Falling fertility rate poses problems, author says

WASHINGTON — Benches built to push couples to sit closer together, special holidays and monetary incentives are all ways other countries have tried to boost fertility rates, author and demographer Jonathan Last told a Washington audience recently.

The “bad news,” said Last, is there are few examples of effective public policy to nudge fertility rates upward. Other countries that have tried to do so failed, the author of “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting” said during an April 3 lecture at the Family Research Council.

The world population will peak before the end of this century and then quickly contract, Last predicted in a February opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. This would be the first time this large and quick of a contraction took place since the Black Plague hit Europe in the Middle Ages.

Today, 97 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where the fertility rate is falling, Last said in the article.

In 1965, 4 percent of all births were to single mothers; today, it is 47 percent. It is not that America is unwilling to produce children; the problem is broken homes and the dropping fertility rate, Last said. America’s ideal fertility rate is 2.5; it is currently 2.1.