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From the library: What to Expect when No One’s Expecting (part 1, the raw numbers)

From the library: What to Expect when No One’s Expecting (part 1, the raw numbers)

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 10:17 pm by Jane the Actuary

From the library: What to Expect when No One’s Expecting (part 1, the raw numbers) 2013-07-30T22:17:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So I’ve been reading What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, by Jonathan V. Last and wanted to type up my thoughts.

There’s a lot of great data in this book, and I wanted to start with just noting down some of the fun facts and figures. So:

Total Fertility Rate by Household Income Level (p. 44):
< $20,000             2.038
$20 – 30K              1.988
$35 – 50K              2.052
$50 – 75K              1.734
$75 – 100K            1.752
$100K+                 1.832

TFR by education level (p. 47)

< high school diploma    2.447
high school graduate      1.947
1 + yrs college                    1.719
Assoc. degree                   1.820
Bachelor’s degree            1.632
Grad. school                       1.596

By immigration status:

native-born women: 2.0
foreign-born women: 2.6

by religiosity:

non-believers: 1.66
observant Protestants: 2.2
observant Catholics: 2.3

International comparisons:

In Mexico, historically:

1970       6.72
1980       4.71
1990       3.40
2000       2.58
2009       2.07

Iran:

1980ish (“thirty years ago”): 6.5
now: 1.88
** note that the 6.5 was caused by the post-Revolution “baby boom” due to religious fervor and/or government pressure, and was not a historical long-term rate.

Huge youth bulge in the Gaza Strip:

42% of the population below age 15
49% between 15 and 30
=only 9% over age 30!
median age is 15.8 years

Russia:

TFR of 1.3
population projected to decline from 143 million (2005) to 136 million (2025) or, in more pessimistic projections, to 121 million.

Japan!

Oh, man, is Japan in trouble.
now: 127.8 million
2050: projected to drop to 100 million
2100: optimistically, 91 million; realistically (unchanged fertility rates), 56 million.
in 2011, more adult diapers sold than baby diapers.
lots and lots of pro-natalist legislation making no difference

Historical TFRs

1972       2.14
1990       1.54
1995       1.42
2001       1.33
2003       1.29
(erratic years because the chart keys off of years when pro-natalist legislation passed)

Fertility rates in Europe:

top nine:
Ireland                 2.08
France                 2.01
UK                          1.91
Netherlands       1.78
Luxembourg      1.77
Denmark             1.74
Finland                 1.73
Sweden               1.67

Really awful rates:

Spain                     1.48
Germany             1.41
Hungary               1.41
Italy                       1.40
Czech Rep.          1.27

France, native-born women: 1.7

foreign-born women: 2.8 (another source: 3 x native-born women)

Another major nosedive: Singapore

1960: 5.45
1965: 4.7
1966: beginning of major efforts at population control
1976: 2.1
1980: 1.74
1986: reverse course, incentives for more children
small rebound: 1988, 1.96
but then decline, despite ever-greater incentives:
1999: 1.48
2001: 1.41
2004: 1.24
“now”: 1.11

Georgia (the country, not the state), fun fact: to encourage births, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church personally (via mass baptisms) baptizes all third-children born in the country, and, coincidentally or as a result, the birth rate jumped 20% after this announcement.

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