In agreeing with the caller about the impact of abortion on Social Security and Medicare, Santorum went on to blame the collapse of "all of these programs" on the declining replacement rate — which is needed for a nation to maintain a stable population — in the United States and Europe.
Santorum, March 29: We’re seeing our birthrate is now below replacement rate for the first time in our history and in all of these programs — look what’s going on in Europe. They’re collapsing. You see all of these countries in horrible situations. Why? Because their birthrate is 1.2. You need 2.1 children per woman of childbearing age to maintain your population, and in France and Italy it is 1.2, 1.3, so they’re collapsing and we are going in the same direction.
Santorum is wrong to say that births in the United States are "now below the replacement rate for the first time in our history." Births were actually below the replacement rate for nearly a quarter of a century — from 1972 through 2005 — before exceeding the "replacement rate" for the most recent two years on record.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines the replacement rate as "the rate at which a given generation can exactly replace itself, generally considered to be 2,100 births per 1,000 women." (That rate assumes "no international migration," which accounts for "almost one-third of the current population growth," according to the Census Bureau.) A nation’s replacement rate is best measured by the total fertility rate, which uses current data of live births to women ages 15 to 44 to estimate a "completed family size," as the CDC explains in a 2010 report:
CDC, Aug. 9, 2010: The total fertility rate (TFR) summarizes the potential impact of current fertility patterns on completed family size. The TFR estimates the number of births that a hypothetical cohort of 1,000 women would have if they experienced throughout their childbearing years the same age-specific birth rates observed in a given year.
In a 2007 report, the CDC said that the U.S. total fertility rate had been below the replacement rate for much of the 1970s and all of the 1980s and 1990s — a trend that didn’t turn around until 2006. The U.S. total fertility rate in 2006 was 2,101 — a shade above the replacement rate needed to maintain a stable population. "The year 2006 marks the first year since 1971 in which the U.S. TFR was above replacement," the report said.
That trend continued in 2007. The Census Bureau’s 2011 Statistical Abstract for the United States shows the total fertility rate at 2,120 in 2007 — the most recent data that we could find — maintaining the trend started in 2006. The CDC noted the trend in its 2010 report.
CDC, Aug. 9, 2010: The U.S. TFR was above replacement for the second consecutive year in 2007, a trend not seen since 1970–1971.
A total fertility rate of 2,100 births per 1,000 women is equal to the 2.1 children per childbearing woman, as Santorum put it. The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that this year the US total fertility rate will be 2.06, which would be lower than the replacement rate — although, as we noted, not for the first time.
The total fertility rate in France was 2.0 in 2008, the most recent data available, and has remained largely unchanged in the last decade, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The CIA estimates France’s total fertility rate at 1.96 for 2011.
Santorum was closer to the truth in Italy, where the total fertility rate was 1.4 in 2008 — slightly higher than it was in the early 2000s. The CIA estimates it at 1.39 for this year.
– Eugene Kiely and Michael Morse, with Lara Seligman
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