In another sign that America’s long national economic nightmare might just be beginning, a new study by the Pew Research Center shows that the American birth rate has fallen to a record low. That means that as our population ages, there will be no one left to pay their bills. Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs will be largely defunct. As with Europe, America will undergo an economic twilight phase, burdened by debt it can never pay off.
Overall, the birth rate declined an astonishing 8% from 2007 to 2010. The birth rate dropped precipitously among new immigrants – foreign born women dropped their birth rate by a full 14% — but remained significantly higher than among US-born women. The rate for foreign-born women was 87.8 births per thousand women aged 15-44; that rate was a shockingly low 58.9 births per thousand US-born women.
According to Pew, 13% of the American population was born abroad, 17% of women of childbearing age were born abroad, and 23% of all births in the country were to women born abroad. Overall, while a majority of births to US-born women were to white mothers, that share was far smaller than it was in 1990; the majority of births to foreign-born women were to Hispanic mothers.
Historically, the highest birth rate took place in 1957, when 122.7 women per thousand gave birth; it dropped during the 1970s, rose slightly during the 1980s and 1990s, then dropped off again in 2007.