The Relationship Recession Is Going Global

Baby bonuses put the cart before the horse when a growing share of people are without a partner.

- John Burn-Murdoch

There's a reason birth rates are an increasingly prominent feature in discourse and policymaking today. Population ageing and decline is one of the most powerful forces in the world, shaping everything from economics to politics and the environment.

But a weakness to the debate – perhaps even the term "birth rates" itself – is that it implies the goal is the same today as it was in the past: finding ways to encourage couples to have more children. A closer look at the data suggests a whole new challenge.

Take the US as an example. Between 1960 and 1980, the average number of children born to a woman halved from almost four to two, even as the share of women in married couples edged only modestly lower. There were still plenty of couples in happy, stable relationships. They were just electing to have smaller families.

But in recent years most of the fall is coming not from the decisions made by couples, but from a marked fall in the number of couples. Had US rates of marriage and cohabitation remained constant over the past decade, America's total fertility rate would be higher today than it was then.

The central demographic story of modern times is not just declining rates of childbearing but rising rates of singledom: a much more fundamental shift in the nature of modern societies.