Editors at National Review Online explore challenges related to the low American birth rate.
A new CDC report shows the U.S. birth rate hovering near a record low. If the patterns of 2024 persist, American women will have an average of 1.6 children in their lifetimes. That’s a very slight increase from the nadir of 2023. The major driver of the trend of reduced fertility is that women under 30 are not having babies at anything like their historic rates.
From 2000 to 2007, American fertility experienced a modest increase above replacement level, peaking in 2007 with a “mini baby boom” largely driven by foreign-born Hispanic women. A sustained decline then coincided with the onset of the financial crisis. After the Great Recession, fertility rates continued to fall and have remained below replacement level.
This trend is starting to reshape our institutions. America’s colleges have 100,000 fewer potential freshmen than last year. The number will fall by another 400,000 in three years.
These numbers, replicated throughout the developed world and much of the rest of it, call into question the sustainability of our cultures and nations: of modern life itself. Risks to nations’ GDP, pension finances, and military strength are obvious; the effects on their creativity and vitality are less measurable but no less real. The compounding effect of lower fertility over generations means that we can already expect the future to be lonelier for many people, who have much smaller and thinner family trees. The increasing suicide rates of the elderly in rapidly aging Japan and South Korea are an ominous sign. Clearly, the normal course of human life and the passing of generations benefit the entire human family.
It is hard to think of a single major social trend that isn’t anti-fertility: Overall marriage rates are falling, while women are getting married later. Moving more and more socialization from real life into social media reduces the opportunity for people to have real social interactions.
