California is currently executing a highly efficient, voluntary depopulation program. Less than 20 years ago, a Californian woman expected to bear 2.21 children. Today, that fertility rate is closer to 1.48. State demographers project a milestone in 2038, when the number of deaths will exceed the number of births. Funeral directors are currently the only growth industry left.
The citizens of the Great Plains possess a completely different biological strategy. The Great Inflation of the 1970s drove coastal families to downsize their dreams. The modern heartland refuses to stop multiplying. North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas maintain birth rates well above the national average of 1.6. These states are populated by people who still enjoy the company of toddlers.
Californians deserve sympathy for struggling to survive in an environment designed to make survival itself a luxury. The most effective contraceptive in existence, it could be argued, is the price per square foot.
Cheap real estate fuels this reproductive enthusiasm in places like Austin, Bismarck, and Oklahoma City, where a home costs roughly $260,000. California has a median home price of $800,000. Plains couples purchase three-bedroom houses with yards before their 31st birthdays. They have spare bedrooms for children.
A mortgage in Topeka is a minor monthly inconvenience. A mortgage in San Francisco is the equivalent of a financial death sentence. Monthly childcare bills in San Diego can cost parents thousands of dollars. Oklahoma parents pay a fraction of that amount to keep their children alive during the workday. Cultural expectations also accelerate the family timeline. Southern and Midwestern communities encourage early marriage. Parents in these regions start their families during their peak biological 20s. They build lives around school districts and Sunday school schedules. Higher levels of religiosity and traditional cultural values create a social environment conducive to reproduction. The local culture celebrates the arrival of a second and even a third child.
California forces its youth to trade their fertile years for a down payment. Young adults, through no fault of their own, postpone parenthood to survive the tax brackets. Fertility clinics eventually inherit the money that was saved for college tuition.
The political consequences of this demographic collapse are already manifesting. The 2020 census cost California a congressional seat for the first time in state history. Power is migrating toward the fertile fields of the South and Midwest. Texas gained two seats in that same reapportionment cycle. The legislative future belongs to the states that produce voters. California is voluntarily handing its political leverage to the regions it mocks. Coastal representatives will soon represent empty districts and retirement communities.
Environmental policies also discourage family formation in California. Progressive planners view human offspring as carbon emitters. They pass laws that restrict suburban expansion. They make it almost impossible to build affordable single-family homes. The heartland embraces suburban sprawl. They build subdivisions on prairie land. They welcome concrete trucks and bulldozers. They view a new cul-de-sac as a breeding ground for future taxpayers. They understand that a society needs children to fund the pensions of the elderly.
The tax burden in California ensures that only the wealthy can afford offspring. The state income tax rate tops out at 13.3 percent. This financial extraction leaves young couples with constant anxiety and anemic bank accounts. Texas and South Dakota levy zero state income tax. Workers in those states keep their earnings. They spend their money on baby formula and youth sports gear.
California is conducting a massive social experiment in terminal decline. The citizens serve as the involuntary test subjects in this policy laboratory. The authorities are testing how long a civilization can survive on tech stocks and tourism. Software algorithms can’t pay for geriatric medical care. The state operates on the delusion that a treasury filled with venture capital can substitute for a working generation.
The heartland is building a sustainable, multi-generational society. California is building a giant, expensive nursing home with a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. Which of these demographic models carries the nation forward is obvious to anyone who realizes that history is inherited by those who show up to inherit it.