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U.S. Birth Rate Has Been Sinking since 2007

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

The U.S. birth rate has been sinking sharply since 2007 for no clear reasons.

A country’s birth rate is measured as the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 years to 44 years.  Between 1980 and 2007, the U.S. birth rate fluctuated between 65 to 70.  In 2007, it was 69.5.

The U.S. birth rate has fallen every year since. The most recent measure of the U.S. birth rate, for 2020, is 56.0. That’s a 19.4 percent drop in 13 years.

The U.S. birth rate decline is widespread across women of different ages.

The teen birth rate – the number of births per 1,000 women age 15 to 19 years – had been falling before 2007: after peaking at 61.8 in 1991, it steadily fell to 42.5 by 2007. It has since plunged to 15.3 in 2020.

U.S. birth rates have also fallen for women in their 20s and early 30s. The birth rate for women age 20 to 24 years fell from 106.3 in 2007 to 63.0 in 2020. The birth rate for women age 25 to 29 years fell from 117.5 to 90.2. For women age 30 to 34 years, the birth rate decreased from 99.9 to 94.9.

Birth rates have increased modestly since 2007 for women age 35 to 44 years. For women age 35 to 39 years, the birth rate increased from 47.5 to 51.8; for women age 40 to 44 years, the rate increased from 9.5 to 11.8.

Those figures show two changes since 2007, one small, one big. The small change is: women are waiting longer to have children. The big change is: women are having fewer children.

U.S. birth rates have also decreased across race and ethnicity since 2007. The birth rate for Hispanic women fell from 102.2 in 2007 to 63.1 in 2020. The birth rate for non-Hispanic Black women fell from 71.6 to 59.2. The birth rate for non-Hispanic White women fell from 60.1 to 53.2.

The birth rate has also decreased across education level. The birth rate for women without a high school diploma decreased from 119.0 to 97.5. For college-educated women, the birth rate fell from 72.5 to 59.4.

What’s driving the sinking U.S. birth rate?

Potential explanations come quickly to mind. The recession of 2007-09. Better employment opportunities for women. Rising costs of raising children, including child care and housing costs. Increased use of contraceptives. College debt burdens. 

Economists have been investigating the causes of the sinking U.S. birth rate with great intensity in recent years. Their findings, to date, are clear. None of those potential explanations, nor any combination of them, explain the sinking U.S. birth rate.

Birth rates in the past fluctuated with the state of the economy, rising with expansions, falling in recessions. Thus, the 2007-09 recession might explain the first years of the sinking birth rate.  But while the economy grew without interruption from mid-2009 through February 2020, the U.S. birth rate continued to sink.

Changes in employment opportunities, child care costs, housing costs, contraceptive use and college debt burdens vary, sometimes considerably, from state to state. State-by-state comparisons show no relationship between changes those variables and changes in birth rates.

So, where does that leave us?

In a recent study, economists Melissa Kearney, Phillip Levine and Luke Pardue conjecture that changes in women’s priorities could be driving the sinking birth rate. The authors acknowledge that their “shifting priorities” explanation is speculative and probably impossible to empirically support. They offer the conjecture because economic factors fail to explain the sinking birth rate.

We’ll explore the consequences of the sinking U.S. birth rate in my next column.

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How Firearms Became the Leading Cause of Death for Children, Teens

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

The nation is still reeling from the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Mass shootings in schools are tragic. According to a recent CDC report, firearm-related injuries are the leading cause of death in the U.S. for children and teens—an all-time high. School shootings receive a lot of media coverage, but mass shootings in schools account for less than 1% of child gun deaths. This column will discuss insufficient access to mental healthcare, the availability of firearms, a spike in violent crime, and numerous other factors as causes of the recent spike in gun deaths among our youth.

Let’s overview the facts. More than 4,300 children and teens died from firearm-related injuries in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death, according to the CDC. Gun deaths among children and teens rose by 29% in one year, largely due to a 33.4% increase in homicides of teens and children between 2019 and 2020. Among the entire U.S. population of all age groups, suicide constituted the majority of the 45,222 firearm-related deaths in 2020. However, among children and teens, homicides made up the majority of firearm deaths.

Mass shootings in schools are horrific, but uncommon. The overwhelming majority of firearm incidents on school property, including K-12 schools and colleges, are accidental discharges, suicides, or acts of violence targeting a single victim, according to the comprehensive list of incidents complied by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety. Fortifying buildings and expanding law enforcement presence in schools may limit deaths from mass shooting events at schools, but these are outlier events. It’s important for policies to address the institutional conditions that result in the most firearm deaths among children and teens.

Many Americans assert that mass shootings are the result of untreated mental illness. Mental health declined precipitously among our youth over the course of the pandemic, in part because of the shuttering of schools and restrictions on face-to-face gatherings. We have a mental health crisis in our nation. Ensuring access to mental healthcare for children and teens plays a part in preventing gun deaths among our youth.

Gun sales have doubled in the U.S. over the past decade from 5.4 million in 2010 to 11.1 million in 2020. The availability of firearms in our nation is a central reason why the U.S. has more gun deaths than other developed nations. Reducing young people’s access to firearms is essential to reducing gun deaths among children and teens.

Attributing child gun deaths to mental illness or firearm availability alone ignores other institutional causes. A 33.4% increase in homicides of children and teens in one year is significant. Changes in law enforcement practices can reduce the number of young people who die from homicides.

Other factors contribute to child gun deaths, including the sale of firearms to persons under 21, unsecured firearms in homes, the proliferation of ghost guns, a lack of firearm safety training, the absence of red flag laws, gang violence, and violence in the home. Additional institutional conditions increase child gun deaths, including bullying, a lack of suicide prevention training, social problems associated with poverty, disengaged parents, mass and social media sensationalizing violence, and alienation among the youth.

A range of institutional reforms are warranted, but these changes cannot just focus on school security as less than 1% of child gun deaths occur in schools. It is important that our solutions address the various institutional conditions that have made firearm injuries the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S. Every child’s death is a tragedy, especially since these deaths are preventable.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

The lost economic opportunity of abortion

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

By now, we all are aware of the leaked Supreme Court decision that, should it stand, will reverse Roe vs Wade and allow states to restrict or outlaw abortion. When asked about the forthcoming decision, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen replied that abortion is an economic issue. I could not agree more with that statement. Yellen went on to cite research showing improved education and labor market outcomes among women, especially minority women, who have access to abortion services.

Though I have great respect for Secretary Yellen as one of my professional heroes, I believe her conclusion that legalized abortion is a necessary part of a strong economy is based in a literature that is one-sided in its approach to the economics of abortion.

After reading Yellen’s remarks, I did some digging of my own. My primary goal was better to understand the economic costs and benefits of abortion, and I specifically was concerned with social, not individual, costs and benefits. Unsurprisingly, with a topic as complex as abortion, there is not clear consensus in the literature on the precise economic impact of abortion.

A couple of themes emerge pretty strongly. 1) As Secretary Yellen asserted, availability of unrestricted abortion reduces fertility and increases educational attainment and labor market participation of women. 2) The financial benefits to taxpayers of funding safe abortions far outweigh the costs of post-abortion care when safe abortion is not accessible.

Indeed, authors of a 2021 peer-reviewed publication found, “On average, the cost of meeting a woman’s unmet need for modern contraceptive supplies and services for one year would amount to just 3 to 12 percent of the average cost of treating a patient who requires post-abortion care.”

What I find missing from most of the literature and from Dr. Yellen’s assessment of the economics of abortion is a whole other side of the story here—the value to the economy of the lives lost when women choose abortion over birth. Most aborted pregnancies could otherwise have ended with a birth. And, given a couple of decades, most births translate into societal contributors and labor force participants.

A 2009 study found that a birth reduces a woman’s labor supply by almost 2 years, but the same study showed that removing abortion restrictions significantly reduces fertility. Productivity lost to abortion in the last half century in the US is non-trivial, especially in light of the Murphy Center’s recent series of columns on our aging labor force.

Surveys administered by the Guttmacher Institute and data from the State of Florida, where a reason is recorded for every abortion, indicate that less than 10% of abortions are performed due to health problems of the fetus or the mother. If we assume, then, that 90% of the 225,075 abortions performed in Georgia from 1990 through 1995 could have instead resulted in a birth, and if we assume the current labor force participation rate of 62.7%, these abortions could have translated to over 127,000 labor force participants between the ages of 27 and 32 today. Those folks would be consumers and tax payers, too!

To reach a conclusion on whether or not abortion restrictions are good economic policy would require far more study than is feasible in this format, but I suspect the scales would tip in favor of growing our future labor force through restricted access to abortion. This is especially true if the economic hardship women avoid through abortion were made less severe through sensible, family-friendly workplace and public policies, especially those specifically targeted to empower minority and low-income women, who are more likely than others to seek abortions.

Of course, when offering abortion policy analysis, there are many complexities to consider from many angles. But, an economic analysis that does not consider the opportunity cost of abortion is an incomplete analysis. It is irresponsible for any academic to advise on policy without having considered both benefits and costs of their recommendations. In particular, one of the primary contributions of economists to any conversation is opportunity cost analysis. In the abortion debate, my profession is getting wrapped up in political opinions and failing to do what we do best. I’m disappointed.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.

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Another Reason Workers Are Hard to Find

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Talk to people in the leisure and hospitality industry, and they’ll tell you the shrinking population of young people is not the only reason for the on-going worker shortages. An abrupt decrease in immigration is another.

People in the leisure and hospitality industry should know. In no other industry is the worker shortage as acute.

The leisure and hospitality industry is a massive collection of industries. It consists of two subsectors, one being arts, entertainment and recreation; the other, accommodation and food service. Arts, entertainment and recreation includes performing arts, spectator sports, museums, zoos, fitness centers and golf courses. Accommodation and food service includes hotels, restaurants, bars and a plethora of the like.

Prior to the pandemic, leisure and hospitality ranked third among the nation’s leading private sector employers (behind professional and business services, and education and health services). It employed 17 million people, 10.7 percent of employed U.S. workers. Accommodation and food services employed 14.5 million; arts, entertainment and recreation, 2.5 million.

In Glynn, leisure and hospitality is a monster industry, far and away the county’s leading employer. Just before the pandemic, leisure and hospitality employed about 8,500 Glynn workers, 22 percent of the county’s employed workers. Accommodation and food services employed about 7,350; arts, entertainment and recreation employed about 1,150.

The pandemic hit leisure and hospitality harder than any other industry. Nationally, the industry’s recovery from the pandemic has been impressive, but not complete. U.S. leisure and hospitality employment currently stands at 15.5 million, 1.5 million below its pre-pandemic level.

In Glynn, leisure and hospitality’s recovery has been impressive and probably complete. The most recent industry employment figure for Glynn is 8,243 for the third quarter of 2021. But tourism here has been roaring for months. A current employment figure below 8,500 would be surprising.

Lurking beneath those numbers is a detail that explains why the worker shortage in leisure and hospitality is so acute. Leisure and hospitality relies heavily on two sets of workers: young workers and immigrants.

The median age of a worker in the U.S. is 42.2 years. The median age of a leisure and hospitality worker in the U.S. is 31.7 years. In the U.S., 12 percent of employed workers are age 16 to 24 years. In leisure and hospitality, 35 percent of employed workers are age 16 to 24 years.

The problem? Between 2010 and 2019, the population of 16 to 24 years olds in the U.S. shrunk by 843,029. The population under age 16 shrunk by 876,772.

In the U.S., 17 percent of employed workers are immigrants. In leisure and hospitality, the figure is 20 percent. In accommodation, it’s 32 percent.

The problem? Between 2000 and 2017, the U.S. foreign-born population increased by an average of 743,000 per year. Between 2017 and 2019, the average increase fell to 203,000 per year. With the pandemic, the U.S. foreign-born population appears to have decreased (though official figures for 2020 and 2021 are not yet available).

To the point, the abrupt shift in immigration in 2018 and 2019 from the 2000-2017 trend cost the U.S. about 1.1 million workers, half of whom would have been college educated.

Would an additional 1.1 million workers solve our current worker shortage problem? No. But it would take a nice chunk out of it.

The new trend in immigration is old news to people in the leisure and hospitality industry, especially hoteliers. The industry has been lobbying hard for immigration reform since 2018.

How’s that for a predicament? The population of young workers can’t be unshrunk. And immigration reform requires serious people in politics.

Look for leisure and hospitality to become the leading employer of robotics engineers.

Opportunities for Mothers in the Labor Force

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

A full-time, nine-to-five schedule is often incompatible with parenting responsibilities. In the absence of robust government support for families, mothers of young children have much lower rates of labor force participation than fathers. Organizational practices and laws can be adapted to increase labor force participation rates among parents, especially mothers of young children.

Several recent columns from the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies have examined the current labor market. Dr. Don Mathews showed that the labor market is experiencing a demographic crisis; we have an aging population and a declining birth rate, resulting in a smaller proportion of working-age people. My other Murphy Center associates identified some solutions. Dr. Melissa Trussell advocated for policies that promote fertility and immigration. Dr. Heather Farley proposed that organizations work to retain existing employees, especially aging employees who must choose between full-time work and retirement. My column contributes to this conversation by advocating for policies that allow parents to work.

Being a parent is a full-time job, but it doesn’t pay. Giving birth and the associated recovery time forces mothers to take time away from paid work. Until a child is school-aged, parents must provide childcare. Families provide childcare in a range of ways: center-based childcare, care from a relative, hiring a nanny or babysitter, or parent care. Even after kids start school, parents’ nine-to-five work schedules do not align with school hours and extracurricular activities.

Center-based childcare is expensive. In many parts of the country, childcare tops housing as the greatest household expense. It can be more expensive to send a toddler to daycare than to send a teen to college. For many lower-income households, opting out of the workforce or shifting to part-time work are the only viable options for providing childcare.

Based on the gendered division of paid and unpaid labor in the U.S., the caregiving burden falls on women disproportionately. Mothers are more likely than fathers to opt out of the workforce or shift from full-time to part-time work. In 2020, fathers of children under three had a labor force participation rate of 93.5%, while mothers of children under three had a rate of 63.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This time out of the workforce impacts women’s regular weekly income, career advancement, and lifetime earnings.

Employers would be wise to adopt parent-friendly policies. Adapting existing positions to be fully remote would allow more parents to work. As appropriate for the job duties, schedule flexibility can allow parents to complete work around childcare responsibilities. Similarly, many part-time positions would be more attractive to parents if the position guaranteed a fixed schedule and reliable income.

Expanding opportunities for professional part-time work will allow more parents to work. Organizations could create positions with attractive compensation packages and flexible schedules to recruit skilled part-time workers who are alienated from the labor market.

Federal and state legislation could strengthen worker protections and enhance benefits for part-time workers. Additionally, laws that expand parental leave and add job protections for parents would keep more mothers in the workforce.

These changes are a win for all. Labor market participation is good for the economy. Income and employer-sponsored benefits support families. And, elevated labor force participation reduces reliance on the social safety net.

What does the future hold? The impending overturn of Roe v. Wade will increase the birth rate, especially among lower-income women in states restricting access to reproductive healthcare. More families will have to choose between paid work or providing childcare. I will end with some good news. The pandemic normalized working from home. Many jobs that were once bound to brick-and-mortar offices are now permitting remote work, reducing the need for center-based childcare. In addition, recent infrastructure investments are increasing the number of households that have access to broadband internet. These developments promise to increase the opportunities for employment among parents of young children.

 

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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What do we do about the aging workforce?

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Last week in this space, Dr. Mathews wrote that labor force changes we are tempted to blame on the pandemic or on pandemic relief policies are more accurately considered part of a demographics story than a pandemic story. Our labor force has shrunk because our population has aged.

It is good news that the labor force was less impacted by the pandemic than it may seem on the surface. It is not especially convenient, though, that we cannot just blame our gaps on the pandemic and wait for time to heal all wounds. An aging, retiring workforce is a problem that will only be exacerbated by time if we are not intentional about addressing it.

There are a couple of policy approaches to alleviating the economic stress brought on by our aging workforce. One is to encourage workers to work longer and/or more productive careers. My colleague Dr. Heather Farley will take a look at this policy challenge in her column next week.

The second policy approach, which could be taken simultaneously with the work longer approach, is to expand the working age population. The annual rate of population growth in Europe and North America has been declining since the early 2000’s, and the UN predicts that by 2075, the death rate will outpace the birth rate in the US.

This is not good news for our labor force, but we can do something about it. There’s a ton of literature showing that our policy choices and priorities have a direct impact on fertility choices.

In 2021, Norwegian sociologists Bergvik, Fauske, and Hart published a review of 35 other studies on the relationships between family policy and fertility in Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia. They found that childcare availability, cash transfers to parents, expanded parental leave, and subsidizing assisted reproductive treatments all, to varying degrees, encourage increased fertility.

Increasing the fertility rate is not the only way to expand our workforce. If you want more people in your house but don’t want to have a baby, invite someone over! Immigration!

While our native born population is aging, immigrants are a major source of younger, working-age adults in the U.S.

In the US, only 61.5% of native born residents are between ages 18 and 64. Among foreign-born US residents, that statistic is 78.1%.

In Georgia, the difference is more pronounced, with 62.3% of native born Georgians and 82.8% of foreign-born Georgians between 18 and 64.

Immigrants are not only more likely to be younger than native born Americans; they also are more likely to go to work.

Native born Americans have a 62.8% labor force participation rate and a 58.9% employment rate. Foreign born American residents have a 66.5% participation rate and a 63.2% employment rate.

In Georgia, the native born participation and employment rates are 63.3% and 59.2%, respectively. The foreign born rates are 70.2% and 67.5%.

These numbers include both documented and undocumented workers.

Immigrants to the US are younger and more likely to work than native-born Americans, and, as I have written before for this column, several studies in the economics literature find that foreign-born workers, including undocumented immigrants, do not push native-born workers out of the labor force. On the contrary, the presence of foreign-born workers often opens doors for creation of new jobs for native-born workers.

Our workforce is aging, and the resulting strain on our economy is palpable. If we are going to effectively relieve the pressure and continue a growth trajectory for the US economy, our policy response should be both pro-family and pro-immigrant.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.

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Are Any Workers Still “On the Sidelines”?

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Why are employers still having so much trouble finding workers?

To many observers, the reason is obvious: lots of workers who left the labor force during the covid onslaught haven’t come back. For whatever reason – fear, lifestyle change, childcare difficulties, accumulated pandemic unemployment payments, etc. – they remain “on the sidelines;” that is, out of the labor force.

Other observers find a different explanation no less obvious: “A lot of people just don’t want to work.”

Let’s address each in turn.      

At first glance, labor force participation figures appear to support the “lots of workers are still on the sidelines” story.

To be clear, the labor force consists of the number of people who are either working or looking for work. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of a population that is in the labor force. The labor force participation rate for the U.S. as a whole is the percentage of the population age 16 years or older that is in the labor force. 

In February 2020, the month before covid hit, the labor force participation rate for men age 16 years and older was 69.0 percent. It’s 68.1 percent now. The labor force participation rate for women age 16 and older in February 2020 was 57.9 percent. It’s 56.9 percent now. 

The difference between a participation rate of 69.0 percent and 68.1 percent for men amounts to 1.1 million workers.  The difference between a participation rate of 57.9 percent and 56.9 percent for women amounts to almost 1.4 million workers.

That’s 2.5 million workers – about 1.5 percent of the labor force – still “on the sidelines,” by that rough estimate.

The workers thought most likely to have opted for the “sidelines” during the pandemic are women age 20 years to 34 years. The labor force participation rate for women age 20 years to 34 years was 76.0 percent in February 2020. It’s 74.9 percent now. The difference amounts to 349,000 workers. Seems to fit the story line.

But take a close look at monthly labor force participation rates over the past ten years, rather than the past two, and the “lots of workers are still on the sidelines” story all but falls apart.

Labor force participation rates for men and women of almost every age group are higher now than at any time in the past ten years – except for the few months right before covid, particularly February 2020.

Consider again women age 20 years to 34 years. The labor force participation rates for women age 20 years to 34 years going back to 2018 are: 74.9 percent now, 76.0 percent in February 2020, 74.4 percent in February 2019 and 73.2 percent in February 2018.         

64 percent of women in the labor force are 25 to 54 years old. The labor force participation rates for women age 25 years to 54 years going back to 2018 are: 76.8 percent now, 77.1 percent in February 2020, 76.0 percent in February 2019 and 75.4 percent in February 2018.

Lots of workers still “on the sidelines”? The numbers say no.

What’s buffeting labor markets in the U.S. today isn’t covid. It’s demographics. Since February 2018, while the country’s population age 16 years to 64 years has increased by 0.5 percent, its population age 65 years or older increased by 10.8 percent. That’s a 1,060,000 increase in 16 to 64 year olds and a 5,450,000 increase in people 65 years and older.

Which addresses the second explanation of why employers are still having trouble finding workers: “A lot of people just don’t want to work.”

Indeed, a lot of people don’t want to work. They’re retired.

Marriage in the U.S. Today

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

I got married a few weeks ago. As a responsible academic, I did my research on marriage before saying, “I do.” It turns out that, in many ways, my experiences are representative of the state of marriage in the U.S.

Marriage rates are declining. Age of first marriage is increasing. Rates of cohabitation are on the rise. And, an increasing share of adults are unpartnered—neither married nor living with a partner. According to the sociologist Andrew Cherlin, marriage is experiencing “deinstitutionalization.”

The 2016-2020 American Community Survey, focusing on people 15 and older in the U.S., finds that 48.1% are married, 10.8% are divorced, 1.8% are separated, 5.7% are widowed, and 33.5% are never married. Declining marriage rates are not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The marriage rate in the U.S. has been falling since the post-WWII marriage boom. Before the pandemic, in 2019, marriage rates were the lowest that they have ever been since the U.S. government started recording marriages in 1867.

My experience of delaying marriage is not uncommon for those of my generation. As an older millennial, I graduated college just in time for the Great Recession. Facing a challenging job market, I focused on continuing my education. This meant delaying attainment of many traditional markers of adulthood, including full-time employment, homeownership, marriage, and children.

Age of first marriage is increasing. In the 1950s, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 22 for men. Today, the median age of first marriage is 28 for women and 30 for men.

Many young people are delaying marriage or choosing not to get married at all according to data from the 2016-20 ACS. Among those 20-34, only 26.5% of men are married and 33.3% of women are married. The marriage rate increases among those who are 35-44; 60.9 % of men and 62% of women ages 35-44 are married. A majority of Americans still get married, but it is happening much later in life than marriage in earlier generations.

Rates of cohabitation are on the rise. My new wife and I lived together for four years before tying the knot. Cohabitation was once taboo, but many Americans are living with a partner without getting married. ACS data show that 9% of adults age 25-54 are cohabitating with a romantic partner. In 1990, only 4% of Americans ages 25-54 were cohabitating with a partner.

Compared to just a few decades ago, many more Americans are choosing to stay single. 38% of U.S. adults age 25-54 are unpartnered, according to ACS data. This is up from 29% in 1990. While a portion of these unpartnered folks were married previously, the growth of the unpartnered population is among those who have never been married. Men are now more likely than women to be unpartnered, which was not the case thirty years ago.

Today, marriage is just one possible lifestyle among many others. Entering middle adulthood, the prospect of financial security and other benefits of marriage contributed to our decision to get married.

The sociologist Andrew Cherlin claims that marriage in the U.S. has experienced deinstitutionalization—a weakening of the social norms that define people’s behaviors. Marriage is no longer mandatory. Marriage has become a choice, rather than a necessity. Marriage and alternatives to marriage are socially acceptable.

Cherlin claims that despite deinstitutionalizing, marriage remains symbolically significant. Marriage is a marker of prestige and a personal achievement. My boomer parents, aunts, and in-laws are quite excited for our new marriage. I am excited too, but for different reasons. Cherlin claims that the rewards of marriage for previous generations focused on the fulfillment of social roles such as the dedicated mother or supportive spouse. Today, Americans seek personal growth and self-development from their marriages.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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Childcare as a necessary part of a healthy labor force

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Happy Women’s History Month! A couple weeks ago, the College hosted Georgia Women in Higher Education’s annual conference, and I had the privilege of attending much of it. Topics discussed in the sessions I attended ranged from leadership and mentorship to employee burnout to effects of addiction on faculty and students.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that in every session and at every social gathering I attended during the conference with almost exclusively female participants the subject of work-family balance came up. Dads are great, and they are doing more and more in terms of non-labor market household production, but, still, in America and in most parts of the world, the duties of child rearing and housework fall primarily on women.

According to OECD data, working-age women in the U.S. spend 247 minutes per day engaged in paid work and 271 minutes in unpaid work, which housework, shopping, childcare or other caregiving, and volunteer activities. Working-age men spend 332 minutes in paid work and 166 minutes per day in unpaid work. The remaining time is divided into personal care, leisure, and other.

With many of the childcare responsibilities still falling to women, women are the first to go from the labor market when childcare becomes unavailable or too costly. The International Labour Organization estimates that 41% of women who are not in the labor force globally are out because of their unpaid care responsibilities.

This is what we saw happening at the beginning of the pandemic, when women dropped out of the labor force at higher rates than men. Some of that gap was due to the types of industries that were hit hardest by the pandemic, but a lot of it was the fact that closures of schools and daycares required moms to switch to full-time caregiving. In fact, women with young children experienced a greater rate of job loss during the pandemic than men or women without young children. This is likely still a factor in the missing workers phenomenon my colleague Dr. Mathews wrote about for this column back in December. He noted that even as we emerge from the pandemic and “we’re hiring” signs are everywhere, a lot of workers are still not returning. The female labor force is still 1.5 percent smaller and the female labor force participation rate is still 1.3 percent smaller than they were pre-pandemic. The male labor force and participation rates are smaller, too, but not by as much.

It is important to recognize, too, that the childcare crisis in America was only exacerbated by the pandemic, not caused by it. A report published in 2019 by the Council for A Strong America found that the value of productivity losses due to childcare issues in the U.S. was as high as $57 billion per year.

This is why there is a conversation right now in America around considering childcare reforms among other necessary infrastructure improvements we need to make our economy stronger. Indeed, our economy is stronger when we make provisions for parents—and especially women— to be more active in the labor force. A March 2021 article from Forbes highlighted ways in which men benefit socially, emotionally, and in their career progression when they have close relationships with women at work. The benefits to women and children are perhaps more obvious. Among them are fewer gaps in employment that can limit career advancement, more financial independence for women, lower rates of child poverty.

Social investment in childcare is smart, supply-side economics for the labor market. Three generations from now, it won’t matter how many train tracks and bridges we have repaired if we have not done the necessary work of investing in the women of today’s workforce and the children of tomorrow’s.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.

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Pandemic Abounds in Economic Riddles

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

We’re now two years out from the onset of the Covid pandemic. I’m as eager as anyone to move on from the odious pandemic, but the economics of it bend the mind.

Let’s start with the roller coaster.

 Nothing in U.S. economic history compares to the drop in economic activity in March and April 2020. Between 1929 and 1933, the four most monstrous years of the Great Depression, U.S. real GDP fell by 26.3 percent. It fell by 31.2 percent in the second quarter of 2020.   

In March and April 2020, U.S. employment fell by 25.6 million, a 16 percent drop. The nation’s unemployment rate went from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent.

In Georgia, employment fell by 14 percent, while the unemployment rate went from 3.4 percent to 12.5 percent. In Glynn, employment fell by 18 percent. Our unemployment rate went from 3.2 percent to 16.7 percent.

In 60 days.

The rebound followed. U.S. real GDP increased by 33.8 percent in the third quarter of 2020. In the second quarter of 2021, one year after shrinking by 31.2 percent, U.S. real GDP eclipsed its pre-pandemic level.

U.S. employment is currently 1.7 million below its pre-pandemic level, while the U.S. unemployment rate is half a percentage point above its pre-pandemic level.  But both gaps are shrinking.

Georgia employment eclipsed its pre-pandemic level in November 2021. Its current unemployment rate of 2.6 percent is the lowest on record.

Glynn employment eclipsed its pre-pandemic level in March 2021. Since September 2021, Glynn’s unemployment rate has ranged between 2.1 and 2.3 percent. Until September 2021, the county’s lowest unemployment rate on record was 2.6 percent in May 1999.

The size and structure of our hometown economy make its swift recovery from the 60-day pandemic plunge all the more remarkable. We’re small, bordering on rural, with an industrial structure dominated by a single sector, leisure and hospitality.

The specifics are informative. The largest industry in the U.S. and Georgia is professional and business services. In 2019, professional and business services accounted for 14.1 percent of U.S. employment and 15.9 percent of Georgia employment. Leisure and hospitality ranked third among sectors in both the U.S. and Georgia and accounted for 11 percent of employment in each.

Leisure and hospitality accounted for 22.1 percent of Glynn employment in 2019. That 22.1 percent not only dwarfs the employment share of the leading sector in the U.S. and Georgia, it’s twice the size of the industry’s share in the nation and the state.

Nothing is weird or surprising about Glynn’s industrial structure. The place is tailor-made for leisure and hospitality.

The point is: the pandemic hammered leisure and hospitality far more than any other industry. In our small, borderline-rural county, 33 percent of the jobs in an industry that employs 22 percent of workers disappeared in 60 days. Who would have figured that in less than a year and a half we’d have four consecutive months of the lowest unemployment rates on record? Not me. 

The rapid rebound from the 60-day plunge is not the only economic mind-bender of the pandemic. After all the changes the pandemic brought to the ways that businesses and consumers operate, and all the job, industry and career changes workers have made, the employment shares across industries are now little different from what they were before the pandemic.

Here’s another head-scratcher. In March and April 2020, while employment tanked, the number of businesses in the U.S., Georgia and Glynn increased. After April 2020, the spate of entrepreneurship accelerated.

Between the pandemic riddles and our demographics, we have some exploring to do.     

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