At one point in my life it would have seemed incredible that people would have to be told to make love, but something like that has to happen in America, because we aren’t having kids anymore, and it’s a big problem.
Whatever your views on Elon Musk, he’s right about one thing: the greatest danger to this country, is the collapsing American birthrate. If you don’t have children then your society doesn’t have a future, literally.
The U.S. birthrate is 1.6 children per woman, as of 2022. That’s shockingly low — far below the replacement rate of 2.1, and approaching the dismal levels of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, a society that really did collapse.
It wasn’t always that way. As recently as 2007, the U.S. birthrate was 2.12 children per woman. We were at 2.0 or above from 1998 to 2007, and 1989 to 1994 — the end of the Clinton and Reagan eras, respectively.
These were periods, generally, of optimism and prosperity in America. They were also eras in which people felt secure — both in a global sense, as geopolitical threats faded, and in a personal sense, as crime dropped.
In 2008, the birthrate started declining, and has never recovered. It would be easy to blame millennials — or to note the rise of Obama, who heralded an age of wokeness, a generation far too preoccupied with politics.
But the other thing that happened around that time was the subprime mortgage crisis, and the Great Recession, and the generation that should have been producing children could not afford to buy homes.
So there are cultural factors, and there are economic factors. And there are all kinds of ideas about how to encourage people to have children — from raising the child tax credit, to encouraging traditional lifestyles.
Perhaps we ought to look at the one industrialized society in the world that has a birthrate above replacement — Israel, where there were 2.89 births per woman in 2022, and where that rate has held remarkably steady.
There are several stories about the Israeli birthrate. The conventional wisdom was once that religious Jews, and Arab Israelis — 20% of the total population — tend to have far more children than secular Jewish Israelis.
That is no longer quite true. Religious Jews still have large families, but the Arab birthrate has fallen as more Arab women become educated and enter the professions. And secular Jewish birthrates have recovered.
In fact, it is becoming the norm for Israelis who are not religious to have large families, or at least to have some children. And children are everywhere in Israel — free, safe, out on their own, even in times of war.
Let’s talk about the effect of war. Before October 7, 2023, Israelis ranked 5th on the list of happiest nations in the world. After October 7, Israel fell — but just three places. Israel is now the 8th-happiest place in the world.
The U.S. ranks a distant 24th, even though we are theoretically richer, more comfortable, and a safe distance from existential conflict. We struggle to find a sense of purpose, and a perhaps reason to believe in the future.
There is something about conflict that shapes Israeli society. Or, more precisely: there is something about social cohesion in the face of conflict. There is an urgency to life and to love — and a sense of solidarity.
The shift toward a higher secular birthrate in Israel also seemed to coincide with the construction of the security barrier (the “wall”) that ended the spate of suicide bombings that marked the second intifada.
Urban life suddenly felt safer; security guards disappeared from restaurants; people discovered a renewed sense of freedom in the streets. I do believe that is when young Israelis decided the future was bright after all.
We don’t need a war to rescue the U.S. birthrate. But we do need a sense of security, and hope about the future. Perhaps, with stronger borders, we will rediscover the optimism that has carried Israelis through.
We also need to remind ourselves that for all the challenges of family life, it remains the most beautiful thing in the world, and the reason why we are here. Now, my fellow Americans: go forth, be fruitful, and multiply.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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