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Subsidizing single motherhood is a terrible response to the fertility crisis.
Fewer couples mean fewer children. The problem is that fewer men are becoming someone with whom a woman would want to build a family. A new paper in the journal Politics and the Life Sciences offers an honest diagnosis of this pattern. It also offers one of the worst prescriptions.
The authors, three psychologists led by Mads Larsen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, begin by pointing out that women in rich countries still say they want between two and three children. In Norway, the average stated preference is 2.4. In America, it’s 2.7. Actual fertility rates are 1.4 and 1.6, respectively. The reason for this gap, the paper suggests, is that fewer young women and men are forming stable relationships during their most fertile years. In Norway, the share of women ages 20 to 34 not living with a partner has doubled since the 1970s. According to one estimate by Morgan Stanley, nearly half of American women ages 25 to 44 will be single by 2030.
What drives the decline in couples? Here the researchers say something most demographers won’t: When women became financially independent, the value many men once offered, basic provision and protection, has largely been lost. A woman who earns her own income and lives in a country with a strong safety net doesn’t need a husband to survive. She can hold out for a partner she actually wants.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal
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Rob Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.