Kerby Anderson
Members of a very popular South Korean boy band were denied draft exemptions even though it would reduce revenue to the country. Why? Because there aren’t enough boys available to serve in the military. Lyman Stone uses this illustration to highlight the extremely low birth rate in South Korea.
But that country is just one of many examples of what has become a global birth dearth. Fertility rates have been declining in all the developed countries of the world. The US figures are better than in many countries in Europe and Asia, but still illustrate the decline. Fertility rates in this country declined from 2.12 children per woman in 2006 to just 1.72 today. The figure might even drop lower if we hit another recession.
Although legalized abortion, contraception, and a down economy are often cited for the reasons for lower fertility, those factors only explain part of the decline. The US first reached birth rates around two children per woman during the Roaring Twenties, not during the Great Depression and long before contraceptive access was readily available.
Modern economies depend on various transfers of wealth across generations. The obvious examples are Social Security and other so-called entitlement programs. An older generation also expects the younger generation to buy their houses and other assets. But that is not happening. Even the trade deficit is due in part to the fact that there are more assets than there are buyers to purchase them.
The solution, it seems, is not to pass government policies that try to make people want to have children. The best that can be done would be to eliminate government policies that currently penalize couples with children. At the least, government should reduce the financial barriers for parents who want to bring kids into the world.

Kerby Anderson
What is the American Creed? That is a question David Gelernter asks in his book, America-Lite.
He has been on my radio program to talk about his book and his op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
He is a fascinating individual. He received two degrees in classical Hebrew literature, but then became a professor of computer science at Yale University. Some have called him a “rock star” in the world of computing. You might also remember that he was one of the people who was critically injured when he opened a mail bomb sent by “the Unabomber.”
He believes that we need to return to the principles that made this country great. Unfortunately, he says “many of us don’t know what they are, or think they can’t work.” He blames the public schools and the academy for their failure to pass on the basic ideals that have served America so well for centuries.
He laments that: “Almost no one believes that our public schools are doing a passable job of teaching American and Western civilization.” Textbooks and class lectures in our education system today often start with the assumption that America and Western ideals are bad for civilization. He concludes that “Many American children have never heard a good word for the United States, the West, Judaism or Christianity their whole lives.”
He also laments that our “American culture is in the hands of intellectuals” which he says are usually people “born with high IQ and low common sense.” He gives lots of examples of this. You can probably think of many other examples of people who are very bright but lacking in basic common sense.
America’s creed is quite simple: “Freedom, equality, democracy and America as the promised land.” The early founders believed in America as a city on a hill, as did many presidents right up to President Reagan.
It is time to use our American creed to evaluate those who are teaching our kids and those who are leading our nation.