Money Crisis May Affect Birthrate

Western women must feel financially secure to have babies. With fewer unplanned births in the G8 countries and Australia, it's mainly women who want children who are having them. Many with jobs will have second thoughts in this tight economy. Recent birth rate blips in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and parts of the European Union could disappear. Environmentalists see a plus side; fewer children means global warming will slow. However, economists worry over their countries' future tax bases.

Today's children are tomorrow's taxpayers, artists and business builders. The world needs them. However, in a May 2007 paper Dr. John Guillebaud of University College London and co-chairman of The Optimum Population Trust maintains "each new UK birth will be responsible for 160 times more greenhouse gas emissions...than a new birth in Ethiopia". In July 2008 he and General Practitioner Pip Hayes said, in The British Medical Journal, mushrooming populations are putting extreme pressure on the planet's resources and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Women Need Job Security

The current crisis may "be the worst period of time since 1929," Donald Trump told CNN. Mothers need job security, maternity leave and, hopefully, partners with paternity leave. These could disappear as corporations cut costs . Forget on-the-job daycare. In recent years, heeding their biological clocks, many have had babies, but "kids are luxury goods" says Stephanie Coontz director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. So popular is having babies that fans track celebrity "baby bumps" on stars such as Natalie Morales, Ashlee Simpson, Amy Poeler and Constance Marie.

Teenage pregnancies are down in the United States, Australia and much of Europe. Mary Maderios Kent of the Population Reference Bureau wrote in March 2007, "women may put off marriage and children to further their education, then to get established in the labor force". Perhaps for the first time, women are choosing to have children because they actually want them.

Financial Incentives For Having Babies

While pundits feel financial incentives don't work, Ulyanovsk's governor Sergey Morozov held a "Procreation Day" in which 500 women participated and found that a year later they'd given birth to 78 children, more than tripling the region's average annual birth rate. Conceiving couples were given money, cars and fridges. Singapore, worried about disappearing into a population black hole, reversed its policy of paying people to be voluntarily sterilized and now provides three-month paid maternity leaves, several thousand dollars in graduated baby bonuses, co-savings plans and tax breaks for nannies and grandparents.

With Europe's second highest birthrate, France offers three-year paid parental leaves, guaranteed job protection, nanny stipends and universal full-time preschool and subsidized daycare. In many countries, however, new or second generation immigrant women are boosting birthrates.

The Birth Rate is an Indicator of Confidence

The birthrate in an indicator of confidence. It "fell steadily between 1930 and 1935, when the Depression made its effects felt most acutely, remained low until after 1940, and then began to rise again in the midst of World War II," writes Professor Gerhard Rempel of Western New England College. Dr. Thomas A Zarka of New Hampshire's Parkland Medical Center says a poor economy keeps women from having multiple babies.

A Deep Existential Fear

When the financial mess eventually clears, industrialized countries will feel "a deep existential fear", wrote Thomas Homer-Dixon of Balsillie School of International Affairs in the Globe and Mail . This could trigger a sinking birthrate that's good for the planet but bad for the economy.

Mom-in-waiting Natalie Morales

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