{"id":422,"date":"2008-12-16T08:38:37","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T14:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=422"},"modified":"2008-12-16T08:38:37","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T14:38:37","slug":"recession-means-fewer-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/12\/16\/recession-means-fewer-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"recession means fewer babies(?)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Creative Commons licensed photo by eyeliam on flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/8566600@N07\/3103258435\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3141\/3103258435_df0cb81725_t.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"IMG_2951\" \/><\/a>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/services\/content\/printedition\/2008\/12\/16\/nokids.html\">Atlanta Journal Constitution<\/a> reports this morning on recent speculation that financial woes from the deepening recession may mean that families will be having fewer children. The AJC reports on how parents are increasingly filled with doubts about their ability to provide for additional children as job prospects shrink, retirement savings plummet, and home values continue to fall.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Many economists fear that the recession will become one of the worst since the Great Depression. When that hit in the 1930s, the birthrate dropped precipitously, and the effects of having fewer people in the work force rippled through the economy two decades later. \u201cIf you can\u2019t pay your mortgage, the last thing on your mind is to have another child,\u201d said Dr. Khalil Tabsh, chief of obstetrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who expects to start seeing a drop in pregnancies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bring in the sociologists&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Starting or growing a family often becomes more of a financial decision than an emotional one as parents calculate the sometimes overwhelming costs of health care, child care, education and other necessities, said Kathleen Gerson, a sociologist at New York University.<\/p>\n<p>Though birthrates usually decline in a recession, there is a countervailing theory popular with some economists: Births may swell. Some women who lose their jobs may decide it\u2019s an opportune time to raise a child, said Gary Becker, a University of Chicago economist and sociologist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/services\/content\/printedition\/2008\/12\/16\/nokids.html\">Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports this morning on recent speculation that financial woes from the deepening recession may mean that families will be having fewer children. The AJC reports on how parents are increasingly filled with doubts about their ability to provide for additional children as job prospects shrink, retirement savings plummet, and home values [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[35,36,131,70,122,320],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-children","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-family","tag-lifecourse","tag-marriage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}