Baby Bust Threatens School Budgets

A baby bust – or decline in births – is having an economic and social impact on the United States. So far, the country has experienced a 0.12% decline from 2023, which is 12.009 births per 1,000 people. To ensure a stable population, it is estimated that women should have 2.1 children. Of course, no one can have fractions of a child, so that’s what it works out to as an average for the whole population. As the older generation retires, there is concern about a lack of people to replace the workforce. Many worry about how fewer births will affect the nation, and one important area is education.

Baby Bust and Education

Public schools rely heavily on federal funding, which is determined by the number of students in the facilities. In 2009, enrollments peaked at 50.8 million, and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) predicted that number to drop to 47 million by 2030. Furthermore, 20 states are expected to fall by more than 10% by 2031, according to NCES.

And that brings us to fertility rates. This year hit an all-time low, and the decline seems likely to continue. The last great baby bust was in the 1970s, and it caused havoc in the education sector. With declining student populations, districts were forced to lay off teachers and close schools.

Property tax revolts started around the country, limiting funding to local schools, which forced districts to turn to state and federal governments to bolster budgets. The teachers’ unions convinced then-President Jimmy Carter to create the Department of Education in 1980 to get access to federal money and reduce the number of layoffs and school closures. However, this meant the institutions were more dependent on federal funding.

Declining Birth Rates and Political Reactions

Two-thirds of the global population live in countries where the fertility rate is below 2.1, the number needed to hold the population constant. Currently, the world’s populace is at 8.2 billion. In 2017, the United Nations predicted it would climb to 11.2 billion by 2100. Now, however, it says the population will peak at around 10.4 billion in 2080 and go down from there. If this happens, it will be the first global population decline since the bubonic plague in the mid-1300s. The Black Death, as it is called, killed more than 20 million people in Europe, nearly one-third of the population. “The demographic winter is coming,” Jesús Fernández-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylvania told The Wall Street Journal.

Americans, though, don’t seem worried about the baby bust. According to an exclusive opinion poll conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies on May 1 for Newsweek, just 16% of participants said they were “very concerned,” while 42% claimed they were “not at all concerned” with low birth rates. Men were more disturbed, with 22% “very concerned,” while only 10% of women felt the same way.

As birth rates continue to decline, the impact on education becomes more apparent. While some may feel unconcerned about the baby bust, its effects are already rippling through the school system, and those ripples threaten to grow larger in the years to come.

Takeaways:

1. A baby bust is when there is a decline in the number of births in a year.
2. A baby bust can cause issues with school funding, as schools receive funding per child, and fewer children means less money.
3. This baby bust could be so severe that, if the trend continues, the world population could start to go back down instead of up by 2080.