What did the latest census results teach me? Women’s bodies are all about economics.

The latest US Census numbers were released last week and the news was all over it. In addition to the changes a few states will see in their number of federal representatives, the news coverage focused on the drop in birthrate.

For the sixth consecutive year, birth rates dropped in 2020. They are the lowest since 1979 and are now below replacement rate. In the past, women were having 2.1 children, enough to replace themselves and maintain the overall population in the country.

As a mother, these census results don’t come as a surprise. There is little support for mothers in the US.

• Health insurance is expensive and doesn’t always cover pregnancy and maternity care.
• Access to prenatal care is under attack nationwide. Rural hospitals are closing and receiving needed care has become a political hot topic. Access to care varies dramatically by area, resulting in places where only half of women receive the 9 recommended prenatal visits.
• Average maternal mortality is 17.4 per 100k pregnancies and rising. This number is higher for women of color and ranks the highest among developed nations.  
• In the US, infant mortality is 5.6% per 100K births, earning us 33rd out of 36 OECD countries.
• Little to no assistance with childcare cost. The average cost of center-based daycare in 2020 was $11,896 per year!
• The US also holds the distinction of being the only developed country without mandatory parental leave.

All of this works against the notion that having a child is a desirable, let alone rational, decision.

Each of the facts on this list can be viewed through an economics lense. We have heard the rhetoric for years that employers find it too expensive to cover maternity costs, that the results of mandatory parental leave would be devastating to a corporation’s bottom line, and that childcare is the parents’ responsibility so why would we have our economy support that with tax dollars?

(There are other factors that have contributed to the decline in the US birthrate, including the tightening of immigration. Historically, immigrants tended to have more children than their US-born counterparts. But we will leave that discussion for another day.)

From another perspective, a lower birth rate could also signal some important wins for some women. It could be that a higher percentage of women are more empowered to make family planning decisions. Women are more educated and are waiting longer to start families. Which is all good news for women’s economic and overall health.

The real concern I have is that US economic vitality and health has been directly linked to population growth.  Lower birth rates mean there are fewer workers paying taxes to support vital services, like social security.  

My worry now is that economics will be used to push back the meager gains women have made towards gender parity in the past several years. The World Economic Report 2021 Report on the Gender Gap notes that the global gender gap has increased from 99.5 years to 136 years in the past 12 months. Women have left the workforces at four times the rate of men, many as a result of increased childcare responsibilities.

If our nation continues to subscribe to the idea that population growth is the primary way to prop up the economy, pressure will increase for women to stay out of the workforce and focus on producing the future tax base (a.k.a., have babies).  Policy makers could be motivated to cut the very supports that working women need to maintain a job and a family. Early childhood education and affordable childcare allow women to remain in the workforce, but some policy makers seem to believe that cutting those supports will keep women at home, producing babies instead of producing jobs. (For a real-world example, read about what Idaho did when offered millions of federal dollars to improve childcare.) Valuing women for everything they bring to economic growth, rather than just their ability to produce the next generation of tax payers, can shift the conversation to new, creative ways to have a healthy economy.

Otherwise, the potential for a modern-day “Handmaid’s Tale” is spine chilling.

[1] Commonwealth Fund 2020 https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/nov/maternal-mortality-maternity-care-us-compared-10-countries

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db395-tables-508.pdf#5

[3] (https://www.verywellfamily.com/cost-of-daycare-616847)