The Northern America Fertility Divide

CANADA AND THE U.S. are more similar to each other than any two other large countries on the planet today. We share a language, a continent, and a colonial history. Our two affluent and resource-rich countries, moreover, have forged the largest trading bond in the modern world. (1) Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1993, of course, the volume of U.S.-Canadian trade has steadily increased; this economic integration is drawing the two economies ever closer. Yet for all their similarities--and the unfolding forces pressing for still greater homogenization--Canada and the United States are remarkably distinct from one another. In recent years, government policies in these two similar countries have diverged recurrently, and conspicuously, on a number of issues: Think of Iraq, missile defense, lumber, gay marriage, and marijuana. And these highly visible differences may not be the biggest ones. A quiet and as yet largely unrecognized divergence may be even more fundamental. Its indicators are found in the relatively new but steadily increasing differentiation of demographic trends in North America. Twenty-five years ago the population profiles of Canada and the United States were similar. Both were younger than their European allies, and their societies were more heterogeneous. In 1980 their populations had almost the same median age, fertility rates, and immigration rates. In the years since then, small changes in demographic variables have accumulated, ultimately creating two very different countries in North America by the end of the twentieth century. Canadians now have half a child fewer than Americans during their life-times--their fertility level is roughly 25 percent lower than that of their neighbors south of the border--and they are living two years longer. Both populations are growing at about the same rate, but the components of growth have diverged. Immigration is relatively more important in Canada's growth rate, and fertility is more important in the United States. Canadians marry later and less often than Americans. They enter common-law unions more often and their children are increasingly likely to be born out of wedlock. Canadians and Americans have similar labor force participation rates, but Americans work more hours per year. They have higher incomes but less leisure. And even though Canada's birth rate is now substantially lower than America's, the Canadian government provides more child services and benefits than the U.S. government. Changes in patterns of marriage and fertility are the accumulated outcomes of millions of personal decisions by men and women. When couples, one at a time, make decisions that differ in aggregate from the couples in a neighboring country, it is a reflection of deliberate agency rather than mere chance. That's why the still-widening demographic gap that has opened up between Canada and the U.S. says even more about the two societies and their futures than public or policy differences on any single issue. It also demonstrates that macroeconomic integration since NAFTA may not have had a homogenizing effect at a household level. This exploration should make Canadians who fear becoming too much like the U.S. a bit less fearful. Why fertility may change ONE OF THE most important and interesting debates in demography today centers on the decline in fertility in developed countries. When the decline in total fertility rates begins and when it stops is of importance not only to demographers, but also to societies. Age structure changes that are caused by declining fertility have far-reaching ripple effects: They touch on all age-specific activities and programs throughout society. Over the past generation, childbearing patterns in nearly all developed countries have changed significantly, falling to levels that (if continued indefinitely in the absence of immigration) would presage a steady shrinking of successive generations. …

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