Why You Shouldn’t Believe The Unfounded Concerns Over Falling U.S. Birth Rates

Lamenting America’s declining birth rate has become a regular ritual among America’s conservative commentators, who see the trend as a threat to the long-term economic sustainability of the social safety net as well as the traditional family structure. The most recent round of concern was kicked off by a Pew Research Center report that found births per 1,000 women of childbearing age hit a record low of 63.2 in 2011. That stat was picked up in a New York Times op-ed piece and subsequent blog post by conservative writer Ross Douthat, with additional encouragement from other commentators who joined in.

In fact, lower birth rates actually correlate with a whole host of positive social and economic trends, such as increased female literacy, increased job opportunities for women, overall national wealth, and women gaining greater control over their own reproduction. So decrying dropping birth rates — especially when it’s conservatives doing the mourning — comes awfully close to pining for past decades when women were far less equal.

But there’s an even more practical issue with this latest round of worries over the “birth dearth” — it’s focusing on the wrong statistic. Douthat’s number comes from the general fertility rate, which calculates annual births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The Population Reference Bureau explains that the total fertility rate, or “the average number of children women would bear in their lifetimes if the pace of childbearing remained constant for the long term,” is actually a more appropriate measure: