Birthrates are a powerful, but lagging/post-hoc indicator of public policy effects. It's worth noting that we tend to associate high birthrates with poverty and negative social outcomes. Except, when rates are low we (western countries) use immigration from high-birthrate societies to shore up the population replacement rate, as the article notes. When you look at who is having kids in the US and Canada, the families, (or specifically, women) who have 2 or more children are either exceptionally wealthy (90th+ pc) or exceptionally poor.
I'd speculate this is because if you are either rich or poor you have stability in that your life circumstances aren't going to change that radically, and hypothesize it's mainly educated middle class people who are having kids below the population replacement rate, if at all, because their lives do not find a relatively stable equilibrium. The mix of the promise of upward mobility that is always just out of reach, and the risk of "losing it all," creates a condition of constant low-level stress similar to other species that do not breed in captivity.
If you have the Malthusian or environmentalist worldview that fewer people is better, this is a positive (if cynical) development. But even that's not going to work because public debt and entitlements mean shoring up a replacement rate population with immigration from high-birthrate societies. The other thing is the people who are having kids create even more polarized opportunity, where the life outcomes of a 3-kid wealthy home vs. the outcomes of a 3-kid working class or public-dependent home are going to be alien to each other. An (increasingly rare) person from a single-kid middle class home is not only a social minority, but has to create more of their own opportunities because they are an outsider to both societies.
IMO, the covid baby bust is only a symptom of a much larger and longer term macro-decline, and just the beginning of the real and inevitable consequences of the post-war baby-boom generation.
I'd speculate this is because if you are either rich or poor you have stability in that your life circumstances aren't going to change that radically, and hypothesize it's mainly educated middle class people who are having kids below the population replacement rate, if at all, because their lives do not find a relatively stable equilibrium. The mix of the promise of upward mobility that is always just out of reach, and the risk of "losing it all," creates a condition of constant low-level stress similar to other species that do not breed in captivity.
If you have the Malthusian or environmentalist worldview that fewer people is better, this is a positive (if cynical) development. But even that's not going to work because public debt and entitlements mean shoring up a replacement rate population with immigration from high-birthrate societies. The other thing is the people who are having kids create even more polarized opportunity, where the life outcomes of a 3-kid wealthy home vs. the outcomes of a 3-kid working class or public-dependent home are going to be alien to each other. An (increasingly rare) person from a single-kid middle class home is not only a social minority, but has to create more of their own opportunities because they are an outsider to both societies.
IMO, the covid baby bust is only a symptom of a much larger and longer term macro-decline, and just the beginning of the real and inevitable consequences of the post-war baby-boom generation.