Higher education driving decline in marriage, birth rate: policy expert
WASHINGTON – A conservative political expert highlighted the role higher education is playing in the decline of marriage and overall fertility as more people choose to take more time to earn college degrees, which she warned is extending their adolescence and delaying certain responsibilities.
On Wednesday, the Heritage Foundation hosted an event titled, “The Birth Shortage: Why the Decline in Marriage and Total Fertility Is a Real Crisis.”
“The demographic crisis in the United States is real and a threat to society as we know it. The United States and almost all developed countries are failing to replace their populations Description because the event reads. “In 2022, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the United States was 1,665 births per woman aged 15-44. This is well below the necessary replacement level of 2.1 births per woman. Among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), fertility was even lower.”
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The opening discussion featured Senator Ted Budd, RN.C., and his wife of 30 years, Amy Kate Budd, who spoke about the joy that comes from marriage and raising children. After the conversation with the Budds, the event moved to two separate panel discussions featuring various political experts from the conservative think tank.
Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy of the Heritage Foundation, spoke during the last panel, which proposed possible solutions to the decline of marriage and total fertility.
The policy expert noted that most undergraduate students now take six years to complete a four-year degree, thereby delaying marriage and family life.
Burke referenced Heritage Foundation from August 2023 paper she published on the subject together with the Center for Education Policy's Senior Researcher, Jay P. Greene. During the panel, Burke emphasized a point addressed in the paper, noting that this extension of schooling typically leads to “extended adolescence.”
“A period of limbo during which people who historically would have occupied adult roles of work and family largely delay assuming those responsibilities,” Burke said, citing. data from within the past decade which shows that the average age for men is 30.5 years old for men and 28.6 years old for women.
Burke also noted that the average age of women at the time of the birth of their first child has increased by three years since 1990. According to the academic, the delay in marriage and family formation in the last decade has occurred at the same time the nation is seeing an increase in enrollment in higher education and gymnasium.
“I would like to suggest that there are two other ways that college can contribute to the birth gap,” Burke said. “The first is this perceived debt burden among those who borrow to attend college, and the second is through the message that higher education sends to those who attend college.”
At the individual level, according to Burke, someone who graduates college and enters the workforce has an average debt of about $222 a month, which the policy expert argued is “manageable.” The bigger threat, however, is the message colleges are promoting about marriage and family, according to Burke.
The researcher referenced February paper published by a professor who compared “marriage fundamentalism” to “structural racism,” arguing that an ideology that promotes the two-parent family “is a key structural element of white heteropatriarchal supremacy.”
“We tell too many people to go to college more and more and that college is the only path to success,” Burke said. “More time in higher education prolongs adolescence and delays marriage and family formation.”
As for possible solutions, one of the academic's proposals included “restoring the value and dignity” of vocational education and cutting off what she described as the “open backbone of federal aid.”
Burke also condemned canceling student loan debt, which the Biden administration has championed, because she argued that this would only shift the “burden” onto working families.
“We need to think about reorienting higher education,” Burke said in response to a question from The Christian Post about how to address colleges' messages about marriage and families. “To my mind, the way you do that is to eliminate these federal subsidies that are there.”
“And so, until we're willing to cut that open plug, and until we're willing to say we're not going to, quote, 'forgive student loans behind,' colleges will have free reign to continue. .”
Source: www.christianpost.com