With fertility rates falling in America, particularly among young people, many pundits have looked to various culprits: failure to launch, student loans, the Great Recession, excessive housing costs, or any number of other explanations. One of the more entertaining theories is that Millennials have very different values than older generations, particularly concerning pet ownership. The chorus of pundits is nearly uniform: Millennials are crazy to choose pets over babies, Millennials are smart to choose pets over babies, Millennials are weird to choose animals over peoplechoosing pets over kids, Millennials are opting for pets not parenthood
But all of these studies face a major problem: there’s very little actual data about pet ownership, and the data that does exist is paywalled data produced by pet-industry surveys. The studies cited are one-off, comparatively small-sample marketing studiesthis study, which suggests that the Millennial pet owner is fundamentally irrational. On the other hand, no major population survey like the American Community Survey, General Social Survey, or Current Population Survey asks about pet ownership. The last public Gallup poll I could find on the question was in 2007.
However, some very limited data does exist. One thing that comes up a lot is the rising expenditures made on a per-pet basis, which is fairly easy to track. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) estimates the cost of pet ownership each year. Comparing 2008 to 2017 shows a substantial increase for most pet categories.
But that third estimate, from an independent study by veterinarians at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests an even higher per-pet cost, though that study had no time series data available.
We can also look at the revenues reported by APPA members each year from their sales in the pet industry. We can then divide these sales by personal income to get an estimate of how much of their money Americans are spending on pets, controlled for inflation or income changes. The market research I cited above shows that there is reason to think that spending is rising, and at least some of this is due to greater spending-per-pet on non-essential items: pet clothing, specialty food, more toys, more pet classes, etc. Or, rather, these items seem non-essential to many older pet owners, but may actually be “essential” for dogs yanked out of a natural environment where they can run and play, and cooped up in a small apartment. A more urbanized America must spend more per pet to make that pet’s life tolerable.
Tellingly, there was no “recession” in pet spending, as the figure above indicates. Even as Americans’ incomes suffered, pet spending rose, causing its share of income to jump markedly. This, despite the total number of pets probably declining, which suggests that spending-per-pet did indeed jump.
We can also see the growth of previously-non-essential categories of pet spending in the limited time-series data
The share of dogs and cats covered by insurance is rising. This suggests both that pet owners increasingly see their pets as valuable and hard to replace, suggesting they make substantial monetary investments in them, but also is itself a rising cost factor: insurance money is “new spending.” APPA also reports that the share of pet owners who spend money on parties for their pets, electronic tracking of pets, or pet-calming devices is rising too.
But, hold on, the APPA’s been surveying this issue for a long time, since 1988, and they find that pet ownership in 1988 was about 56%, compared to 68% today: that is not a particularly rapid increase for a 30-year period. Is this really a seismic shock in pet ownership, or is the main factor changing social norms about how much people should spend on pets? Given extant data, it’s hard to say. But whether it’s higher per-pet spending, or more pets, the conclusion that pets are consuming a larger share of American earnings seems clear.
But does this have any impact on fertility?
One way we can test this is to find groups that have very different pet ownership rates, for example, single people versus married people. Perhaps fulfilling a stereotype, APPA reports that dog owners are more likely to be married, while cat owners less so, although a more detailed study of California
So we can ask ourselves: how did fertility change for people ages 22-35 once we control for race or marital status? Did more pet-prone groups have bigger fertility declines?
It turns out, the answer is “no.” Fertility fell much more for unmarried young people than for married young people, and it fell more for less-pet-intensive minorities than for non-Hispanic whites.
While we can’t observe pet-owner-specific fertility, at least the aggregate correlates give comparatively little support to the idea that pets are replacing kids on a meaningful scale. However, it does seem there may be some effect: while singles have lower total pet ownership, pet ownership is reportedly rising particularly fast among single women
With delayed marriage, the share of young people who are married has fallen, and they spend less of their 20s and early 30s in marriage than previous generations did. As a result, they have lower total fertility in this period, because married fertility is reliably 2-5 times as high as unmarried fertility. As singles make up a larger share of the population, this composition change ends up driving a huge share of the aggregate change in fertility.
Meanwhile, singles may also see their pets differently than families do: singles often see pets as “family members,” while family-owners are more likely to see pets as property. But while “pet-parents” may rhetorically describe their pets as “children,” the correspondent decline in both single-person fertility and marriage among young people suggests that pets may be replacing two different family members. For some owners, pets replace kids. But for many, the companionship provided by a pet replaces spouses. Pets are often described as providing companionship, emotional support, security, or a sense of “home” or rootedness for “pet-parents”: but these aren’t traits that describe a child. These are traits that describe a husband or a wife. With my generation postponing the commitment of marriage due to any number of other reasons, the need for a reliable companion who is committed to stay until death do it part may simply be transferred onto pets rather than people.
In other words, there probably are two separate connections between fertility and pet ownership: rising pet ownership may be replacing single-motherhood to some extent, but more prominently, young people are pushed by many factors to delay marriage, and so spend more years in singleness, without reliable companionship. As a result, they invest—often expensively so—in a truly reliable companion: a pet.
-From Ringle
1. Compare the pros and cons of dogs and cats as pets. Do you prefer dogs or cats? What are your reasons for choosing one over the other?
2. What is your opinion on people spending a lot of money on their pets? Do you think it’s excessive?
3. What is the primary reason why the fertility rate in South Korea has fallen to the lowest among OECD countries?
4. What are some social problems that may arise from low fertility rates?
5. What are some solutions to solving the problem of low fertility rates?
6. Is there a correlation between the increase in pet ownership and the decline in fertility rates?
7. Can the rise of pets become a cause of lower fertility rates? Or are these completely independent factors? What do you think?
Millennials are picking pets over people
The majority of Americans in their 30s have a dog. They are also increasingly likely to buy clothing, costumes, even strollers, for their pets. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
Young Americans are less likely to be homeowners, car owners or parents than their predecessors, but they do lead in one category: Pets.
Three-fourths of Americans in their 30s have dogs, while 51 percent have cats, according to a survey released by research firm Mintel. That compares to 50 percent of the overall population with dogs, and 35 percent with cats.
The findings come at a time when millennials, roughly defined as the generation born between 1980 and 2000, are half as likely
“Pets are becoming a replacement for children,” said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of “Generation Me.” “They’re less expensive. You can get one even if you’re not ready to live with someone or get married, and they can still provide companionship.”
Millennial men, it turns out, are more likely to look for companionship in pets. Among those surveyed, 71 percent of men between ages 18 and 34 had dogs (versus 62 percent of women), while 48 percent had cats (versus 35 percent of women).
“Men are more willing to put in the time and effort of taking care of a pet,” said Rebecca Cullen, an analyst at Mintel. “Women are more likely to feel they are away from home too much and that pets require too much work.”
All of this is has big implications for the $63 billion
Last year Americans spent $11 billion on pet-pampering alone. One-third of owners said they bought toys for their pets, while 17 percent bought pet costumes and 10 percent shelled out for pet strollers, according to Mintel, which surveyed 2,001 adults for its findings“When you’re preparing for your first child, you’re reading all the books, doing all the research,” said Nathan Richter, 36, a partner at Wakefield Research, a market research firm in Arlington. “That’s how millennials are approaching pet ownership.”
A majority of millennials — 76 percent — said they are more likely to “splurge –– said they would do so.
Millenials were also twice as likely than Baby Boomers to buy clothing for their pets, a phenomenon Richter chalks up to the prevalence of social media.
“The clothing is, for them, an opportunity for performance — they put it on their dog or cat, take them for a walk, post a picture on Facebook,” Richter said. “It’s increasingly about getting a digital stamp of approval.”
What Can Governments Do About Falling Birth Rates?
“It Just Keeps Going Down”
“The idea of having a book about declining birth rates, in a way, is seen as absurd,” Kramer said. Overall, world population is projected to climb to nearly 9.6 billion by 2050 and this growth is often considered one of the biggest challenges to security and sustainability
“There’s never been a time when people have voluntarily produced fewer children than is necessary for sustaining the population”
But the two trends – rapid growth and fertility decline – are not as distinct as they may appear, Kramer said. As developing countries gain access to better health care and poverty rates decline, their total fertility rates – the number of children per woman – also tend to decline, a phenomenon called the demographic transition.
In research for The Other Population Crisis, Kramer visited five countries with very low fertility rates: France, Sweden, Italy, Singapore, and Japan. To understand why women and families choose to have fewer children in these societies, it’s necessary to see the place yourself and witness the daily rhythms of life, work, and family, he said.
For example, Kramer said Singapore is not a place where “you can imagine it’s easy to be a parent and easy to be a child.” Parents work long hours often on the opposite side of the island, and playgrounds in apartment complexes are surrounded by 200 feet of concrete on all sides. “You can hardly imagine what it would be like for a child to be playing there,” he said. “Just seeing that, I think, was a profoundly important thing [for] understanding why there’s a low birth rate.”
“What Russia is, is hard for me to define,” Kramer said, “and China is not just an advanced society, it’s also a developing society.” He noted France and Sweden both had “successful programs for different reasons,” Singapore’s small size makes it a “terrific laboratory for any kind of political phenomenon,” Japan is important because it has the third-largest economy in the world, and Italy has excellent demographic resources available and was logistically favorable.
Exploring Reasons Why
For policymakers, the prescription for achieving the first stages of the demographic transition – fertility decline and the demographic dividendhigher or at least replacement-level fertility rates, at the latter end of the demographic transition, is less clear.
“There’s no way you’re going to tell people, ‘We’re going to force you to have children.’ It’s nonsense,” Kramer said. “These are things that people really care about, and I think that it’s always dangerous in a society to tell people to do things that they absolutely won’t do.”
For example, in response to a question from Sciubba about the influence of the Catholic Church in Italy, Kramer said the Church has had little effect on fertility choices despite its political power. “In terms of affecting people’s sexual life, that influence is almost negligible; people don’t follow the Church’s dictates.”
To realistically boost fertility rates, governments have to make it possible for women to reconcile work and family, Kramer said. “You have to have housing and education for these children to develop well, and you have to have programs which are not monetary programs but social programs.” Things like daycare and strong early education help children assimilate into society and give mothers the confidence that they can return to work when they want. “If you can’t do that, women are not going to have children.”
Reduce Stress for Working Parents
Some countries have been more successful than others at boosting fertility rates. Since 2002, France’s fertility rate has increased from 1.74 to 2.08
The ideas behind these policies are not new. In the 1930s, the work of a Swedish couple, fittingly enough, Gunnes and Alva Myrdal
But these welfare programs are also expensive, and today the question is not if similar policies can work, but if they can be funded, said Kramer.“In a time when neoliberalism is so strong, when the government is doing less rather than more, and there are a lot of people who think the government should spend less money, do you find the money to do the same kind of things?” he posed. “So that raises the question, if not that, then exactly what?”
Celebrating Success While Planning for the Future
Besides the difficulty in funding pro-natalist policies, Kramer also worries about an increasingly pessimistic view about the future. “There’s a feeling, very prevalent today, that things are not going to be that great for the next generation, and therefore it makes sense on a family basis not to have too many, so you can concentrate your resources for one child,” he said. “I see this as one of the really biggest issues connected with low birth rates that perpetuates itself and aggravates itself.”
It’s easy to forget that aging is a human success story
Jurczynska also noted it’s important to keep in mind that the improvements in medical care and lifespans that have led to declining mortality and aging populations is something to be celebrated, not lamented. “It’s easy to forget that sort of a key component around low fertility and population, aging is a very successful, human success story,” agreed De Souza.