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I thought this was going to be an editorial by Vance, but no, WSJ takes it upon themselves to swoop in to use an April interview with Vance to re-frame the cat lady comments into a Republican talking point.
“…
After joining the Senate last year, Vance became one of the most outspoken lawmakers about the decline in U.S. fertility. The total fertility rate—a snapshot of how many children a woman is expected to bear over her lifetime—fell to 1.62 last year, provisional government figures show, the lowest on record, and well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to keep population steady, absent immigration.
The issue has long been on Vance’s mind.
… [after high cost of parenthood and social isolation/not dating enough] Vance said lower fertility might also be the result of less patriotism. In Israel, which has relatively high fertility, “there’s still a fundamental sense that they love their country, they want their country to keep going. America was always considered by our European friends to be kind of jingoistic back in the 1990s and 2000s. We had pretty healthy fertility rates back then. Now that we’re a little bit more like our European counterparts, much less sort of innately patriotic than we were 20, 30 years ago, our fertility rates have declined.”
… Vance cited several negative consequences to low birthrates.
…
“If you have kids you’re probably a little bit more willing to take on risk and you’re probably a little bit less willing to do it if you don’t have family,” he said. “There’s all of these very weird and totally underappreciated ways in which it makes our society worse off.”
Vance also said that, while he is strongly antiabortion, that is unrelated to his concerns about fertility, and he doesn’t think access to the procedure is a major cause of declining U.S. fertility, given that other countries with more restrictive abortion laws are seeing sharper declines in childbearing. “I think there is some connection but I think it’s pretty weak,” he said.
… While Vance has studied pronatalist policies in countries including South Korea, France, Hungary and Japan, he said hasn’t yet seen any clear solution to falling fertility. “I’m fascinated by Hungary…because they’re aggressively trying a lot of different things. And I think some of it’s working.” The U.S. should look at lowering income-tax rates on women who have multiple children as Hungary has done, he said.
…
Greater immigration wasn’t the solution to lower birthrates, Vance said in the April interview with the Journal. One reason is that immigrants’ own fertility tends to resemble that of the native-born. Another is that once the share of a country’s foreign-born population becomes greater than 15%, he said, it spawns a backlash and social division, and also makes assimilation more difficult, he said.
“It’s like the difference between having your own family over for dinner and having strangers come over for dinner,” Vance said.
“It’s nice to have new people come over for dinner. But you need to have some core for other people to assimilate into or I think it totally transforms the nature of your society.” “
“…
After joining the Senate last year, Vance became one of the most outspoken lawmakers about the decline in U.S. fertility. The total fertility rate—a snapshot of how many children a woman is expected to bear over her lifetime—fell to 1.62 last year, provisional government figures show, the lowest on record, and well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to keep population steady, absent immigration.
The issue has long been on Vance’s mind.
… [after high cost of parenthood and social isolation/not dating enough] Vance said lower fertility might also be the result of less patriotism. In Israel, which has relatively high fertility, “there’s still a fundamental sense that they love their country, they want their country to keep going. America was always considered by our European friends to be kind of jingoistic back in the 1990s and 2000s. We had pretty healthy fertility rates back then. Now that we’re a little bit more like our European counterparts, much less sort of innately patriotic than we were 20, 30 years ago, our fertility rates have declined.”
… Vance cited several negative consequences to low birthrates.
…
“If you have kids you’re probably a little bit more willing to take on risk and you’re probably a little bit less willing to do it if you don’t have family,” he said. “There’s all of these very weird and totally underappreciated ways in which it makes our society worse off.”
Vance also said that, while he is strongly antiabortion, that is unrelated to his concerns about fertility, and he doesn’t think access to the procedure is a major cause of declining U.S. fertility, given that other countries with more restrictive abortion laws are seeing sharper declines in childbearing. “I think there is some connection but I think it’s pretty weak,” he said.
… While Vance has studied pronatalist policies in countries including South Korea, France, Hungary and Japan, he said hasn’t yet seen any clear solution to falling fertility. “I’m fascinated by Hungary…because they’re aggressively trying a lot of different things. And I think some of it’s working.” The U.S. should look at lowering income-tax rates on women who have multiple children as Hungary has done, he said.
…
Greater immigration wasn’t the solution to lower birthrates, Vance said in the April interview with the Journal. One reason is that immigrants’ own fertility tends to resemble that of the native-born. Another is that once the share of a country’s foreign-born population becomes greater than 15%, he said, it spawns a backlash and social division, and also makes assimilation more difficult, he said.
“It’s like the difference between having your own family over for dinner and having strangers come over for dinner,” Vance said.
“It’s nice to have new people come over for dinner. But you need to have some core for other people to assimilate into or I think it totally transforms the nature of your society.” “
