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Most of this year's high school graduating class was born 18 years ago. In 2007 American families welcomed more than 4.3 million new babies. They have been welcoming fewer ever since. Only about 3.6 million were born in 2024, roughly the same as a year earlier, when US births hit a new low. In other words, the Class of 2025 is the largest we are likely to see for the foreseeable future. The US baby bust is well underway, with all the grim social and economic changes that implies.
Demographic decline has been inevitable since the mid-1970s. That was when the nation's fertility rate (the average number of children born to American women over their lifetime) dropped below 2.1, the number required, all other things being equal, to keep a population from shrinking. So far, thanks to continued immigration and the longevity of older generations, the total population of the United States has not fallen. But it is only matter of time before the number of Americans peaks and turns south — just like the number of graduating high school seniors.
Some people, especially on the environmentalist left, embrace the growing disinclination to be fruitful and multiply. For decades there have been ideologues who claimed that the worst of all fates was overpopulation. Illustrations abound. The late David Brower, who for years headed the Sierra Club, held that childbearing should be "a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license." When David and Victoria Beckham announced the birth of their fourth child, they were attacked for setting a "bad example." In one of her Instagram reels, progressive heartthrob Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that whether it is "still OK to have children" is a "legitimate question" since there is a "consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult."
But thoughtful demographers and social scientists on both the right and the left have been warning for years that plummeting birthrates will lead to a "demographic winter" — a poorer, grayer, lonelier, sadder world. Among policy makers, the trend toward having fewer or no children is increasingly seen not as an achievement to applaud but a challenge to overcome.
Of course, in a free society whether to have kids is a matter of individual choice. As nations grow wealthier, fertility typically declines. Expanding opportunities for women, readily available birth control, more years spent in advanced education, the cost of a higher quality of life — they all have combined to discourage childbearing, in advanced countries especially. The United States, where the fertility rate has fallen to 1.8, has plenty of company. There isn't a single European or North American country where the fertility rate is above replacement level. In China and Russia, the rate is now 1.5. In Japan, it's 1.4. In South Korea, 1.1. In many of these nations child care is heavily subsidized, yet the fertility crisis is more acute than it is here.
Whether anything can be done to reverse this trajectory is the subject of a lively discussion.
The New York Times reported last month that the White House has been "hearing out a chorus of ideas" to encourage Americans to have more children. Some of those ideas are implausible or weird, such as reserving more Fulbright fellowships for applicants with children, having the government subsidize "programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles," or conferring a "National Medal of Motherhood" on women with six or more children.
The most straightforward proposal so far is to pay a $5,000 "baby bonus" to every American mother who gives birth. "Sounds like a good idea to me," President Trump said when he was asked about it on April 22.
No doubt many parents with a newborn would welcome the cash. But more free money from the government is rarely a good idea. For one thing, it is never "free" — more federal spending means more federal borrowing, which increases the national debt and contributes to inflation. And in this case, there is little evidence that rewarding the birth of a baby with a few thousand dollars will make a dent in the fertility crisis.
The idea isn't new. Quite a few other countries already pay bonuses to parents who have children, in most cases with minimal effect.
Germany pays "kindergeld" to families with new babies, but its fertility rate has continued to fall and is now less than 1.4 births per woman. In Australia, new parents receive the equivalent of $1,700 over their baby's first 13 weeks. That hasn't stopped the country's fertility rate from sinking to a record low. Though Singapore's baby bonus of about $8,000 is more generous, the impact is the same: Fertility is down to 0.97, among the lowest rates anywhere.
Baby bonuses prove "costly and ineffective" almost everywhere they are tried, wrote Leonard Lopoo, a professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. Considering how expensive it can be to raise a child — roughly $300,000 over 18 years, according to a new LendingTree analysis — what difference is a relatively modest "baby bonus" going to make? The prospect of a government check might induce a couple already committed to parenthood to get pregnant a little sooner. But is it going to convince adults who don't want a baby to change their minds? Hardly.
Government benefits and incentives may have some impact at the margins, but ultimately the only real strategy for reversing demographic decline is to change cultural norms surrounding marriage and child-rearing. That is the lesson from Israel, the one advanced country where the fertility rate remains far above replacement level — more than 2.9 children per woman. All the factors that usually lead to falling birthrates are present in Israel: a rising cost of living, pronounced female participation in the workforce, high rates of education, easily accessible birth control, expensive housing. Yet fertility remains incredibly robust — not only among Israel's most traditional and religious communities, but also among the considerably more numerous Israelis who live modern or secular lifestyles.
"The real secret to Israel's fertility rates appears to be cultural," wrote Danielle Kubes in Canada's National Post in 2023. "The family is at the absolute center of Israeli life. Getting married and having kids is the highest cultural value." It is a value that goes beyond religious observance and political ideology. It cannot be explained by government financial aid (welfare benefits in Israel are comparable to those in Western Europe). Rather, it boils down to this: Israelis of every stripe share a conviction that having children is the best and highest means of imbuing life with meaning.
That isn't the kind of deep-rooted cultural norm that can be bought with a "baby bonus." It can only be established through the steady revitalization of civil society, and by inculcating a worldview that celebrates family life as a blessing beyond measure. There is no easy fix for making that happen. But if a culture that treasures children can take root in one modern, democratic, and pluralistic society, it can take root in others. Perhaps, in time, even in ours.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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