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Editor’s note: Art Woolf is an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont. He served for three years as state economist for then-Gov. Madeleine Kunin beginning in 1988.

Vermonters aren’t making babies as much as they used to — or as much as women in other states are. To put that in the language of the demographers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Vermont had one of the lowest fertility rates in the nation in 2017, with the average Vermont woman giving birth to 1.52 babies over her lifetime — a record low for the state. Vermont’s fertility rate is also well below the U.S. level of 1.76, also a record low.

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Only three states — New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts — had lower fertility rates than Vermont. And Maine and Connecticut are just a tad above Vermont in the rankings. Maybe it’s something about the New England water, or weather, or winter, although I doubt any of those are major contributors.

Demographers tell us that for a population to be constant in the long run, fertility needs to be at 2.1 babies per woman over her lifetime. Vermont is in good company with a fertility rate below that level. Forty-seven other states have fertility rates less than 2.1, with only South Dakota and Utah above it. Should fertility rates continue at their present levels, only immigration will cause the nation’s population to grow.

Vermont is also not an outlier worldwide. If Vermont was a country, we would have the 195th lowest fertility out of the 224 nations on the planet. And rather than overpopulation being a problem now or in the future, more than half the world’s population lives in countries with below-replacement level fertility.

While Vermont’s fertility rate has been lower than the U.S. for several years, the number of births to Vermont mothers has declined markedly. In 1990 there were 8,000 babies born to Vermont mothers. By 2000, that was down to 6,500 and in 2017 it fell to 5,655 — fewer than were born in the years before the Civil War, when Vermont’s population was half what it is today.

Vermont’s trend of fewer births will continue. Women born in 1980 are 39 this year and are just about at the end of their child-birthing years. Given the decline in the number of babies born between 1980 and 1990, there are fewer women giving birth now than 10 years ago, and there will be fewer giving birth 10 years from now. It’s a safe bet to forecast even fewer births in Vermont in the 2020s and 2030s.

If low fertility rates and fewer births are so common nationally and worldwide, is Vermont’s low fertility anything to worry about? I think so. For one, we are entering a period of low fertility and declining numbers of births faster than just about any other state, so any impacts will be felt in Vermont before it hits other states. Without any appreciable number of immigrants or in-migrants from other states (each year more people move out of Vermont than move in), low fertility means a stagnant population that is aging much faster than the nation.

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And we are aging rapidly. In 1990 Vermont’s median age was the same as the U.S. Today we are, on average, six years older than the average American and by 2030 Vermont’s median age will be eight years above the U.S. average and more than one-quarter of us will be over 65. That means a smaller number of people in the prime working ages of 25 to 65. It means a continuing decline in the number of students in Vermont’s schools, fewer younger Vermonters entering the labor force to replace retiring seniors, and a lot more people over 65 and over 85.

Within the economy, there will be a decline in some occupations and growth in others: Fewer teachers and more people working at assisted living centers; fewer pediatricians and more gerontologists; fewer bartenders and more people working at hospitals. For employers, filling existing positions, not to mention expanding, will prove increasingly difficult.

Demographic changes are slow moving but very predictable once the underlying changes have occurred. The most fundamental demographic change is the decline in births, which has already occurred, and which will not reverse.

It’s not difficult to project the demographic impacts of that change. It should not be ignored. Neither should the social and economic impacts of that change.

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