As society changes and new government officials are placed into office, there are many changes; whether it be with low fertility rates, the increase in living and education, the high cost of medical treatments, the rising prices of groceries, and even more changes.
In the United States, there has been a quick decline in fertility rates among women. There are a plethora of external factors that can cause low fertility in women, such as smoking, stress, an overabundant amount of alcohol consumption, obesity and a plethora of other things. The United States does not help in decreasing these factors either. For example, alcohol has become so commercialized over the past years that there are a large amount of advertisements and commercials made for this addictive beverage.
Along with many external factors affecting fertility rates, many internal factors are seen to affect it. Genetic influences play a role in if a woman is able to bear a child, and many genetic diseases have been seen to be passed down from mother to daughter. According to the Center of Disease Control, around 19% of married women are unable to get pregnant even after a year of attempting to, and 26% percent of women in general cannot have a child or carry it through the entire pregnancy term.
Due to the high cost of medical treatments, many women who want to have children are not able to seek help in doing so because it is simply out of budget for them.
According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, for the past 20 years the price for medical treatments have gone up 2.6% each year. The average cost of a hospital visit is around $7,500 per person, not including medical insurance. Around 8%of people are medically uninsured, which means they have to pay those hospital prices in full.
As new officials have been placed in office, they decided to cut a huge amount of money for government medical funding. They are no longer funding resources such as Medicaid, medical research with the National Institutes of Health and even global programs.
As well as medical prices going up, so has the price of living.The average price in houses has gone up 4% in the previous year alone according to the U.S. Federal Housing. With the highest increase in housing prices being Rhode Island, where prices have gone up 11.4%.
The prices of groceries have gone up significantly as well. Since the pandemic, prices have gone up by a large percentage. In 2022 alone, as reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the price of groceries went up 9.9%. These price increases have drastically affected families that have a lower income rate, making shopping for groceries, which are a basic necessity, so much more difficult.
Additionally, the price of getting a college education has become significantly more expensive. For the most part, the highest paying jobs, not all, require one to have a college degree. Since the end of the 1990s, college tuition prices have increased by a whopping 84%. Which has made it extremely difficult for those who want to seek a higher education to be able to do so without things like scholarships and Federal Student Aid.
While there is a very large increase in everyday life and basic necessities, as a country, there needs to be something done soon. Actions that could be promoted to help the situation would be things such as; raising the minimum wage incomes or even bringing down the prices to where they were before all of the increases. People are struggling each and every day to live out their lives with just the basic necessities. Instead of cutting down on the funding to many necessary things, the country and government need to instead increase funding. People should not have to struggle, worrying about when their next full meal will be or if they are going to be able to send their children to college.