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The dwindling numbers in later generations may not be enough to support the huge demands that the baby-boom generation will put on the Social Security system. Demographers predict that payroll taxes on baby boomers now entering their peak earning years will build a surplus of retirement funds that will sustain the Social Security system for a while. But by 2020 the amount coming in from the smaller cohort of workers behind the boomers will not be enough to cover costs. Says Ben Wattenberg of A.E.I.: "What you put into a Social Security system is babies, and what you get out is money. Those nice baby-boom yuppies forgot to put a baby in the system."
To gloomier prophets of the American future, the long-term drop in the birthrate means that the U.S. has joined other industrialized nations in a Spenglerian decline of the West. In his forthcoming book, The Birth Dearth (Pharos Books; $16.95), Wattenberg points out that developed nations such as the U.S., Australia and the West European countries, which accounted for 22% of the world population in 1950, are being surpassed by the rapidly growing East bloc and Third World populations. The developed nations now account for just 15% of the world total, and will sink to 9% by 2030.
In the U.S., conservatives have begun to point to the birth-dearth phenomenon in their arguments for "pronatalist" social policies, including better day care, maternity leave and a tax exemption of up to $5,000 for every child in a family. Republican Presidential Contenders Pat Robertson and Jack Kemp have taken up the subject in their speeches. Says Kemp: "Children are not just mouths to feed. They're our future, our precious resource." Just as the baby busters have started reaching voting age, they may find that their smaller numbers have become an issue in the 1988 presidential campaign.
CHART: TEXT NOT AVAILABLE
Credit: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola.
Caption: U.S. birthrate per 1,000 people.
Description: Line graph indicating birthrate on scale of 14 to 26 for the years 1945 to 1985, graph in shape of baby in carriage.