Last month, Jim Geraghty wrote about the “Five Non-Debt Problems That the U.S. Government is Largely Ignoring.” Most of those problems resulted from the decline in the U.S. birth rate. He documents how this decline will have ripple effects in the country. 

The first effect will be a population that will peak and begin declining in the 2050s. Americans believe they will have at least two children or more, but the total fertility rate is 1.6 children per woman.

Second, “the K-12 enrollment collapse has already begun.” Fewer children born means that five years down the line there will be fewer children entering kindergarten and the school system. And fewer children mean smaller budgets since funding is based on enrollment. It also means a decline in toy manufacturing and children’s book publishing.

Third, “the higher education enrollment cliff has also begun.” Back in 2008, when the Great Recession started, the U.S. birth rate entered a steep decline. It is now 18 years later, and there are fewer 18-year-olds around. Fewer high school seniors are applying for college, and many are deciding not to go to college and take on overwhelming student debt. 

It is also worth mentioning that the impact on the nation will not be uniform. If you overlap a map of where colleges are located with projections of high school graduates, you will notice a disconnect. The Northeast and the Midwest have the highest density of college campuses but also have the biggest declines in high-school graduates. Colleges cannot relocate when the nearby population shrinks.

Sociologists claim that “demography is destiny.” That is exactly what we see with the declining birth rate in America.