.
To the second point, the chart here (and below) is as interesting as its headline is misleading. The headline points you to the fact that births go down in bad economic times, which is true. But that papers over the reality evidenced in the chart that birthrates have been declining as a trend, through good times and bad.
Given these realities, it is stunning to me that pro-family Republicans don't hammer on the violence we exact every day on America's young adults: that is, as long as we soft-pedal Social Security and Medicare reform, as Mitt Romney seems content to do in order to attack Rick Perry, we send a message to our young people today that tomorrow will be even worse than today. With each passing year, America offers less and less of an incentive for young people to get married and have kids. That spells serious trouble for the future growth of our economy. We only have to look across the Atlantic to see why.
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