As Birthrates Decline, So Does College Attendance

As Birthrates Decline, So Does College Attendance

Japan’s Experience, Our Future?

We know artificial intelligence will change the face of society dramatically. The Copyright Office has already chimed in that computer-only creations cannot get a copyright. Congress, in gridlock and dealing with issues from the last decade, is completely unprepared for the obvious and expected changes. In Hollywood, as labor agreements are being renegotiated, AI is deeply within union demands. But there is another major issue lurking in the background in mostly developed countries. It lies at the heart of how we fund social programs for the elderly – even if they have paid for such programs over time: the original legislation, passed in the 1930s, was predicated on the rising aggregation of younger workers paying for the shrinking number of older workers through payroll taxes.

There’s just one huge catch to this reality. In virtually every developed nation – including both China and the United States – birthrates are declining below the replacement rate (2.1 live births per couple)… which tells you simply that the original funding assumptions for Social Security and Medicare are no longer operative. The burden of social programs can no longer simply be placed on working Americans. We’re at 1.6 live births per couple here… and falling. With our current anti-immigration trends, we simply are not adding enough new workers to support those programs as anticipated. You’d think in a nation where 1% of the population owns and controls half the wealth in the nation, the solution is beyond obvious. But the fallacy of “a rising tide floats all boats” – which has never actually happened – the GOP still believes these programs are “entitlements” which need to pay for themselves. Entitlement with decades of deductions!

But there is fallout beyond these issues, which we can see reflected in modern day Japan, with 1.3 liver births per couple. Further, China is no longer the most populous nation on earth (India is), joining Taiwan and South Korea with even lower rates than Japan. Japan is expected to lose a quarter of its population over the next 40 years according to the IMF. While these trends may benefit some over time – like making more housing available with fewer buyers – there are other more serious negative displacements that developed nations must absorb. Like a serious decline in the need for schools and colleges, reductions well beyond the unrecovered losses of students after the COVID lockdowns. Japan offers some insight to one particular impact: reduction in the need for institutions of higher learning, as this summary of a Hechinger Report, by Jon Marcus for the April 19th Los Angeles Times illustrates:

“The number of 18-year-olds here has dropped by nearly half in just three decades, from more than 2 million in 1990 to 1.1 million now. It’s projected to further decline to 880,000 by 2040, according to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology… That’s taken a dramatic toll on colleges and universities, with severe consequences for society and economic growth — a situation now also being faced by the United States, where the number of 18-year-olds has begun to drop in some states and soon will fall nationwide…

“The most significant of those implications, based on the Japanese experience: a weakening of economic competitiveness at a time when international rivals such as China are increasing the proportions of their populations with degrees… ‘Policymakers and industry leaders are really facing a sense of crisis,’ said Akiyoshi Yonezawa, professor and vice director of the International Strategy Office at Tohoku University, who has studied the economic ramifications of the decrease in Japan’s university-age population.

“The onset in the 1990s of shoushikoureika, or the aging of Japan’s population, coincided with the start of a recession here that the Japanese call ‘the lost 30 years.’… To help drive growth, some businesses have been moving operations abroad and recruiting university-educated foreign workers, another study by Yonezawa found.

“That’s not only because of the population decline; it’s also a result of Japanese universities significantly lowering their standards to fill seats. Whereas the average proportion of applicants accepted in 1991 was 6 in 10, Japanese universities today admit more than 9 out of 10, the Education Ministry says… ‘It’s easier to enter, easier to graduate,’ Yonezawa said. ‘There are doubts that students really get the necessary skills and knowledge.’…

“At least 11 universities in Japan shut down from 2000 to 2020, and there were 29 mergers, compared with only three in the 50 years before that, Inaba found. Most vulnerable have been small private universities in rural areas with low rankings based on selectivity and graduates’ job success…

“[The lesson for us:] Although the numbers in the United States aren’t as dire, they are also declining… The U.S. birthrate — the number of live births per 1,000 women — has been falling steadily, the National Center for Health Statistics reports. The total number of births declined in nine of the 10 years of the 2010s and dropped even more sharply in 2020, before inching up by 1% in 2021, according to provisional estimates.

“This is projected to worsen an already unprecedented slide in college and university enrollment, which fell by more than 11%, or 2.4 million students, from 2010 through this year. There will be a 10% drop in the number of high school graduates from 2026 to 2037, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Other forecasts put the coming decrease in the number of 18-year-olds at more than 15%.”

We have suffered from a tsunami of “it can’t happen here” realities of late. Climate change. An explosion of mass shootings. Polarization so severe that talk of a possible civil war is front and center. The thought of a killer pandemic. And now, the impact of a contracting population as we ramp up our efforts to stop immigration.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in a world of declining birthrates and severe shifts in our tax base, Americans can either adjust to reality or find innocent people to blame and lame conspiracy theories to soothe.