Vermont’s Baby Bust 
By Robert Maynard

The Ethan Allen Institute recently placed a report on its web site that should be of interest to all Vermonters. The report, entitled "Demographic Changes and Fiscal Consequences in Vermont (December, 2006)" was produced under contract by Dr. Arthur Woolf and Richard Heaps of Northern Economic Consulting Inc. The report details the aging of Vermont’s population and the long term consequences of the high level of spending on education and other social services coupled with a shrinking tax base. 

EAI President John McClaughry summarizes the report in a piece entitled "Off the Rails: Changing Demographics, Changing Economics, Accumulating Obligations. How will Vermont cope with a challenging future?" In this piece, McClaughry compares the course Vermont is currently on to a train wreck. This is an apt comparison as Vermont seems to be headed down the same path that the countries of Europe have already traveled. European countries are now starting to reap the fruits (or lack of fruit) of instituting an expensive welfare state.

Of course part of our demographic problem lies in the exodus of Vermont young people for greater opportunity elsewhere. That is only part of the problem. As the report points out:

"The U.S. Department of Health’s Vital Statistics Division reports that Vermont women have the lowest fertility rate of any state in the U.S. In 2004 the U.S. fertility rate was 66.3. In Vermont the rate was just 51.8. Maine and New Hampshire were only slightly higher than Vermont.

The low level and downward trend in fertility is a characteristic of western countries, as evidenced by the slow population growth rates of France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, among others. The trend affecting Vermont women is an international trend that is not likely to be reversed soon. Rather, fertility in Vermont may decrease further." 

The low fertility rate in western countries has been tied to the increase in secularization and the loss of religious faith. In a Foreign Affairs article from May/June 2004 entitled "The Global Baby Bust", Phillip Longman points out that: "Today there is a strong correlation between religious conviction and high fertility." This correlation plays out not only internationally between various countries but within the U.S. as well. As Longman points out: "In the United States, for example, fully 47 percent of people who attend church weekly say that the ideal family size is three or more children, as compared to only 27 percent of those who seldom attend church. In Utah, where 69 percent of all residents are registered members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, fertility rates are the highest in the nation. Utah annually produces 90 children for every 1,000 women of childbearing age. By comparison, Vermont -- the only state to send a socialist to Congress and the first to embrace gay civil unions -- produces only 49." (Phillip Longman is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Empty Cradle (Basic Books, 2004), from which this article was adapted.)

I bring this up to point out that the problem is as much of a cultural problem as it is an economic one, perhaps more so. (In truth, I do not separate cultural from economic factors as they are intertwined) The report from Dr. Woolf and Richard Heaps offers some possible solutions, none of which get at the root of the problem. 

As McClaughry points out in his summary: "Over the past forty years the people of Vermont have approved public policies that have created expectations of a very high level of public services and benefits, relative to those in other states. Since 1966 responsibility for providing those services and benefits – notably social welfare, health care, and education – have come to be dramatically centralized in the State." This trend has to be reversed. Such services are better provided for by such institutions of Civil Society as the family, churches, community centers, etc. When the state takes over this role from the institutions of Civil Society, it robs them of their relevance in society and they decay. With that decay comes further social problems which the state attempts to address by yet more programs. This trend leads to excessive state spending that is ultimately unsustainable.

The problem before us is to convince the people of Vermont that they are looking to the wrong source for such services. In the long run, centrally managed top down state run societies break down. This was not only the case in the former Soviet Union, but is starting to be seen in the welfare states of Western Europe. 

This is not merely a question of shifting services from the state to the private sector, but a change of perspective. The bureaucratic welfare state creates a sense of entitlement and a victim mentality. All of one’s problems are seen as someone else’s fault and the "victim" is entitled to the fruits of someone else’s labor. This resulting attitude makes it unlikely that the recipient of aid would feel any gratitude toward his benefactor, since he has been conditioned to see such aid as an entitlement rather than an act of human compassion. The impersonal nature of the state acting as a mediator for such aid further alienates the recipient from his benefactor. The end result is a society divided into groups of passive recipients clamoring for more entitlements and productive workers trying to find ways to avoid the heavy burden of taxes that are the result. 

The politics of entitlement, practiced by a growing number of politicians from both parties, aggravates the problem by enticing more able bodied people to go on the dole and expand the burden on the productive sector. The cultural shift we should be advocating is one from seeking out entitlements to looking for opportunities, from seeing oneself as a victim of society to a sense of personal responsibility and from coercive welfare state wealth transfers to genuine compassion.

-- Robert Maynard lives in Williston