"[I]t is good, once again, to note that our Lord Jesus did not take up residence in Mary's womb in the late hours of December 24th, rather, Jesus came as a human first as a zygote, then embryo, fetus, and only then as the babe in a manger.  If Christians are serious about the belief that Jesus was totally man while totally God-starting not at Christmas, but Annunciation-then procedures that either involve risk to embryonic life, or seek to manipulate its occurrence must be scrutinized carefully."

"South Korean scientists reported an incredible series of coups over the past two years in the difficult fields of stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. They claimed to be the first to clone human embryos and extract stem cells from the embryos, the first to clone a dog, and the first to derive embryonic stem cell lines tailored to match the DNA of patients suffering from specific diseases or spinal cord injuries. It sounded almost too good to be true, and now it turns out that some, if not all, of it probably was too good to be true. …If all of the South Korean work is ultimately judged bogus or too error-ridden to trust, the science of therapeutic cloning, the most promising area of stem cell research, will look a lot less advanced than we thought. It appears that no other scientist in the world has successfully created a human embryonic stem cell line that is tailor-made to match the DNA of a specific donor, thus allowing custom-made research and therapies. The Korean fiasco should serve as a stimulus to get American scientists cracking on their own plans for therapeutic cloning research, and on doing it right.”

Politicians of both parties agree that the pending insolvency of Social Security stems from a demographic problem: the declining number of workers relative to retirees. Yet few politicians appear willing to explore the causes of that declining ratio or why fertility rates have declined, particularly since the mid-1960s. Perhaps that is because a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which documents the negative impact of Social Security on fertility rates, suggests that Congress itself deserves some blame.

In this study, three economists from the University of Minnesota chart the growth of public pension systems against the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) using a cross-section of data of 104 countries from 1997 and a panel study of eight developed countries from 1960 to the present. In both the cross-section and the panel study, the economists found a “strong negative correlation” between the two variables. Depending on the countries studied, they found that the expansion of public pensions systems accounted for between 50 and 80 percent of the decline in fertility rates over the last 50 years.

More specifically, they found that “an increase in the size of the social security system on the order of 10% of GDP is associated with a reduction in TFR of between 0.7 and 1.6 children.” Although expressing caution about causal interpretations, they nonetheless claim that their findings are “highly statistically significant and fairly robust to the inclusion of other possible explanatory variables,” including infant mortality, income, and female labor force participation. They also note that in countries where the TFR was at least 3.0 children per woman, none had a social security tax rate of more than 4 percent, leading them to conclude that increases in social security taxes does reduce the number of children couples have and that this effect “is fairly large in size.”

The correlation explains variations in the TFR over time as well as between Europe and this side of the Atlantic. As they observe: “Fertility rates were much higher in the USA and Europe around 1950, when both groups of countries had a much smaller pension system than they do now; since the 1970s fertility rates have been consistently lower in Europe than in the USA, and the former countries have a substantially larger pension system than the latter.”

While the economists refrain from drafting policy recommendations, their findings suggest that if President Bush really wants to offer workers a promising future, he needs to think more in terms of what kind of changes in Social Security would best shore up the family and fertility so that young Americans might be able to enjoy more children and grandchildren in old age.