March 22, 2009

My new VDARE.com column on the 2007 births statistics

Every year I wait around for the release of the federal National Vital Statistics Report on Births: Preliminary Data for Year 200X, because, like Whitney Huston, I believe the children are our future. Due to a combination of the long term trends and the late Housing Bubble, the last two reports, for 2006 and 2007, have been doozies.

Here's an excerpt from my new VDARE.com column on the 2007 numbers:

The insightfulness of Main Stream Media analysis is displayed in this quote from the NYT’s article ’07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record [by Erik Eckholm, March 19, 2009]:

"But in contrast with the culturally transforming postwar boom, when a smaller population of women bore an average of three or four children, the recent increase mainly reflects a larger population of women of childbearing age…"

Nothing "culturally transforming" going on in the new birth numbers. Nothing! Just move along, folks, no need to gawk.

The Associated Press write-up by AP medical writer Mike Stobbe [March 18, 2009] reflects the conventional wisdom:

"Behind the number is both good and bad news. While it shows the U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend, the teen birth rate was up for a second year in a row."

As you can see, the main area of birth statistics you are allowed to worry about in public is…teen births. Teen births are Bad. It doesn’t matter if a 19-year-old high school graduate married lady gives birth. Teen births are, ipso facto, socially unhealthy.

A high birthrate for the "U.S. population," on the other hand, is "healthy," according to the wire service.

Everybody knows that. Don’t ask inconvenient questions about increased carbon emissions and global warming. That kind of thinking goes in a wholly separate compartment.

And don’t even think about who exactly is getting defined as being part of the "U.S. population." Don’t try to document just how high the fertility of the "undocumented" is.

And, above all, don’t ask: Why do we need high immigration if we have high fertility? Or why do we need high fertility if we have high immigration?

It’s none of your concern. You’re just a citizen.

So, what actually happened in 2007 to birthrates according to the federal statistics?

After the 2006 birth statistics were released, I reported in VDARE.com that 2006 represented a "demographic disaster". Now the 2007 numbers are out and, due to the combination of malign long term trends and the Bush-Rove Housing Bubble, they’re even more disastrous

Everything that suddenly got worse at an accelerated pace in 2006 kept on getting even worse in 2007, although usually at a slightly slower rate....

Thus, from 2005 to 2007, the number of babies born to unmarried white women dropped 2.0 percent, while the number of babies born to unmarried Hispanic women grew 15.2 percent.

By the way, the "picture of California" in my column is of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

A picture is worth a thousand words.

From one Californian to another, thank you for doing what you can. It's more than just about anyone else has ever done.

Anonymous said...

We can't wait 20-30 years until the babies become homeowners. We have to fix our housing glut now.

Anonymous said...

Among whites, it was up 25.3 percent to 27.8 percent over those two years.

Typo? Presumably should be "from 25.3"

rec1man said...

For comparison, Illegitimacy rates among hindu diaspora is less than 1%

In India it is less than 0.1%

In UK, the white illegitimacy rate is 40% vs 1% for UK hindus

with the result that UK hindus own 10% of UK GDP

Anonymous said...

I attend all the SWPL functions in my tiny Idaho town. Their main focus is on "sustainability", and the attendees believe themselves to be hipster reincarnations of the Germans at Ascona a century ago, lacking only the brains, cultural heritage, and racial solidarity. They worriedly mention that 20,000,000 acres of farmland have been lost since the 90s here in Freedomland, yet if you bring up massive immigration - high IQ, low IQ, doesn't matter - and its impact on the present/future, you'll get the same befuddled look the cows give you in the pastures hereabouts.

Your numbers speak volumes, Steve, but at the end of the day, so what? Most whites simply don't care about anything anymore, and the ones that do are too far removed from reality to do anything to effect any type of change. Though they've an awesome capacity to hate, in the Shelbyville-Springfield way, or the "we proudly spit on trailer trash" way, when it comes to the hordes descending, they're either mute or welcoming or busily adopting.

I don't want anything to do with them anymore, not just culturally, but genetically. Maybe that should be the next movement. Isn't that what the Exodus is all about, in reality?

Anonymous said...

Mr. 1%,

Can you cite sources?

Anonymous said...

Benjamin Franklin pointed out [...] that the happiness of Americans is closely tied to a low population density, which leads to inexpensive land and high wages.

Incidentally this was also espoused by Jefferson and Madison, as Steve may well know. Since Franklin published on this before those two were educated, I suppose they were almost certainly influenced on this issue by Franklin.

Madison in particular felt explicitly a bit saturnine about what might happen in future centuries, when land might become scarce. (Jefferson might have joined him in that feeling, had he not had a more optimistic temperament, and also tended to see the distant future as less predictable and thus less worth contemplating.)

Anonymous said...

Something has to be done about the anchor babies. There are at least 400,000 (and very likely higher) born every year. Either removing their illegal mothers or revoking birthright citizenship would considerably help get a handle on our demographic situation, even without a reduction in legal immigration.

I remember a report from FAIR or some other low-immigration outfit that 107,000 anchor babies were born to illegal Hispanic women in California alone.

This was an estimate from several years ago. I wonder what the number of anchor babies is now.

Anonymous said...

here's an economic indicator for you! vasectomies are up.
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/sexual-health/mens-sexual-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100235024&GT1=31036
dave.s.

Anonymous said...

...you'll get the same befuddled look the cows give you in the pastures hereabouts.

California is chock-full of politically correct dumbshits.

Anonymous said...

"For comparison, Illegitimacy rates among hindu diaspora is less than 1%

In India it is less than 0.1%

In UK, the white illegitimacy rate is 40% vs 1% for UK hindus

with the result that UK hindus own 10% of UK GDP"

I doubt that. Poxy little corner shops and smelly restauraunts are not ten per cent of our GDP.

Anyway as a group their personal hygiene is still atrocious. It's not politically correct to notice but has anyone else noticed that when someone who isn't a tramp is stinking up a whole room it's normally a person of South-Asian ancestry or an African immigrant? Perhaps somebody should look into the cultural signifigance of hygiene.

Anonymous said...

"The offspring of Mexican immigrants averaged an 82...".

Holy cow. That is awfully close to what in the education business they refer to as "TMR": trainable mentally retarded.

Anonymous said...

Instead of complaining about the fecundity of low IQ populations, why not support those highly fecund groups with high IQ's?

Anonymous said...

Love this final paragraph from Franklin's Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind that you linked in the VDARE piece:

"That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind."

I bet if Poor Richard's Almanac were still being published, the SPLC would feature it prominently on their HateWatch page.

rec1man said...

Anon,
I have not seen a single case of unmarried middle class Indian teenagers giving birth, either here or in India

The other Indian bloggers will also confirm

There are consequences for such irresponsible behavior
For example, no one will marry the sister of a teenage unwed mom

Among the Jats, this will lead to shotgun marriages, etc

Anonymous said...

The overwhelming (99% perhaps?) majority of teen mothers are single. It's how the lower classes are outbreeding the higher classes, by starting early.

Anonymous said...

SWPL are in fact the greatest supporters of Immigration. And the core of SWPL is status competition among women, best seen in HGTV.

Part of SWPL status competition is driven by money, a lasting recession will erase that part. The other issue is of course, the profound influence single women now exert in cultural, commercial, and political spheres due to demographic power.

Note that 28% (roughly) illegitimate birth rate among Whites. It's not all or even mostly I'd imagine waitresses at truck stops. It's often the NYT crowd, with the single mothers by choice glorying in their ability (sign of high status earnings) to have kids on their own.

Increased female earnings have been a boon, in increasing family wealth, and also sustaining family formation as land prices have shot up in job centers. But it comes at a price (like everything else): women increasingly can and do form their own families without men. Creating SWPL central and MORE not less support for immigration.

Long term trends (cities are terrorist targets, from Bombay-style attacks to nuclear carbombs, along with declining ability to pay for welfare state programs and less will to lock up criminals) may push job centers out to various rural/suburban places where decent transport and cheap land makes things competitive.

BUT ... that's just as likely to push SWPL into cities like Boise, Orem, Fort Worth, Topeka, and so on the way they have in Denver, Sacramento, and Atlanta.

Having been to those latter places I can tell you it's SWPL central there as much as Soho or Santa Monica.

To stop the tidal wave of illegal immigration, SWPL must be broken as a political and cultural force (the two are inseparable). It's as simple as that. [And breaking SWPL to my mind means ending status-competitions by dramatically changing the "engine" for status competition: female choices and culture.]

Anonymous said...

Slightly off topic...Mother Jones has an "interesting" take on Postville's "Undocumented workers".

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/year-without-mexican

Anonymous said...

It's often the NYT crowd, with the single mothers by choice glorying in their ability (sign of high status earnings) to have kids on their own.

No. Hardly any college-educated white women have children out of wedlock. I suspect the tiny tiny percentage that do so on purpose is made up nearly entirely of

1) lesbians
2) old-fashioned bohemians
3) Catholics who can't get the Church to annul a previous marriage, and since they have a sacramental view of marriage don't really care abouts the legal marriage when the Church won't give them the real thing. I fall into this category. I didn't bother getting legally married until I had a child with my partner in a state that makes it a pain in the ass to establish paternity if you're not married; otherwise I might never have bothered. Sure, there's not a lot of people like me but there's WAY more than the imaginary single moms by choice the freaks at the NYT made up.

Note that none of these women are "single mothers." They are all raising children in a partnership, just not a legal marriage. No matter how many articles the NYT runs on "single mothers by choice" it just isn't happening in significant numbers. It's about as influential a trend as... knitting. Less so.

michael farris said...

"I believe the children are our future"

This, I firmly believe, is one of the most noble thoughts ever expressed. Kudos, Steve. Kudos!

Anonymous said...

For a different view on those ICE raids, try this:

http://cis.org/2006SwiftRaids

D Flinchum

Anonymous said...

Anonymous,

As a 1/2 SWPLer, I'd actually read that Mother Jones article over the weekend. I loved the line about "an unusual multicultural experiment in America's heartland", all benign, an "experiment", like it's just a kid dropping two differently weighted balls from a roof instead of the destruction of a racial group's way of life. The story of Postville, back when it was news, had summed up the end of the European peoples for me - crawling, naive, hard-working, slightly stupid Germanics falling prey to all the usual suspects. Now, years later, we get the crummy denouement, introed by that boring Columbia School of Journalism technique of "put the human face in the first paragraph" - helicopters came swooping in! They were out to get the Mexicans!

But, like I mentioned above, no one really cares at this point - there's always going to be some Lutheran something or other warbling about the value of "life", like everything's just the same, from the grub to the tiger. Who cares if Steve's numbers are right, who cares if the West just morphs into a Kingdom of the Changelings, we're all the same so there's no problem. So say and believe, literally, millions of something called "whites" - a sloppy, confused, lethargic bunch that, as Sailer's data shows, are not long for this earth.

Anonymous said...

I should add that, in the original article Steve referenced, Eckholm's line about the population "more than replacing itself" and calling that "a healthy trend" would, in a better time, get him thrown into one of those madhouses like they show in 'Amadeus'.

Without an infinite amount of resources, if a population is "more than replacing itself", that means a great deal of pain and suffering for that population somewhere down the road.

Anonymous said...

A large percentage of the unmarried white mothers and a somewhat lower percentage of the unmarried black and Hispanic mothers will marry the baby's fathers in a year or two. There were some statistics published about this recently, but I can't find them now. It's a mistake to think that all the children of unmarried mothers will be growing up in fatherless welfare households.

Also, as the other poster mentioned, almost no college educated white women have illegitimate children. The NYT will run an article profiling three such women and trying to suggest it's a big trend, but that's a lie. I am immersed in a SWPL type environment in a major city and I have never met a white, college educated mother who wasn't married to the child's father at the time of birth.

Anonymous said...

The TFRs for all racial groups except non-Hispanic whites are almost certainly too high by about 10%.

The same thing happened in the 1990s; after the figures from the 2000 Census came out, they had to revise the TFRs for everybody except non-Hispanic whites down because they, uh, found 6 million more nonwhites in the country than they expected. Same number of babies from a group of people found to be larger than expected = lower birth rate.

Also, the NUMBER of Hispanic births in 2007 was up 22,000, which is lower than the 55,000 for 2006 and the average throughout the last two decades of about 30,000 per year. Black births also appear to have topped off this year. Both black and Hispanic births appear to be on track to actually fall in 2008.

The only odd thing I found was an acceleration in the number of Asian births in 2007... I don't know what the heck was happening there. Maybe it's a lucky year in the Chinese calendar or something?

Anonymous said...

I posted a completely innocuous comment to this thread last night.

It can't possibly have been censored, can it have been?

Lately I'd been assuming that the reason only about half of my posts ever show up on this board was because you didn't approve of them.

But now I'm wondering if there's some massive software glitch here?

For whatever reason, it sure is getting frustrating...

Dog of Justice said...

Instead of complaining about the fecundity of low IQ populations, why not support those highly fecund groups with high IQ's?

Amen. A positive strategy has much better odds of success than a negative one.

Anonymous said...

Half Sigma said...

The overwhelming (99% perhaps?) majority of teen mothers are single. It's how the lower classes are outbreeding the higher classes, by starting early.

I remember reading somewhere that the Black birthrate among adult Blacks was about the White rate. The main difference with Whites was the children
black women had before they were 18.

Anonymous said...

testing99 said...
And the core of SWPL is status competition among women, best seen in HGTV.

And that is why women should not be allowed to vote. they can have all of the other rights of men, but voting should not be one of them.

Anonymous said...

I've had several friends who either married as teens (because they had to) or were born to teen mothers. They've all done well. One has done extremely well. Most were Mormon.

The energy we have in our late teens/early 20s is supposed to be used for raising children, not for all night orgies and drinking binges. Trust me, when you're a thirtysomething with an infan you begin to realize that.

When generally responsible, intelligent children get in "trouble" it doesn't mean that their children are destined for the same fates as the kids from the ghetto. Kids from the ghetto tend to get pregnant more often because they're too stupid and impulsive to spend their time doing anything other than shagging. Their children end up in the ghetto because that's where their parents are from.

Unknown said...

The teen figure alone predicts dimmer economic futures and fuels the prospects of limited educations and more welfare programs. I'm not sure I want to live in America in the future.

Anonymous said...

A funny anti-amnesty video.

From that Mother Jones article:

Lutheran Pastor Stephen Brackett: "It's like saying we'll take the 15-plus years of progress that we've made trying to gel this community together," Brackett told me, "and overnight we'll throw that away."

Wonder how many times the reporter would've mentioned "separation of church and state" if Brackett's passion had been abortion, abstinence education, gay marriage or intelligent design?

Ten months after the raid, the meatpacker, having declared bankruptcy, was operating at half-steam with a ragtag assembly of workers, and the town's economy remains a shambles.

Ten months after the mob bust, the economy in the Sicilian-American community remains a shambles.

The agency reported 5,184 workplace arrests in fiscal 2008, more than seven times the 2004 figure

Just 7,994,816 more arrests to go!

Supposing ICE's strategy is indeed effective; there's a separate question policymakers may want to ponder: How have these raids affected the communities involved?

Next up on Mother Jones: Complaints about the rapidly rising unemployment all across America, and demands that the government DO SOMETHING! Wouldn't want those unemployed SWPL ad execs and architects in San Francisco to have to move to Iowa and slaughter cows!

The Guatemalan restaurant remained open, but was mostly empty, even at lunchtime; to make ends meet, its owner had a side business shuttling panicked immigrants to Chicago, where they could catch direct flights to Guatemala City.

1) Enforcement works. 2) Attrition through enforcement works. 3) We will not be needing George Will's 200,000 buses. Deny them jobs and theywill go home on their own.

Among them was Diana Morris, who accepted a three-day Greyhound bus trip to Postville, but balked after being told she'd have to live in a house with 10 male workers, lacking running water or electricity.

Gee, the pay at Agriprocessos must be terif! Next month Mother Jones will non-ironically run an article complaining about the pay at slaughterhouses, and completely miss the point.

the company recruited Somalis—mostly from Minneapolis—who can also work legally due to their refugee status. One Friday afternoon during my visit, groups of Somalis walked about Postville's downtown, mingling with black Americans recruited from the South and Midwest and Mexican Americans from Texas. The plant was closed for the Sabbath, and the inebriated payday scene felt more Bourbon Street than Main Street. One worker, spotting his supervisor pulling into the bank in his pickup, yelled drunkenly down the block and managed to cajole a $10 advance through the driver's window.

Next up on Mother Jones: why letting in Somali and Darfuri refugees is awesome, and why blacks are no different than whites!

The workers also brought new energy to the school district, which created bilingual programs and built new facilities

Ya know, when whites put lots of kids into the school system, they're referred to as "burdens" and "costs," even if the white kids are actually likely to learn how to read and unlikely to bring guns to school. Hispanic kids, though, bring "energy." Awesome!

To be sure, ICE has neutralized Swift and Agri and Howard Industries as illegal-immigrant magnets, but so, too, has it neutered the economies that came to depend on them.

The problem is that the corrupt idiots we call our leaders have allowed parts of our economy to become dependent on illegal labor. They were never really necessary, but now we're hooked,and withdrawal, while necessary to our very survival, will be hell.

What's funny is that a huge percentage of the comments - at Mother Jones! - are staunchly pro-enforcement.

Anonymous said...

corvinus:
"The only odd thing I found was an acceleration in the number of Asian births in 2007... I don't know what the heck was happening there. Maybe it's a lucky year in the Chinese calendar or something?"

You are correct; it was the Year of the Golden Pig, very very lucky. My son was born June '07 and whenever we went to a Chinese restaurant the staff would pick him up and rub his head for luck.

Anonymous said...

But now I'm wondering if there's some massive software glitch here?

For whatever reason, it sure is getting frustrating...


That or Steve's getting tired of reading comments and is just playing pin the tail on the donkey with the approve button.

Anonymous said...

Amen. A positive strategy has much better odds of success than a negative one.

My spin is that at the end of the day, suicide is still a negative strategy, and survival still a positive one. I don't see that changing.

Anonymous said...

"Prospective hires were bussed in from as far away as Texas, where many had been recruited at homeless shelters. Among them was Diana Morris, who accepted a three-day Greyhound bus trip to Postville, but balked after being told she'd have to live in a house with 10 male workers, lacking running water or electricity."

Electricity use leaves too big a carbon footprint you spoiled American!

-Vanilla Thunder

Anonymous said...

A positive strategy has much better odds of success than a negative one.

It's not logically impossible to try both at once. It's not like trying to travel faster than light. Positive stratey: a pro-natal cultural and political push for citizens. Negative strategy: enforcement, reduced immigration.

Dog of Justice said...

It's not logically impossible to try both at once. It's not like trying to travel faster than light. Positive strategy: a pro-natal cultural and political push for citizens. Negative strategy: enforcement, reduced immigration.

True. My point was just that the positive side has better political properties, at least in the US.

(It's also worth mentioning that the size of the Hispanic population in North America is peanuts compared to the size of the underclasses in Africa and India. As far as groups with dangerously high birthrates go, they don't even come close to the top of the list. They really only matter to the degree that they crowd out/discourage the rest of us here from having kids.)

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

I doubt that. Poxy little corner shops and smelly restauraunts are not ten per cent of our GDP.

Rec1man hasn't given a link showing that Indians control 10% of GDP, but I do know that they do more than just run stores and restaurants. One of the largest steelmakers in the world was owned by an Indian in the UK. What happened to Mittal since then I do not know.

Anonymous said...

"I have not seen a single case of unmarried middle class Indian teenagers giving birth, either here or in India"

This is the kind of mind numbing ethnocentrism that lowers the quality of blog.

Most people back up their boasts with numbers. You just fabricated some numbers.

In my social circle I only know of one young woman who gave birth to a child. So by my estimate the illegitimacy rate in this country is actually very low.

Anonymous said...

One of the largest steelmakers in the world was owned by an Indian in the UK.

Mittal is not a British citizen, and Mittal Steel is based in India. His company contributes little if anything to Britain's GNP.

London is home to a hell of a lot of foreign billionaires who do most of their business abroad.

Anonymous said...

"I have not seen a single case of unmarried middle class Indian teenagers giving birth, either here or in India"

That's why India's a freakin' paradise. Everyone on the planet is practically breaking down the doors.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:

(Talking about single mother stats.)

This is an important point. A lesbian couple with a kid is listed as a single mom with a roommate, which completely gets the situation wrong. A male/female couple that's been together ten years and has a kid is also not the same thing as a single mom, or a single mom shacked up with the sleazeball of the month. I know a fair number of long-term couples (on the high end of intelligence and education), some with kids, who aren't married. I'm sure they differ from married couples with kids in some important ways, but they don't represent the same phenomenon as a single mom out on her own.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

The birth statistics are fascinating. It used to be that the only way to get a snapshot of the world, for most people, was to read newspapers or magazines. Even when hard objective data was available, it was a pain to get.

Now, that's not true anymore. Downloading the fascinating stuff available from the census dept., the DOJ's crime statistics, the Pew Center's surveys, the CDC's death and injury statistics, etc., is almost as quick as browsing over to read another newspaper online or another blog entry. But instead of getting some math-illiterate journalist filtering a survey for you, you can get the raw data.

It's amazing how often (as with the birth and crime and cause-of-death statistics) the media-provided picture of the world turns out to be completely, 180 degrees off.

I recommend that everyone find some good source of the raw data, and dig in from time to time. Accept that this data is going to piss you off, confuse you, contradict your prior beliefs. But it will make your picture of the world much clearer.

Anonymous said...

I know a fair number of long-term couples (on the high end of intelligence and education), some with kids, who aren't married.

Really? Do you live in some kind of frozen in time bohemian enclave? Not being married to the other parent of your child is logistically unfun. It's unusual for people to do it on purpose.

I'm sure they differ from married couples with kids in some important ways

I am desperately curious to know more about your friends.