Also: The “China Shock” Myth and Falling Birth Rates

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Happy Thursday! In today’s newsletter, we examine the collapse of confidence in higher education, the “China shock” myth, and plummeting global birth rates.

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1. Americans Have Lost Faith in College ([link removed] )

Gallup found that only 38 percent of Americans report having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, an astonishing 20-point drop from a decade ago. While politics may seem like the obvious culprit, recent Pew Research Center survey data indicate that Americans see cost as the biggest issue facing higher education. AEI’s Daniel A. Cox asserts ([link removed] ) , “Even Americans who are the most dissatisfied with the direction of higher education—a group that is more right-leaning—are as likely to say it has to do with cost as politics.”

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More on College
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2. The Truth Behind the “China Shock” Myth ([link removed] )

Conventional literature contends that more than two million jobs were lost from 2000 to 2011 due to competition with Chinese imports. But in the context of broader labor market churn, that figure is less exceptional. In a typical month from 2000 to 2007, more than five million workers—including 425,000 manufacturing workers—separated from their employers. AEI’s Michael R. Strain argues ([link removed] ) , “It is wrong to present the ‘China shock’ as evidence that trade liberalization hurts the working class, or that a powerful, murky, nefarious elite is making deliberate, isolated choices that hurt the majority of Americans.”

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More on the “China Shock” Myth
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3. The Global Birth Rate Crash ([link removed] )

The US reached a peak of more than 4.3 million births in 2007, but that number had fallen to roughly 3.6 million by 2025. The decline is even more striking in countries such as China and Italy, where current births have fallen to a fraction of their historical peaks. AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt posits ([link removed] ) , “The persistence and further spread of sub-replacement fertility can only mean eventual world depopulation—with human numbers potentially peaking not only during the lifetime of most people alive today but potentially even in the coming generation.”

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More on Birth Rates
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Dive into More Data

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China and Taiwan Update ([link removed] )

More on China and Taiwan
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The Test Score Mystery ([link removed] )

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Special thanks to Jacinth Planer and Drew Kirkpatrick.

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