The real reason women have fewer kids today

My mother gave birth to me when she was 21. Thirty-five years later, she is thrilled that her first grandchildren are finally on the way: I’m pregnant and expecting twins later this year.

I am part of a broader trend: Millennials are having children later — or not at all. This is among the most pressing economic challenges of our time. Fewer babies born now means fewer workers — and resources — in the decades to come. That will ultimately hurt growth and make it difficult to support a large old-age population.

This isn’t just a U.S. problem. Over the past 50 years, global fertility has been halved. The decline is especially pronounced in high-income economies, where the population in already shrinking or on track to shrink soon.

On some dimension, these are trends to be celebrated. Declining fertility is strongly tied to the fact that there has been a surge in the past half-century of women going to college and launching successful careers. For example, as the birth control pill became more broadly accessible in the 1970s, it gave more women the freedom to invest in professional education, according to research by Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. The result? The percentage of lawyers and judges who were women more than doubled from 5% in the 1970s to over 13% in 1980, and the share of female physicians grew from 9% to 14% over this horizon. And progress has continued: Female lawyers now make up 39% of the profession; female physicians, 36%.

But something more is happening with millennials. Fertility is falling dramatically across education levels. The declines in the United States are especially pronounced for the most educated and least educated women, as economist Melissa S. Kearney and co-authors have pointed out.

The Great Recession hit less educated women and minority women especially hard. They were the most likely to report financial insecurity had caused them to postpone childbearing. Those delays likely meant some women who wanted children were never able to have them, in part because fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization, which can cost well over $10,000, are out of reach.

For highly educated professionals, part of the story seems to be a workforce culture that demands more time and investment in the early career phase. For example, people used to go straight to law school after graduating college.

The age of students entering law school has been rising over time, with many students now starting at age 25 or older, after working for a few years or doing fellowships. Similarly, doctoral programs are taking longer than they did in the past. Nearly 70% of economics doctorates today are awarded after more than five years in the program, with the median duration being seven and a half years.

Half of childless young adults report that they want children someday. But when millennials find themselves well into their 30s and still training for their careers, it is hard to see when exactly kids are supposed to fit into the picture.

It is a challenge to come up with policy solutions that can address demographic woes. Plenty of nations are trying out solutions to encourage having kids, but they aren’t working. Ad campaigns calling on couples to “do it for Denmark” flubbed, so, too, have one-time cash bonuses for new parents, generous parental leave and free early-childhood education.

I want to be clear: Some of these policies are worthwhile and have significant benefits for families and children. It’s shameful the United States is one of only six countries in the world without federally mandated paid family leave. Similarly, access to preschool reaps benefits for children in the decades to come.

But addressing declining fertility will require more creative thought about how to preserve women’s economic gains in the workforce while also affording them flexibility to start families if they desire to do so. It is no surprise, young men without children are more likely than young women to report they want to be parents someday. Women bear the physical cost of childbirth and face greater career interruptions from parenthood.

I want it to be better for Gen Z. My partner and I are lucky to be able to invest heavily in child care, including by relying on help from two sets of grandparents, who are young, healthy and excited to assist. He and I are fortunate to have this as an option and, ironically, by virtue of our own choices to wait to start a family, it’s one we won’t be as well-equipped to afford our own children.

Natasha Sarin, a Washington Post contributing columnist, is an associate professor of law at Yale Law School.