Post by jeffolie on Sept 4, 2013 15:45:44 GMT -6
California’s shrinking baby pool
By Sam Mathews 9/03/13
At the moment of my birth — a moment that occurred only last week — I was the most valuable child in the history of California.
That’s not merely the opinion of my proud father, the usual author of this column. And that’s not the idle boast of a 7-day-old infant. My value is a hard demographic and economic fact for California — and a huge burden for me.
Few Californians know it, but our state has a shortage of children. California’s birth rate has fallen to 1.94 babies per woman — below the 2.1 babies-per-woman fertility standard necessary to maintain a population. And migration to California from other states and countries is down. The result: Over the past decade, the state’s number of children under the age of 10 declined by 187,771. This decade, California is projected to lose more than 100,000 of us. While children were one-third of all Californians in 1970, they will be only one-fifth by 2030, according to a recent report on this shortage from University of Southern California demographer Dowell Myers.
This older California is a problem for both you — those old enough to read this — and me.
For you, having fewer kids around means that you have a smaller talent pool from which to develop the adults needed to replace you at work and in the community, support you as retirees and buy your houses.
For me, according to the USC report, the child shortage means a ton of pressure. I will have to have nearly twice the economic and social impact as my Aunt Katie, a newly minted California lawyer born in the mid-1980s. Call me precocious in taking over my dad’s column, but I don’t have any time to waste.
Since I’m the third child in my family, you’d think Californians would extol the fertility of my mother and prodigious virility of my father (did I mention he’s editing this?). But no. I suspect many Californians wish I’d never been born.
On the right, many people complain about all the taxes being paid to support my education. On the left, especially among those concerned about overpopulation, it’s practically an article of faith that couples should have no more than one child.
My reaction: You can’t keep taxes low and save the planet without me. Yes, consumption practices must change to slow climate change. But improving the environment is expensive. Without enough children to produce economic growth, there won’t be enough resources to do it. Big families are also, in many ways, more efficient. I can testify that I’m wearing nothing but ratty hand-me-downs from my big brothers.
And those on the right who call us children “tax eaters” talk as though having a kid is downright profitable. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that it will cost $241,080 to raise a child born last year for 18 years; when my dad plugged estimates for my health, education and child care into the USDA calculator, the figure for me was nearly $500,000, not including college. I’d say it’s my parents who are subsidizing the state’s future.
Many countries offer payments to children via parents or special accounts. In the United Kingdom, Prince William will get what is called the child benefit for baby George. If I’d been born in Singapore, my parents would have received $8,000 as a “baby bonus” and a special savings account — the Child Development Account — with a government match for their contributions.
So am I saying that California should open a savings account for me and send me a big check?
Yes. Short of that, treat me like the precious resource I am in this graying state and tie more benefits to me.
And, short of that, ease my burden another way. My fellow Californians of child-bearing age, for your future and for mine, I beg you: Get busy.
www.dailynews.com/opinion/20130903/californias-shrinking-baby-pool-joe-mathews
By Sam Mathews 9/03/13
At the moment of my birth — a moment that occurred only last week — I was the most valuable child in the history of California.
That’s not merely the opinion of my proud father, the usual author of this column. And that’s not the idle boast of a 7-day-old infant. My value is a hard demographic and economic fact for California — and a huge burden for me.
Few Californians know it, but our state has a shortage of children. California’s birth rate has fallen to 1.94 babies per woman — below the 2.1 babies-per-woman fertility standard necessary to maintain a population. And migration to California from other states and countries is down. The result: Over the past decade, the state’s number of children under the age of 10 declined by 187,771. This decade, California is projected to lose more than 100,000 of us. While children were one-third of all Californians in 1970, they will be only one-fifth by 2030, according to a recent report on this shortage from University of Southern California demographer Dowell Myers.
This older California is a problem for both you — those old enough to read this — and me.
For you, having fewer kids around means that you have a smaller talent pool from which to develop the adults needed to replace you at work and in the community, support you as retirees and buy your houses.
For me, according to the USC report, the child shortage means a ton of pressure. I will have to have nearly twice the economic and social impact as my Aunt Katie, a newly minted California lawyer born in the mid-1980s. Call me precocious in taking over my dad’s column, but I don’t have any time to waste.
Since I’m the third child in my family, you’d think Californians would extol the fertility of my mother and prodigious virility of my father (did I mention he’s editing this?). But no. I suspect many Californians wish I’d never been born.
On the right, many people complain about all the taxes being paid to support my education. On the left, especially among those concerned about overpopulation, it’s practically an article of faith that couples should have no more than one child.
My reaction: You can’t keep taxes low and save the planet without me. Yes, consumption practices must change to slow climate change. But improving the environment is expensive. Without enough children to produce economic growth, there won’t be enough resources to do it. Big families are also, in many ways, more efficient. I can testify that I’m wearing nothing but ratty hand-me-downs from my big brothers.
And those on the right who call us children “tax eaters” talk as though having a kid is downright profitable. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that it will cost $241,080 to raise a child born last year for 18 years; when my dad plugged estimates for my health, education and child care into the USDA calculator, the figure for me was nearly $500,000, not including college. I’d say it’s my parents who are subsidizing the state’s future.
Many countries offer payments to children via parents or special accounts. In the United Kingdom, Prince William will get what is called the child benefit for baby George. If I’d been born in Singapore, my parents would have received $8,000 as a “baby bonus” and a special savings account — the Child Development Account — with a government match for their contributions.
So am I saying that California should open a savings account for me and send me a big check?
Yes. Short of that, treat me like the precious resource I am in this graying state and tie more benefits to me.
And, short of that, ease my burden another way. My fellow Californians of child-bearing age, for your future and for mine, I beg you: Get busy.
www.dailynews.com/opinion/20130903/californias-shrinking-baby-pool-joe-mathews