Sixteen years ago, I was the object of a critical article in The New Republic, "Are We Running Out of Babies?"  Author Tony Kaye traced my efforts during the 1980's to put America's--and the Western World's--startlingly low fertility rates on the political agenda.  In the end, he accused me of "conceiving a crisis" for nefarious, reactionary social ends: "[The Birth Dearth campaign] allows secular neo-conservatives and religious social conservatives to unite in the happy work of rooting out every last trace of the 1960's--contraception, 'cohabitation,' abortion, working women."[1]

In 2003, the threat and reality of depopulation have gone mainstream.  No longer dismissed as a right wing fantasy, even The New York Times highlights "an increasingly worrisome reality for Italy and other European countries whose fertility rates have plummeted over the last decades, shifting one-child families close to the statistical norm."  Spain, Sweden, Germany, Greece, and Italy--to name but a few--now face "the spectre of sharply winnowed and less competitive work forces, surfeits of retirees and pension systems that will need to be cut back deeply."  In some parts of Europe (such as the Italian Province of Ferrara and German Saxony), fertility has fallen to an average of .85 children born to women over their lifetime, only 40 percent of even the zero-growth level.[2]  By 2050, most young Europeans will have neither brother nor sister, nor aunt nor uncle, nor cousins: so undoing even the extended family.  At The United Nations, long a center of frantic warnings about overpopulation, concern has now shifted to fear of global depopulation.  Even in places such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and Iran, fertility is falling far more rapidly than predicted.  "What we're seeing right now is a revolution in fertility," says Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations Population Division.  The child is vanishing.[3]

America's leading scientific and environmental journals are also now singing a new tune.  The March 28 edition of Science reports "Europe's Population at a Turning Point."  It notes that the concept of "population momentum measures the effect of current age structure on future population growth."  In the year 2000, Europe's "momentum" shifted from positive to "negative."  If the European Union's current Total Fertility Rate of 1.5 (lifetime births per woman) remains unchanged through 2020, the EU will lose a quarter of its population--or 88 million persons--by century's end.  The 'dependency burden' of workers would nearly double, as well.[4]

But perhaps this will be good for the environment?  Alas, this does not appear to be true.  A recent article in the influential journal, Nature, reports a peculiar development: while Italy's population is in absolute decline with deaths out numbering births, the number of separate households is growing: an increase of 6 million in recent decades.  In the USA, the population did grow by 57 percent between 1960 and 2000; but the number of households soared by 100 percent.  Why the discrepancy?  The answer is simple: fewer marriages, more divorces, and fewer children have sharply reduced average household size in all developed nations; for the U.S.A., from 3.4 persons per dwelling unit in 1960 to 2.5 in 2000.  If family structure had remained the same in 2000 as it had been in 1960, the U.S.A. would have needed 28 million fewer houses.  Looking globally, Nature magazine calculates that if the average household size of developed countries projected for 2015 could return just to the level of 1985 (let alone 1960), 415 million fewer housing units would be needed.  Counter-intuitively, it turns out that the retreat from marriage and fertility decline are actually the cause of urban sprawl and environmental decay.  Why?  Larger families--on a per capita basis--use less land, fuel, building materials, and supplies than do singles and childless couples.  Large family households, in a sense, are both more efficient and more environment friendly.[5]  But there are precious few of these today.

Fertility decline first became a serious challenge to Western nations during the 1900-40 period.  After several decades of recovery (the 'Baby Boom' era), the decline began again during the 1960's, reaching unprecedented crisis during the 1990's.  Demographers now commonly speak of the early 20^th Century development as part of  "The First Demographic Transition."  Fertility change from 1965-2000 is labeled "The Second Transition."  What do we know about cause?  There are a number of rival explanations, each with some merit, which I have organized in an ascending level of insight.  At the bottom:

1. FIRST, THE FEMINIST EXPLANATION

In a 1980 article entitled "Will U.S. Fertility Decline Toward Zero?," The University of Illinois' Joan Huber answered "yes":  "The most probable long-run fertility trend is continued decline, not just to ZPG but toward zero."  Huber argued that it was the new demand for female labor during the prosperous 1950's that undermined prevailing cultural assumptions about a woman's responsibility to care for children at home.  During that decade, the rapid expansion of business and government bureaucracies increased demand for clerical workers, traditionally a female job.  Ironically, the baby boom also stimulated demand for teachers and nurses, also female tasks.  So began the massive flow of married women into the labor force, a development which was politicized after 1960.

As more women began to spend more time in the labor force for more of their adult lives, powerful challenges were mounted against male and female job categories and the sexual wage differential that set the earnings of women employed full-time at about three-fifths the wages of male counterparts.  Such developments, Huber said, "not only triggered a new women's movement but also set the stage for continued fertility decline."  Indeed, she added, feminist ideology has now "made the U.S. profoundly anti-natalist."

She anticipated no improvement in the future, for a variety of factors weighed against any revival of pro-natalism.  First, the direct costs of child-rearing continued to rise, exceeding $175,000 for the first child.  Second, the psychic costs of having children increased as parents face the awful challenges of peer groups, professional advice, and government scrutiny. Third, the economic rewards of childbearing declined as society wiped out the economic bonds of parents to children.  Fourth, as women's education level and job opportunities rose, the "opportunity cost" of staying home also increased.  Fifth, husbands had become primary advocates of working wives, having learned (as did husbands earlier in the Soviet Union) that the added income, in practice, cost them almost nothing in terms of extra housework.  And sixth, the dramatic rise in the divorce rate after 1965 suppressed the desire for children, by increasing women's risks of being saddled with the children alone.

Huber concluded that the primary long-term effect of women's rising employment has been "to increase the perception that parenting couples are disadvantaged in comparison to nonparenting ones."  Barring dramatic changes, she says, American children would simply and slowly disappear.[6] 

2. NEXT, THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION

In the 1930's, during the first European "depopulation crisis," the Swedish social democrat Gunnar Myrdal laid blame for the birth rate decline squarely on liberal capitalism.  The basic assumption of liberalism, which equated the individual's private interest with society's general interest, had broken down over the birth question, he said.  It did not hold that if individuals sought what was socially and economically best for themselves, the net result would be best for society.  While individuals might desire a growing population for social or economic reasons, their own self-interest dictated an extreme limitation in number of children.  In short, the harmony between the individual and the collective interest had been lost in the population question.

Myrdal emphasized that the central cause of the decline in births was economic, not moral.  The dilemma to be faced was that in capitalist society children were the chief cause of poverty.  Given current social organization, the refusal of young people to bear children was natural, rational, and blameless.  The very persons who contributed the most to the nation's existence were dragged down into poverty, shoddy housing, poor nutrition, and limited cultural and recreational opportunities.  A voluntary choice between poverty with children or a substantially better living standard without them was what young couples now faced.[7]

Contemporary Social Democrats make the same case.  As Peter McDonald explains, "[t]he risk-averse individual in a world that rewards market production is unwise to devote time or money to social reproduction [e.g., by which he means family creation].  Social reproduction involves altruism, that is, time and money devoted to others….For the risk-averse in a free market economy, altruism is equivalent to foolhardiness."  Specifically, the risk-adverse woman will be sure to be able to support herself and not to put herself in a position of dependency on a man.  More broadly, the market is very short term in its orientation; indeed, financial markets punish individuals and firms for any short-term lapse.  But child rearing is long term.  Accordingly, rational persons choose to forego children.  Finally, decisions on fertility in a market economy rest primarily on "relative" --rather than "absolute"--well being: "No matter how successful the market is, under present arrangements in most countries, it will always provide lower [net] benefit to those with children than to those without children."  Fertility must decline.[8]

3. THIRD, EXPLANATIONS FROM THE NEW HOME ECONOMISTS.

Since 1960, a related--if somewhat more positive--economic explanation of fertility behavior has come to the fore.  Usually identified with Nobel Laureate Gary Becker of The University of Chicago,  this explanation became by the early 1980's "the shared tenet of…almost everyone" who studied fertility decline.[9]  Essentially, Becker and followers--also called the 'Chicago School'--argue that fertility decline is caused by shifts in the balance of economic costs and benefits produced by child bearing.  They assume that all families in all times and places have some knowledge of contraceptive techniques, and turn to the rational control of births when it is in their economic interest.  During pre-modern times, characterized by family-centered household production and high death rates, families behaved rationally by bearing many children.  But a new development came during the first demographic transition, as fertility fell while per-capita income rose.  Becker attributes this new development to a rise in "the price of children."  This so-called "price" depended, in part, "on the value of the time spent on child care by parents, typically mothers."  The "foregone value" of time spent rearing children--which might have been sold instead on the emerging labor market--actually comprised over half of children's "shadow cost."  Also, as infant mortality rates began to fall, parents shifted their reproductive strategy from "quantity" of children to "quality."  In smaller families, they could invest more "human capital" in each child, and assume that it would survive.  Becker emphasizes that the first demographic transition toward low fertility was "not simply the result of 'modernization,' but itself help[ed] produce a modern economy partly by encouraging a greater investment in human capital."[10] 

4. FOURTH, THE "FAMILY VALUES" EXPLANATION

Becker's portrait of economically rational parents making judicious fertility decisions soon ran into a problem:  it failed to explain real historical changes.  Charles Tilly reported that there was no historical evidence from Europe showing any relationship between declines in infant mortality and declines in fertility.[11]  Detailed investigations of fertility patterns in Germany and England between 1550 and 1850 found no signs of fertility control guided by changes in "the cost" of children.  Rather, the areas studied all showed "natural fertility" throughout this period, where births to married couples reflected "the absence of deliberate birth control" and an average of six to nine children born into each family.[12]  Moreover, recent massive demographic investigations for the European Fertility Project at Princeton University and The World Fertility Survey point to the incomplete nature of Becker's explanations.  Until very recent times, these studies show, contraceptive use was confined to only a very few elites; and marital fertility in the West was "constant" at a high "natural" level, despite the fact that children often represented a net economic loss to their parents.[13]

Australian demographer John C. Caldwell was among those investigators who began to suspect that ideas, more than economic incentives, lay behind the first fertility decline.  Borrowing from the 'Chicago School,' Caldwell agreed that a critical economic shift was involved:  from a family-centered form of production, such as that found on a peasant farm, which welcomes children as economic assets, to a capitalist form of production, where children become an economic burden.  In a "family economy," he agreed, no one has an interest in fertility control:  the old draw on the earnings of the young; while young men and women gain status and future income security through numerous children.  But he found that even after the rise of industrial capitalism, "the pyramidal family, hallowed by time and enthusiastically sanctioned by religion," could still  prevail.  What Caldwell called a "family morality" system could actually serve as a brake on the economic pressures toward social change; as he put it:  "[t]his morality (and the concomitant high fertility) can long survive the growth of a substantial capitalist labor market, partly because it is supported by public religion and private adage."  The Western world, he insists, had such a "family morality…backed by the religion and outlook of the day" until about 1900, one that held the family economy and the market economy in balance.  Caldwell describes this system of mixed modes of production in a way that may sound familiar:

The family system in the West depended on a sharp division of labor:  the husband worked outside the home for wages or profits…, while a wide range of [productive] activities (clothing, feeding, providing a clean and comfortable environment, child rearing) was undertaken by the wife with the help of the children (especially the daughters).

Resting on religious affirmation and a purposeful system of job and market wage preferences for fathers, this "two-tiered mode of production"--what we would call the bourgeois or Victorian home--sustained high fertility long after the Becker thesis said it should have disappeared. 

5. FIFTH, THE "MASS EDUCATION" EXPLANATION

Eventually, this "family morality" system did crumble.  Caldwell attributes part of its failure to a "spectacular growth in capitalist" production and gadgets--from the automobile to the fast food restaurant--that overwhelmed residual home production and part to Europe's peculiar egalitarian streak, derived from the French Revolution, which opened these societies to gender-role engineering.  Yet the real spoiler, he insists, was mass state education, which indoctrinated new generations against the old family morality.  The new government schools, introduced in most Western nations during the late 19^th century, not only reduced the potential for child labor around the house and raised the cost for items such as children's clothing.  These schools also became, for the children involved, the new focus-of-loyalty and advocate-for-the-future, displacing the family.  As Caldwell explains:  "[the schools] made citizens of those whose horizons had been largely confined to the family, and taught the immorality of putting family first."  State schools so "destroy[ed] the corporate identity of the family," attacking parental authority in particular, and fertility tumbled.  What was true for Europe, soon became true for the whole world.  As Caldwell concludes:  "It seems improbable--and has yet to be demonstrated--that any society can sustain stable high fertility beyond two generations of mass schooling."[14]

Subsequent applications of Caldwell's emphasis on "mass schooling" as the trigger to fertility decline have shown positive results.   In the United States, for example, the spread of state schooling is closely correlated with fertility decline in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Indeed, even in rural American school districts, each additional month of a public school year resulted in an average fertility decline of .23 children per family:  the state schools literally consumed children.[15]  Other investigators have found "a strong [negative] relationship between school enrollment and fecundity," particularly at the secondary school level.

6. SIXTH, THE RELIGIOUS EXPLANATION

Indeed, evidence from the latest demographic research points strongly toward religion--its strength or absence--as perhaps the major influence in determining fertility.[16]  This new view holds that an economic shift (such as the change from "family" to "factory" production) "is merely a powerful incentive for fertility decline;" it is "neither sufficient nor necessary" to explain the first demographic transition.[17]  Instead, the influence of religion on the beliefs of persons regarding fertility serves in practice as  the critical, necessary, and sufficient variable:  only change here can lead to fertility decline.  As Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe summarizes, "secularization"--or "the decrease of adherence to organized forms of religion"--is both "the most powerful variable at the outset of the fertility decline" and "the one with the longest lasting effect or the highest degree of persistence."[18]  Without secularization, the evidence shows, fertility decisions would probably remain "in the realm of the sacred," whatever the economic situation.  This suggests that pre-1850 fertility in Europe was "natural" and high because most Europeans were active Christians; they refused to reduce their family size, not out of ignorance, nor because of potential household economic gains, but because of their obedience to Christian teaching.  As Lesthaeghe and Wilson explain:

[T]his moral system can be viewed as an excellent intellectual adaptation to, and buttress of, the traditional family mode of production in Western Europe.  The intergenerational solidarity between members of the family, so necessary for the smooth operation of such familial economic units of production, was a central concern of Christian teaching.  The paternal control of this unit was thoroughly legitimated by the prevailing moral code, for which the Christian churches acted as guardians.[19]

It was the French Revolution which released a "total attack" on this system, advancing individualism, materialism, and radical egalitarianism to replace the Christian family system.  One hundred years later, Protestant Christians began breaking ranks with Roman Catholics (and with their own theological founders such as Martin Luther), and started to turn fertility control over to the individual's secular conscience.  This left only the Roman Catholic Church to offer a fierce resistance in Europe to this aspect of secularization in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries.

In sum, the weight of the evidence shows that the "first demographic transition" in Europe--marked by the abandonment of "natural fertility" levels of 6 to 9 children per family in favor of a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) slightly over 2--was primarily a religious event.  Secular ideas of individualism, rational calculation of economic gain, and materialism won out in most places over Christian obedience to the Genesis command, "be fruitful and multiply."  In practice, these new values also displaced some level of respect for the role of God in the creation of new human life.  Put another way, the compelling new evidence strongly suggests that this first episode of sharp fertility decline--the first fertility transition--was simply a sign of societal wide religious retreat. 

TOWARD THE "DIMINISHED CHILD”

What about the "second demographic transition," the label given by demographers to the new wave of fertility decline into negative growth levels that set in, among Western nations, about 35 years ago (1963-1965)?  Does it, too, have a religious explanation?

To answer these questions, more background is in order.  This second change actually came as a great surprise to observers, who had thought a new demographic stability had been achieved.  Fertility decline had ceased in most Western nations by 1940.  Indeed, after the disruptions of World War II, fertility had even climbed again.  What some sociologists called "the golden age of marriage" appeared to have set in.  Between 1945 and 1965, the average age of first marriage had fallen to near record lows, for both men and women, and the proportion of all adults who were married reached near 95 percent in many countries, a record high.[20]  Fertility rose in the 1950's and early 1960's, creating "Baby Booms" in many Western nations. 

But then, in what one writer properly calls "a remarkable coincidence" of timing, all the indicators of family well-being abruptly turned in these places during the very short 1963-1965 period.  Fertility resumed its fall, tumbling well below the zero-growth level; a massive retreat from marriage commenced; and Western societies seemed to lose all sense of inherited familial order.  Dutch demographer Dirk van de Kaa has described the phenomenon as involving four transformations:

1. A shift from the golden age of marriage to the dawn of the age of cohabitation, where marriage is increasingly discarded in favor of informal sexual and living arrangements;

2. A shift from the era of the king-child with parents to that of the king-adult pair with one--and usually only one--child;

3. A shift from preventive contraception, designed to benefit the favored early children,  to self-fulfilling contraception, designed to please the parents; and

4. A shift from a uniform family system of a married couple with children to pluralistic families and households, including the rapid growth of single-parent families.[21]

How do demographers explain these changes?  All agree that analysts seriously misread developments in the 1945-65 era.  Caldwell suggests that the "Baby Booms" found in Europe, North America, and Australia were "not real."  Rather, they were the compound effect of "earlier and more nearly universal marriages in a period of imperfect contraception" and some catching up on births deferred by economic depression in the 1930's and by war in the 1940's.[22]  Van de Kaa agrees that the Baby Boom was a one time event, brought on by earlier marriages, and a marked acceleration in first and second births.  That third and fourth births in families were still in decline in most places was not immediately apparent.[23]  Michael Murphy offers a more sobering analysis, suggesting that the "Baby Boom" and the "golden age of marriage" were in fact logical preludes to the seemingly permanent "baby bust," all being products of the mid-century sexual revolution.  As he writes:

…the whole post-war period forms a more coherent pattern than is often recognized.  The second demographic transition is initially associated with increased numbers of births as young people become sexually active at younger ages, both inside and outside of marriage:  age at marriage fell and the proportions who married rose.  Fertility tends to rise, in part because there is not full awareness of, and access to, efficient contraception.  [But] in time, this situation reverses.[24]

The "Chicago School" theorists emphasize the role of women's wages in this change, arguing that at "almost every age and birth order, higher net women's hourly earnings [compared to men's] reduce the likelihood of birth."  Equal Pay Laws adopted in the 1960's and early '70's, they suggest, disrupted systems where higher net wages for men encouraged fertility.[25]  Researchers looking at Japan trace that nation's sharp fertility decline to the increase in the proportion of married women who were employed, from 13 percent in 1963 to 42 percent in 1991, a change labeled "the most rapid increase on record in economically advanced nations."[26] The "Chicago School" also shows how state-provided welfare benefits can disrupt the natural economic gains of marriage.  So can easier divorce, since women will only commit to more children and housework, and forego career advancement, if they are reasonably certain that their households will not dissolve.  Ermish shows that married mothers who are employed after giving birth are almost twice-as-likely to divorce as new mothers who do not work after bearing a child.[27]  Indeed, "Chicago School" analysis suggests that such processes begin to feed on themselves.  As Ermisch explains:

Thus, having fewer children and having them later in one's life suggests a tendency for the expected gains from marriage cooperation to decline.  This suggests that a fall in fertility will [in turn] increase divorce rates and reduce marriage rates.[28]

But among some analysts, suspicion remains that "women's employment" may be more symptom or consequence of the second demographic transition, than cause.  Murphy suggests that the "Chicago School" simply cuts out the "middle level" explanations in order to link fertility decline to "remote determinants," without showing how these actually work. 

The very pervasiveness of this "second" transition may point to better explanations.  Coleman notes that remaining pockets of high fertility in Europe--such as in the rural Swiss regions of Switzerland--all disappeared after 1965.  So did pockets of higher "Catholic fertility" still to be found in Spain and Portugal.[29]  Van de Kaa reports that 97 percent of 21-year-old Danish women now report having had pre-marital sex, essentially marking the full collapse there of the old sexual ethic.  Lesthaeghe and Meekers show that only 20 percent of all European Community citizens above age 18 have a meaningful link to organized religion; among young adults, the figure is closer to 10 percent.[30]  Ronald Inglehart cites the sharp decline in votes for identifiably religious political parties in Europe after 1963 as a sign of what he calls "the silent revolution" in European values.[31]

Coleman concludes that ideas and values "may be more important that had been thought" in explaining the second demographic transition.[32]  Lesthaeghe is more blunt.  Recent changes in family formation and marital fertility, he says, are nothing new.  They merely continue the "long-term shift in the Western ideational system" away from the values affirmed by Christian teaching (specifically "responsibility, sacrifice, altruism, and sanctity of long-term commitments") and toward a militant "secular individualism" focused on the desires of the self.[33]  And so, secularization  or the retreat from religion emerges again as the key variable in understanding this second demographic change. 

It is important to note that the values of the new secular order, despite the rhetoric, do not in fact center on "freedom" and "choice."  Rather, the evidence suggests that those are transitional arguments, masking a new and quite negative view of children.  Belgian researchers point to signs that European youth "appear to be extending non-conformism with respect to abortion, divorce, etc., to parenthood as well," agreeing in large majorities with statements such as "children need only one parent" and "children are no longer needed for personal fulfillment."  Even those who choose to parent now do so "to satisfy their private needs," rather than to meet religious, family, or communal obligations.  The new "tolerance" of alternate lifestyles at times comes near to excluding parenthood even as an option.[34]  Van de Kaa notes the paradox that it was the arrival of "perfect" contraception--in the mode of  the birth control pill--in 1964-65 which, instead of bringing "wanted" children within marriage, produced couples who could live outside of marriage "without fear of unwanted pregnancy and forced marriage" and perhaps subsequently make a "self-fulfilling choice" to bear a child.[35] 

Historian Philippe Aries, author of the classic volume Centuries of Childhood, sees "a new epoch, one in which the child occupies a smaller place, to say the least."  Between 1450 and 1900, he notes, the Europeans had expanded the place of the child in their civilization.  Levels of care improved noticeably, and the period of childhood became something precious.  The Europeans even created "the child king," placing children at the center of adults' lives.  Looking near our century's end at a civilization with almost universal pre-marital sex, ubiquitous contraception, legal abortion, and record-low fertility, Aries concludes:  "In like manner, [the child's] role is changing today, before our very eyes.  It is [now] diminishing."[36]

THE AMERICAN EXCEPTION

Europe is dying; so may be Japan, also done in by a broad rejection of children.  However, unlike two decades ago, when America was leading the retreat from marriage and children, something different now seems to be happening here.  The United States is the only developed nation in the world which recorded an increase in its total fertility rate between 1981 and 2000: from 1.81 in the former year to 2.10 in 2000, an increase of 16 percent, just back to the replacement or zero-growth level.  This was not, as some suggest, just a function of a rising number of births out-of-wedlock.  Between 1995 and 2000, even marital fertility rose by 11 percent.  Nor was this a function of America's greater ethnic diversity.  The increase in fertility among Americans of European descent actually climbed by 19 percent after 1981, to a total fertility rate of 2.065.  As The Economist magazine recently summarized, "demographic forces are pulling America and Europe apart….America's fertility rate is rising; Europe's is falling.  America's immigration outstrips Europe's….America's population will soon be getting younger.  Europe's is aging."  By 2050, The Economist calculates a U.S. population of about 500 million, compared to an EU in demographic freefall,  with barely half as many people.[37]

Part of the explanation for America's greater fecundity is the higher degree of religious identification and behavior shown by Americans, when compared to Europeans.  Forty-five percent of Americans, in the year 2000, reported attending religious services during the prior week; in Europe, under ten percent.  And believers tend to have more babies.  For example, a study of differential fertility among "white fundamentalist Protestants" found a total fertility rate 13 percent above the American average.  Among "fundamentalists" who attended church weekly, the figure was 27 percent higher.[38]  To choose another example, the fertility of American Latter-Day- Saints, or Mormons, is about 70 percent above the American average.

But family creation as an expression of religious belief also requires a favorable policy environment.  What American public policies appear to make a difference?  I see three that have been active since 1980:

1. First, the joint taxation of married couples, also known as income splitting.  United States tax law still requires that most married couples file a joint income tax return, where tax brackets are substantially wider for married couples than for individuals. Between 1948 and 1969, the U.S. had a system of pure income splitting, where income tax brackets were fully twice as wide for married couples as for single persons.  Such policy treats marriage as a meaningful economic partnership and recognizes and protects spouses who devote themselves to labor in the home, such as fulltime childcare.  There is good evidence that this tax law encouraged both the Marriage Boom of the 1950's and early 1960's and, indirectly, the Baby Boom: where the U.S. Total Fertility Rate nearly doubled.  Even though the existing tax structure does create a modest "marriage penalty" for certain two-income couples, it also continues to provide some encouragement to traditional family structures with a full-time mother at home.

2. Second, tax exemptions and credits for children.  The effect of European-style child-allowances on encouraging fertility is minimal, at best; some recent analysts find no positive effects at all.[39]  In contrast, there is evidence that the tax exemption for dependent children found in the U.S. tax code has a "robust" effect on fertility.  When the real value of this exemption has risen, U.S. fertility also rose; when its real value fell, so did fertility.  Analyst Leslie Whittington shows that a 10 percent rise in the exemptions real value generates 8 percent more births.[40]  In 1997, the U.S. Congress also created an additional child tax credit: $400 per child then; $600 per child in 2003; and currently scheduled to reach $1,000 by 2010.  Preliminary results suggest that this credit has a pronatalist effect, as well. 

3. My third example is home schooling.  This development--now legal in every state--is growing rapidly in the U.S.:  over two million children are now homeschooled, a number growing at about 15 percent a year.  Homeschooling can be called the most important American folk or popular movement of the last 20 years.  The educational results are impressive.  But the more important traits of homeschooling may be the familial.  Over 97 percent of homeschool students have parents who are married, compared to a 67 percent figure nationwide.  Sixty-two percent of homeschooling families have three-or-more children, compared to only 20 percent of the nationwide sample.  A full third (33.5 percent) of homeschooling families actually have four-or-more children, compared to but six percent nationwide.  These are unusually child-rich families, who are starting to make a statistical dent.[41]

In short, the early 21^st Century shows new signs of American Exceptionalism.  When this New Republic article ran in the 1980's, the answer to the question--"Are We Running Out of Babies?"--could have been "yes."  Yet, by 2003, the answer for America--uniquely in the Western world--may have become "no": a startling and important change.

Thank you for your attention.

Endnotes:

[1]   Tony Kaye, "The Birth Dearth: Conservatives Conceive a 'Crisis,'" The New Republic (Jan. 19, 1987): 20-23.