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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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It's not chemicals impacting the odds of pregnancy, but it's also not people trying and failing at any age. It's young people trying to not have kids and succeeding that's driving the decline. The birth control pill is released, and within a little over a decade the fertility rate (births-per-1000-women) falls roughly in half, a greater drop than the previous WWI-Great-Depression-WWII plunge. Total Fertility Rate is what we usually care about in the end, but it's an integral of that instantaneous births-per-woman rate over a lifetime, so somewhat obfuscates how rapid the effect was.

In the decades since then, it seems that older people trying to have kids are succeeding more, not failing! The birth rate among mothers 40-44 has more than doubled from 1980-2015 (from very very little up to very little...), the birth rate among 35-39yo mothers is up 150% (which in that case is a significant increase in absolute terms too), and the birth rate among ages 30-34 nearly doubled since 1975.

But at ages 25-29 the rate shows no clear trend downward until a 2006 peak, at 20-24 it's down 25% from the 90s, and at 15-19 it's down nearly 2/3rds.

Looking at provisional 2023 numbers ... the older age groups' birth rate rises have stopped and held mostly flat over the last decade (except that 30-34 might be on its way down now?), 25-29 is more clearly starting its fall, 20-24 is now down 50% from the 90s, and 15-19 is now down by more than 75%.

I suppose there could be chemicals impacting the human drive toward life-long pair mating? In the US marriage has been plummeting for all age brackets for generations. But I think we've got so many cultural factors contributing to that, Occam says don't even bother checking for chemicals right now.