You should have more kids for purely selfish reasons

Bryan Caplan — economist, free thinker and father of four — came out with a fun book 15 years ago called “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.” He made a good argument but evidently nobody listened, for people have been having fewer babies ever since. Not that it’s his fault.Like many of us, he came of age in the days when overpopulation was a fashionable concern.

But today, the world’s “total fertility rate” (a standard measure of fecundity) is roughly half of what it was in the 1950s and, in many countries, well below even replacement levels.American women now have an average of 1.6 children, a record low, compared with the 2.1 needed to maintain population in a developed country.

Some places in Europe and Asia are lower.China is at 1.0.“During my lifetime, the American family has drastically downsized,” the 55-year-old author writes, adding that big families have “all but disappeared.

In 1976, 20% of women in their early forties had five or more kids; by 2006, less than 4% did.”Doing their part to combat this trend, Caplan and his publisher, Basic Books, have brought out a new edition of “Selfish Reasons,” with a new afterword by the author.It couldn’t be timelier.

Back in 2011, the author explains, “very few people were worried about declining fertility, at least in the US.But over the last 15 years, it has become at least a moderately mainstream concern.”There’s good reason to recognize the birth dearth for the trouble that it is.

Aging societies are often economically stagnant and plagued by loneliness, labor shortages, spiraling pension and health care costs, mounting deficits and levels of immigration that can lead to political turmoil, as has been the case in recent years in Europe.Caplan (a supporter of unrestricted immigration) argues that having more children makes us happier at the same time that it’s good for the world, which needs more labor, new ideas and all the other things humans provide.Of course people ...