Yes, a lot of the recent decline in fertility might be due to the lower classes becoming more bourgeois. For example, teen mothers are way down compared to the late 20th Century, which was a result devoutly wished by responsible people in the 20th Century.
In interesting facet of the stir about "teen" pregnancy was the inclusion of 18- & 19-year-old married women in statistics on the "problem".
Surely some of the deception was intentional and resulted from an insufficiency of legitimate social problems and bad news. But some must have been mental deficiency on the part of mass media persons.
One of the striking changes from when I was growing up over forty years ago is that the young of today don't seem to congregate at bars with groups of friends like in my early adult life.
They do where I live, Derek. I’m in southeast PA. Two of my kids are at that age and gathering in watering holes is very much still done. Thank God for Uber.
This brings to mind the totally-unnoticed fact that Wokeism has greatly worsened, rather than improved race relations. Gallup data shows that from 2001-2013, around 64% of blacks and 70% of whites saw race relations as being "very" or "somewhat" good - the figures were extremely stable for a dozen years. Starting in 2014 those numbers crashed into the 30s and 40s respectively, as of 2021.
Aside from that, I'd say blacks are affected by the same aspects of modernity lowering the fertility of every other group. Kids are an expensive hassle, there are plenty of cheap digital distractions these days, and women are leaving their menfolk in the dust when it comes to educational attainment and good-job prospects. If blacks are seeing greater declines than other groups, it may simply reflect their relatively sharper convergence from typical black behavior circa the early-aughts to 2025's Tiktok-powered cultural average.
Black women are more likely to earn a college degree (38% v 26%) than black men. (Pew research). That gap developed quickly. It’s slightly bigger than other racial groups. This must lower the odds of finding a partner for baby-making during prime years?
I would like to know how much of the decline in births to black women is accounted for by black births to white women, but those details seem unavailable.
Interracial relationships are only a few percent but seem more common on TV--and few of those couples have children. At 70+% illegitimacy, it isn't as if black women are insisting on a long term monogamous relationship to get pregnant.
I would guess that black suicide rates are lower in poorer neighborhoods. People who contemplate suicide. Suicides tend to be more introspective than most people, sort of like Hamlet. Poor people usually don't have the intelligence to be introspective.
All racial groups have had deep declines in births. Blacks are just part of the larger trend. There are other factors. With black marriage rates in deep decline for about sixty years now, your average black woman is on her own. She has no husband to rely on, just sex partners for pleasure. It is in the economic interest of black women not to be saddled down with expensive, time-consuming children. Black religiosity has plummeted just like the other racial groups. People who walk away from religion tend to have fewer children. Black women have successfully used their prominence in bureaucracies to move on up. Children get in the way. And, as a guess, I believe lesbianism has increased significantly among black women. It is impossible at this date for two lesbians to conceive a child.
Blacks have increasingly moved away from Christian values and embraced progressive ideology.
Blacks managed to be fairly Christian AND Democratic for a couple decades longer than whites, but that's finally breaking down, probably due to black women associating with more white progressives in cities.
Fertility is highly dependent on moral/religious values -- much more so than it is on material well-being.
I used to see crowds of blacks dressed in colorful finery going to church on Sunday mornings even in highly irreligious Seattle. I don't live in that neighborhood anymore, and wonder whether that's still the case. I kind of doubt it.
As recently as ten years ago, the black "megachurches" in Los Angeles were an incredible fashion parade on Easter weekend. Several milliners in South LA would be booked up for six months each year just working on the women's hats and Easter Bonnets.
I fear that sort of beauty and formality is or has gone with that particular generation, though.
Anyone with access to the LA Times archives, look up the term, "Church Crowns". You will find a photo essay of the type a great metropolitan newspaper could once do, the milliners and the community and the beautiful hats and the wonderful people. Humbling and amazing.
Did they demand payment up front? I used to know a florist in Berkeley who stopped supplying flowers for black graduations because he wouldn't get paid.
I thought it was notable that during the campaign, Trump had a rally in Detroit, and Thomas "Hitman" Hearns, famous boxer, came on stage (*), and was wearing simple black clothes and a prominent silver crucifix. I don't know if he is a lay minister, but it was a plain cross and not part of a mess of "bling". He certainly projected the image of a man of faith. (**)
Notable because men, black male role models, and Christianity, are not welcome at all in the Democratic party, who that week had B. Obama scolding black men, and the Harris rally in Detroit, had "Lizzo", a fat black entertainer, scolding black men.
That's when I finally knew Trump was going to win.
* - Trump "saw" Hearns in the crowd and invited him onstage, maybe that was scripted, who knows. Trump did say, "This guy , awesome boxer, made me a LOT OF MONEY!" The warmth seemed real.
** -- OK, or maybe he thought Trump was a vampire. Sure.
Who won the Hagler-Hearns fight of 1985? The opening round appears to have been the greatest in recorded boxing history. I've only watched the first round (about eight times) and it seems sad that one man later ended up with a loss on his record.
My contempt for the 20% of the crowd in the expensive seats that didn't bother to stand up to give the two warriors a standing ovation at the end of the first round is unbounded.
IIRC, Hearns fought at five different weight classes and won belts at every level. My boxing knowledge consists of reading A.J Liebling, and memories of the last glory days of Ali and Television boxing, but also going to NFL games in the early '80's, and my buddy pointing to the "crawl" on the stadium scoreboard: Tyson! Another knockout! You gotta see this guy!
I'm talking ESPN, 1AM Saturday night, taped on VHS, some 2000-seat hockey arena in upstate NY, did that really happen? stuff. How is this guy so unstoppable but nobody has seen this?
Is Mike Tyson, the greatest American Story of our lifetime?
BTW, if you want to reach black men in Detroit, who could possibly be more crucial than Tommy Hearns? Unless Marvin Gaye (?) or Joe Louis came back from the dead.
Hearns was awful smiley for somebody getting rocked by numerous Hagler shots. Hagler does not even look like a man, more like a deadly dark brown iron fire hydrant or a bronze golem. Or, actually, a cannon.
Boxing was still great in the 80s and Hearns and Hagler were two of the greatest of all times. It is sad to me that boxing has declined so much. Mixed martial arts are probably much more popular.
Based on the search results provided, there is no evidence that Lizzo scolded black men at a Kamala Harris rally in Detroit. The search results do not mention any such incident or any specific comments directed at black men by Lizzo during the rally157.
The search results primarily focus on Lizzo's appearance at a campaign event for Kamala Harris in Detroit on October 19, 2024. During this event, Lizzo made comments praising Detroit and expressing support for Harris's candidacy57. The national press reported on Lizzo's appearance and her statements about Detroit and Harris, but there is no mention of her scolding black men or any similar controversy234.
The main controversy reported in the search results relates to Lizzo's comments about Detroit, which some interpreted as potentially negative due to the city's economic challenges23. However, this controversy does not involve any scolding of black men.
Perhaps I was wrong on what was said at that particular Harris rally. I'll put it in the context of the Harris campaign generally being about women scolding men. Harris had many female celebrity endorsers -- good for them, use that support. But how could she poll any higher with black women? For a party all about identity politics, maybe trot out some other identities to rally support amongst different tribes. I'm pretty sure John Legend would have Come to every rally with her, probably snag acapella awesome about Kamale.
I imagined an SNL parody where Los Lobos (one of the greatest rock-n-roll bands ever, staunch Democrats) offered the Harris campaign commercial with a new song, and Kamala blew them off, "Just play "La Bamba" and me and Timmy dance around like this --LALALALALA BAMBA!! !!!!" and David Hidalgo strangled her.
Most are, but that didn't stop many of them from still trying (to be good Christians) until recently. And trying is really what most of it is about, since hardly any of us have what it takes to be saints.
echoing what a couple others have said, I think the internet and phones caught up with us. Finding someone has always been a problem because most of us aren't very attractive yet want someone attractive (or super attractive). The average voice of society used to tell the singles to get realistic, make some compromises and get on with it. The average voice of the internet tell the singles that the opposite sex sucks, it's not your fault, they just suck, never compromise your standards and if he/she does anything wrong, next!!!!
I can't say for sure that the new approach is wrong, but it must lead to less connection, right?Maybe it's just a tiny minority of loud voices making it seem like this is how society feels about relationships and reproduction. Even if that's true, acting as a ready source of discouragement must have an effect.
Children aren't as financially valuable as they used to be, so we have fewer of them.
Perhaps we just feel crowded. Americans voted with their reproductive practices for population stability in the 1970s, only to see their revealed preference vetoed by the government and big businessI. We've added 130 million people in my lifetime and practically all of it by immigration.
My wife and I were married in 1991. America's population was 250 million. America's population today is over 340 million. Immigration is out of control.
Here in NJ, every once-black majority city has either become Hispanic majority or is close. The Plainfield NJ school district went from 75% black in 1999 to 80% Hispanic by 2023. Two-parent Hispanic families are crowding out single black moms and everyone's moving to the Carolinas or Georgia. Affordable family formation is now a conscious decision.
But the 2009 drop in birthrate due to the collapse of the economy over the course of 2008 was at least explicable in terms of the economy. We need new theories to explain the late 2010s decline of the white rate and the current decline of the black rate.
Socialising and forming real world connections is an ever harder personality and intelligence test because things like delaying the easy gratification of a phone and overcoming the increasing awkwardness of others create real barriers to entry.
Well-explained.
Yes, a lot of the recent decline in fertility might be due to the lower classes becoming more bourgeois. For example, teen mothers are way down compared to the late 20th Century, which was a result devoutly wished by responsible people in the 20th Century.
I remember how preventing teenage motherhood was a massive social priority. Charles Murray wrote hand-wringing op-Ed’s about it.
I had three teen births in my high school cohort (late 90s). That doesn’t happen today.
I thought the mothers (and fathers) were hugely irresponsible at the time but now see the benefits of getting it all over and done with early in life.
In interesting facet of the stir about "teen" pregnancy was the inclusion of 18- & 19-year-old married women in statistics on the "problem".
Surely some of the deception was intentional and resulted from an insufficiency of legitimate social problems and bad news. But some must have been mental deficiency on the part of mass media persons.
One of the striking changes from when I was growing up over forty years ago is that the young of today don't seem to congregate at bars with groups of friends like in my early adult life.
They do where I live, Derek. I’m in southeast PA. Two of my kids are at that age and gathering in watering holes is very much still done. Thank God for Uber.
When I was twenty, I easily could close bars with my pals. Nowadays, I rarely make it to 9 PM.
I feel your pain, buddy. It’s a struggle to stay up long enough to make sure all my kids are home. Getting old isn’t for the weak.
This brings to mind the totally-unnoticed fact that Wokeism has greatly worsened, rather than improved race relations. Gallup data shows that from 2001-2013, around 64% of blacks and 70% of whites saw race relations as being "very" or "somewhat" good - the figures were extremely stable for a dozen years. Starting in 2014 those numbers crashed into the 30s and 40s respectively, as of 2021.
Aside from that, I'd say blacks are affected by the same aspects of modernity lowering the fertility of every other group. Kids are an expensive hassle, there are plenty of cheap digital distractions these days, and women are leaving their menfolk in the dust when it comes to educational attainment and good-job prospects. If blacks are seeing greater declines than other groups, it may simply reflect their relatively sharper convergence from typical black behavior circa the early-aughts to 2025's Tiktok-powered cultural average.
I suspect rising obesity rates are also a factor. Maybe girls aren't actually impressed by reckless driving and shooting.
Should you separate the suicide rates by young vs. old first before comparing races?
Black women are more likely to earn a college degree (38% v 26%) than black men. (Pew research). That gap developed quickly. It’s slightly bigger than other racial groups. This must lower the odds of finding a partner for baby-making during prime years?
Particularly with white women now grabbing so many desirable black men, according to the TV. How long they manage to keep them is another matter.
I would like to know how much of the decline in births to black women is accounted for by black births to white women, but those details seem unavailable.
Interracial relationships are only a few percent but seem more common on TV--and few of those couples have children. At 70+% illegitimacy, it isn't as if black women are insisting on a long term monogamous relationship to get pregnant.
It may be associated with the decline of Christianity in the US.
See last year's Gallup poll at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/642548/church-attendance-declined-religious-groups.aspx
I wonder how the black suicide rate tracks with violent crime in black neighborhoods. Was it higher in the 90s when cities were scary as hell?
Blacks generally had a low suicide rate. They still do, but it's not as relatively low as before.
I would guess that black suicide rates are lower in poorer neighborhoods. People who contemplate suicide. Suicides tend to be more introspective than most people, sort of like Hamlet. Poor people usually don't have the intelligence to be introspective.
Even Hungarian births are plummeting
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/hungary-births-drop-to-record-in-blow-to-orban-s-family-policies
It looks just like 10% of all live births in 2024.
Steve - how does this compare to US-born black women as a share of the 15-45 population?
The CDC doesn't estimate fertility rates for 2024 yet, probably because it doesn't have population estimates for 2024 yet, it being only February.
Obesity must play a role
Wealthier people got less fat in 2024 due to Ozempic.
There are a lot of long term trends that would drive down fertility, but the sharp decline in black American births from 2023 to 2024 is puzzling.
All racial groups have had deep declines in births. Blacks are just part of the larger trend. There are other factors. With black marriage rates in deep decline for about sixty years now, your average black woman is on her own. She has no husband to rely on, just sex partners for pleasure. It is in the economic interest of black women not to be saddled down with expensive, time-consuming children. Black religiosity has plummeted just like the other racial groups. People who walk away from religion tend to have fewer children. Black women have successfully used their prominence in bureaucracies to move on up. Children get in the way. And, as a guess, I believe lesbianism has increased significantly among black women. It is impossible at this date for two lesbians to conceive a child.
Blacks have increasingly moved away from Christian values and embraced progressive ideology.
Blacks managed to be fairly Christian AND Democratic for a couple decades longer than whites, but that's finally breaking down, probably due to black women associating with more white progressives in cities.
Fertility is highly dependent on moral/religious values -- much more so than it is on material well-being.
Black males are nearly totally off the religion reservation except for a few pastors where religion is a profitable enterprise.
I used to see crowds of blacks dressed in colorful finery going to church on Sunday mornings even in highly irreligious Seattle. I don't live in that neighborhood anymore, and wonder whether that's still the case. I kind of doubt it.
As recently as ten years ago, the black "megachurches" in Los Angeles were an incredible fashion parade on Easter weekend. Several milliners in South LA would be booked up for six months each year just working on the women's hats and Easter Bonnets.
I fear that sort of beauty and formality is or has gone with that particular generation, though.
Anyone with access to the LA Times archives, look up the term, "Church Crowns". You will find a photo essay of the type a great metropolitan newspaper could once do, the milliners and the community and the beautiful hats and the wonderful people. Humbling and amazing.
Did they demand payment up front? I used to know a florist in Berkeley who stopped supplying flowers for black graduations because he wouldn't get paid.
I thought it was notable that during the campaign, Trump had a rally in Detroit, and Thomas "Hitman" Hearns, famous boxer, came on stage (*), and was wearing simple black clothes and a prominent silver crucifix. I don't know if he is a lay minister, but it was a plain cross and not part of a mess of "bling". He certainly projected the image of a man of faith. (**)
Notable because men, black male role models, and Christianity, are not welcome at all in the Democratic party, who that week had B. Obama scolding black men, and the Harris rally in Detroit, had "Lizzo", a fat black entertainer, scolding black men.
That's when I finally knew Trump was going to win.
* - Trump "saw" Hearns in the crowd and invited him onstage, maybe that was scripted, who knows. Trump did say, "This guy , awesome boxer, made me a LOT OF MONEY!" The warmth seemed real.
** -- OK, or maybe he thought Trump was a vampire. Sure.
Who won the Hagler-Hearns fight of 1985? The opening round appears to have been the greatest in recorded boxing history. I've only watched the first round (about eight times) and it seems sad that one man later ended up with a loss on his record.
My contempt for the 20% of the crowd in the expensive seats that didn't bother to stand up to give the two warriors a standing ovation at the end of the first round is unbounded.
IIRC, Hearns fought at five different weight classes and won belts at every level. My boxing knowledge consists of reading A.J Liebling, and memories of the last glory days of Ali and Television boxing, but also going to NFL games in the early '80's, and my buddy pointing to the "crawl" on the stadium scoreboard: Tyson! Another knockout! You gotta see this guy!
I'm talking ESPN, 1AM Saturday night, taped on VHS, some 2000-seat hockey arena in upstate NY, did that really happen? stuff. How is this guy so unstoppable but nobody has seen this?
Is Mike Tyson, the greatest American Story of our lifetime?
BTW, if you want to reach black men in Detroit, who could possibly be more crucial than Tommy Hearns? Unless Marvin Gaye (?) or Joe Louis came back from the dead.
Here's the first round of Hagler-Hearns in 1985:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2a2-8OHdg
It's like the 15th round of a "Rocky" movie, except it was real.
Granted, I'm guessing they were out of their minds on steroids, but still ...
Hearns was awful smiley for somebody getting rocked by numerous Hagler shots. Hagler does not even look like a man, more like a deadly dark brown iron fire hydrant or a bronze golem. Or, actually, a cannon.
Thanks for providing. A great round of boxing.
Thanks for the link!
Boxing was still great in the 80s and Hearns and Hagler were two of the greatest of all times. It is sad to me that boxing has declined so much. Mixed martial arts are probably much more popular.
Sayeth Perplexity:
Based on the search results provided, there is no evidence that Lizzo scolded black men at a Kamala Harris rally in Detroit. The search results do not mention any such incident or any specific comments directed at black men by Lizzo during the rally157.
The search results primarily focus on Lizzo's appearance at a campaign event for Kamala Harris in Detroit on October 19, 2024. During this event, Lizzo made comments praising Detroit and expressing support for Harris's candidacy57. The national press reported on Lizzo's appearance and her statements about Detroit and Harris, but there is no mention of her scolding black men or any similar controversy234.
The main controversy reported in the search results relates to Lizzo's comments about Detroit, which some interpreted as potentially negative due to the city's economic challenges23. However, this controversy does not involve any scolding of black men.
Perhaps I was wrong on what was said at that particular Harris rally. I'll put it in the context of the Harris campaign generally being about women scolding men. Harris had many female celebrity endorsers -- good for them, use that support. But how could she poll any higher with black women? For a party all about identity politics, maybe trot out some other identities to rally support amongst different tribes. I'm pretty sure John Legend would have Come to every rally with her, probably snag acapella awesome about Kamale.
I imagined an SNL parody where Los Lobos (one of the greatest rock-n-roll bands ever, staunch Democrats) offered the Harris campaign commercial with a new song, and Kamala blew them off, "Just play "La Bamba" and me and Timmy dance around like this --LALALALALA BAMBA!! !!!!" and David Hidalgo strangled her.
I thought that a lot of black mothers were single.
Most are, but that didn't stop many of them from still trying (to be good Christians) until recently. And trying is really what most of it is about, since hardly any of us have what it takes to be saints.
echoing what a couple others have said, I think the internet and phones caught up with us. Finding someone has always been a problem because most of us aren't very attractive yet want someone attractive (or super attractive). The average voice of society used to tell the singles to get realistic, make some compromises and get on with it. The average voice of the internet tell the singles that the opposite sex sucks, it's not your fault, they just suck, never compromise your standards and if he/she does anything wrong, next!!!!
I can't say for sure that the new approach is wrong, but it must lead to less connection, right?Maybe it's just a tiny minority of loud voices making it seem like this is how society feels about relationships and reproduction. Even if that's true, acting as a ready source of discouragement must have an effect.
Children aren't as financially valuable as they used to be, so we have fewer of them.
Perhaps we just feel crowded. Americans voted with their reproductive practices for population stability in the 1970s, only to see their revealed preference vetoed by the government and big businessI. We've added 130 million people in my lifetime and practically all of it by immigration.
My wife and I were married in 1991. America's population was 250 million. America's population today is over 340 million. Immigration is out of control.
Here in NJ, every once-black majority city has either become Hispanic majority or is close. The Plainfield NJ school district went from 75% black in 1999 to 80% Hispanic by 2023. Two-parent Hispanic families are crowding out single black moms and everyone's moving to the Carolinas or Georgia. Affordable family formation is now a conscious decision.
Hispanics are taking over towns in black-majority Prince George's County, MD. Whites are an aged, feeble minority.
i've been in the hospital business for a long time. the drop in birthrate in 2009 was one of the most staggering things i've ever seen.
But the 2009 drop in birthrate due to the collapse of the economy over the course of 2008 was at least explicable in terms of the economy. We need new theories to explain the late 2010s decline of the white rate and the current decline of the black rate.
How much have the absolute numbers of 15-45 women dropped this century by race?
“Plan B” was approved for over-the-counter sales in 2013.
For a large cohort of whites, the economy hasn’t really recovered.
Socialising and forming real world connections is an ever harder personality and intelligence test because things like delaying the easy gratification of a phone and overcoming the increasing awkwardness of others create real barriers to entry.