“The United States has a population of north of 327 million people. Why do we need more kids?”
That’s how Joy Reid begins a video rant that is going viral this week.
Reid is specifically attacking Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and as you might expect, she accuses him of racism. She insinuates that he’s racist if he thinks white people should have more babies (“a great replacement thing,” she says), and he’s racist if he thinks black people should have more babies (like slavery!).
I’ll leave Tuberville to defend himself or not, but I’ll answer Reid’s main question: why America needs more children. Some quick points.
The U.S. child population is shrinking
Reid is correct that our population is large and growing. But Reid isn’t merely suggesting we have enough people. She’s suggesting we have enough children. Does she know that the population of children is shrinking in the U.S.? There were fewer children in the most recent census compared to the 2010 census. In the Northeast, the number of children has gone down by 5% each of the last two decades.
As a result, the U.S. now has more people in their 60s than we have people under 10.
The old-age dependency ratio is growing and will harm the economy
Maybe Joy Reid considers this to be like slavery, but the fact is that a society needs people who can make things and perform services. With longer lifespans and the baby boomers retiring, we have a record number of retired people.
Our working-age population has nearly flatlined, and pretty soon, it will start shrinking. Meanwhile, our retirement-age population is growing incredibly rapidly. This will create a shortage of goods and services, which means more inflation, longer waits, higher prices, and lower quality.
In Maryland’s most populous county, for instance, 911 wait times are climbing because the county cannot hire enough dispatchers.
Children make us better as a society
People who grow up with siblings are happier. People who have children become more law-abiding. Neighborhoods with children are more friendly and more connected.
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Most adults grow up through the process of having children. Not all adults need children in order to become more conscientious and mature, but most of us do. If fewer people become parents, more people are lonely.
I could go on (I do, in my new book, Family Unfriendly, which comes out in three weeks). But this mindset that we probably have too many children is particularly unfortunate because it’s not grounded in facts.