U.S. FERTILITY REACHES ALL-TIME LOW AS PEOPLE CHOOSE THINGS OTHER THAN CHILDREN.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald

THE U.S. TOTAL fertility rate has dropped to below 1.73 births per woman, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. This record low edges out the previous U.S. fertility nadir of 1.74 births per woman back in 1976.

U.S. rates appear to be following the downward trend seen in other developed countries. The overall total fertility rate for the 28 members of the European Union is just under 1.6 births per woman; Japan is at 1.4, and Canada is 1.5.

In a 2010 study, University of Connecticut anthropologists Nicola Bulled and Richard Sosis found that fertility drops as female life expectancy increases. As global average life expectancy rose from 52.6 years in 1960 to 72.4 years today, the global total fertility rate fell by more than half, from 5 to 2.4 births per woman.

Is this a bad thing? A newly popular argument is that "late capitalism" has made it too hard to balance life and work, which is causing women to have fewer kids. In a New York Times op-ed, the writer Anna Louie Sussman blamed employers for failing to make parenting more compatible with having a career and argued that the government should intervene to make family creation easier.

So far, no developed country has succeeded in using pronatalist policies to sustain fertility above the "replacement rate" of 2.1 children per woman...