Fertility Rates; Boring Stuff, Yes?

Not so fast...low fertility rates have dramatic ramifications, including a great replacement

Fertility Rates

So what is it, the fertility rate, exactly; according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),

The total fertility rate in a specific year is defined as the total number of children that would be born to each woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years and give birth to children in alignment with the prevailing age-specific fertility rates. It is calculated by totaling the age-specific fertility rates as defined over five-year intervals. Assuming no net migration and unchanged mortality, a total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman ensures a broadly stable population.

The bogey then, to maintain a stable population, is a fertility rate of of 2.1/woman. All, “western” countries, all, have fertility rates below 2.1. This leads to successive generations being smaller than their predecessors; an aging, and shrinking, population.

The chart is from the wiki on “sub-replacement fertility.” I am not going to get into the reasons for sub-replacement fertility, they are many, but the implications for the United States in particular.

The Welfare State

Remember, we are facing successively smaller generations. According to the Social Security Administration, in 1940 there were 159.4 workers per beneficiary; that number fell to 5.1 by 1960, and sat at 2.8 in 2013. No doubt it has continued to fall. Keep in mind that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, the so-called Social Security Trust Fund is a smoke screen; current “investors,” i.e. workers, fund the beneficiaries hand to mouth, if you will. So even a decade ago, fewer than three workers were funding the Social Security payment to one beneficiary. Clearly, we have simply offloaded an ever-increasing burden onto successive generations. Can you say “unsustainable.” Gen Z seems to be awakening to what we have done, thank God. It is decidedly bad for them, hence their disdain, if not outright hatred of Boomers, such as me. And for good reason. Social Security per se, is just the tip of the iceberg.

The history of welfare began after the United States was 156 years old. It started in the 1930s with the Great Depression. Three small programs were mixed into Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal programs. Still, welfare remained small until the Great Society Programs of Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) in the 1960s. Eight programs were up and running at the end of the Great Society. Over succeeding years, these programs generally expanded their reach and benefits, except for welfare reform performed in 1996. After that <the 1960s>, five new programs were added to the welfare system in 1972 and one each in 1975, 1990, and 1997. In all, fourteen welfare programs make up the welfare system today.

History of Welfare, Federal Safety Net

Because of this growth in the welfare state, Johnson and FDR follow only Woodrow Wilson on my list of the worst Presidents in the history of the United States; they have done, literally, irreparable harm to the Republic. There is absolutely nothing compassionate about the welfare state, rather the converse is true, it is a destroyer of people, families, and the nation.

Immigration

Without immigration the population of the United States would have already been in decline for decades. But to save the welfare state, legal immigrants, dues-paying workers, are required. More on that later, but suffice it to say here that immigrants who come in as beneficiaries of the system, rather than as benefactors, only exacerbate the sub-replacement fertility problem.

Absent a dramatic re-invigoration of fertility, immigration is a requirement. Of course we are a “nation of immigrants.”

Side note: Italian-Americans, German-Americans, Japanese-, Chinese-, Vietnamese-, African-Americans … these hyphenated names for immigrant groups are a uniquely American “thing.” There is no such thing in France, or Germany, or Japan, etc.; you are French, German, Japanese, or you are a second-class citizen.

The United States can afford to pick and choose its immigrants, and we should be doing exactly that. And whatever we do, we should not be incentivizing illegal immigration by offering “free,” which is to say paid for by actual tax payers, access to our various and sundry welfare programs.

Politics

I have told my Leftist friends, “just be patient, you will get your way, be it gun controls, more social welfare, more ‘social justice,’ more censorship of those on the Right, etc.” I might have been wrong, it's been known to happen. Why?

Okay … I’m going to give you a long-ish quote here.

Republican-leaning areas in the United States consistently exhibit higher birth rates compared to Democratic-leaning areas. As of 2023, red states—those that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election—had markedly higher fertility rates than blue states, with states like South Dakota (2.01), Texas (1.81), and Utah (1.80) leading in total fertility rates, while states such as Vermont (1.30), Oregon (1.35), and California (1.48) had significantly lower rates.

The aggregate total fertility rate in the 20% most Republican counties was 1.76, compared to 1.37 in the 20% most Democratic counties as of 2024.

Research also shows that Republicans express a stronger desire for children than Democrats. Between 2014 and 2019, Republicans wanted, on average, 0.20 more children than Democrats, with a growing preference among Republicans for larger families of four or more children, while Democrats increasingly favored smaller families or childlessness.

Data from the General Social Survey indicates that a random sample of 100 conservative adults would raise 208 children, compared to 147 for 100 liberal adults.

The fertility advantage in Republican areas persists even when controlling for factors like population density, race, ethnicity, and education levels, suggesting the divide is not merely a function of urbanization or demographics but reflects deeper cultural differences around family formation.

Notably, after the 2016 election, Republican-leaning counties experienced a measurable “Trump bump” in birth rates, attributed to increased economic optimism among Republicans, while Democratic counties saw a relative decline.

A similar but smaller effect was observed after the 2000 election, but no such shift occurred following the Obama victories in 2008 or 2012.

However, most red states still fall below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman, indicating challenges to sustainable population growth across the political spectrum.

Brave Search

For the United States as a whole, the fertility rate is 1.62, but as shown above, the Republicans have a fertility rate of about 1.76, while Democrats have a fertility rate of about 1.37. In other words, if we assume for the moment that family influences strongly party affiliation, the born-and-raised Democrat population is going to shrink significantly faster than the born-and-raised Republican population. That is why I might have been wrong.

You have heard of the Great Replacement so-called conspiracy theory perhaps? Here is an intro from that wiki;

The Great Replacement (French: grand remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a debunked white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory originally espoused by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of “replacist” elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims of a conspiracy of “replacist” elites as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview.

Now, I am not going to argue the objectives of a great replacement, but I am going to argue that a great replacement is happening, and needs to happen, if we intend to preserve the welfare state, the population of the United States, the economy of the United States, etc. I will also argue that the Democrats, who are not idiots, have more incentive to encourage the immigration of Leftists that do the Republicans have incentive to encourage the immigration of more conservative peoples. Where you would find large populations of those more conservative peoples I cannot say.

According to the Pew Research Center,

The number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States reached an all-time high of 14 million in 2023 after two consecutive years of record growth, according to a new Pew Research Center estimate. The increase of 3.5 million in two years is the biggest on record. Data from 2023 is the most recent available for developing a comprehensive and detailed estimate.

So. Four million new illegal (unauthorized) immigrants setup households in the United States between 2020 and 2023, a million per year on average. Most of these immigrants were from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

According to USAFacts:

Summary

I will let you take it from here. With sub-replacement fertility rates, a “great replacement” is happening, like it or not. The only question is, “who will replace the not born?”