Back in the days when daily newspapers published free obituaries, reporters assigned to write them sometimes jokingly complained about retired farmers. Their list of survivors tended to be long, thus requiring more time to type them into the obits, as well as increasing the possibility for error, such as misspelling a name.
I don’t know if there’s any empirical evidence to prove it, but those who tilled the land before mechanization and chemicals took over much of the labor on the farm did seem to produce more children. Working on the family farm wasn’t the only reason for those large families of earlier years, but the children of the Mississippi farmers of the early and mid-20th Century did their share of the chores.
Judging from recent census reports, America — including Mississippi — could use a few more retired farmers. An AP article, citing government reports, says that the nation’s birth rates for women in their teens and 20s reached record lows last year, leading to the fewest babies in 32 years. “The fertility rate of 1.7 births per U.S. woman also fell two percent, meaning the current generation isn’t making enough babies to replace itself,” the article said, going on to opine: “If trends continue, experts said, the U.S. can expect labor shortages including in elder care when aging baby boomers need the most support.”
However, the article goes on to say: “Other experts are not concerned, predicting today’s young women will catch up with childbearing later in their lives. The only two groups with slightly higher birth rates in 2018 were women in their late 30s and those in their early 40s.”
A lower birth rate isn’t all bad — including a statistic that shows births to teenagers reached a record low. If fewer younger, unmarried teenagers are having babies, that's a good thing. But the prospect of fewer people entering the work force impacts two major issues in politics these days; Social Security and immigration.
It’s common knowledge that the trend of fewer workers paying into Social Security and more drawing from it hasn’t just started. It’s been going on for years, and a lower birth rate, if it isn’t reversed, will exacerbate the problem.
Social Security is a subject politicians don’t talk about much, other than promise to protect it. Few of them want to address the difficult choices needed to fix the problem. Elections are not won by promising to raise the Social Security tax, reducing benefits or raising the age of retirement. Here in Mississippi, which keeps losing population, the birth rate isn’t as much of an issue as is the exodus of many of the brightest who are born in the state.
It is interesting to note that between 1930 and 1950, Mississippi had seven congressional districts. For a period before 1930 it had eight. After the 1950 census, the number of Mississippi U.S. representatives dropped to six. After 1960 it dropped to five. After 2000 it dropped to four, our present number of representatives.
If Mississippi’s trend of losing population as some other states — especially those in the Sun Belt — gain, we could get down to three in the foreseeable future.
