cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45445434
Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19.
On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates.
Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”
The dude was conflating a number of things.
Teen birth rate is down the most, at 7% in 2025. 70% since 2005. Overall births are down slightly last year.
Overall we have a sub replacement birth rate of 1.53 per woman.
The last one is a societal problem. But just saying we need women to have more kids isn’t a solution. You need to find out why people don’t want to have as many kids. Which I would bet is almost entirely economic. Kids are a large long term expense. And if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, with an uncertain financial future, a kid is a scary prospect.
This is not actually a problem, except we want to keep the completely unsustainable economic system unchanged.
Economy or not, having one person who needs to take care of two elderly parents, themselves, and 0.75 kids isn’t great. That’s not the goal
Society doesn’t have to work that way.
Of course not. That’s the point. We don’t want it to work that way
Birth rates are down all over the developed world with Japan being the hardest hit
Most of the developed world has the same societal problems that boil down to, no one has the money, time or energy to have kids.