Is the drop in fertility temporary or permanent?
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Issue in brief (Center for Retirement Research)
- Author(s):
- Munnell, Alicia H., author Chen, Anqi, author Sanzenbacher, Geoffrey T., author
- Contributor(s):
- Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Chestnut Hill, MA : Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, July 2018
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Birth Rate -- trends African Americans Economic Recession Educational Status European Continental Ancestry Group Forecasting Hispanic Americans Religion Social Security -- economics Social Security -- trends Humans United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- The U.S. fertility rate has declined sharply since the Great Recession. The question is whether this decline is a temporary response to the economic downturn or a drift to the lower levels seen in some other large developed countries. The future of the fertility rate is important in that it determines the age structure of the population, the ratio of workers to retirees and, hence, the finances of the Social Security system (which operates largely on a pay-as-you-go basis). According to the 2018 Social Security Trustees Report, a total fertility rate of 1.8 children per woman instead of 2.0 would increase the program's 75-year deficit by 0.41 percent of taxable payrolls or a present value of almost $2 trillion. This brief summarizes work to date that exploits state-level variation in the fertility rate to determine the extent to which fertility rates are a response to the Great Recession as opposed to underlying demographic factors. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section provides a primer on the various measures of fertility and documents trends in fertility rates. At first blush, the various measures tell a mixed story of whether lower fertility is temporary or permanent. In order to examine this issue further, the second section explores the extent to which the decline in fertility can be explained by the Great Recession and assesses the prospects of a cyclical rebound. Given that the case for a cyclical rebound seems difficult to make, the third section turns to structural factors that affect fertility--race/ethnicity, education, religion, and the opportunity cost for women as measured by the ratio of female-to-male wages. Estimating--across states--the relationship between these basic factors and each state's total fertility rate in 2001 and 2016 suggests that these structural factors can explain much of the decline. The final section concludes that the bulk of the evidence suggests that the total fertility rate is not going to bounce back to pre-recession levels, which--in the absence of more immigration--would make the nation's key social programs more expensive going forward.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (10 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101751836 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101751836