Raw Data: The Declining US Fertility Rate

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Monika Bauerlein,
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December is make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising, and in "No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS," we hope that giving it to you as matte-of-fact as we can will work to raise the $350,000 we need to raise this month. Donations make up 74 percent of our budget this year, and all online gifts will be matched and go twice as far until we hit our goal.

This is literally apropos of nothing. I happened to get pointed to a Ross Douthat tweetstorm about declining fertility rates, and it made me curious about what our fertility rate actually looks like. So here it is:

I really have nothing at all to say about this. As it turns out, our fertility rate did start dropping during the Great Recession. It seemed like it was flattening out around 2013, but then it started declining again. Does this matter? Is it a blip, or a sign of problems to come? Does it mean we need more immigrants? Should I even care if our population is going to start shrinking a few decades from now? Robots are going to be running the whole planet by then, after all. It all beats me. But at least now you know what the basic shape of the water is.