StateImpact’s Jillian Taylor spoke with Dave Hamby, the Oklahoma Policy Institute's communications director, about what Oklahomans can learn from the report.
TRANSCRIPT
Jillian Taylor: Let's start by talking about what the report says about Oklahoma. How has its fertility rate been impacted from 2023 compared to 10 years ago?
Dave Hamby: So what we have seen in the report is that Oklahoma's fertility rate remains among the lowest in the region, and that really tracks with how the trend has gone over the last decade or so.
Taylor: One of the things that I think is important to address is the landscape for raising a child in Oklahoma. I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit and some of the barriers families might face.
Hamby: So I think the thing that I would point to first would be … the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT report. … They recently released their latest report in June, and that showed Oklahoma ranked 46th nationally in terms of child well-being. And in the four constituent elements of that report – economic, health, financial, and community family – Oklahoma didn't rank higher than 40th in any of those categories. So what that tells us is Oklahoma may not be the place to raise a family, that maybe our elected officials might say that it is.
Taylor: Are there maybe economic reasons that you could point to?
Hamby: So, in looking at the cost of raising a child, one of the things that folks have to consider is the cost of child care. And in Oklahoma, the cost for having an infant in a child care facility is more than $10,000 a year, which is a heck of a lot of money for any family to be able to shoulder … along with the cost of being able to care for and feed a child. Oklahoma is not an outlier in that it's expensive to have a child. But what makes Oklahoma different is we have such a large poverty rate. We actually have the sixth-largest poverty rate in the nation. About one in five Oklahomans lives in poverty.
… In Oklahoma, we have about one in three who make less than a living wage. We rank 11th for having the highest concentration of workers who earn $12 or less. So even though Oklahoma is generally considered a low-cost-of-living state, we do not have the jobs to be able to support the people who want to be here and to raise a family.
Taylor: And so when we look at the economic impacts of fewer children, what does that kind of look like in Oklahoma?
Hamby: When we have fewer children in the state, and we also have a growing elderly population, there's going to be a point in time where, and this is very cut and dry and pretty bloodless, but we're going to need more taxpayers to be able to fund services that people rely on. And if we are producing fewer children to enter into the workforce, eventually when they turn 18, and we have a growing population of over 65 who are retiring and probably earning less and not as robustly in the economy as they had been – those two things will come into play. And it will be very difficult to be able to maintain the public services that folks need.
Taylor: So what are some investments that Oklahoma lawmakers can consider to address the impacts of lower fertility rates and kind of provide supports to families?
Hamby: Investments in being able to make education easier to access, child care easier to access – both of those are critical. The other piece that I think is worth mentioning is health care. Oklahoma heavily relies upon Medicaid, which in Oklahoma operates as SoonerCare, to be able to provide health insurance. … As we've seen at the federal level, there's trying to keep folks from being able to participate in … SoonerCare through any number of ways to introduce red tape. By making it harder for Oklahomans to be able to access health care, that's going to have a whole cascading effect not only on the person who receives the care but the family around them.
Taylor: Thank you so much for speaking with me today.
Hamby: Well thanks again for having me.
The Oklahoma Policy Institute is a nonpartisan think tank based out of Tulsa. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
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