Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)

America’s One-Child Policy What China imposed on its population, we’re adopting voluntarily.

Jonathan V. Last

September 27, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 02

For the last several months, Chinese officials have been floating the idea of relaxing the country’s famed “One- Child” policy. One-Child has long been admired in the West by environmentalists, anti-population doomsayers, and some of our sillier professional wise men. In Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008), for instance, Tom Friedman lauded the policy for saving China from “a population calamity.” What Friedman and others fail to understand is that China is built upon a crumbling demographic base. One-Child may or may not have “saved” China from overpopulation, but it has certainly created a demographic catastrophe.

Between 1950 and 1970, the average Chinese woman had roughly six children during her lifetime. Beginning in 1970, the Chinese government began urging a course of “late, long, few,” and in a decade the fertility rate dropped from 5.9 to 2.1. But that wasn’t enough for the government. In 1979, they instituted the One-Child policy—which is more complicated than it sounds.

Under One-Child, couples wanting a baby were required to obtain permission from local officials. (In 2002, the government relaxed this provision; you can now have one child without government clearance.) After having one child, urban residents and government employees were forbidden from having another. In rural areas, however, couples are often allowed to have a second baby five years after the first. Any more than two, however, and the government institutes penalties. Sanctions range from heavy fines to confiscation of belongings to dismissal from work—in addition to the occasional forced or sterilization. The overall result is a Chinese fertility rate that now sits somewhere between 1.9 and 1.3, depending on who is doing the tabulating. Nicholas Eberstadt noted that “In some major population centers—Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin among them—it appears that the average number of births per woman is amazingly low: below one baby per lifetime.”

One-Child marked a radical change in the trajectory of China’s population, from staggering growth to probable contraction. In 1950, China had 550 million people; today it is home to 1.33 billion. According to projections from the United Nations’ Population Division, -China’s population will peak at 1.458 billion in 2030. But then it will begin shrinking. By 2050, China will be down to 1.408 billion and losing 20 million people every five years.

At the same time, the average age in China will rise dramatically. In 2005, China’s median age was 32. By 2050, it will be 45, and a quarter of the Chinese population will be over the age of 65. The government’s pension system is almost nonexistent, and One-Child has eliminated the traditional support system of the extended —most people no longer have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, or nephews. It is unclear what sort of havoc this atomization will wreak on their society. China will have 330 million senior citizens with no one to care for them and no way to pay for their upkeep. It is, Eberstadt observed, “a slow- motion humanitarian tragedy already underway.”

By 2050, the age structure in China will be such that there are only 1.6 workers—today the country has 5.4—to support each retiree. The government will be forced to either: (1) substantially cut spending (in areas such as defense and public works) in order to shift resources to care for the elderly or (2) impose radically higher tax burdens on younger workers. The first option risks China’s international and military ambitions; the second risks revolution.

When we talk about the “fertility rate,” we mean the “total fertility rate” (TFR): the number of children born to the average woman over the course of her lifetime. In order for a country to maintain a steady population, it needs a fertility rate of 2.1. If the rate is higher, the country’s population grows; lower and it shrinks.

During the last 50 years, fertility rates have fallen all over the world. From Africa to Asia, South America to Eastern Europe, from Third World jungles to the wealthy desert petro-kingdoms, every country in every region is experiencing declines in fertility. In 1979, the world’s fertility rate was 6.0; today it’s 2.6. Industrialized nations have been the hardest hit. America’s 2.06 is one of the highest fertility rates in the First World. Only Israel (2.75) and New Zealand (2.10) are more fertile.

China and America have yet to witness the effects of falling fertility because of demographic momentum. Populations increase even as fertility rates collapse, until the last above-replacement generation dies, after which the population begins contracting. The rate of contraction speeds up as each generation passes. No society has ever experienced prosperity in the wake of contracting population.

Like China today, 30 years ago Japan was supposedly on the verge of eclipsing America economically. But like China, Japan was also in dire demographic straits. In 1950, the average Japanese woman had 2.75 children during her lifetime. That number dropped to 2.08 by 1960. By 1995, it had fallen to 1.49. In 2010, the Japanese fertility rate is 1.2.

Japan’s demographic momentum kept its population slowly increasing during the late 1990s and early 2000s; in 2004, it peaked at 127.84 million. And then the contraction began. In 2008, Japan lost 145,000 people and by 2025, it will have lost 6 million. By 2050, it will have shed an additional 17 million people, leaving its total population around 100 million and falling. And a declining population is necessarily an aging population, meaning that you’re faced with both a decline in demand for goods and services (because the population is getting smaller) and at the same time a labor shortage (because so many of the remaining people are too old to work). In 2050, the largest five-year cohort in Japan is expected to be people aged 75-79. While health care will likely be a growth sector, this is not a recipe for a robust economy.

Culturally speaking, Japan’s fertility problem is a problem: As Japanese women began attending college at greater rates in the 1970s, they began to delay marriage. By 2000, the average age of first marriage for college graduates was over 30. At first, these women simply postponed childbearing; then they abandoned it. Today, college-educated Japanese women have, on average, barely one child during their lifetimes.

These changes created some new cultural stereotypes in Japan. For instance, it is not uncommon to see dogs paraded around in strollers by childless, adult women. But the most prevalent new demographic archetype is the parasaito shinguru or “parasite single.” These creatures are college-educated, working women who live with their well into their 30s—not because they are too poor to pay rent, but because they spend their salaries on designer clothes, international travel, and fancy restaurants. The parasite singles are Japan’s biggest consumer group because, unlike real adults, their entire paychecks are available for discretionary spending. Sociologist Masahiro Yamada, who coined the term, explains, “They are like the ancient aristocrats of feudal times, but their parents the role of servants. Their lives are spoiled. The only thing that’s important to them is seeking pleasure.” The Japanese government has been trying to stoke fertility since the early 1970s. In 1972, when Japan’s fertility rate was still above replacement, the government introduced a monthly per-child subsidy for parents. Over the years, the government tinkered with the subsidy, altering the amount and raising the age . None of which made much difference: The fertility rate fell at a steady pace. In 1990, the government formed a committee charged with “Creating a sound environment for bearing and rearing children,” the fruit of which was a Childcare Leave Act aimed at helping working mothers.

In 2003, Japan passed the “Law for Basic Measures to Cope with a Declining Fertility Society,” followed two years later by the “Law for Measures to Support the Development of the Next Generation.” To get a sense of how daft the Japanese bureaucrats and politicians are, one of the new provisions required businesses to create—but not implement—abstract “plans” for raising the fertility level of their workers.

In the face of 35 years of failed incentives, Japan’s fertility rate stands at 1.2. This is below what is considered “lowest low,” a mathematical tipping point at which a country’s population will decline by as much as 50 percent within 45 years. This is a death spiral from which, demographers believe, it is impossible to escape. Then again, that’s just theory: History has never seen fertility rates so low.

Next to Japan’s, the U.S. fertility rate looks pretty good at 2.06. The massive, continual influx of immigrants we receive is enough to keep the U.S. population slowly growing. But America’s fertility rate has been falling since the founding.

Colgate economist Michael Haines combined the 1790 census with other data sets to determine that in 1800 the fertility rate for white American females was 7.04 and for black was 7.90. (All early American demographic data were kept separately for the two races.) Fertility rates for both groups have fallen steadily. The only significant uptick came at the end of World War II with the Baby Boom. For 20 years, fertility rates spiked, reaching as high as 3.53 for white women and 4.52 for black women in 1960.

The Baby Boom was notable not just for its magnitude but for its longevity—it lasted an entire generation, creating a population bulge that still bloats our demographic profile. Yet despite its impact, the Baby Boom was temporary. In the cultural moment that followed during the 1960s and 1970s, the fertility rate in America—and indeed around the world—went bust. In Canada, the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, in every single Western industrialized nation, the fertility rate plummeted.

From a combined TFR of 3.7 in 1960, U.S. fertility halved to 1.8 in 1980. It has rebounded slightly during the last few decades, but that upward movement has more to do with Hispanic immigration than with increased native fertility. In 2006, the fertility rate of non-Hispanic whites was 1.77; the fertility rate of blacks was 2.0. Of America’s major demographic groups, only Hispanics are above replacement, with a TFR of 2.3. Yet even the Hispanic population has seen its fertility rate fall some 8 percent in the last decade. Indeed, the problem with immigration as it relates to fertility isn’t the old complaint that the newcomers are out-breeding the natives. Rather, the problem is that the newcomers start behaving like natives too soon, with their TFR regressing quickly to the mean. If we are to maintain even our modest 2.06, we need an ever-greater supply of immigrants.

Today there are 26.6 million legal immigrants living in America and roughly 11.3 million illegals. We need these workers to prop up the entitlement programs we’re no longer having enough babies to fund. In order to keep Social Security and Medicare running, we need a stable ratio of workers to retirees. If we were to keep the ratio at the present level of three workers for every retiree—already lower than it has ever been—America would need to add 44.9 million new immigrants between 2025 and 2035. If we wanted to keep the ratio at 5.2 workers for every retiree—about what it was in 1960, before the collapse of our fertility rate—we’d need to import 10.8 million immigrants every year until 2050. At which point the United States would have 1.1 billion people, 73 percent of whom would be the descendants of recent immigrants.

Putting aside questions of cultural coherence—remember the joke: “Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism: You may pick two”?—it would be logistically impossible to add 10.8 million immigrants a year. As demographer Phillip Longman notes, “such a flow would require the equivalent of building another New York City every ten months or so.” There is a supply-side problem, too. Immigrants began streaming over America’s southern border in the 1980s for several reasons. America was safer and freer. There were more and better jobs. But there was also an enormous surplus of labor in Latin America as a result of high fertility rates. In Mexico, for instance, the fertility rate was 6.82 in 1970. It dropped to 5.3 in 1980, 3.61 in 1990, and 2.75 in 2000. It now sits at 2.1. You see this trend across the entire Latin world. Some countries, such as Chile and Costa Rica, are already well below replacement. And when a country’s fertility drops below replacement, people tend to stop emigrating. Consider Puerto Rico. In 1955, Puerto Rico’s fertility rate was 4.97. (The major Puerto Rican migration to America began in the 1950s.) Over time, Puerto Rican fertility diminished. By 2000, it had dipped to 1.99. For 2010, it is estimated to be 1.65.

During this same period, emigrating from Puerto Rico to the United States became easier, and while the economic situation in Puerto Rico brightened somewhat, it did not improve dramatically. Yet the number of Puerto Ricans moving to America during that span plummeted—from 80,000 in 1955 to just 3,800 in 2008. And this took place as the population of Puerto Rico itself was nearly doubling, from 2.25 million to 3.97 million.

There is no reason to believe that the example of Puerto Rico will not translate to the rest of Latin America. To our south, fertility rates are generally still higher than our own. But the rate of decline is much steeper. The average fertility rate for Latin America in the 1960s was 6.0 children per woman; by 2005 that average had dropped to 2.5. Within a decade or two, every single country in Latin America will have a fertility rate below that of the United States. And at that point, immigration from the region may significantly diminish.

There is a constellation of factors tamping down fertility in America. And even with steady immigration, they represent our own, bottom-up of a One-Child regimen.

At the most basic level, the decline of infant mortality played a large part. In 1850, 2-in-10 white babies and 3.4- in-10 black babies died during infancy. Steady improvements in medicine, sanitation, and nutrition reduced infant mortality to asymptotic levels—today just 6.22 deaths for every 1,000 live births.

Americans also began migrating from rural areas to cities and transitioning from farm work to factories. These changes made children both less useful and more expensive.

Social changes have affected the fertility rate, too. Some of these changes are small and simple—like the evolution of car-seat laws, which make it difficult to transport more than two children. Some—like the rise of the educated woman—are massively complex.

One of the best predictors of fertility is : The more educated a woman is, the fewer children she will have. The total fertility rate for American women without a high school diploma is 2.45. With each subsequent level of educational attainment, fertility falls—it drops to 1.6 for women with a graduate degree. One of the drivers of our fertility decline was the making of college de rigueur for middle-class women.

From 1879 to 1930, American men and women graduated from college at roughly the same low rate. This was as much a function of the university being the preserve of the privileged as it was of gender equality. It wasn’t until 1930 that college graduation rates between the sexes began diverging, with men becoming markedly better educated. By 1947, 2.3 men graduated from college for every woman. That divergence was not, as the feminist-industrial complex would have you believe, the result of sexism. Before the two world wars, college was open only to a small pool of wealthy elites and was partaken of by these men and women in equal measure. The G.I. Bill broadened access to college for former soldiers, who were, naturally, men. As these middle- and lower-middle-class men flooded the classrooms, a gender gap was created.

With the class restrictions lifted, however, it was only a matter of time before middle- and lower-middle-class women caught up with their male counterparts. By 1980, the balance was again even. And, by 2003, women significantly outnumbered men in college, with 1.35 women graduating for every man.

But let’s wind the clock back to the period stretching from the 1950s to the early 1970s. What’s interesting about this interregnum isn’t that men outnumbered women, but rather what it was women graduating from college did with their degrees. Nearly half of those female graduates were involved in a single field—education. And as it turns out, being a teacher is highly compatible with having babies. As more women began attending college, however, they entered a broader array of fields, many of which were less friendly to family life. For the class of 1980, for instance, only 36 percent of female graduates became teachers and that number has continued to drop.

As women entered other careers, they postponed having babies. A teacher can reasonably graduate from college at 22, begin working immediately, and if she so chooses, marry and have children in short order without losing ground in her career. By comparison, consider the life of a young woman who becomes a doctor: Graduate with a bachelor’s degree at 22; graduate from medical school at 26; finish residency at 29. If our doctor does not pursue any specialization, she can begin her career as she turns 30. Only then is childbearing even theoretically possible, and it will come at some expense to her nascent career.

The first effect of the broadening of women’s career paths was to push up the average age of marriage. In 1950, the average age of first marriage for an American woman was 20.3 years. Between 1950 and 1970— when a large percentage of women were still entering the teaching profession—that number ticked upward only slightly, to 20.8 years. By 1980 it had risen to 22.0 years; by 1990 it was 23.9, and off to the races. By 2007, the average American woman did not wed until she was 26.

The drop in fertility among women with college and advanced degrees, then, is in large part due to delayed family formation. The longer a middle-class woman waits to get married, the longer she will wait to have children. For example, in 1970, the average age of a woman in the United States giving birth to her first child was 21.4 years. In 2000, it was 24.9 years.

The American drive for education has had other subtle effects on fertility. For instance, it’s not just the length of education that diminishes fertility, but the debt-load incurred. In 1987, 9 percent of college graduates said they were delaying marriage because of their student loans and 12 percent said they were delaying children. As student debts ballooned, so did those numbers. By 2002, 14 percent said they were pushing back marriage and 21 percent said they were postponing having children because of their loans.

If the G.I. Bill could wreak so much havoc on fertility rates, imagine the effects of the last century’s two great changes in sexual life: the contraceptive pill and the legalization of on-demand abortion. Calculating the number of babies not born because of the pill is impossible. But without confusing correlation and causation, it is worth noting that the pill became available in America and much of the West in 1960, the precise moment when fertility rates began heading into deep decline.

On the other hand, it is quite easy to make an accounting of abortion’s effects. Before the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the tide of public opinion in America was against abortion. Accordingly, there were relatively few , even though most states allowed for early-term abortions. In 1970, for example, there were 193,491 reported legal abortions. Certainly, this number undercounts the real total because it does not include illegal abortions. But let’s take 200,000 as a baseline. In 1973, as Roe created a universal abortion right, the number of reported abortions rose to 744,600. The next year, that number rose by 20 percent, to 898,600 abortions. By this time all abortions were legal, and so we can be confident that this number is fairly accurate. Over the course of the next 15 years the number of abortions rose by almost 100 percent.

In 1973—the year of the Roe decision—there were 3.1 million babies born. Over the next 10 years that number rose only slightly, despite the fact that America’s total population was increasing quickly. Why weren’t there more babies born in the decade following Roe? Because during that time, 13.6 million were aborted—meaning that 28.5 percent of all ended in abortion. Since Roe more than 49.5 million babies have been aborted in the United States, and the fertility rate has varied inversely to the abortion rate, generally declining when abortion is on the rise and rising when abortion is on the decline.

Fertility isn’t all about sex, of course. It also involves that other great American passion: real estate. Fertility rates vary widely across the 50 states. The states with the highest are found mostly in the West, while the states with the lowest fertility are found mostly in the industrialized Northeast. The more fertile states tend to be more rural; the less fertile more urban. And the more fertile states tend to have lower land costs and, hence, costs of living. The cultural demographer Steve Sailer refers to this phenomenon as the “dirt gap.” Beyond even the cost of real estate, housing stock influences fertility. When dramatically falling fertility first appeared in Europe after World War I, demographers went into a panic. In Sweden, researchers noticed that the small, modernist apartment buildings which had sprung up across the country were pushing couples to have fewer children. Subsequent research has demonstrated the effects of housing stock on fertility across the globe. Studies show the same results over and over—all things being equal, women living in apartments or condominiums have fewer babies than women living in single-family homes. This phenomenon has been demonstrated everywhere from to Colombia to Great Britain to Iran.

How much does housing type matter? A 1988 Canadian study showed that even when you control for education, income, and other factors, married couples who lived in apartment-type buildings had 0.42 fewer children over their lifetimes than married couples in single-family homes. From the 1940s until the 1960s, there was a boom in the construction of detached, single-family homes in America. Levittowns sprang up across the country and, by 1960, single-family homes represented their biggest share of American housing stock in modern times. This coincides perfectly with the Baby Boom. On the other hand, large-scale apartment and condominium complexes became more popular during the 1960s. Their percentage of the total U.S. housing stock increased by 40 percent from 1960 to 1970 and by another 23 percent from 1970 to 1980: the precise years during which America’s fertility numbers went into steep decline.

And then there’s consumerism. It’s a cliché to complain about $800 baby strollers and designer children’s clothing. But even the clichés no longer capture the lunacy of it all. One popular baby stroller, the Bugaboo Cameleon, retails for $880. That’s a bargain compared with Avila’s innovative “round” crib. Crafted from cherry wood, it goes for $1,285. But even if you sift out the consumerist outrages, the cost of raising a child today is staggering.

In 1960, the USDA estimated that the total cost of raising a child, from birth until age 18, was $25,229 ($185,817 in 2010 dollars)—they measured food at home and away, clothing, housing, medical care, education, transportation, and “personal care, recreation, reading and other miscellaneous expenditures.” Over the next 25 years, that cost remained reasonably constant, rising and falling by minor degrees. By 1985, it was (in real dollars) actually slightly cheaper to raise a child than it had been in 1960. But after 1985 children became steadily more expensive. By 2007, the cost of raising a child had risen 15.4 percent over the 1960 level.

The USDA, in its calculations, leaves out many of the little costs of parenthood—maternity clothes, baby furniture, toys, vitamins. Yet even these items are just nickels and dimes. The real money is in three big-ticket items that the USDA ignores: , college tuition, and forgone salary.

Let’s start with child care. The 2007 USDA survey reports that the average family spent $4,000 on child care during the first two years of a child’s life. In the real world, that $4,000 is little more than a mathematical construct. The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies reports that in 2008, the average cost of full-time care for an infant from a babysitter or was $9,630 per year. The average cost of full-time care for an infant in a day-care center was $14,591 per year.

The USDA also ignores college. Recall our mammoth college gender gap in 1947. Even though many more men than women were going to college, very few people were enrolled at all—only 10 percent of college-aged men and 3.4 percent of college-aged women attended a university. Today, the majority of children—and the vast majority of middle-class children—attend college. In 2006, 66 percent of high school graduates enrolled in either a two- or four-year degree program within a year of completing high school.

These costs beggar belief. For the 2009 school year, the average tuition at a state college was $7,020. Private colleges averaged $26,273. Neither of those figures includes room, board, and other expenses—another $12,755 for full-time students not living at home (though only $12,368 for state-school students). So a child starting college today will cost her parents somewhere from $77,552 (for an average state-school degree) to $156,112 (for an average private degree). Remember, please, that we’re talking averages here. If your bundle of joy is lucky enough to gain entrance to an elite university, the four-year tab will easily top $200,000. Over the last 35 years, the period during which college became a necessary expense for middle-class life, the price of college increased—in real dollars—by 1,000 percent. Finally, there’s the matter of forgone income. Recall that the USDA assumes virtually no expenditures for child care. This implies that one stays home at least until the child reaches school age. In The Empty Cradle (2004), Phillip Longman explored the cost of lost income by mothers and calculates that a woman making $45,000 a year who stays home until her child is school-aged and then returns to work part-time forgoes $823,736 by the time her child turns 18.

Add that number to the others and you’re talking $1.1 million to raise a single child. That’s a lot of money for a middle-class couple. In 2007, the median income for Americans in their prime child-bearing years (ages 25 to 34) was just $30,846 (or $40,739 for those with a college degree). People like to say that buying a house is the biggest purchase you’ll ever make. Well, the median price of a home in 2008 was $180,100. Having a baby is like buying six houses, all at once. Except that you can’t (legally) sell them—and after 13 years they’ll tell you they hate you.

There was a time when such indignities were worth suffering because children served a practical purpose: They cared for their parents in old age. Oftentimes physically; always financially. Beginning with the New Deal, the logistics of this social compact began to change. In 1935, the Social Security Act established government payouts for retirees. These benefits were paid for by a new payroll tax on those working. Over time, Social Security payments expanded, the taxes increased, and new benefits—such as Medicare—were added.

It’s difficult to overstate the effects of these initiatives. For starters, they created an enormous new burden for workers. In 1955, the median American family paid 17.3 percent in income taxes. By 1998, the median one- earner family paid 37.6 percent in income taxes; two-earner paid 40.9 percent. Social Security and Medicare placed an increasing burden on families at the same time that the cost of children was also increasing.

There were other consequences. Where people’s offspring had for centuries seen to the financial needs of their parents, retired people with no offspring now had access to a set of comparable benefits. And in a world where childbearing has no practical benefit, people have babies because they want to, either for self-fulfillment or as a moral imperative. “Moral imperative,” of course, is a euphemism for “religious compulsion.” There are stark differences in fertility between secular and religious people.

The best indicator of actual fertility is “aspirational fertility”—the number of children men and women say they would like to have. Gallup has been asking Americans about their “ideal family size” since 1936. When they first asked the question, 64 percent of Americans said that three or more children were ideal; 34 percent said that zero, one, or two children were ideal. Today only 34 percent of Americans think that a family with three-or- more children is ideal.

But on this question there are two Americas today: a secular population that wants small families (or no family at all) and a religious population that wants larger families. Religious affiliation is part of the story, but the real difference comes with church attendance. Among people who seldom or never go to church, 66 percent say that zero, one, or two children is the ideal family size, and only 25 percent view three-or-more children as ideal. Among those who go to church monthly, the three-or-more number edges up to 29 percent. But among those who attend church every week, 41 percent say three or more children is ideal, while only 47 percent think that a smaller family is preferable. When you meet couples with more than three children today, chances are they’re making a cultural and theological statement.

And the truth is, America needs more of such statements. The United Nations Population Division’s projection of our demographic future makes for stark reading. Native fertility rates are so low that without a continual influx of immigrants to stave off population decline, our population will shrink from 308 million to 290 million by 2050.

Our challenge is to balance three needs: (1) a stable population, (2) a plausible ratio of workers-to-retirees, and (3) a manageable number of immigrants. Yet, for instance, to keep the worker-support ratio at high levels would require, as we saw earlier, gargantuan levels of immigration. Keeping immigration at a reasonable level (the U.N. uses 760,000 immigrants a year as a baseline) would mean that our population would increase to 349 million in 2050, but that our worker-support ratio would be cut in half. If we cut off immigration altogether the worker-support ratio would be even lower, and in addition, we’d face rapid population decline. The simplest answer is for Americans to have more babies.

Throughout history, governments have tried to get people to procreate. Augustus levied a “” on unmarried, aristocratic men. In 1927, Mussolini imposed a tax on all unmarried men between the ages of 25 and 65. The Soviet Union spent the last 50 years of its existence attempting to cajole it citizenry into having more children. In 1944, for instance, Stalin created the Motherhood Medal, given to any woman who bore at least six children. None of these attempts was successful. But they raise the question of what smart pro-natalist policies would look like in America today.

The Social Security regime is the most obvious and easily addressable problem. Longman proposes a “Parental Dividend” system by which a couple’s FICA taxes would be reduced by one-third with the birth of their first child, by two-thirds with the birth of a second, and then eliminated completely with the third (until the youngest child turns 18). Other, more complicated schemes abound. Regardless of the means, though, the goal is the same: Reduce the disconnect between the costs of creating new taxpayers and the benefits of receiving government pensions.

The costs of raising children could also be undercut by reforming the college system. The modern college degree functions less as an educational tool than as a credentialing badge—a marker which gives employers a vague estimate of a person’s intelligence, social milieu, and work ability. The reason employers need this badge is that, thanks to an obscure Supreme Court case, they aren’t allowed to ask for test scores the way colleges are.

In the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power, the Court held that employers could not rely on IQ-type tests if minorities performed relatively poorly on them. Blacks and Hispanics display a persistent underperformance on such tests, making it impossible for employers to ask for test scores. (As the recent Ricci case proved, even a test that has been sufficiently vetted beforehand for a lack of bias can cause trouble if minorities perform poorly on it.) So employers launder their request for test scores through the college system since colleges are allowed to use such considerations. The universities get rich, students and their parents go into hock, and everyone pretends that Acme Widgets is hiring young Suzy because they value her B.A. in English from Haverford, and not because her admission to Haverford proved that she is bright—a fact that a free, three-hour written test would have demonstrated just as well. If Griggs were rolled back, it would upend the college system at a stroke.

Finally, we could address the dirt gap—the underlying cost of land, which drives the cost of living and gives rise to the dramatic differences in fertility we see across the country. People often make decisions on where to live based on employment. High concentrations of jobs are found in intensely urban areas—Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Chicago—which have correspondingly high land costs. This is why we have the accurate stereotype of the working couple who move from the city to the exurbs once they decide to have kids.

Geography is unpleasantly resistant to social planning. There are only so many acres of land in Manhattan, and there’s nothing anyone can to do to make it less expensive (though correcting the absurdity of New York City’s rent-control/rent-stabilization system would help). But we could make the suburbs more accessible to cities by improving our highway system. Since 1970, the “vehicle lane miles” (that’s the metric traffic engineers use) consumed by Americans have risen by 150 percent. During that period we added 5 percent to our highway capacity. Now you know why we have so much traffic.

The answer is not building more public transportation. Parents trying to balance work and children need the flexibility automobiles provide. The solution is building more roads. As Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam noted wryly in Grand New Party (2008), Dallas has twice as much pavement-per-person as Los Angeles and half the traffic. And, not coincidentally, a higher fertility rate. An improved highway system would make it easier for couples to have access to both the concentration of jobs cities provide and the affordable housing that the suburbs offer.

Yet even if we adopt such measures, they may do little to change American fertility. It turns out that a government cannot convince people to have children; all it can do is help people to have the children they already want. In 1965, Singapore gained full independence from the British, and the government embarked on a program of rapid industrialization. Among its initiatives were increased urbanization and an attempt to jumpstart women’s rates of college graduation and participation in the workforce. Singapore’s fertility rate was already in decline, having fallen from 5.45 in 1960 to 4.7 in 1965. As part of modernization, however, the government wanted to drive the fertility rate down even faster. In 1966, the government created the “ and Population Board” and launched a propaganda campaign, using messages such as “Stop at Two” and “Small Families, Brighter Future.” The most popular slogan, recounted in numerous posters and public service ads, was “Girl or Boy, Two Is Enough.”

Accompanying this bright, cheery campaign was an array of less gentle policies. Abortion was sanctioned—and even encouraged—at every stage. Parents who had more than two children were punished with no paid maternity leave and higher hospital charges for the delivery of the extra babies. Couples were encouraged to volunteer for sterilization. Parents who did so after having just one or two children were reimbursed for the medical costs of delivering those babies and their children were given preference in registering for the best schools.

The tactics were frighteningly effective. In 1976—just ten years after the campaign began—Singapore reached its target of 2.1. They had pushed their fertility rate down 53 percent in a decade. But the rate kept diving, down to 1.74 by 1980. The biggest fertility decline came from the elites: Singapore, like every other industrialized country, found that the more education a woman had and the better her job, the less likely she was to have children.

In 1983, Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, spoke about the country’s demographic problem with a candor that is the luxury of autocrats:

[W]e shouldn’t get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers. . . . You just can’t be doing a full-time, heavy job like that of a doctor or engineer and run a home and bring up children. . . . Our most valuable asset is in the ability of our people, yet we are frittering away this asset through the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal career opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role as mothers.

In an attempt to boost fertility rates among the elites, the government began offering big tax breaks to highly educated women who had three or more children. A matchmaking service was created by the government for university graduates to encourage young professional men and women to get married. None of it worked. Educated women still shunned motherhood. Even worse, Singapore realized that lower-class women had stopped having babies, too. By 1984, Singapore’s fertility rate was 1.62 and falling.

The government dissolved the Family Planning and Population Board. “Two Is Enough” was replaced by “Have Three Or More Children If You Can,” a slogan broadcast on TV and radio and pushed in print ads and on billboards. Posters abounded proclaiming the joy and fulfillment of family life. Tax-incentives were given to families with more than three children, as were school admissions preferences. Unpaid maternity leave for government workers was increased from one year to four years. For a brief period these pro-natalist measures seemed to be working, but they merely delayed the downward march. By 1999, the fertility rate stood at 1.49.

In 2000, the government announced a series of new initiatives. The first was the “” program, which paid families for having children: $9,000 for the second child and $18,000 for the third. The tax code was modified to give a hefty break to mothers under the age of 31 who had a second child. The government created “ Accounts,” which function like a 401(k) for kids, with the government matching parents’ savings dollar-for-dollar. Mothers were granted 12 weeks of paid maternity leave with each birth.

The government offered better, larger housing for families with children and made it easier for young married couples to buy a home. They even embarked on a program to find grandparents housing close to their grandchildren, to help ease the burden of childcare. At the same time, the government did its best to undo the disincentives it had created a few years earlier. The $10,000 bonus for sterilization was scrapped. Officials were reluctant to ban abortion outright, but launched a public campaign against it. Women with fewer than three children who sought either sterilization or an abortion were required to attend counseling before any procedure would be performed. Singapore had become a pro-natalist utopia, where aggressive government intervention was married to a willingness to talk frankly about demographic failure and uphold traditionalist mores. (In 1994, for instance, the prime minister spoke out against illegitimacy, calling single motherhood “wrong” and claiming that the “respectable part of society” should never accept it because “by removing the stigma, we may encourage more women to have children without getting married.”) And yet the effort has met with total and unremitting failure. In 2001, Singapore’s fertility rate was 1.41. By 2004 it was 1.24.

Today it is 1.1. Despite all the incentives, all of the public campaigns, all of the pleading, the average woman in Singapore can barely be bothered to have a single child.

Jonathan V. Last, a senior writer at The Weekly Standard, was a 2009 Phillips Foundation fellow. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america%E2%80%99s-one-child-policy?page=3

California Gov. Brown signs transgender-student bill

Published August 13, 2013 FoxNews.com

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a controversial bill into law Monday afternoon allowing the state’s transgender public school students to choose which bathrooms they use and whether they participate in boy or girl sports.

The law would cover the state’s 6.2 million elementary and high school kids in public schools.

Supporters say the law will help cut down on bullying against transgender students, The families of transgender students have been waging local battles with school districts around the country over what restrooms and locker rooms their children can use.

"Now, every transgender student in California will be able to get up in the morning knowing that when they go to school as their authentic self they will have the same fair chance at success as their classmates,” Masen Davis, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center said.

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While California is the first state to pass a law of this magnitude, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington and Colorado have all adopted policies designed to protect transgendered pupils.

Not everyone is on board.

Opponents of the bill say allowing students of one gender to use facilities intended for the other could invade the other students' privacy.

Randy Thomasson, of savecalifornia.com, says the law would “damage” kids.

"This radical bill warps the gender expectations of children by forcing all California public schools to permit biological boys in girls restrooms, showers, clubs and on girls sports teams and biological girls in boys restrooms, showers, clubs and sports teams," Thomasson said. "This is insanity."

The California bill, which was backed by a coalition of organizations including Transgender Law Center, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, Gender Spectrum, Equality California, ACLU of California, National Center for Lesbian Rights and statewide teacher and parent organizations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/13/california-gov-brown-signs-transgender- student-bill/?test=latestnews#ixzz2bt8eNk1I

Census tracks 20 years of sweeping change By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY

What changes two decades have wrought. The USA is bigger, older, more Hispanic and Asian and less wedded to marriage and traditional families than it was in 1990. It also is less enamored of kids, more embracing of several generations living under one roof, more inclusive of same-sex couples, more cognizant of multiracial identities, more suburban, less rural and leaning more to the South and West.

Results of the 2010 Census have been pouring out all year, an avalanche of statistics detailing the population characteristics of states, counties and cities. But the Census represents more than just a current snapshot. The end of the first decade of the 21st century marks a turning point in the nation's social, cultural, geographic, racial and ethnic fabric. It's a shift so profound that it reveals an America that seemed unlikely a mere 20 years ago — one that will influence the nation for years to come in everything from who is elected to run the country, states and cities to what type of houses will be built and where.

The metamorphosis over just two decades stuns even demographers and social observers. "It was always predicted that we would be diverse, but it's happened faster than anyone predicted," says Cheryl Russell, former editor in chief of American Demographics magazine, now editorial director of New Strategist Publications, publisher of reference tools. "Diversity and the rapid growth in diversity is one of the reasons we have a black president today. That's one thing that would never have been predicted."

The black-white racial dynamics that have dominated much of the nation's history have been scrambled by the explosive growth of Hispanics. In most southern states where the black-white legacy has deep roots, Hispanics have accounted for most of the population gains during the past decade. "An entire Venezuela's worth of Hispanics was added in just those two decades," says Robert Lang, an urban sociologist at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. That's about 30 million, or half of the nation's growth since 1990. "Everything about America now has to do with diversity that we could hardly recognize in 1990," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. The change will be felt for years to come as whites and blacks age and young Hispanics dominate in more places. "By 2050, Americans will look back at the controversies around immigration, controversies about diversity and wonder what the big deal was," Lang says.

The starkest evidence of the cultural revolution the nation has undergone in two decades lies in the first government reporting of same-sex households. "That is huge," Russell says. "Usually, attitudinal change occurs as one generation replaces another'' but this happened faster. "In 1990, people were still thinking of family as what you saw on TV sitcoms," Frey says — mainly mom and dad and two kids. "It still stuck in people's minds as the norm." The facts behind the new norm: Who's home The traditional — one or two adults and their young children — continues to ebb. In its place, a grab bag of alternatives has appeared or begun growing after decades of decline:

•Among families. Various forms of three generations under one roof; adult children returning to their parents' home, sometimes with a spouse and their own children or both; blended families that include stepparents or stepchildren; and extended families that include a parent, a child, cousins and others, related or not.

•Among unrelated people. A wide variety of living arrangements have flourished among all ages: unmarried partner couples, both same-sex or opposite sex, sometimes with their own or related children or adult roommates.

•Living solo. The share of one-person households continues to grow, up from 25% in 1990 to 27%. The recession has slowed the trend by forcing some young adults to live with parents or roommates. But as Baby Boomers flood into their empty-nesting years and beyond, the trend could accelerate. In many Western European countries, more than one-third of households consist of just one person.

•Multigenerational households. At the other end of the spectrum, a growing share of homes includes more than one generation of a family. The average household size has stopped shrinking and begun to grow for the first time in a half-century, partly buoyed by the influx of immigrant families. Immigrants are more likely to have young children and live with siblings, parents or other relatives. By one broad definition, 16% of U.S. households are multigenerational (two or more), up from 14% in 1990, according to the Pew Research Center. The Census defines multigenerational as three or more generations of the same family. In 2010, they made up 4% of households.

•Fewer kids. Only one-third of households now have children, and the share of households that have kids under age 18 dropped in 95% of counties, changing the flavor of neighborhoods in cities and suburbs. The opposite is happening in areas populated predominantly by immigrants. The 1.9 million-person gain in the under-18 population since 2000 was fueled completely by racial and ethnic minorities. Hispanic fertility is at 2.9 births per woman, much higher than the national average of 2.1. At 24%, the proportion of residents who are 18 and under is at an all-time low, according to the Population Reference Bureau. It was 25.6% in 1990. Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., lost 10% or more of their child populations just in the last decade. Having children increasingly has become detached from marriage. The share of births by unmarried women has risen from 26% to 41% since 1990 and could be headed higher. Among Hispanics, it's 53%; among blacks, it's 73%. In several European countries, half to two-thirds of all children are born to unmarried women. Remix One of the most significant demographic trends of the past 20 years is the explosive growth of Hispanics. Now at 50 million — almost one in six Americans — Hispanics have more than doubled their numbers in 1990. The Hispanic boom has spread far beyond traditional immigrant gateways such as California and Florida, altering the American landscape in states such as Kansas and North Carolina.

Just more than 1% of North Carolina 6.6 million residents were

Hispanic in 1990. In 2010: Almost 7% of 9.5 million people were. Asians grew at a similarly rapid rate but they still account for a small share of the population (4.7%). Since 2000, more Asians were added (4.3 million) to the population than blacks (3.7 million). Hispanics surpassed blacks in 2003. African Americans' presence in some traditional strongholds is shrinking. They are leaving cities and heading for the suburbs or returning to the South. Fifty-seven percent of the USA's blacks live in the South, the highest since 1960. Some are retirees settling in Florida and North Carolina; others are professionals lured by thriving metropolitan areas in Texas and Georgia.

Most of Chicago's population declines since 2000 were due to a loss of more than 181,000 black residents. There were declines in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Dallas and Atlanta. The black population in Washington, D.C., is slipping below 50%.

The USA's racial and ethnic balance has been further upset by the growing number of Americans who claim more than one race. The change happened in 2000, when the government first allowed people to pick two or more races on Census forms. The 9 million who did make up almost 2% of the population, up from 1.6% in 2000. One in seven new include spouses of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, according to the Population Reference Bureau. In 2010, 5.6% of children under age 18 reported two or more races compared with 2.1% of adults. The Census projects that less than half of the U.S. population will be white and not Hispanic by 2042 — a moving target that will be influenced by future immigration and fertility patterns.

Gender evolution Gender roles have been redefined. One of the biggest changes is the delay and eclipse of marriage. Half of women who marry wait until 26 to do so, up from 24 in 1990. For men, half don't marry until they are older than 28, up from 26.

Part of the delay may stem from higher education levels. Women have made such giant leaps that they now dominate men at every level of higher education in earning degrees. The most recent Department of Education statistics show that 51% of doctoral degrees went to women in 2007-08, up from 42% in just 10 years. "For a lot of women, marriage is a disadvantage," Russell says. "Women would end up supporting the men."

The educational gender gap is widening, but men's life expectancy, still lagging women's, is rising at a faster rate. Since 1990, life expectancy for men who make it to retirement has grown at almost three times the rate that it has for women, according to preliminary 2009 data from the National Center on Health Statistics. A 65-year-old man today is expected to live another 17.3 years, women 20 years — up 15% for men and just 6% for women. In 1990, a 65-year-old man was expected to live an extra 15.1 years and women 18.9. The same is happening for those who reach the age of 75: Men's life expectancy has gained 14%, women's 4%. Much of the gain for men is the result of lower lung cancer rates (men smoked more before the anti-smoking crusade began a generation ago) and better heart disease treatment and prevention. Men have shown steady annual gains of 0.2 years in life expectancy in recent years while the rate for women gained less or stayed flat.

Where we live • The pull of suburbia did not let up despite an urban renaissance fueled by empty nesters and the young and childless. More than half of Americans — about 158 million — are suburbanites. In 1990, just over 48% were. In just 20 years, almost 40 million more people lived in suburbs.

• Rural areas continued their decline, their population remaining stagnant over 20 years at 50 million. Rural residents now make up only 16% of total population, down from 20% in 1990. "Remote rural counties grew the least and the outer suburbs of large metro areas grew the most during the 20-year period," says Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. "In rural areas, farm counties grew the least and retirement counties grew the most."

• The nation is tipping south and west. The allure of Sun Belt states such as California and Florida was in full bloom 20 years ago, but no one saw the population explosion that hit states throughout the region, from North Carolina to Nevada. "We knew people were moving to the Sun Belt but we didn't know people were moving to the interior part of the Sun Belt," Frey says. "This time, California didn't even gain a seat in Congress but Nevada, Arizona and Utah all gained seats. These are the new pioneering areas of the U.S."

At the same time, growth slowed in the Northeast and Midwest, where less than 40% of the U.S. population lives now compared with more than 44% in 1990. More than 37% now live in the South and 23% in the West. For the first time, more people live in the West than the Midwest. Twenty years ago, the West first surpassed the Northeast. "It's not something we would have foreseen, this emptying out of the industrial Midwest," Frey says. "This decade has made that much more permanent, much more dramatic."

• Because of suburbanization, cities that were mere specks on the map 20 years ago are major urban centers today. Frisco, Texas, for example, a northern suburb of Dallas, was a hamlet of 6,141 in 1990. In 2010: 116,989. "It's the newest city in America with more than 100,000 people," says Lang, who coined the term "boomburbs."

Life stages for Americans Tweens? twentysomethings? Young professionals? Oldest old? Partly because of longevity, largely because of economic and cultural influences, life stages are stretching far beyond the five traditional categories — kids, teens, young adults, middle-aged and old. That gives marketers more sales pitches to customize for age niches.

Children go from being children to the in-between stage of tweenhood that precedes teenage years. Young adults, staying in college longer and many moving back home after they graduate, are in a new stage of delayed adulthood. "It's partly the extension of childhood to about age 30 at this point," Russell says. "Because of education, the time it takes to establish a career and marry, people are about 30. That's when, interestingly, voting rates rise."

In 2010, 24 million adult children lived at home, she says, many of them because they can't find jobs or can't afford housing. "That's one of the surprises," Russell says. "Who knew in 1990, when boomers were young adults, that they would be so family-oriented? … First, they were family- oriented by choice and now it's by necessity."

People are living longer and older people are working longer, creating new degrees of aging. The 85-plus population climbed from about 3 million in 1990 (1.2% of the population), to 5.5 million — 1.8% —in 2010. "We didn't appreciate how old the white population would get in 20 years," Frey says, and how diverse the younger population would get. "The future is people of all races and ethnicities." http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-08-10-census-20-years-change_n.htm

Gay couple may sue Church of England to wed in church Trevor Grundy | Aug 6, 2013 | 10 Comments

CANTERBURY, England (RNS) The British government’s promise that no religious organization will be forced to conduct same-sex weddings following the passage of a gay marriage bill may soon be tested. Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, 42, and his partner, Tony, 49 — millionaires who run a company in Britain and the U.S. — have been a high-profile couple since 1999 when they became the first gay couple to be named on the birth certificate of their child.

Now they have five children by five surrogate mothers. All the children are American citizens born in California. While planning for a sixth, they told the Daily Mail they plan to sue the Church of England to get married there.

“I want to go to my church and marry my husband,” said Drewitt-Barlow in an interview published Friday (Aug. 2). “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into a court to get them to recognize us.”

Referring to the legislation that received the queen’s approval last month he said: “The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the Church.”

The couple own a company based in Essex called the British Surrogacy Centre. It recently opened a branch in Los Angeles. The new law stipulates that no religious denomination will be forced to carry out such services. But that’s not good enough for the couple.

“We need to convince the church that it is the right thing for our community for them to recognize us as practicing Christians,” said Drewitt-Barlow. “It upsets me because I want it so much — a big lavish ceremony, the whole works. I am a Christian — a practicing Christian — my children have all been brought up as Christians and are part of the local parish church in Danbury.”

Neither the Church of England nor the Roman Catholic Church recognizes gay marriages. Other religious groups, including Orthodox Jews, Hindus and Sikhs do not perform such marriages. Some religious bodies, including Quakers, Unitarians and Reform Jews, say they plan to conduct same-sex weddings when the law goes into effect next year.

The threat of court action against the established Church of England — whose supreme governor is Queen Elizabeth II — has provoked a strong reaction from the Coalition for Marriage, which led opposition to the bill. Director Colin Hart said Drewitt–Barlow’s comments clearly shows that churches are certain to face litigation.

In a statement, he said: “The ink’s not even dry on the bill and churches are already facing litigation. We warned Mr. Cameron (Britain’s prime minister) this would happen, we told him he was making promises that he couldn’t possibly keep. He didn’t listen. … Mr. Cameron’s chickens are coming home to roost and it will be ordinary people with a religious belief who yet again fall victim to the totalitarian forces of political correctness.” http://www.religionnews.com/2013/08/06/gay-couple-may-sue-church-of-england-to-wed-in-church/

If you think we're fat now, wait till 2030

Maggie Fox, Senior Writer NBC News

Image Source / Getty Images file / In the 13 heaviest states, 60 percent of residents will be obese in less than two decades if current trends continue, finds a new report.

Think Americans are fat now? After all, a third of us are overweight and another 35 percent are obese. But a report out Tuesday projects 44 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030.

In the 13 worst states, 60 percent of the residents will be obese in less than two decades if current trends continue, the report from the Trust for America’s Health projects. That’s not chubby or a little plump – that’s clinically obese, bringing a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, several forms of cancer and arthritis.

“The initial reaction is to say, ‘Oh it couldn’t be that bad’,” says Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health. “But we have maps from 1991 and you see almost all the states below 10 percent.” By 2011 every single state was above 20 percent obesity, as measured by body mass index (BMI), the accepted medical way to calculate obesity. Those with a BMI or 30 or above are considered obese.

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 12 states have an adult obesity rate over 30 percent. Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity at 34.9 percent. On the low end, 20.7 percent of Colorado residents are obese. CDC projections for obesity resemble those in Tuesday's report - it projects 42 percent of adults will be obese by 2030. The problem isn’t just cosmetic. “The number of new cases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension and arthritis could increase 10 times between 2010 and 2020 — and then double again by 2030,” the report projects. “Obesity-related health care costs could increase by more than 10 percent in 43 states and by more than 20 percent in nine states.”

That’s bad news when states are already strapped to pay for public health programs such as Medicaid and the federal government is struggling to fund Medicare.

Over the next 20 years, more than 6 million patients will be able to blame obesity for their diabetes, 5 million will be diagnosed with heart disease and 400,000 will get cancer caused by obesity.

And some of them are frighteningly young.

"Now I am seeing 25-year-olds weighing 350 pounds who present with chest pain or shortness of breath," says Dr. Sheldon Litwin, a cardiologist at Georgia Health Sciences University. “Everything from the heart disease process to its diagnosis and treatment are affected by obesity. We see it every day. This really is the number-one issue facing us," added Litwin, who worked on one of a series of obesity studies published in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The trend is not inevitable, according to the report, entitled “F as in Fat.” Some programs are beginning to make a dent in the rising rates. “We certainly see, in some communities, the beginning of some changes,” says Levi. “We know what some of the answers are.”

For instance, making it easier for people to exercise day in and day out, and making it easier to get healthy food. “A large-scale study of New York City adults found that increasing the density of healthy food outlets, such as supermarkets, fruit and vegetable markets, and natural food stores is associated with lower BMIs and lower prevalence of obesity," the report reads.

What about initiatives like New York’s controversial ban on the largest sodas? “Every community is going to experiment with different approaches. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens in New York and whether this makes a difference,” Levi said. New York’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, defends the move in the medical journal’s obesity issue. "How should government address the health problems caused by this successful marketing of food? To do nothing is to invite even higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and related mortality,” he wrote.

Trust for America's Health /

Many studies have also shown that people who live in big, walkable cities such as New York and Washington D.C. are thinner than their rural and suburban counterparts, and it’s almost certainly because they walk more and use public transportation instead of sitting in cars.

If everyone lost just a little weight, the savings would be enormous, the study predicts.

“If we could lower obesity trends by reducing body mass indices (BMIs) by only 5 percent in each state, we could spare millions of Americans from serious health problems and save billions of dollars in health spending —between 6.5 percent and 7.8 percent in costs in almost every state,” the report says.

Education can’t hurt, either. The more educated people are, the less likely they are to be obese. Higher-earners are also thinner. “More than 33 percent of adults who earn less than $15,000 per year were obese, compared with 24.6 percent of those who earned at least $50,000 per year,” the report notes. And several studies have shown that people who eat more fruits and vegetables are thinner, as well as healthier. “Seven of the 10 states with the highest rates of obesity were also in the bottom 10 for fruit and vegetable consumption,” the report says.

Levi believes it’s worthwhile targeting kids the hardest. New nutritional guidelines for schools will help, he said, as will initiatives to restore recess and physical education classes. Beverage makers have agreed to replace sugary sodas in vending machines with water and other low-calorie drinks. “It is as simple as an hour a day less of screen time and one less sugar beverage,” Levi says. “Just 120 calories can make a big difference as to whether a kid crosses over from being normal weight into overweight and obesity.”

Another study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that kids who exercised 20 minutes a day lowered an important measure of diabetes risk by 18 percent. Exercising 40 minutes a day cut the risk by 22 percent. The researchers also noted it’s important to make exercise fun for kids

"Regulation sports tend to have kids standing around a lot waiting for the ball. We had enough balls so everyone was moving all the time," said Dr. Catherine Davis of Georgia Health Sciences University. "It had to be fun or they would not keep coming.”

CNN's Don Lemon says more than 72 percent of African- American births are out of wedlock

CNN anchor Don Lemon offered a commentary on race that went viral. We fact-checked a claim he made about out-of-wedlock births among African-Americans.

In the middle of a national conversation about race following the George Zimmerman acquittal, CNN anchor Don Lemon gave an on-air commentary that went viral on social media. The focus of the commentary was a five-point list of recommendations. "Black people," Lemon said, "if you really want to fix the problem, here's just five things that you should think about doing."

The No. 1 item on that list -- "and probably the most important," he said -- had to do with out-of- wedlock births.

"Just because you can have a baby, it doesn't mean you should," Lemon said. "Especially without planning for one or getting married first. More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers. And the studies show that lack of a male is an express train right to prison and the cycle continues."

Lemon’s commentary inspired a firestorm of criticism on social media -- the website Mediaite published a sampling -- and bloggers took aim at his conclusions.

"If Lemon really wanted to help the black community, he could start by adopting a deeper understanding of the history, sociology and psychology of his own people," wrote Washington Post blogger Rahiel Tesfamariam. "Offering made-for-TV analysis about deeply complex social issues in the manner in which he did is irresponsible and lacks intellectual rigor."

We can’t check Lemon’s opinions, but we did want to take a look at the one verifiable fact he offered. Is it correct that "more than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock"?

We turned to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publishes a report every year that includes a wealth of data about births in America. The most recent report, published in August 2012, is based on data from 2010.

The report broke down statistics by ethnic groups. Here’s a summary

Racial or ethnic group Percent of births considered “non-marital” Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders 17 percent Non-Hispanic Whites 29 percent Hispanics 53 percent American Indian and Native Americans 66 percent Non-Hispanic blacks 73 percent

So Lemon is correct that "more than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock." To make sure we weren’t missing something, we asked two population experts -- Tom W. Smith, a senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and Douglas Massey, professor at Princeton University's Office of Population Research -- and they agreed that the statistic is the best available.

Lemon did overreach somewhat when he went on to say that the 72 percent "out of wedlock" figure "means absent fathers." The 72 percent figure refers to children who are born to women who are not married; it would, however, include unmarried couples in which the father is present.

That said, the rate of African-American children living in single-parent homes is almost as high as the rate for non-marital births.

The chart below summarizes 2011 Census Bureau data compiled by Kids Count, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The group defined "children in single-parent families" as kids under 18 who live with their own ; it includes children living with a parent and a cohabiting adult, but it does not include children living with married step-parents.

Racial or ethnic group Children in single-parent families Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders 17 percent Non-Hispanic whites 25 percent Hispanics 42 percent American Indian and Native Americans 53 percent Non-Hispanic blacks 67 percent

We should note that this data doesn’t suggest that 67 percent of African-American children have no contact with their father (or a father figure), but rather that their father does not live in the same household with them.

Our ruling:

Lemon said that "more than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock." Federal data confirms that 73 percent of African-American births in 2010 were out of wedlock. Estimates for the percentage of African-American children growing up in single-parent households are slightly lower, at 67 percent. Finally, black children counted in these statistics may have contact outside the household with their biological father. But Lemon's statistic was accurate, and we rate his statement True. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says- more-72-percent-african-americ/

Transgender Mayhem in California: Boys Will Be Girls Will Be Boys

By Michael Brown, CP Op-Ed Contributor

August 15, 2013|8:55 am

What would have sounded completely unbelievable just 20 years ago is now law, thanks to California's Governor Jerry Brown: "transgender students" – meaning children from K-12 who believe they are trapped in the wrong body – can "pick the restrooms they want to use, and the sports teams they want to play on, based on their gender identity."

So, 6 year-old Sally, who is convinced she is actually Sam (without any scientific diagnosis that can prove this and, in fact, without any professional confirmation required by the school), can not only dress like a boy at school, she can also share the boys' room with the other 6 year-old gents.

And 18 year-old Sam, who is convinced that he is actually Sally, can not only come to school dressed as a girl and use the girls' bathroom, he can play on the girls' basketball team and use their locker room too.

I am not making this up.

Legislators passed this bill and the governor signed it, yet even for California, this is hard to believe.

And remember: This is based entirely on the child's self-perception.

That's why, in recent years, male high school students have been voted prom queens and female high school students have been voted prom kings. As explained by a 16 year-old female student in 2010, "It's not like the stereotype where the [prom] king has to be a jock and he's there with the cheerleaders anymore. We live in a generation now where dudes are chicks and chicks are dudes." (For documentation of this and the following quotes, see A Queer Thing Happened to America.)

And make no mistake about it. Deconstructing gender has long been a gay activist goal. As expressed by Barb Burdge, a lesbian activist and social work professor, "challenging oppressive gender structures and making gender rights a priority are critical steps toward universal freedom from punishment for gender nonconformity."

Because of this, Burdge calls upon all social workers to join forces and "challenge gender stereotyping unceasingly." After all, many people don't want to be trapped in the "gender binary" of male-female.

A psychologist recently wrote to me, noting that a colleague of his observed that his practice seemed "to be filling up with more folks who identify as genderqueer. These people have no intention of taking hormones or having surgery and often prefer the term 'they' as their preferred gender pronoun."

But this shouldn't surprise us in the least. Already in 2004 there was a children's coloring book entitled, Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls.

According to the book's blurb, "The antithesis of the 'Dick and Jane' coloring book, this is a funny, playful and provocative deconstruction of traditional gender roles. The activist authors use drawings as well as images taken from old children's books to show how completely silly and unnecessary most common gender assumptions are."

And it's already been nine years since GLSEN (which should actually be parsed as the Gay Lesbian Sexual Education Network) introduced its teacher training manual called GLSEN Lunchbox 2, which included an exercise called, "Getting in Touch with Your Inner Trannie" (i.e., inner transgender identity), where all the kids would have the opportunity to question their gender identity.

And it's been 13 years since Patrick (originally Patricia) Califia-Rice, wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled, Two Dads with a Difference-Neither of Us Was Born Male, explaining, "We are transgendered men (female-to-male, or FTM). My boyfriend is the mother of my child." (Chew on that one for a while.)

Now there is a camp where boys who want to dress up as girls (and vice versa) can join together with their peers, putting on makeup and nail polish and fancy dresses and engaging in fun, little girl activities – all with the encouragement of their parents. (To be perfectly clear, I don't question the love these parents have for their kids. I simply question their judgment.)

Last month, the media glowingly reported the budding romance between Arin Andrews, 17 and Katie Hill, 19, with Arin born female and Katie born male, both now in various stages of sex-change surgery (most recently renamed "gender alignment surgery").

Today, in some states, these changes can be made retroactive to birth (I kid you not), so that, after sex- change surgery, the gender on your birth certificate is changed (almost like a sci-fi time tunnel of sorts).

What about investing funds and energy into getting to the root cause of these gender identity issues, trying to help these children and adults from the inside out? After all, it is well known that many "transgender children" simply outgrow their gender identity issues (which means that playing into their childhood confusion only makes things worse), while others are tormented for life (witness people like Mike Penner, aka Christine Daniels, before returning to Mike Penner, then taking his life, or, Don Ennis, then Dawn Ennis, now back to Don Ennis, or Walt Heyer, who after sex-change surgery realized he was really a man after all).

Sadly, even to talk about looking for an internal "cure" for gender identity issues is considered "transphobic," a word that even made its way into an official statement from the UFC (the Ultimate Fighting Championship), the elite mixed-martial arts, combat sports organization, better known for its blood and gore cage fights than for its political correctness.

All of which leads to the question: If this we are today, where will be 10 years from now?

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 22 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire. Follow him atAskDrBrown on Facebookor @drmichaellbrownon Twitter.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/transgender-mayhem-in-california-boys-will-be-girls- will-be-boys-102336/#gcLwjDql5kBhL7m7.99 U.S. families shift as fewer households include children: Census

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON | Tue Aug 27, 2013 2:02pm EDT

(Reuters) - The iconic picture of the traditional American household has faded over the last four decades as the number of married couples with children has seen a steep decline and more people are living alone, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Since 1970, the portion of U.S. households that include families with two married parents and children fell by half, from 40 percent to 20 percent last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"That's at a historic low," Jonathan Vespa, one of the report's co-authors and a researcher in the Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the number of single-person households grew from 17 percent in 1970 to nearly 28 percent in 2012, according to the Census' report.

The findings, based on Census' annual American Community Survey from 2011 and 2012, underscore the shifting notion of family in the United States as more people opt for other types of living arrangements and highlight the nation's declining birth rate.

"Over the last half-century, the trend in the U.S. has been toward smaller households, fewer family and married-couple households with children, and more people living alone," Vespa said in a statement.

"If people are waiting until later to get married and waiting to get children and they're not living with their parents, then they're probably living alone," Vespa told Reuters.

While married couples with children were the majority decades ago, now nearly 57 percent of U.S. households are childless. In 2012, about 29 percent included childless married couples and nearly 28 percent included people living alone.

Despite the decline in married parents with children, that is still the norm for most U.S. children, researchers said. "For all of the change that's going on, we still do see the majority of children are living with married parents," Vespa said.

ECONOMIC STRAIN

Among families that do have children, parents and children still struggle to cope with economic strain, especially in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession.

For example, the number of households with young children that included at least one parent who was unemployed rose by a third between 2005 and 2011, from 2.4 million to 3.2 million, the Census found. States such Nevada, Hawaii and Florida saw an even higher rate of increase.

"During the recession, economic well-being worsened for families with children," said Jamie Lewis, another Census demographer and co-author of the report.

"Home ownership among families declined, while food stamp receipt and parental unemployment increased. Even after the recession officially ended in 2009, these measures remained worse than before it began," Lewis said in a statement.

Families in , Arizona, California and Ohio saw the biggest decline in home ownership, according to Census' data.

Overall, homeownership among households with children fell 15 percent between 2005 and 2011 to 20.8 million, Census said.

Other findings included:

* The number of people per U.S. household fell from 3.1 to 2.6 on average between 1970 and 2012.

* In 2012, 66 percent of households consisted of two or more people related by birth, marriage or adoption living together, compared with 81 percent in 1970.

* In 2011, there were 605,000 same-sex couple households in the United States, including both married and unmarried couples. Same-sex couples also had the highest share of unions in which both partners had a bachelor's degree.

* Four percent of those in married heterosexual couples were of different races compared to 9 percent of unmarried heterosexual partners and 12 percent of same-sex couples.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Leslie Gevirtz) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-usa-families-idUSBRE97Q0TJ20130827

Number of 'older' women having babies

continues to grow

By Lois M. Collins, Deseret News Published: Saturday, July 28 2012 12:16 a.m. MDT SALT LAKE CITY — It seems to Mandy Krell that she has been waiting for a long time. The Lansing, Mich., native didn't meet a man she wanted to marry and with whom she'd like to have a child until she was 39, a bit later than she expected. Now she is waiting for that longed-for child who has not, so far, arrived. What has come into her life is a bad economy that left her unemployed and fearful about being able to afford a child on one income. And she worries that her opportunity to have a child may have passed. If Krell does manage to have a baby in her 40s, she will be less alone than she would have been in decades past. The number of births, particularly first-time births, to older mothers is growing. First-time maternity for "older women" — and this may be the only area besides sports where women in their late 30s and 40s are considered "old" — is becoming less uncommon. But women who have or are trying to have children then, naturally or with assistance, agree it is a journey filled with both challenges and joys. "Forty is the new 20 when it comes to having babies," wrote Susan Newman, social psychologist and author of 15 books on family issues and , in a Psychology Today blog. The Council on Contemporary Families said 40 percent of babies are born to women over 30 and that 1 in 7 babies is born to women over 35, while the Pew Research Center in 2010 reported that more babies were born to women older than 35 than to teenagers. It is a change, Pew said, driven by medical advances, later marriages and new views on motherhood. In good company June's National Vital Statistics Report said the rate for women 40- 44 has increased steadily since 1991 to 18.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women in that age group. It didn't count women who have babies beyond 44, but that number is growing, too. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that nearly 40 percent of women who had a first baby at age 35 or later between 2006 and 2010 went on to have at least one more, compared to 26 percent in 1995. Research gives mixed reviews, but there is much good news among the bad for older moms: Children born to moms over 40 tend to have higher IQs and more impressive early vocabulary, according to a study from the Institute of Child Health, University College London and Birkbeck College in London. Those children are less apt to need hospitalization or have accidents. The researchers theorized older moms are either more cautious or are better able to identify and help children avoid risks. Different research showed that women who delay motherhood live longer than those who give birth at younger ages, perhaps even to 100. And studies consistently show that older moms are typically better educated than young moms. But researchers have found a downside, too. Older moms are more prone to health problems linked to . While most women in their late 30s and early 40s will have healthy pregnancies and babies, the March of Dimes said, the moms' older age confers greater risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, miscarriage, delivery complications, prematurity and stillbirth than younger women face. Autism numbers rise. And the chance the baby will have a genetic disorder increases with maternal age. So does the possibility that fertility has declined or gone away. Still, numbers are sometimes misinterpreted. A report that a woman at 30 only has 12 percent of her eggs didn't note it was comparing a woman that age to a 20-week-old female fetus. By that measure, a girl of 15 only has half the egg cells and a healthy woman of 25 only 22 percent. While fertility declines, and it may take longer for a couple to conceive after 35, studies say about 90 percent of women at 35 can conceive without aid, as can 75 percent of those through age 39 and about half of those who are 41, said Elizabeth Gregory, director of women's studies at the University of Houston, in a fact sheet prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families. "Rates plummet thereafter, and few women have children after age 44 with their own eggs," she said. Having babies Jocelyn Nager joked that by the time she looks at colleges for her daughters, Pearl, 5, and Sarah, 8, she'll get the AARP discount. Nager, a lawyer from New York City, got married late and didn't think she'd be able to have children. It was not, it turned out, a problem for her. Pushing 40 with the first birth, she was established in her career and now enjoys the flexibility to set some of her own hours, with financial stability enough to send the girls to a nice school and summer camp. "There are a lot of extras I could not provide for my kids if I was in my 20s or 30s," Nager said. She still rides bikes with her girls and is very active. "I think I'm not a typical 48-year-old," she told the Deseret News. "But really, what is typical these days?" Different challenges Amy Wasserman, a Palham, Mass., artist who sells her work through Amycreates.com, always knew she'd want to have a baby. After she married Scott Plotkin at age 38, she learned she couldn't become pregnant. They eventually became foster parents and when she was 44, in 2003, they adopted their 2-year-old foster child, Lily. As a mom, she said, what she lacks in stamina she makes up for in patience and wisdom. She is sorry she could not experience pregnancy herself. But she has no regrets about having a child in her 40s instead of her 20s. Wasserman is confident she recognizes her daughter's long-term needs — including how important it is to be inspired by successful, hard-working women, she said — more than she would have when she was younger. Paula Pant is 28, but plans to wait until her mid-30s to have children, unfazed by statements like "older parents won't have the energy to play with their children," or "they'll never live to see their kids grow up." Pant, who was raised in Cincinnati and lives now in Atlanta, was adopted when her folks were 43. "They played with me and kept up; 40 is not that old." The quirk that came with her parents' age, she said, was that much of her childhood she saw them plan their retirements. Pant doesn't think it's a coincidence she now writes a financial-issues blog, "Afford-Anything.com," with lots to say about retirement. The biggest drawback to older parents was that generational differences were "amplified." Some things she wanted to do that were common with her peers were very foreign to her parents, two generations removed. Still, she will wait, too, she said, "half for economic reasons, but half because I want the freedom to travel the world, to move on a whim, to do the fun things you can do when you don't have the responsibility." She won't push it, though, she said. She doesn't want increased risk of genetic or physical complications that come after 35, however small that chance. Jennifer Archer is 40, married just shy of 15 years, and contemplating whether to have children. Her baby right now is her Shiba inu dog, Koho, on whom she dotes. Real babies are a great deal more daunting, she said. Her own parents had her when they were 20, which they told her is too young. They encouraged their own children to get an education, to work and travel and grow up first. Now, after years of doing what they want without children, she and her husband, Tyler, wonder what kind of parents they would be and if they're ready for that. "I think we're at a stage where we've agreed to give it a good go and see what happens," said Archer, who work for KSL in Salt Lake City. "But it scares me a little, too." Experts and experience On her 40th birthday, Angel LaLiberte, the sound of her biological clock pounding in her ears, gave up on finding Mr. Right. She remembers being in a "dark place, deeply depressed," as she realized she'd likely not marry or have children. The Santa Cruz, Calif., woman was packing up those dreams and moving on when he walked into her life and her heart two weeks later. The problem was, Bill Cozzens had been told that he couldn't have children. At a fertility clinic, he had been handed a shiny brochure, its cover sporting a cup-half-full photo of an old couple, no kids but a burgeoning retirement account and a still-good life. When they married a decade ago, Cozzens and LaLiberte decided to try for kids anyway, and with the help of a medical procedure for him she was carrying their baby, Leo, five months later. She'd grown up with siblings and wanted Leo to have that, too, so a miscarriage when she was 43 was devastating. They went to another doctor, who told her to forget it; she was too old, Cozzen's previous fertility problem too complicated. She wept in the parking lot. They didn't know then that medicine sometimes gets it wrong. She was already pregnant. When Isabella was born, six years ago, they thought about sending the doctor a photo. She calls herself a flower power mom and has a blog by that name, a meeting ground for older moms who share experiences. "We are the shock troops, if you will, for a demographic and a future where no woman or mother as a minority collective has gone before. It's both scary and fascinating." Older moms definitely get more tired, she said, and have to learn to pay attention to their own health. It's part of giving kids "the energetic mom they're entitled to." A drop in fertility is real. So is the criticism some people feel emboldened to offer about an older mom's choices. And it's harder to find pals among the moms of kids' friends, since they're 20 years younger. But the pluses are quite lovely, she said, including studies that prove later mothers cope as well as younger ones with newborns, don't feel more stress and tend to be more patient with their children. "That younger mom might have more energy, but I have discipline, experience and knowledge," she said. "And I'm more financially secure. That matters. It's an expensive venture to have kids." By the time she became a mom, she'd worked a couple of decades, honing skills. "I had been a homeowner, I knew how to manage things, I'd trained to handle tough decisions." As for older mothers dying before their children are grown, life happens. Her own mom was not an older mom, but died when she was 24. Besides that, she added, these days, 40 is midlife, with decades to go. email: [email protected] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765592822/Number-of-older-women-having-babies-continues- to-grow.html?pg=all