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U.S. birth rate hit record low last year, signaling surge in childlessness

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5 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

As data analyst Stephen Shaw has documented in his film ‘Birthgap,’ declining birth rates in the U.S. and around the world are being driven by an ‘explosion’ in women choosing not to have children.

The U.S. birth rate hit a record low last year of 1.62 births per woman according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part of a worldwide trend of declining birth rates that have been shown to stem from rising childlessness.

The U.S. has had birth rates mostly below replacement level since 1972, according to United Nations (UN) data, with a minor brief respite from 2006 to 2007, when birth rates were just at replacement level. Birth rates hovered near replacement level from about 1989 to its recent peak of 2.11 births per woman in 2007. Since then, the birth rate has steadily declined.

The new CDC data shows that the birth rate for women ages 20 to 24 has seen a particularly steep decline of 47% since 2007. From 2022 to 2023 alone, the number of births for this age group dropped 4%.

As data analyst Stephen Shaw has documented in his film “Birthgap,” declining birth rates not just in the U.S. but around the world are being driven not by smaller family sizes but by an “explosion” in childlessness.

By comparing statistics on first-time mothers and the number of children they go on to have with national fertility rates, Shaw found that childlessness rates skyrocketed within only a few years in many countries.

For example, in Japan in 1974, one in 20 women were childless. By 1977, this ratio was one in four, and by 1990, it had reached one in three, a statistic that held in 2020. While Shaw doesn’t give specific numbers for most countries, he shares that most have become, like Italy and Japan, “childless nations,” where one-third or more people will become “childless for life.”

And according to the Pew Research Center, by 2010, “Nearly one-in-five American women end(ed) her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-10 in the 1970s.” As of 2018, 41% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 were single and childless, and that number is projected to spike to a whopping 45% by 2030.

Just as remarkable as this trend is the finding in a Dutch meta-analysis, cited by author Jody Day in Shaw’s “Birthgap” film, and using data from the early 2000s, that only 10 percent of such women are childless “by choice,” and another 10 percent are childless due to “known” medical reasons, including infertility.

Shaw highlighted what appear to be contributing factors: childbearing is delayed until a woman’s fertility window closes; women tend to want to settle with men at least as educated as they are, and everywhere, significantly more women are attending college than men; there are “too many options;” a number of young men are staying at home playing video games instead of pursuing women (or have given up on that).

Many speculate that increased pornography use and addiction is disincentivizing young men’s pursuit of women, and that overuse of technology is leading many young men and women to live isolated from each other.

The increasing secularization of society may also lead to growing numbers of childless women (and men) through a whole slew of hard-to-quantify factors, including by diminishing young people’s sense of purpose and happiness, and depriving them of character formation and a meaningful, effective way to select a mate.

Commentators such as Elon Musk have warned that if global birth rates continue to decline at their current projected rates, “human civilization will end.”

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Daily Caller

Suspect In Savage Knife Attack That Roiled Britain, Triggered Speech Crackdown Had Al-Qaida Manual At Home

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Nick Pope

The 18-year old suspect in a vicious July knife attack that left three young girls dead in the U.K. before triggering riots and a government crackdown on speech was in possession of an al-Qaida manual, according to Reuters.

Axel Rudakubana, who faces three murder charges and ten counts of attempted murder for the savage attack against a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, now faces additional charges for possessing an al-Qaida training guide and producing ricin, a highly toxic substance, Reuters reported  on Tuesday. Large riots broke out across the country following the attack as rumors spread that the perpetrator was a migrant, a radical Muslim, or both, prompting the liberal British government to crack down on speech on the internet.

The riots that followed the vicious attack rocked the U.K. for several days, with outraged crowds surrounding mosques, burning cars and attacking a hotel known to host migrants, according to Reuters and The New York Times. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a member of the Labor Party, quickly attributed the unrest to “far-right thuggery.”

U.K. government officials subsequently warned people to “think before [they] post” and announced  that law enforcement personnel would review social media platforms to look for speech deemed to be inflammatory and likely to spark violence.

Citizens were warned against “publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred,” in the words of Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions of England and Wales. “So, if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that and then potentially you’re committing that offense [incitement to racial hatred].”

“We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media,” Parkinson added. “Their job is to look for this material, and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth.”

More than 1,000 people were arrested for their involvement in the riots, and more than 30 were arrested for social media posts that authorities claim fueled the rioting, according to the BBC. Of those arrested for social media activity, at least 17 faced criminal charges for their posts.

“These are telling details and are important for Rudakubana’s trial,” British conservative pundit Douglas Murray wrote of the new revelations about the materials in the suspect’s possession. “But the authorities must have known this months ago – indeed, within hours of getting into Rudakubana’s house – meaning that people who were heavily criticized for spreading ‘fake news’ about the potential motive of the attacker now turn out to have said something that seems likely to have been true.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Joe Rogan Responds To YouTube Censorship of Trump Interview

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From Reclaim The Net

By

Joe Rogan has accused YouTube of making it difficult for users to find his recent interview with former President Donald Trump, saying that the platform initially only displayed short clips from mainstream media instead of the full episode. Rogan sarcastically remarked on YouTube’s actions, saying, “I’m sure it was a mistake at YouTube where you couldn’t search for it. Yeah. I’m sure it was a mistake. It’s just a mistake.”

In episode 2200, Rogan explained that even though his team contacted YouTube multiple times, the episode remained difficult to find. X CEO Elon Musk intervened, contacting Spotify CEO Daniel Ek about the issue. (Spotify exclusively licenses The Joe Rogan Experience but allows the show on third-party platforms like YouTube.)

Watch the video clip here.

Rogan noted the explosive viewership once the content was available, with the episode racking up “six and a half million views on mine and eight plus million on his.”

Emphasizing the episode’s broad reach, Rogan expressed frustration with the initial suppression, stating, “You can’t suppress shit. It doesn’t work. This is the internet. This is 2024. People are going to realize what you’re doing.” He pointed to the significance of this episode’s reach, asking, “If one show has 36 million downloads in two days, like that’s not trending? Like what’s trending for you? Mr. Beast?”

Describing the power of YouTube’s algorithmic influence, Rogan claimed the algorithm worked against the interview’s visibility, only showing clips instead of the full conversation. According to him, when YouTube initially fixed the issue, users had to enter highly specific keywords, like “Joe Rogan Trump interview,” to find the episode.

Rogan argued that YouTube’s gatekeeping reflected an ideological stance, remarking, “They hate it because ideologically they’re opposed to the idea of him being more popular.” He suggested that major tech platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, which hold significant influence, often push agendas that favor specific narratives, stating, “They didn’t like that this one was slipping away. And so they did something.”

In a telling moment, Rogan noted the impact of the initial suppression, explaining how “the interactions…dropped off a cliff because people couldn’t find it.” He claimed that this caused viewers either to give up or settle for short clips, leading to a dip in views before the episode gained traction on Spotify and X.

 

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