People, listen! We need more people!

I just finished recently a close to two hour documentary on fertility rates and my first reaction was...W O W! I couldn't believe some of the things I heard and saw, much less take in all what it meant for me and my family! For quite some time the fertility rate has been dropping in the United States (even as far back as the 1720's). Now just to clarify, the fertility rate and birth rate are two different things. The birth rate is how many children were born per 1,000 people, where as the fertility rate is the number of children born to each woman during her lifetime. So yes, you would be correct in saying the birth rate most definitely has increased significantly since the 1720's, but the fertility rate has actually been declining.

That being said, what does the fertility rate have to do with all of us? Well...lots to be honest. For starters with a lower FR, we are not able to reach the sustaining point of our population. In other words, with a low enough fertility rate we would depopulate until extinction! (OK, that is a bit extreme, but the fertility rate taken to the extreme can have extinction as a result!) Another reason FR is important to us is because of Social Security. Social Security is funded by us, the working people of America. When Social Security was funded a retiree was funded by an average of 13 working people. Now, because of the decline in FR, that ratio is roughly one retiree to three working people. Why? There are more people in the older generations, and much fewer in the young working generation. To make matters worse, our baby boomer generation is approaching retiring age, that means the largest population in one generation in America will be added to the Social Security pool! That will change the retiree to worker ration to just a bit more than 1 to 2! As if we aren't losing enough from each of our checks!

So what is to be done? First and foremost, people need education about this problem! Many people think the earth is way overpopulated thanks to a number of different reasons which I won't go into here. We need to let the world know that, guess what? More people is good for us!

As for me personally, I will be doing my own part to populate the earth by starting my own family!

So to you people who read this blog, I echo my own Father's words to me the night I shared this information with him, "Have fun repopulating the earth!"