{"id":24181,"date":"2019-09-04T12:57:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T16:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=24181"},"modified":"2022-05-15T11:01:55","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T15:01:55","slug":"low-fertility-among-middle-class-whites-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/04\/low-fertility-among-middle-class-whites-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Low fertility among middle-class whites explained&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8230;. by a white middle-class American. A Facebook post from a woman in her 30s who was last seen (by me) thoroughly enjoying Burning Man:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I decided recently to get clear on what my future self would like to create now for my life. Though I\u2019ve enjoyed the wild ride of the single life and being foot loose and fancy free most of my adult life. I decided that slowing down to focus on building a relationship with my life partner was going to be my biggest priority. I definitely had to do some internal housekeeping to create space for this person to show up in my life and he sure did! I\u2019m so happy to have found this man and our time together has been nothing short of awesome! He\u2019s not on social media (which I find refreshing) so he will never see this, but I\u2019m so thankful to have met him and I\u2019m so excited for the life we plan to build together and I look forward to sharing this journey with you all. \ud83d\udc95<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I.e., in her 20s she did not have the idea of an enduring partnership with a man and therefore, presumably, no children were planned (not sure she realized that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realworlddivorce.com\/Massachusetts\">having sex with an already-married dentist in Massachusetts<\/a> would have paid a lot better than her job in education!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If children are the outcome of this &#8220;life partnership,&#8221; the first won&#8217;t arrive until mom is at what biologists would say is the sunset of her fertility. We have <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thehauer\/status\/1149055146451709957\">the cold data<\/a> on the low fertility of middle-income white Americans:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-24182\" width=\"557\" height=\"386\" srcset=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image.png 1338w, https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image-300x209.png 300w, https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image-1024x712.png 1024w, https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image-768x534.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>But via Facebook we have an explanation of how this occurs. (Remember that there are few Americans with incomes of $200,000+\/year and therefore, despite what you might infer from a casual glance at the chart, the future population will be increasingly descended from people earning less than $50,000\/year.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;. by a white middle-class American. A Facebook post from a woman in her 30s who was last seen (by me) thoroughly enjoying Burning Man: I decided recently [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociology-amateur"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Low fertility among middle-class whites explained... - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/04\/low-fertility-among-middle-class-whites-explained\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Low fertility among middle-class whites explained... - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8230;. by a white middle-class American. 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