I liked this book more and more as I went along, but I still had a few beefs with it.
THINGS I LIKED
1. I found his observations on the effect that ideological sorting has on a region's politics to be very interesting, even though it was only tangentially related to fertility. In the 1976 presidential election, only 26.8% of counties went to either candidate by greater than a 20 point margin. In the 2004 presidential election, 45.3% of counties went to either candidate by greater than a 20 point margin. In both elections, the percentage of the popular vote was similar--it's not that American individuals became more Democratic/Republican, it's just that increasing mobility allowed like-minded people to collect together, polarizing election outcomes and leading to the election of more polarized Congressmen.
This plays out with families too. People who are married, religious, and want to have kids (these things are often found together) gradually group together, usually in suburbs/rural areas where things are cheaper and roomier. I found his discussion of Salt Lake City interesting: the actual city has recently started to go Democratic, but the surrounding suburbs have become even more Republican and Mormon. A small scale version of the Big Sort.
2. I liked his detailed examination of how various countries' efforts to boost fertility have failed. In short, the government is quite ineffective at convincing people to have children they don't want to have. In reading reactions to this book, I've noticed that liberal commentators usually use the opportunity to slam Last for not promoting policies like universal paid maternal leave, child subsidies, etc. What they seem to ignore is that Last does examine these policies, and find that they just don't work. They should re-read his discussion of Japan's and Singapore's pro-fertility legislation.
They should also re-read his discussion of France's pro-fertility legislation. While France's fertility rate of 2.08 might seem impressive for a Western European nation, it masks the fact that native-born French women have a fertility rate of 1.7 and foreign-born French residents have a fertility rate of 2.8. France's relatively high fertility rate is primarily due to immigration, not paid maternal leave, cash payments, national day care centers, etc.
3. Some commentators portray Last as anti-immigration, saying that his reluctance to champion more liberal immigration policies as the solution to this dilemma is a sign of him putting his partisanship ahead of the data. They must not have read the book very well. Last says, "One of the lessons from Japan and France is that no wealthy, industrialized nation can prop up its fertility rate without large-scale immigration. America is, as we have seen, no different. A reasonably liberal program of immigration is necessary for the long-term health of our country."
Last simply couches this with a reminder that immigrants' fertility tends to trend toward the American norm after a generation or two, and that we should expect fewer immigrants in the years ahead as increasing economic opportunities and declining fertility rates in Latin America give people less incentive to come here.
4. I like that he addressed the interplay between secularists' growing numbers due to adult conversion, which is stymied by secularists' low fertility rates and low success rates at raising the children they do have within their irreligion (most children raised by non-religious parents grow up to identify with some religion). I'm not sure whether religious fertility or secularist culture is stronger, and neither is Last, but I'm glad that he at least addressed this.
5. The book is a quick and easy read. I finished it in one night.
THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE
1. The author's prose is sometimes charged, labeling people as "crackpots", lampooning liberal beliefs, etc. I'm a staunch conservative, but I'm afraid that this type of rhetoric might limit this book's audience to the choir. The prose is also somewhat erratic, sometimes whipsawing between anecdotes and statistics without smooth transitions. The combination of these 2 things lends the book a somewhat frenetic, jigsaw feel.
2. While some of the author's proposals (decreasing FICA taxes for parents based on their number of children, to pay them back for supporting America's future taxpayers, etc.) seem like good places for discussion to start, he doesn't really flesh these out. For instance, decreasing these families' FICA payments would take further funds from a system that's already having trouble. How would he address this? Last doesn't really go into it.
He also tends to stretch some of his connections, sometimes accidentally. Sure, I buy that parents' spending less time in traffic and more time with their families can encourage a kid-friendly climate. But his citation seems to suggest (I think accidentally) that Dallas' lesser traffic is directly responsible for Dallas' higher fertility rate compared to Los Angeles.
SUMMARY
All in all, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it as an introduction to the subject to a reader who is pre-disposed to overlook its more colorful tendencies (aka a conservative reader) and discover the valuable information underneath. But if you're trying to convince a skeptic, I'd recommend a more neutral book/article.
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