Overregulation In Childcare Tied To Families Having Less Kids, Report Says

'Boost prices much more than quality'

Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson get to the bottom of the West's 'civilizational suicide'



Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently identified three key drivers of the "civilizational suicide" underway in the West: a "parasitic mindset," climate alarmism, and false religion.

Musk noted midway through his interview with the titular host of the Tucker Carlson Network that while leftist billionaire George Soros is "senile," he has bequeathed a powerful nongovernmental system to his son Alexander Soros and other "like-minded people" who may continue his "anti-civilizational" campaign of normalizing criminality and dismantling borders.

While open borders and unchecked crime are certainly ruinous, Musk intimated that they are merely symptoms of a greater civilizational sickness — a sickness that leaves the body politic tolerating the Open Society Foundations' agenda, spurns life, mutates empathy, and glorifies an unmanned nature.

When asked to assess the current state of Europe, Musk bemoaned the collapse of birthrates.

"My biggest concern for Europe is that their birth rate is half replacement rate," said Musk. "So Europe is rapidly becoming with each passing year older and older with fewer and fewer young people. ... At the most fundamental level, unless Europe has a birth rate at least roughly equal to replacement rate, it is in population free fall, population collapse."

'Their main sort of domestic social policy is convincing you not to have kids.'

In May, a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet revealed that fertility rates have declined in all countries and territories since 1950 and that "human civilization is rapidly converging on a sustained low-fertility reality."

The fertility rate references the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. The replacement rate Musk referenced is 2.1. This is necessary for a population to maintain stability and replenish itself without requiring replacement by foreign nationals.

Blaze News previously reported that in 1950, the global fertility rate was 4.84. In 2021, it was 2.23. By the end of the 2100s, it is expected to drop to 1.59 globally.

The average fertility rate for the European Union as a whole in 2022 was 1.46. Italy and Spain were among the European nations with the lowest rates — 1.24 and 1.16, respectively.

While Europe is on the greased track to collapse, Carlson reflected on the situation stateside, noting, "It does seem like the U.S. government — if you take three steps back — is pretty committed to making fewer Americans. There's a lot of anti-fertility propaganda. Actually, that seems like their main sort of domestic social policy is convincing you not to have kids."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the general fertility rate in the U.S. reached a historic low of 1.61 in 2023. By way of contrast, in 1960, the U.S. fertility rate was 3.7.

Despite these staggering statistics, the Biden-Harris administration has continued championing the slaughter of the unborn and the effective sterilization of vulnerable populations while Democratic lawmakers work to dissuade some young couples from becoming parents.

A big driver of Western anti-natalism in recent years has been climate alarmism.

Morgan Stanley analysts told investors in 2021 that the "movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline."

'It's infecting people and making it impossible for them to make rational decisions.'

"The environmental movement in the extreme is fundamentally misanthropic and anti-human," Musk told Carlson. "They start seeing humans as a plague, a blight on the surface of the earth — that earth would be this paradise if only the humans weren't here."

Musk noted that some climate alarmists are forthright about their desire to see humanity destroyed in a massive "holocaust," whereas others have not admitted as much out loud or to themselves.

"A lot of people believe that the earth can't sustain this level of human population, which is utterly untrue. It may seem that in a crowded city there are a lot of people, but actually, if you look down in an airplane and say, 'Am I over a person at any given point in time?' when you're in an airplane, the answer ... 99.9% of the time is 'no.'"

Musk emphasized that the world is in fact underpopulated and that the suggestion to the contrary was the result, in part, of the successful anti-human depopulationist propaganda advanced by biologist Paul Ehrlich.

Despite having had the primary claim in his magnum opus proven wrong by real-world trends, Ehrlich doubled down on his anti-human mania in a "60 Minutes" interview last year, stressing the world has "too many people."

Musk said, "I hope he burns in hell, that guy. Seriously. Terrible human being."

After Musk highlighted that amidst the West's activist-supported population collapse, leftist governments — particularly the Starmer government in Britain — are actively censoring those who would dare criticize the native population's replacement and sporadic rape by immigrants, Carlson said, "You've used the phrase 'mind virus,' but it's behaving like a virus. It's infecting people and making it impossible for them to make rational decisions."

Musk recommended the work of evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad, who has argued that the West "has been parasitized by a set of idea pathogens that negate reality and common sense."

Saad noted last year in the National Post that chief among all idea pathogens now plaguing the West is postmodernism:

It is a form of intellectual terrorism as it posits that there are no objective truths since apparently all truth claims are tainted by subjective relativism and personal biases. Postmodernism opens the door to questioning the 'antiquated' reality of what constitutes a man and a woman. Until fifteen minutes ago, the 117 billion people who had ever lived, as a sexually reproducing species, knew exactly how to identify these two phenotypes. This is no longer true.

The other pathogenic ideas Saad suggested are now crippling the West are the "DIE cult (diversity, inclusion, and equity)," cultural relativism, and suicidal empathy.

Saad noted that suicidal empathy is what animates that class of people who would excuse the illegal entry of criminal noncitizens into the homeland despite their track record of preying upon the citizen population.

'The woke mind virus — it takes the place of religion.'

"Progressives are driven by misplaced and hyperactive faux empathy," wrote Saad. "According to the tenets of progressivism, criminals are victims of society. Hence, to severely punish them for their acts presumes that they have personal agency."

Musk contrasted the kind of "deep empathy" that would entail a desire to see civilization thrive and continue with this shallow or "suicidal empathy," which he suggested "results in the destruction of civilization."

According to Musk, there is a link between the implantation and spread of this parasitic mindset and the decline of religion.

"Nature abhors a vacuum. So when you have essentially a decline in religion and increase in the secular nature of society, for most people, they need something to fill that void, so they adopt a religion. It's not called a religion," said Musk. "The woke mind virus — it takes the place of religion, and they internalize and they feel it with religious fervor."

Musk indicated that the adherents of this woke pseudo-religion then wage a "holy war."

Blaze News recently discussed the implications of America's de-Christianization with Dr. Joshua Mitchell, professor of political theory at Georgetown University.

'Identity politics is the latest iteration of an incomplete religion.'

Mitchell, whose thesis in "American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time" pre-empted Musk's realization by a few years, indicated that identity politics has absorbed much of the attention and energy previously invested into traditional religions.

"So when the Pew Charitable Trusts notes that American church attendance is going down, I say, 'You don't know where to look,'" said Mitchell. "If we call religion 'institutionalized Christianity,' well, then of course the numbers are going down. But if we call religion 'the search for a way to think through purity and stain, innocent victimhood, and historical sin in order to find atonement,' then in America today we're having a religious revival."

Mitchell borrowed a term from Alexis de Tocqueville to describe the woke pseudo-religion Musk recently identified:

We didn't move from Christianity to a secular world. We moved from one incomplete version of Christianity — complete with a designated innocent victim and a moral economy that says who's purified and who’s damned — to the next. Identity politics is the latest iteration of an incomplete religion.

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Lancet study: Fertility is plummeting globally, with over half of countries below replacement level



Biologist Paul Ehrlich, 91, and other de-populationists have long concern-mongered about the planet having far too many human beings living on it. Their alarmist claims have proven as consequential as they have been wrong, inspiring the kind of disastrous policies taken up by the communist Chinese regime, which massacred hundreds of millions of babies as a result of its one-child policy.

It turns out the problem the species actually faces is not a population boom but rather a world-changing population crunch.

A graying world

A new peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet recently revealed that fertility rates have declined in all countries and territories since 1950 and that "human civilization is rapidly converging on a sustained low-fertility reality."

The fertility rate references the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. In 1950, the global fertility rate was 4.84. In 2021, it was 2.23. By the end of this century, it is expected to drop to 1.59 globally.

For a population to maintain stability and replenish itself without need for an influx of foreign nationals, a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed.

The fertility rate in the U.S. last year was 1.784. By way of contrast, in 1960, the U.S. fertility rate was 3.7. The American fertility rate predicted for 2100 is 1.45, according to the study.

"Only six of 204 countries and territories (Samoa, Somalia, Tonga, Niger, Chad, and Tajikistan) are projected to have above-replacement levels of fertility by 2100, and only 26 will still have a positive rate of natural increase (i.e., the number of births will exceed the numbers of deaths)," wrote the researchers.

The researchers drew these conclusions on the basis of up-to-date assessments of key fertility indicators from 1950 to 2021 along with the forecast fertility metrics to 2100 produced in the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2021, executed at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The impact of this demographic trend outlined in the study has already shaken up countries such as China and Japan. The consequences will continue to magnify across the world in the coming decades, lest there be some grand about-face.

— (@)

The fallout

According to the study, the world will become increasingly divided in terms of age demographics. The West and Asia are poised to thin out and turn increasingly gray, while parts of sub-Saharan Africa will remain relatively youthful.

The greater ratio of old people to young people in low-fertility countries is "likely to present considerable economic challenges caused by a growing dependency ratio of older to working-age population and a shrinking labor force," reported the study.

The researchers indicated that barring new funding sources or "unforeseen innovations," national health insurance and social security programs along with health-care infrastructure will be overwhelmed.

In addition to straining health and welfare systems, increasingly childless societies are likely to also suffer economically.

"If productivity per working-aged adult does not increase in accordance with declines in the working-age population, growth in gross domestic product will slow," said the study. "Reliance on immigrants will become increasingly necessary to sustain economic growth in low-fertility countries."

The study suggested that reliance on immigrants from those lower-income countries that still bother to have kids will increase as post-industrialized nations attempt to address labor shortages. However, this reliance may adversely impact the migrants' native countries, which lose out on the skilled labor and talent pursuing better pay abroad.

Despite the civilizational collapse underway, the researchers behind this Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded study highlighted what climate alarmists and other de-populationists might regard as a silver lining, stating, "Although sustained below-replacement fertility will pose serious potential challenges for much of the world over the course of the century, it also presents opportunities for environmental progress."

An increasingly old and childless world "could alleviate some strain on global food systems, fragile environments, and other finite resources, and also reduce carbon emissions," wrote the researchers.

Remedies

The study suggested that pro-natal policies such as child-related cash transfers, tax incentives, childcare subsidies, extended parental leave, and other supports for family — such as those rolled out in Viktor Orbán's Hungary and now being considered in South Korea — might help arrest or slow the fertility decline. However, "There are few data to show that such polices have led to strong, sustained rebounds in fertility."

The Atlantic noted that pro-natal policies have proven successful in certain cases. For instance, the Czech Republic saw its birth rate bottom out in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the mid-2000s, the government began doling out $10,000 to parents for every child, the equivalent of what many citizens were making yearly after taxes.

Tomáš Sobotka, a researcher at Austria’s Vienna Institute of Demography, told the Atlantic that the Czech Republic's pro-natal policy apparently worked as there was a corresponding increase in births over time, and more families were having second and third children.

"Even under optimistic assumptions on the impact of pro-natal policies based on current data, global [total fertility rate] will remain low — and well below replacement level — up to 2100," said the study. "Nevertheless, our pro-natal scenario forecasts also suggest that pro-natal policies might prevent some countries from dropping below very-low (<1·6 TFR) or the lowest-low (<1·3 TFR) fertility in the future."

The researchers did not mention possible cultural or spiritual remedies but did recommend against restricting access to abortion, which kills more than 70 million babies a year worldwide.

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Climate alarmist champions limiting families to one child; claims having more children is 'selfish'



Climate alarmists are becoming increasingly forthright about their hostility toward human life.

Donnachadh McCarthy, a failed politician involved in Just Stop Oil and one of the leading figures of Extinction Rebellion, recently went on British television to peddle depopulationist solutions to imagined problems. McCarthy suggested to GB News — just weeks after calling for Israeli forces to surrender — that "there is a moral issue" with having too many children and that families should be limited to one child.

When China adopted as policy the voluntary scheme McCarthy proposed Tuesday, it ended up with a half-billion dead children, a devastating sex ratio imbalance, and a demographic crisis. It's clear, however, that a similar population collapse is precisely what McCarthy and other alarmists want for the West.

McCarthy — who has previously shared a stage with photo opportunist Greta Thunberg — made clear that he regards children as mobile pollutants, citing disputed statistics as evidence.

"Every child in an industrial country like ours has around 505 hundred tonnes of carbon over their lifetime," said McCarthy, who has himself fed plants with his carbon dioxide for over 64 years. "That's equivalent to 1,000 years of electricity for a household. So each child has an impact, and we're saying one is great, two is plenty, and three is selfish."

McCarthy made clear that he is not only concerned about procreation in Western nations like the United Kingdom — which accounts for less than 1% of global carbon dioxide emissions. He similarly bemoaned the British government's apparent failure to do more to help the developing world abort its young.

"When women have access to family planning, rights to work and a right to education, the birth rate falls naturally," he said. "What I think is tragic is that the U.K. government have cut funds for girls in the developing world, and I think that is sad."

McCarthy appears to have been referring to the U.K.'s 2022 reduction in funding for foreign abortions, euphemistically referred to as sexual and reproductive health rights, by nearly a third.

The climate alarmist has long been a proponent of abortion, claiming that the pro-life position of the "patriarchal Abrahamic religions ... is a stain on human progress."

Despite his apparent desire to have the human population reined in, McCarthy's group Extinction Rebellion elsewhere claims to be a movement for the young dedicated to combating a system "contemptuous of humanity."

Nicole Ratcliff, a parenting coach on the GB News panel with McCarthy, said in response to the radical's depopulationist rhetoric, "I am one of four. I'm sorry, we've got a lovely family, and the idea that three is selfish is shocking."

"For me, I think if someone is choosing not to have children because of climate change, that is not somebody who is driven to have them," said Ratcliff. "The need to have children is something that is built within us, and if you are somebody that wants to have them, then you can't switch that urge off."

"There are people out there pending every single penny that they have got to have a child, and if they are made to feel guilty they are contributing to climate change — I feel quite offended by the idea that bringing a much-loved child into the world would be a bad thing to do," added Ratcliff.

— (@)

Like other radicals, McCarthy's climate hysteria has not only pitted him against big, happy families, but also againstdaily showers, affordable energy, holiday flights, road trips, water hoses, critics of communist China, meat, and pet ownership.

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China's hundred-year marathon slows to a crawl amid economic woes and record-low birth rate



China's aspirations of seeing its hundred-year marathon through to displacing the U.S. and becoming global hegemon by 2049 are growing increasingly fantastical. The economic and social problems the Asian nation faced in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic have not gone away. Rather, things have continued to deteriorate.

Fallout of the one-child policy

China faces a worsening demographic crisis, due in part to the Chinese Communist Party's one-child policy as well as to other correlated factors such as a decrease in the number of women of childbearing age, higher suicide rates in women than in men, sex-selective abortion, and declining fertility.

The birth rate was over 20 births per 1,000 people in 1990, one decade after the implementation of the one-child policy. Over the next 25 years, the country saw a precipitous decline in the birth rate, which a two-child policy in 2016 was unable to arrest. The rate hit a record low of 7.5 births per 1,000 people in 2021.

Data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics Wednesday indicated the birth rate reached a new low in 2023 of 6.39 per 1,000 people, reported the BBC.

The country's annual population has in turn fallen for a second consecutive year, this time by an estimated 2.08 million people.

"It's not a surprise. They've got one of the lowest fertility rates in the world so this is just what happens - the population stops growing and starts to decline," Stuart Gietel-Basten, a population policy expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told the BBC.

The country's fertility rate in 1950, the year after communists formally took power, was 5.29. The rate dropped to a record low of 1.16 in 2022. Blaze News previously noted that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development regards 2.1 as the standard for a stable population.

Demographic stability has been further undermined by a sex-ratio imbalance. As of 2021, there were over 34.9 million more men than women in the country, reported Newsweek.

"It's kind of locked in now… this is just the next year in this new era of population stagnation or decline for China," added Gietel-Basten.

The demographic problem has been compounded by economic stress as many of those in China who want and can physically have children reportedly cannot afford to do so.

Economic woes

Data released this week revealed the Chinese economy had allegedly grown at one of the slowest rates in over 30 years. Reuters reported that China's GDP allegedly grew by 5.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023, disappointing many investors and analysts.

"Although the government met its 2023 GDP growth target of 'around 5.0%', achieving the same pace of expansion in 2024 will prove a lot more challenging," said Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China Economics at Capital Economics.

The China Beige Book International's latest survey suggested, "Any true acceleration (this year) will require either a major global upside surprise or more active government policy."

Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Newsweek that the regime's latest claims about the country's GDP growth "are just not credible."

"Focusing on China's false GDP figures risks missing the forest for the tree," said Singleton. "The days of China's sky-high growth are over."

"There is no getting around the fact that China is in damage control mode, attempting to project a sense of stability to the international community while grappling with myriad domestic challenges. If ever the cliché 'investor beware' applied, it's now," added Singleton.

The country is struggling with high debt, a stock market in free fall, and a real estate crisis that continues to ravage the sector.

Reuters indicated that amid China's disputed recovery and in the face of concerns about renewed lockdowns, the jobless rate nationwide increased to 5.1% last month and unemployment among Chinese youths ages 16 to 24 also remains high.

The youth unemployment rate skyrocketed to 21.3% in June 2023, prompting the regime to suspend the release of monthly data. The rate allegedly sank to 14.1% in December, but is still high enough to create trouble for the regime, which has promised progressive increases in living standards in exchange for acceptance of its authoritarian rule.

In addition to a potentially restive, largely male youth population, China has to contend with its massive elderly population. The BBC indicated that the retiree population, placing increasing pressure on the health care and pension systems, is projected to increase by 60% to 400 million over the next 10 years.

The Guardian noted that 14% of China's population is over the age of 65 and is on track to have more geriatrics than the entire population of the United States.

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Kamala Harris declares US must 'reduce population' to combat climate change in yet another gaffe



Vice President Kamala Harris made yet another gaffe during a speech about green energy on Friday. In Kamala's latest slip-up, she accidentally said the United States needs to "reduce population" in order to combat climate change.

Harris gave a speech about "building a clean energy economy" at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Harris touted President Joe Biden's "ambitious goal" of reducing America's greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and having the U.S. economy reach net zero emissions by no later than 2050 — with or without approval from Congress.

She argued that the "climate crisis" is "one of the most urgent matters of our time," adding that we "must act" because "it is clear that the clock is not only ticking, it is banging."

Harris told the audience, "When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water."

— (@)

The words "reduce population" was a trending topic on Twitter on Saturday morning.

Many immediately interpreted the faux pas as a Freudian slip revealing a conspiracy theory that the government plans to carry out population control to fight climate change.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) asked, "Are you the population she wants to reduce?"

The White House website rushed to clarify the vice president's statement, noting that Harris meant to say "pollution" instead of "population."

Friday's verbal gaffe came just days after Harris was mocked for attempting to explain artificial intelligence.

"I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it's two letters. It means artificial intelligence, but ultimately what it is, is it's about machine learning," Harris said on Wednesday during a roundtable discussion at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.

On Tuesday, Harris made yet another head-scratching comment.

Kamala said, "This issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go! It's that basic."

Earlier this month, Harris was ridiculed for her word salad explanation about what culture is.

Last month, Harris notched the worst net approval rating for a vice president in NBC News polling history.

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Nearly one-third of New Yorkers want to leave their state; over 10,000 have already sought refuge in Florida this year



New York continues to hemorrhage residents, many of whom are relocating to Florida. A new poll indicates that this trend wasn't limited to the pandemic and is likely to continue.

More than one in four want out

A Siena College Poll conducted March 6-9 has provided some damning insights into how New Yorkers view their state.

When asked whether they felt that New York was a place they felt safe from crime, 49% of the 795 respondents answered in the negative. Women appeared especially concerned about their safety, with 57% providing a negative response.

Nearly 40% of respondents suggested New York is not a good place to raise children; 60% of respondents cast doubt on whether New York is a suitable place to retire; 31% said they would retire someplace else.

When asked whether they plan to continue to live in New York or intend to leave within the next five years, 27% of respondents said they were planning on leaving.

Don Levy, polling director at the Siena College Research Institute, told the New York Post, "These are high numbers. These are take your breath away numbers."

Angela Gutierrez, 38, told the Post that she had moved to East Harlem from the Bronx, partly to get away from "all the crazy people," but stressed that it was "still not safe."

"And everything is expensive! They’re raising the rent again and we can’t. It’s going up almost $800 a month," added Gutierrez, noting that she was "going to Pennsylvania at the end of the month."

Unlike Gutierrez, tens of thousands of Americans are going a great deal farther than Pennsylvania to escape New York.

The grass is greener

New York City Mayor Eric Adams bet on LGBT activism to stop the exodus of New Yorkers to Florida and potentially even reverse the trend.

Adams denounced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last April over his ratification of the "Parental Rights in Education" bill and called on Floridians to head north to "celebrate the diversity and acceptance of New York City," reported CNN.

The Democratic mayor's efforts — repeated in spirit by the LGBT lobby groups who issued a Florida travel warning this week — were evidently in vain.

Despite the rainbow posters and celebrations of diversity, the exodus of New Yorkers from Adams' city and elsewhere in the state has not let up, with many continuing to flock en masse to the Sunshine State.

10,824 New Yorkers swapped out their state driver's licenses for Florida licenses in the first three months of 2023, reported the Post, citing new figures from the Florida Department of Highway Safety. This is reportedly a slight slowdown over the same stretch last year, which saw 14,834 move their licenses to Florida.

USA Today reported that over 65,000 New Yorkers ultimately made the switch in 2022 and another 62,000 the year before.

U.S. Census Bureau data released this week indicated that Kings, Queens, and Bronx Counties in New York were among the five hemorrhaging the most residents between July 2021 and 2022, with a total of 213,000.

Conversely, Polk, Lee, and Pasco Counties in Florida saw some of the greatest gains, picking up nearly 85,000 people combined.

Drawn in or chased out?

While New York's authoritarian COVID policies and Florida's earlier reopening reportedly played a significant part in driving the exodus during the pandemic, some Americans are following businesses that migrated down to save on taxes.

Jackie Bild, a real estate agent at Douglas Elliman based in Miami, told USA Today, "You have successful people with big businesses who want to create their residency in Florida to save on taxes. ... Many jobs have become more flexible, and you no longer need to go into the office and be in the cold. And it’s more affordable than New York. Like, why not live in Florida?"

There is zero income tax in Florida, whereas New York's top rate is 10.9%.

DeSantis suggested to Fox Radio host Guy Benson in 2022, "They tax and regulate so they repel people to leave their state," referencing New York's loss of 400,000 residents in 2021 alone.

In addition to greater freedom and less tax, the median sale price of a home was significantly less in Florida than in New York, at least as of January.

The real estate site Redfin indicated in a March report that Miami and Tampa are among the most popular destinations for house hunters looking to move to a different city. New York was the top out-of-state origin for buyers in these cities, as well as in Orlando, which ranked sixth on the list of "Top 10 Metros Homebuyers Are Moving Into, by Net Inflow."

As suggested by the Siena poll, crime may have chased out a great many people. After all, major crimes rose 22% last year in New York City, reported the New York Times.

Neighborhood Scout indicated that the odds of becoming a victim of a violent crime and a property crime in the state are 1 in 319 and 1 in 74, respectively.

While crime, affordability, and taxes are factors, some in the diaspora may simply be Republicans who heeded Gov. Kathy Hochul's order to leave.

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An 'explosive social and demographic change': Unprecedented number of Americans face aging and death alone



An alarming demographic trend is underway that may present the United States with both significant challenges and opportunities. Whereas in 1960 just 13% of American households had a single occupant, that figure is now closing in on 30%. Alternatively put: 26 million Americans 50 or older may now face aging and death alone.

What are the details?

The New York Times reported that one of the fastest-growing demographic groups consists of people 50 and older who live alone. There are nearly 26 million persons in this demographic, doubling that seen in 2000.

It has historically been the case that older people have been more likely to live alone, in part due to wives tending to outlive their husbands. However, since the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have both grayed into that age group, the Times indicated the demographic now makes up a bigger share of the population than at any other time in American history.

Part of this demographic trend was reportedly driven by "deep changes in attitudes surrounding gender and marriage."

Those of the leftist persuasion who were led to believe that the family was a bourgeois convention that impinged on individual autonomy may have voluntarily forgone taking a marriage partner and having children, were it up to them or within their capacity. Some who partook in the former made certain not to follow through with the latter. Over 63 million abortions have been executed since the days of the Boomers' youth, crowding out many checks against this present loneliness.

Data from the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation indicated that over 15 million adults (one in six Americans ages 55 or older) were childless.

The Times indicated that some women who were provided with opportunities (e.g., professional, financial, and social) previously unavailable to earlier generations may have seized upon them at the expense of having children. Now, over 60% of older adults living alone are female.

A great many of those now alone had contrariwise generated or adopted families, but have either outlived them or have been left behind in empty nests.

The solitude tens of millions of Americans face may also be the direct or indirect consequence of a climbing divorce rate, a consistently declining marriage rate, delayed life milestones (the median age for a woman and a man to get married for the first time is 28.6 and 30.4 respectively), and a low fertility rate.

Markus Schafer, a sociologist at Baylor University, told the Times, "There is this huge, kind of explosive social and demographic change happening."

What are the implications?

Regardless of how they found themselves to be socially isolated, those without the support of a partner, kids, or nearby family face a variety of physical and mental conditions.

Researchers supported by the National Institute on Aging indicated in 2019 that social isolation and loneliness are linked to "higher risks for a variety of physical and mental conditions: high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease, and even death."

Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo said, "The misery and suffering caused by chronic loneliness are very real and warrant attention. ... As a social species, we are accountable to help our lonely children, parents, neighbors, and even strangers in the same way we would treat ourselves. Treating loneliness is our collective responsibility."

Beside health concerns that appear to disproportionately affect the socially isolated and lonely, Schafer indicated there are other significant problems that may crop up first, not the least of which have a financial dimension.

"Can they continue to find other supports that compensate for living alone?" asked Schafer.

According to Forbes, those who cannot find organic support and must come to rely upon institutionally assisted living services can expect to shell out $3,500 to $8,000 per month in the Midwest. Prices vary throughout the country.

Personal caregivers, room, and board associated with assisted living are not covered by Medicare, meaning the lonely and financially stretched may be left in the lurch.

Axios suggested in 2018 that robotics may soon play a more critical role in accommodating an aging, childless population.

The American Association of Retired Persons concurred, noting on the basis of a 2019 estimate that with 41 million caregivers providing 34 billion hours of unpaid care, robots could "prove extremely helpful."

For those persons socially isolated but keen to be otherwise — not just hoping to find support but to give it — the Administration for Children and Families has indicated that hundreds of thousands of children await adoption every year.

It is worth noting that this atomization and loneliness does not just affect older populations. Fox News Digital reported late last year that the percentage of adults living with a spouse decreased from 52% to 50% over the past decade. 37 million adults 18 or older lived alone as of early 2021.