July 28, 2020
Why Are Americans Having Fewer Babies?
By Jonathan V. LastIt's an enigma that's vexed demographers for 40 years. The answer turns out not to be natural disasters or pandemics, or even economics, but something deeper: a decline in religion.
At 5:16 on the evening of November 9, 1965, the lights went out in New York City.
The blackout was the result of a safety-relay tripping in Ontario, which caused a cascade of power failures across the Canadian province, New England, and New York. The outage lasted only 13 hours and if you believe the popular mythology it was one of the most pleasant evenings most New Yorkers had ever experienced. Nine months after the blackout, the New York Times reported seeing a rise in births in the city. The 1968 Doris Day movie about the blackout, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, ended with Day’s character giving birth exactly nine months later (with the paternity of the child uncertain).
As it turns out, the story of the blackout baby boom was somewhat oversold. Grumpy statistical analysis suggests that there was no rise in births correlated with the dark night in the city that never sleeps.