I would like to take a few steps back to last week when we discussed Malthusianism and birth/death rates. I recently came across an article that discussing US birth rates and found it quite interesting. In class we discussed reasons for the rise and fall of birth rates (as shown on page 115 in chapter 4). We primarily discussed those reasons as being environmental (such as poor living conditions leading to higher death rates), and economic (having more children for work purposes). This article below references recent low birth rates due to economic and educational values. The US birth rate is at an all time low as of 2012. The records used for the below article state that rates are 63.0 births to every 1,000 women. I don't know about anyone else but I found that very surprising. Because families do not have a demand for children to complete labor tasks families are having fewer children. This should be seen as a positive attribute to the environment not using as many recourses and helping cost efficiency. However, the article argues that the increase of lower birth rates hurts us as a national labor force. With the decrease of recent birth the young workers labor pool is becoming scarce and will slowly begin effecting the economy as a whole.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/06/news/economy/birth-rate-low/index.html
I also came across a short video clip discussing the resent fall in birth rates all over the world. I found it interesting one of the points it touches upon is women's education. Because women across the country are being more educated in various areas they are putting off family and marriage to continue education goals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOuzC0UMBHQ
The question this sparked in my mind was: Do you believe birth rates have done down due to economic reasons or more due education reasons?
No comments:
Post a Comment