America’s baby bust is going to cost us down the line
Americans aren’t having enough babies. Ironically, pro-life politicians might be making the problem worse.
U.S. fertility rates hit a record low in 2023, the federal government reported last week. The average American woman is now expected to have just 1.6 births over her lifetime, based on age-specific birthrates last year — well below the fertility rate needed for the native-born U.S. population to replace itself (2.1 lifetime births per woman).
Why should you care about the baby bust? A couple of reasons. First, Americans’ own preferences: They’re having fewer kids than they say they want.
Recent Gallup polling data shows that Americans believe the “ideal” number of kids for a family to have is 2.7. In fact, last year, the share of respondents who said three or more kids is ideal reached its highest level since 1971 (45 percent).
The second reason: cold-hard economics.
As other countries have discovered, a population that fails to replace itself can face serious challenges. For instance, all else being equal, a shrinking workforce can lead to stagnant or declining living standards, because workers power the economy.
Likewise, a shrinking contingent of young people means fewer workers are available to care for the growing elderly population and pay for its retirement benefits. Already, the typical American senior receives more Social Security and Medicare payments than they paid into the system. As the ratio of retirees to working-age Americans grows, this problem will worsen.
In fact, the problem is already worse than government numbers suggest. The standard actuarial forecasts for Social Security assume a higher U.S. fertility rate than we’re on track to have; they project we’ll revert to near-replacement-level fertility rates in the years ahead, despite decades of data well below that. In other words, those dire forecasts for when Social Security might go broke are likely too optimistic.
Declining birthrates are not a U.S.specific phenomenon. We’re actually doing a little better than most other high-income countries, which have tried all sorts of measures to boost baby-making. Some have adopted generous family-leave policies or expanded child care. Others have basically paid women to have more kids or tried to encourage more equitable gender roles.
For the most part, these policies have had little success at boosting birthrates, including in countries with more egalitarian gender norms. They’re still worth adopting, in my view, to improve the lives of those who have or wish to have children. (Some might also prove more effective with better design.)
The average American woman is now expected to have just 1.6 births over her lifetime, based on age-specific birthrates last year — well below the fertility rate needed for the native-born U.S. population to replace itself.
In any event, the United States fares terribly on almost all family-friendly measures. For instance, we’re one of just three countries globally without mandatory paid maternity leave.
So maybe there’s more low-hanging fruit here, fertility-wise, than in a place such as Finland. One idea: Slash the tax burden for families with young kids, a traditionally bipartisan policy that a few Republican senators are currently blocking.
Another option: Provide better access to reproductive care. Unfortunately, some hospitals are now winding down in vitro fertilization programs because of continued “litigation risk,” thanks to Alabama’s Supreme Court, which ruled this year that embryos are considered people. Providers remain jittery even after Alabama lawmakers claimed to have fixed the problem.
Perhaps counterintuitively, better reproductive care also includes more reliable access to abortion care, especially in emergencies.
Post-Dobbs, pregnancies in red states — including wanted pregnancies — have become much more dangerous, especially when things go wrong. In Texas, women with pregnancy complications have gone into sepsis before doctors would provide treatment. In Louisiana and Ohio, women have seen their fallopian tubes rupture as a result of untreated ectopic pregnancies, compromising their ability to have children in the future. In Florida and North Carolina, pregnant women have been turned away from emergency rooms and left to miscarry in a lobby bathroom or the back of a car. In Idaho, as the Supreme Court recently heard, pregnant women are being airlifted to other states for emergency care.
OB/GYNs are understandably fleeing these states. Some hospitals are shutting down their obstetrics wings entirely.
Such stories are horrifying and traumatic for the women involved. They also likely discourage women on the fence about having kids from deliberately conceiving, especially if those women have existing medical vulnerabilities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, procedures for permanent contraception (vasectomies, tube-tying) spiked last year.
If we’ve given up on encouraging Americans to voluntarily have more kids, there are other ways to avoid the economic damages associated with population shrinkage. A sudden surge in productivity, for instance. Or hey, more immigration! You know, politically easy stuff.
Catherine Rampell is a columnist for The Washington Post.