Great editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the Duggars, they of the 19 children and homespun clothing, and the underlying cause of the mix of fascination and revulsion they cause in the general population. Here are several excerpts from Duggar Economics: The Costs of 19 Kids :
Yes, the Duggars are an easy target: They have taken the idea of a large family and given it an exponential boost. And their lives are not exactly filled with suburban glamour, fancy college degrees or evenings at home reading aloud from collections of symbolist verse. The family tends toward plain clothes, warehouse-club portions and the New Testament. And yet the discomfort with the Duggars is not merely an expression of class snobbery. It has partly to do with their hyperfertility. There is a creeping anti-natalism in America that has made having large families a radical act.
Even by historical standards, the Duggars' soon-to-be-19 kids are exceptional. In 1800 the American fertility rate—that is, the number of children born to an average woman in her lifetime—was 7.04 for whites and 7.90 for blacks. (The first census was taken in 1790, and the numbers for the races were tabulated separately.) Over the years, the fertility rate trended inexorably downward. Today the average American woman has only 2.09 children, just a hair beneath the replacement rate of 2.1. The rate for Michelle Duggar's demographic group, non-Hispanic whites, is just 1.85. In 1800, the Duggars would have been odd. By today's standards, they seem positively freakish.
I don’t know that the Duggars are “hyperfertile”. They certainly have no problems getting pregnant but I think that even an average couple without fertility issues that got married early, had sex regularly and never used contraception would have quite a few kids. We have eight and we have used contraception sporadically through our 17 years of marriage. Take that away and we probably would have ten or more kids and still have several more kids ahead of us. The Duggars are not hyperfertile so much as the majority of America is anti-fertile. The industry in place to prevent or “undo” pregnancy is huge and the prevailing American attitude is that kids are something to think about when you are closer to 30 than 20 (or more frequently closer to 40 than 30!), something to consider only once you have “lived life” and travelled and certainly something to be limited to a “nice sized family”, i.e. 2 or 3 kids. This is the socially acceptable family size and tragically it is true in the church to very nearly the same extent. There are pockets of Christians with larger families but they are few and far between and often are a viewed by fellow believers as a weird blend of blessing and oddity.
What was troubling was a paragraph of stats that the author, Jonathan Last, inserted in the middle of the story:
There are scores of reasons for society's decreased fertility. Better medical care reduced infant mortality. In 1850 more than one in five children died in infancy; today that number is just a little over one in 166. With more babies surviving, families needed fewer births to achieve their desired family size. Effective birth control reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies. And, beginning in 1974, widespread access to abortion reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies that were brought to term. Forty-eight million abortions have been performed in America since Roe v. Wade; for perspective, the entire baby-boom generation comprises 75 million people.
The sheer number of abortions in America is staggering and when you look at the baby boomers about to retire and whining about Social Security insolvency, feel free to point to the nearly 50,000,000 workers who will never pay a nickel into the Social Security trust fund because they were murdered in the womb. We are reaping the fruit of a bloody harvest in the form of social insecurity for a whole generation because children became choices and now that same generation that exulted in their new found freedom to prevent and terminate pregnancy at will is looking around at am empty trust fund and demanding that someone do something about it.
Being the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Last examines the economics of children and it is fascinating:
Whatever its merits, the welfare state is a disincentive to childbearing. Each generation of workers pays for the retirement benefits of the generation ahead of it. The system is powered by babies, who grow up to become productive little FICA contributors. But even if you never have children, someone else's kid will eventually pay for your Social Security benefits.
Even as economic incentives for childbearing have diminished, costs have grown. The welfare state required an enormous new tax burden, for instance. When Social Security was first instituted, in 1937, only 1% of earnings up to $3,000 were taxed. Today Social Security and Medicare eat up 7.65% of earnings up to $106,800. According to a study by the Tax Foundation, the median American family in 1955 paid 17.3% of its income in taxes. By 1998, the median two-earner family paid 40.9%. All of which makes family formation much harder. As demographer Phillip Longman observes, young white men since the 1970s have seen a 40% decline in income relative to their fathers—for young black men the figure is 60%.
While the government started taking more of a family's money, the expense of raising a child shot to the moon. The Agriculture Department estimates that the costs of raising a child from birth to age 18—that is, clothes, food, health care—averaged $207,800 in 2007. In real dollars, that's a 15% increase since 1960. But the department's numbers leave out three big-ticket items: child care, college tuition and forgone salaries.
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies reports that in 2008 the average cost of a full-time nanny was $9,630; the average cost of full-time day care was $14,591. That's as much as a year at college. The average cost of state-university tuition, along with room and board, is now $14,333. Private colleges average a good deal more— $34,132. But what's really striking is the rate of increase. During the past 35 years, the real-dollar cost of college has increased by 1,000%. That's not a misprint.
I especially liked the part where we see that the total tax burden on Americans has exploded from 17.3% in 1955 to 40.9% in 1998. Little wonder that so many families think they need two incomes to survive. In spite of the healthy tax deductions for kids, our society as a whole is structured to discourage children at the same it depends on a steady stream of new workers to fund the welfare system, which is really what Social Security and Medicare are: a welfare system writ large in the form of generational income redistribution. Instead of saving your own money for your own retirement, you pay money into a system to pay for the retirement of someone else and then you rely on an as yet unborn worker to pay for your retirement. Great system! At least until the fertility rates plummet and the post-retirement life expectancy jumps up. This self-defeating system is brought to you by the same people who want to take over health care. No thanks!
Ms. Last ends with this:
The Duggars have mortgaged their financial futures for their children. Yet we're the ones who will benefit. In 1940 there were 160 workers paying the tab for each person collecting Social Security. By 2006, there were just 3.3 workers supporting each pensioner. The Social Security Administration estimates that by 2034, there will be only 2.1 workers for each person collecting a government retirement check.
In an era when it is rare for a bourgeois couple to have even three children, the Duggars are helping subsidize our retirement at considerable costs to themselves. Instead of mocking them, we ought to thank them.
Amen to that!
Yes, the Duggars are an easy target: They have taken the idea of a large family and given it an exponential boost. And their lives are not exactly filled with suburban glamour, fancy college degrees or evenings at home reading aloud from collections of symbolist verse. The family tends toward plain clothes, warehouse-club portions and the New Testament. And yet the discomfort with the Duggars is not merely an expression of class snobbery. It has partly to do with their hyperfertility. There is a creeping anti-natalism in America that has made having large families a radical act.
Even by historical standards, the Duggars' soon-to-be-19 kids are exceptional. In 1800 the American fertility rate—that is, the number of children born to an average woman in her lifetime—was 7.04 for whites and 7.90 for blacks. (The first census was taken in 1790, and the numbers for the races were tabulated separately.) Over the years, the fertility rate trended inexorably downward. Today the average American woman has only 2.09 children, just a hair beneath the replacement rate of 2.1. The rate for Michelle Duggar's demographic group, non-Hispanic whites, is just 1.85. In 1800, the Duggars would have been odd. By today's standards, they seem positively freakish.
I don’t know that the Duggars are “hyperfertile”. They certainly have no problems getting pregnant but I think that even an average couple without fertility issues that got married early, had sex regularly and never used contraception would have quite a few kids. We have eight and we have used contraception sporadically through our 17 years of marriage. Take that away and we probably would have ten or more kids and still have several more kids ahead of us. The Duggars are not hyperfertile so much as the majority of America is anti-fertile. The industry in place to prevent or “undo” pregnancy is huge and the prevailing American attitude is that kids are something to think about when you are closer to 30 than 20 (or more frequently closer to 40 than 30!), something to consider only once you have “lived life” and travelled and certainly something to be limited to a “nice sized family”, i.e. 2 or 3 kids. This is the socially acceptable family size and tragically it is true in the church to very nearly the same extent. There are pockets of Christians with larger families but they are few and far between and often are a viewed by fellow believers as a weird blend of blessing and oddity.
What was troubling was a paragraph of stats that the author, Jonathan Last, inserted in the middle of the story:
There are scores of reasons for society's decreased fertility. Better medical care reduced infant mortality. In 1850 more than one in five children died in infancy; today that number is just a little over one in 166. With more babies surviving, families needed fewer births to achieve their desired family size. Effective birth control reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies. And, beginning in 1974, widespread access to abortion reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies that were brought to term. Forty-eight million abortions have been performed in America since Roe v. Wade; for perspective, the entire baby-boom generation comprises 75 million people.
The sheer number of abortions in America is staggering and when you look at the baby boomers about to retire and whining about Social Security insolvency, feel free to point to the nearly 50,000,000 workers who will never pay a nickel into the Social Security trust fund because they were murdered in the womb. We are reaping the fruit of a bloody harvest in the form of social insecurity for a whole generation because children became choices and now that same generation that exulted in their new found freedom to prevent and terminate pregnancy at will is looking around at am empty trust fund and demanding that someone do something about it.
Being the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Last examines the economics of children and it is fascinating:
Whatever its merits, the welfare state is a disincentive to childbearing. Each generation of workers pays for the retirement benefits of the generation ahead of it. The system is powered by babies, who grow up to become productive little FICA contributors. But even if you never have children, someone else's kid will eventually pay for your Social Security benefits.
Even as economic incentives for childbearing have diminished, costs have grown. The welfare state required an enormous new tax burden, for instance. When Social Security was first instituted, in 1937, only 1% of earnings up to $3,000 were taxed. Today Social Security and Medicare eat up 7.65% of earnings up to $106,800. According to a study by the Tax Foundation, the median American family in 1955 paid 17.3% of its income in taxes. By 1998, the median two-earner family paid 40.9%. All of which makes family formation much harder. As demographer Phillip Longman observes, young white men since the 1970s have seen a 40% decline in income relative to their fathers—for young black men the figure is 60%.
While the government started taking more of a family's money, the expense of raising a child shot to the moon. The Agriculture Department estimates that the costs of raising a child from birth to age 18—that is, clothes, food, health care—averaged $207,800 in 2007. In real dollars, that's a 15% increase since 1960. But the department's numbers leave out three big-ticket items: child care, college tuition and forgone salaries.
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies reports that in 2008 the average cost of a full-time nanny was $9,630; the average cost of full-time day care was $14,591. That's as much as a year at college. The average cost of state-university tuition, along with room and board, is now $14,333. Private colleges average a good deal more— $34,132. But what's really striking is the rate of increase. During the past 35 years, the real-dollar cost of college has increased by 1,000%. That's not a misprint.
I especially liked the part where we see that the total tax burden on Americans has exploded from 17.3% in 1955 to 40.9% in 1998. Little wonder that so many families think they need two incomes to survive. In spite of the healthy tax deductions for kids, our society as a whole is structured to discourage children at the same it depends on a steady stream of new workers to fund the welfare system, which is really what Social Security and Medicare are: a welfare system writ large in the form of generational income redistribution. Instead of saving your own money for your own retirement, you pay money into a system to pay for the retirement of someone else and then you rely on an as yet unborn worker to pay for your retirement. Great system! At least until the fertility rates plummet and the post-retirement life expectancy jumps up. This self-defeating system is brought to you by the same people who want to take over health care. No thanks!
Ms. Last ends with this:
The Duggars have mortgaged their financial futures for their children. Yet we're the ones who will benefit. In 1940 there were 160 workers paying the tab for each person collecting Social Security. By 2006, there were just 3.3 workers supporting each pensioner. The Social Security Administration estimates that by 2034, there will be only 2.1 workers for each person collecting a government retirement check.
In an era when it is rare for a bourgeois couple to have even three children, the Duggars are helping subsidize our retirement at considerable costs to themselves. Instead of mocking them, we ought to thank them.
Amen to that!
8 comments:
Great article!
Also, while the Muslims are having los of babies (all over the world)nations with Christians are not doing very well and those birth rates are below replacement levels.
The Muslims may very well take over by shear numbers, and then Christians will really find out what it is like to be persecuted.
Old photo of the Duggers, obviously.
Agreed, anti-natalism is embraced, unknowingly, by many people today. People feel that they cannot afford, don't have room for, couldn't manage, more than one or two children, there is pressure to have one or two children, people are not so welcoming to your pregnancies once you move beyond the third. But, that said, I do feel that Jim Bob Duggar exploits his family for financial gain, I doubt the giant house, with commercial grade appliances could have been accomplished without a lucrative deal with TLC. And, this I am hesitant to say, I feel that although they are welcoming to new life in their family, each pregnancy pretty much guarantees another show on TLC, another round on the talk shows, the free trips involved etc. etc.
The Duggar children are well behaved, educated, pleasant children, and they are being raised in a safe, secure, loving Christian environment, and that is a GOOD thing!
I consciously embrace anti-natalism because ya'll seem to want to produce kids to serve as fodder for your factories, battlefields, and retirement funds. By not creating them they are freed from the burdens of supporting your wrinkly aged behinds as well as freed from living in fear of just who is it that will take care of *their* wrinkly aged behinds when their bodies give out on them before turning into dust in the end anyway - making their births somewhat of a moot point in the grand scheme of things.
Doktor,
I actually am intentionally raising my eight kids to NOT be cogs in the production-consumption economy nor to participate in warfare. We expect that our family will support one another throughout future generations instead of relying on social security and pensions. Given your troubling and nihilistic worldview, it is probably best that you embrace anti-natalism.
"Given your troubling and nihilistic worldview"
Troubling to those, maybe, who can't admit the first noble truth of Buddhism: Life means suffering.
In light of that it seems to me that to conceive is to sin against those who would suffer as a result of it.
It is not that I can't admit "the first noble truth of Buddhism", it is that I reject Buddhism as a system so none of it's "truths" are true or noble.
If life is nothing but suffering, why don't you end you own? Wouldn't that alleviate your suffering? Since the very act of bringing a life into being is a sinful act, might as well just get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.
"If life is nothing but suffering, why don't you end you own? Wouldn't that alleviate your suffering?"
Well that one's easy, isn't it Arthur? If the goal is to reduce Suffering (as opposed to my own personal 'suffering') then taking my own life during a time when the majority of people are, like yourself, unable to comprehend that life means suffering, would not understand my death within that context and suffer themselves. Sure - mine would end but the net overall suffering would increase, wouldn't it? Ha - if only it were that easy, my friend.
Even the pre-civil war slaves - who mourned every birth and celebrated every death - knew that taking their own lives would cause worse misery than to stick it out until the bitter end. Now - imagine what a joyous and happy occasion they could have enjoyed with a supply of condoms?
Tell us Arthur - did you ask for your children's consent before you forcibly squirted them out into this nightmare of a planet?
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