birth rate – dwkcommentaries

State of Minnesota Has Declining Number of Births

In 2023 the State of Minnesota had 61,715 children born in the state. This was a decline from the peak of 73,735 births in 2007. “The pattern of declining births is consistent across racial and ethnic groups, and it’s visible everywhere from the state’s urban core to its rural corners.”[1]

“More women [in the state] are also choosing not to get pregnant, at least for now, because they are anxious about costs, access to child care, and the political and environmental futures in which they would raise children, said Kathrine Simon, an Allina Health midwife. Moreover, “births among Minnesotans (women] 15 to 19 have fallen 33% since 2016 — a hard-won outcome following public health campaigns to convince teens that unplanned pregnancies can hurt their futures. But births also are declining among women 20 to 34, despite a generational uptick in young adults in their childbearing years.”

Over the next decade, this “decline will accelerate . . . when millennials exit that age range and the smaller Generation Z enters it, said Susan Brower, Minnesota’s state demographer. “That’s going to have kind of echo effects into the future.”

This decline “has already had an impact, forcing some small hospitals to close their delivery units, and will eventually hit Minnesota in its pocketbook,” Brower said.

“Over time, fewer children will result in fewer workers — from doctors to farmers to bankers to builders. That will mean fewer people making Target runs, buying Vikings tickets and paying taxes to keep up Minnesota’s infrastructure. . . . Eventually, and it’s already happening, we won’t be able to find people to do some of these essential services … to keep our economy and our society going.”

“Eventually, and it’s already happening, we won’t be able to find people to do some of these essential services … to keep our economy and our society going.”

“International immigration has sustained growth in Minnesota’s population and employment base for decades. The Hmong population that started with refugees fleeing Southeast Asia in the late 20th century has tripled in Minnesota since 2000. If not for immigrants who started new families in Minnesota, the state’s decline in births would be sharper, Brower said.”

Conclusion

This blog already has commented on the aging and declining population in the U.S. and many other countries in the world and the many problems that creates for those countries. Encouraging the immigration of people from other countries, including medical doctors and other medical personnel, is one way to counter these negative effects. [2]

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[1] Olson, Reversing Minnesota’s declining birthrate is costly—and controversial, StarTribune (Nov. 9, 2024).

[2] E.g., Support for Immigration from Nicholas Eberstadt and George Will, dwkcommentaries.com. (Oct.23, 2024).

Government Difficulties in Raising Birthrates

This blog has discussed the current low birth rates most countries are experiencing and their efforts to increase those rates to combat declining and aging population.[1]

Now the New York Times discusses the failure of various policies adopted around the world to attempt to increase birth rates.[2]

Japan has been the first to recognize this ‘problem.’ “Starting in the 1990s, Japan began rolling out policies and pronouncements designed to spur people to have more babies. The government required employers to offer child care leave of up to a year, opened more subsidized day care slots, exhorted men to do housework and take paternity leave, and called on companies to shorten work hours. In 1992, the government started paying direct cash allowances for having even one child (earlier, they had started with the third child), and bimonthly payments for all children were later introduced.”

“None of this has worked. Last year, Japan’s fertility rate stood at 1.2. In Tokyo, the rate is now less than one. The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since the government started collecting statistics in 1899.”

The United Nations Population Fund in a 2019 report found that “half of the world’s population lives in countries where the fertility rate has fallen below the ‘replacement rate’ of 2.1 births per woman.”

“Lower birthrates [in some respects] signify progress: Declining infant mortality rates reduced the need to have many children. As economies transitioned away from predominantly agricultural or family-owned businesses that required offspring to run, people focused on leisure and other aspirations. Women could now pursue career goals and personal fulfillment beyond raising children. Undergirding it all was the rise of birth control, which meant women could determine whether and when they got pregnant.”

“In Japan, policymakers are trying a new gambit: promoting weddings. Last year, fewer than 500,000 couples got married in Japan, the lowest number since 1933, despite polls showing that most single men and women would like to do so. One obstacle is that many young adults live with their parents. Yet it’s “hard to imagine that this pro-wedding push will succeed in boosting the birthrate any more than Japan’s last three decades of initiatives have. In the end, it seems that governments can only do so much.”

Now many, if not most, countries are experiencing these problems: “working-age populations outnumbered by the elderly; towns emptying out; important jobs unfilled; business innovation faltering. Immigration could be a straightforward antidote, but in many of the countries with declining birthrates, accepting large numbers of immigrants has become politically toxic.”

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[1] The Significance of the U.S. Low Birth Rate, dwkcommentaries.com (Oct. 7, 2024) (footnote 1 cites most of these blog posts).

[2] Rich, Can the Government Get People To Have More Babies, N.Y. Times (Oct. 13, 2024) .

Slower Growth Predicted for Minnesota Population in the 2020s

Minnesota state demographers predict that the state’s population will grow 6.6% in the 2020s from today’s 5.6 million to 5.9 million at the end of the decade. That is less than the 7.2% growth in the 2010s. Moreover, only the seven-county metro area will experience population growth while the state’s other 80 counties will have population declines; this pattern also is expected to continue into the 2030s and 2040s.[1]

This development will squeeze the state’s economy, especially as “the last baby boomers retire in this decade” and as the state’s labor force “will essentially stop growing in the first five years” of the upcoming decade. These effects already are being felt in Minnesota. “Job vacancies have outnumbered the unemployed in Minnesota for two years. Businesses, governments and ordinary people find it’s harder to get things done. Hiring is especially challenging at restaurants, factories, schools and hospitals. Things aren’t delivered on time.”

These developments are especially difficult for small towns in the state. One example is Clarks Grove, a town on Interstate 35 in the southern part of the state. Its population in 2010 was 706, down from 734 10 years earlier. Its school closed in the mid-1980s; its co-op dairy creamery, in 1996; its fire station was destroyed by a tornado in 2017 and a new one reopened in February 2019 after a struggle over insurance coverage, high replacement cost and draining the town’s rainy-day fund.

Another strategy to confront these demographic trends was adopted by Minneapolis’ Augsburg University. It realized that “the fastest-growing group of prospective college students was in immigrant communities around the Twin Cities. They began chasing them. . . . This fall, 65% of its first-year students were persons of color. Undergraduate enrollment was 2,153, up 11% from fall 2014.” This was helped by adding “some new majors, such as music business and graphic design, and sports, such as women’s lacrosse and women’s wrestling.”

Conclusion

These demographic facts are not unique to Minnesota. As the StarTribune article points out, “U.S. population is expected to grow 6.6% in the 2020s, a slide from 7.5% growth this decade” and “urban and rural areas across the country will divide further in the deceleration.”

This broader point was made in the Wall Street Journal. While very pleased with the continued strength of the U.S. economy and labor market, the Journal points out that “this bright cyclical picture for the labor market is on a collision course with a dimming demographic outlook. While jobs are growing faster than expected, population is growing more slowly. In July of last year, the U.S. population stood at 327 million, 2.1 million fewer than the Census Bureau predicted in 2014 and 7.8 million fewer than it predicted in 2008. (Figures for 2019 will be released at the end of the month.)”[2]

The slow growth of U.S. population is due to several factors, said the Journal. First, the “U.S. fertility rate—the number of children each woman can be expected to have over her lifetime—has dropped from 2.1 in 2007 to 1.7 in 2018, the lowest on record. From 2010 through 2018, there were 3 million fewer births than the Census Bureau had projected in 2008.” Second, “[d]eath rates, already rising because the population is older, have been pressured further by “deaths of despair”—suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related illness.” This is 171,000 more deaths than the mentioned Census Bureau projection. Third, U.S. immigration “has been trending flat to lower” and is subject to anti-immigration policies of the Trump Administration.

As has been argued in other posts in this blog, this demographic reality should cause U.S. citizens and government leaders to recognize that the U.S. needs more, not less, immigration.[3] This issue is especially timely in light of the Trump Administration’s recent reduction of the U.S. quota for refugee admissions to 18,000 for Fiscal 2020 and the imposition of a new requirement for state and local governments to provide written consents to resettlement of refugees, as has been discussed in other posts[4] as well as others to come in the near future.

Addition: On December 30, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its official population estimates for 2019 showing, as expected, a slowdown in overall growth of population and reduced population in 10 states: New York, Illinois, West Virginia, Louisiana, Connecticut, Mississippi, Hawaii, New Jersey, Alaska and Vermont.

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[1] Ramstad, Life in the 2020s: Slower growth will be the new normal in Minnesota, StarTribune (Dec. 29, 2019).

[2] Ip, The Demographic Threat to America’s Job Boom, W.S.J. (Dec. 18, 2019).

[3] See these posts in dwkcommentaries.com: Outstate Minnesota Newspaper Stresses Need for Immigrants (July 27, 2018); State of Minnesota Faces Increasing Shortage of Workers (Dec. 13, 2018); Rural Minnesota Endeavoring To Attract Younger People, dwkcommentaries.com (Sept. 2, 2019); Minnesota Facing Slowdown in Labor Force Growth, dwkcommentaries.com (September 3, 2019); Minnesota’s Challenges of Declining, Aging Population, dwkcommentaries.com (Oct. 2, 2019).

[4] See the following posts to dwkcommentaries.com: U.S. Sets 18,000 Quota for New Refugee Admissions to U.S. for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 4, 2019); U.S. Senators Oppose U.S. Reduction in Refugee Admissions for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 11, 2019); Latest U.S. Struggle Over Refugees (Dec. 11, 2019); Minnesota and Minneapolis Say “Yes” to Refugees (Dec. 14, 2019); Update on States’ Consents to Refugees Resettlement (Dec. 16,2019); Tennessee Consents to Refugees Resettlement (Dec. 20, 2019). See also Global Refugee Forum, dwkcommentaries.com (Dec. 28, 2019).

Continued Demographic Squeeze on Japan

For 2019 Japan’s population declined by 512,000, the latest sign of the country’s increasing demographic challenges due to declining births (less than 900,000 in 2019, the lowest figure since 1874) and increasing deaths (1.4 million in 2019, the highest since the end of World War II).[1]

Fewer births mean there will be fewer young people entering the workforce to replace retiring workers and support them as they age. This “poses a serious threat to Japan’s economic vitality and the security of its social safety net.”

Moreover, there is no anticipated end to Japan’s declining population. Its “government estimates that the population could shrink by around 16 million people — or nearly 13 percent — over the next 25 years.”

To try to meet this challenge the Japanese government has attempted to increase the fertility rate “by increasing incentives for parents to have more children and reducing obstacles that might discourage those who want to.” But so far that has not been successful for at least the following reasons:

First, “marriage is on the decline. The number of marriages dropped by 3,000 year-on-year to 583,000 [in 2019], part of a steep decline over the last decade.”
Second, “more people in Japan are putting off childbirth — or not having children at all — either to take advantage of economic opportunities or because they worry that economic opportunities do not exist and feel that they cannot afford children.”
Third, parents with younger children face difficult challenges. “Demand for day care in the country far outstrips supply, making it difficult for working women to juggle careers and children. And working men who want to take advantage of the country’s generous paternity leave can find themselves stigmatized by an entrenched cultural belief that a man’s place is in the office, not in the home.”

As noted in another post, Japan is attempting to increase the number of immigrants, contrary to long-standing Japanese norms against immigration. It also is promoting the use of robots to supplement its shrinking workforce.[2]

Other countries are facing similar problems. South Korea has an even lower birth rate than Japan. And China and the U.S. also have declining birth rates.[3]

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[1] Dooley, Japan Shrinks by 500,000 People as Births Fall to Lowest Number Since 1874 (Dec. 24, 2019) See also Japan Shows Why U.S. Needs More Immigrants, dwkcommentaries.com (Sept. 1, 2019).

[2] Japan Implements New Law Allowing Increased Immigration, dwkcommentaries.com Sept. 15, 2019).

[3] Impact of Declining, Aging Rural Populations, dwkcommentaries.com (May 22, 2019); Other Factors Favoring More U.S. Immigration, dwkcommentaries.com (May 17, 2018); The Importance of a Growing U.S. Population, dwkcommentaries.com (Mar. 27, 2017).