From my new column in Taki's Magazine on the quantity and quality of births in America:
Yet most articles about birthrates assume intellectual underpinnings that could be based upon talking points from, say, the Toilet Paper Manufacturers Association: As with opinions, everybody’s got one, so the more the better. More toilet-paper consumption is Good for the Economy, and that’s all you need to know.
One irony is that the quality of births has perhaps been improving during Barack Obama’s tenure. At minimum, quality has not been in a free fall as it was during George W. Bush’s disastrous second administration. But not only can’t Obama mention this on the campaign trail, he probably can’t even formulate the idea without his head exploding.
And yet, illegitimate births are bad for the GOP in the short and long runs.
Read the whole thing there.
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12 comments:
About the second graph:
The number of kids born and the number of women of childbearing age present go into the calculation of the TFR. The number of Hispanic kids born in this country each year can be known with a great deal of precision. I'm sure that almost all births in this country are registered and counted. The number of Hispanics present here in any particular year can only be roughly approximated. Same for the number of people here, period. The Census is a joke. It may well be that the Census Bureau has underestimated the recent flow of Hispanics back to their countries of origin. Actually, I'd be shocked if it didn't. That would distort the Hispanic TFR.
"You might think that the Republican brain trust would carefully monitor illegitimacy trends as a serious threat to preserving the GOP’s putative 53 percent."
Cons need to stop with the pro-life BS. I say free abortions forpoor women.
Poor women get the majority of abortions already, often free (Medicaid.)
Well, the recession stop hispanics from having babies like rabbits. Hispanic births went down 6 percent in 2011. Actually, the lower births are probably better for Dubya's state and even California as bas off asit is. Reading some old articles Bush did try to expand minority ownership.
With all this talk about toilet paper and how 'everyone has opinions' seems like Steve self-censored from making a rather rude but widespread phrase that was common amongst the older generation.
actually this proves your theory steve that some of th illegals went home since the birtrate went down by 6 percent among hispanics.
I won't say I'm always great at predicting things - for one thing, I thought the Great Recession would cause a much bigger backlash against illegal/mass immigration than it has - but I did see this one coming. A poor economy means fewer immigrants, a shitty economy means reverse immigration.
Given our current deficits, welfare will have to be scaled back, and soon. When that happens I wouldn't be shocked if white birthrates actually surpass those of blacks and Hispanics. You heard it hear first: at some point within the next 5 years, next decade at the latest, the birthrate of white women will exceed that of both black and Hispanic women.
I recently occasioned to drive through a once Hispanifying suburb of my city. I began noticing white people. I went into a restaurant and several other stores where there were whites shopping and working behind the counter, including teenagers who probably lived in the neighborhood. I noticed whites in yards and driveways.
Perhaps I had so written off this particular suburb as solidly part of the Reconquista that I had stopped noticing the white people. I wouldn't deny that's a strong possibility. But my sense is that whites may be moving back in on some of the turf we'd once lost.
Bush's "bushllit" economy was a steroid economy. He juiced demand - demand for housing, specifically - by reallocating it from the future to the present. That required extra labor to build those houses, and that meant illegal, Hispanic labor. One housing mogul in my city estimated that about 2/3rds of the laborers on his projects were Hispanic. His company had a scholarship program exclusively and specifically for Hispanics, and ran for county mayor (as a Republican) when I gladly and remorselessly voted for Howard Dean's lefty cousin instead.
"Cons need to stop with the pro-life BS. I say free abortions forpoor women."
Norplant is more reliable and less controversial. Norplant = no pregnancy, period. Abortion = no child IF the woman decides to have an abortion.
Based on your graph, its hard to lay it at the feet of Bush as it seems to, with few anomalies, be a pretty steady rise in illegitimate births since at least the 80's, unless you want to say its a Bush dynasty thing since Bush 1 was VP and P during most of the period before Bush 2.
"Cons need to stop with the pro-life BS. I say free abortions forpoor women."
Legalized abortion has worked wonders. Before, we had 99% Black illegitimacy and 95% White illegitimacy and we lived in a dark age of dysgenics. Thank Abortion we're not experiencing that now.
Share of Births to Unmarried Mother By Race, 1990-2008
The real question, though, is one of stable-relationships. Marriage was always an easy proxy for that, but is now an increasingly fuzzy one. Many young parents don't get married, but their relationships are strong. They often marry shortly after the child's birth, or at least still live together as the child is growing up.
This is addressed here:
"Women who were in stable but non-married relationships,
who gave birth to babies out of wedlock, and who still
live with the baby’s father as of the child’s 5th birthday:
50-55% : Whites
50-55% : US-born Hispanics
80-85% : Mexico-born Hispanics
35-40% : Blacks
"The number of Hispanics present here in any particular year can only be roughly approximated."
The CDC revised all racial groups' TFRs from 2001 to 2010, based on Census 2010 data. They counted more Hispanics than they thought they would. Before Census 2010, they were saying the Bush Immigrant Baby Boom lifted Hispanic fertility to 3.0 -- which has been revised downward now to a peak of 2.86 in 2006.
By the way, relatively speaking, this recession has hurt all Nonwhite fertility much more than it has hurt Whites' -- 2010 marked a historic low-point for Nonwhite TFR, but White TFR dipped only slightly, and stands now about where it has been since 1990 -- somewhere between 1.8 and 1.9.
See here: USA's TFRs by Race, 1980 to 2010
Well,in california the Bush policy caused more white flight since the housing was more expensive and helped to hispanicizled the state more.
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