By Below‑replacement fertility is widespread across the country, according to the report by the Institute for Family Studies.
A report from the Institute for Family Studies warns that the United States is approaching a demographic turning point, with fertility rates continuing to fall well below replacement levels and population declines increasingly likely in the coming decades unless current trends change.
The report, titled ”The Demographic Dead End: 2026 State of Fertility Report,” presents estimates of fertility trends for every state dating back to 1917. As part of the nation’s 250th anniversary, researchers also reconstructed birth rates in Massachusetts dating to 1660, offering one of the longest historical views of American fertility ever compiled.
According to the report, the U.S. fertility rate has fallen to about 1.6 children per woman, well below the replacement level of about 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population without immigration. Researchers said the decline is no longer a temporary consequence of delayed childbearing but reflects a sustained demographic shift.
The authors projected that if trends continue, the U.S. population will likely peak during the 2050s before entering a prolonged period of decline. They contend that many mainstream demographic forecasts underestimate the pace of falling fertility and assume a rebound that has yet to materialize.
The report notes fertility has declined in nearly every state over the past two decades, though the pace varies geographically. States with higher levels of religious participation, marriage, and family stability generally continue to post comparatively higher birth rates than states with lower rates of marriage and family formation.
Although Americans’ desired family size has remained relatively stable, the gap between how many children they want and how many they ultimately have continues to widen. Surveys consistently show Americans expect to have about two children and ideally would like to have an average of 2.4.
Catherine Pakaluk, professor at The Catholic University of America and author of “Hannahʼs Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth,” cautioned against interpreting that gap as entirely unmet demand.
“I’d be careful treating that gap as pure unmet demand — people fall short of almost everything they say they want, and stated desires are aspirations measured before the real tradeoffs arrive,” Pakaluk told EWTN News. “What ‘I want 2.4’ mostly reflects is a preference stated in the abstract, which softens once a child is weighed against everything else a life can hold.”
Why are fewer Americans having children?
Pakaluk said economic pressures and delayed marriage play a role but are not the primary cause of declining birth rates.
“Cost and later marriage matter at the margin, but they aren’t the engine,” she said. “The driver is a shift in the relative value placed on children.”
She added that prolonged low fertility could reshape American society, leading to “an older population, a thinner worker-to-retiree ratio that strains Social Security and Medicare” as well as “thinner kin networks and more people aging without family nearby.”
Limits of government policy
Researchers argue reversing the trend will require more than financial incentives for parents. Pakaluk agreed that public policy has limits.
“The most honest thing I can say is that the levers government actually controls aren’t the ones that move completed family size,” she said. “Policy can clear obstacles at the margin, but the decisive factors live in culture, faith, and community, where government has a light touch.”
She said measures such as expanding housing supply, strengthening the child tax credit, and removing marriage penalties may help families but cautioned that “no wealthy country has policy-engineered its way back to replacement.”
Global demographic challenge
The findings come as concerns over declining birth rates are growing worldwide. More than two-thirds of countries have fertility rates below replacement, prompting governments across Europe, Asia, and North America to examine ways to encourage family formation.
For the Catholic Church, concern over declining birth rates has long been connected to its teaching on marriage, openness to life, and support for families. Recent popes have repeatedly warned that demographic decline carries not only economic consequences but also cultural and social implications for future generations.
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We read: “For the Catholic Church, concern over declining birth rates has long been connected to its teaching on marriage, openness to life, and support for families.”
And, beneath these concerns is the existential loss of any attitude toward anything in the “future.” Such as personal growth, and yes family with children, but also ontological grounding, and the universal and interior Natural Law as now replaced by only the exterior and atom-splitting and genome “laws of nature.” Loss of even intellectual curiosity and therefore of polar-star soteriological openness (what’s that?).
Instead, a dissolving and narcissist derailment into a monopoly-money economy, with opulent consumerism, Wall Street’s futures day-to-day market for oil and gas prices, mainstreamed 24/7 talking heads with interchangeable bullet points, fractious identity politics, and anti-binary and post-relational gender theory/LGBTQ tribalism. And, everywhere the aura of routinized anti-conception and abortion and physician assisted suicide—all within the all-knowing surrogate “Cloud” (womb?) with countless umbilical cord cellphones.
But, at least we have the old-fashioned postal service, and now a faction within the perennial Catholic Church offers the forever-stamp of synodality-without-end, amen.
Your last two lines lol
” Wall Street’s futures day-to-day market for oil and gas prices”
The hardest lesson I’ve learned trading is not to drink from a fire hose.
I once wrote 10 “put options” against a stock that was trading in the low 90’s at the time. (AMD). Each option means 100 shares, so 1000 shares were at play.
I watched it take a swan dive on the expiration day, until the market price was about 50 cents below the strike price. That meant the option would be exercised and I would be buying the stock at 50 cents over market so a paper loss of $500.
I thought no big deal, it will bounce up on Monday (option closed on Friday), and I’ll sell at 50 cents above the strike price.
To my great horror, when the market opened the following Monday, the stock dove another 5 bucks in about 20 minutes, so my $500 loss became a $5500 loss.
I walked away for a couples, when I came back, the price recovered and I masde a small gain on sale. I should have sat on it. AMD closed at $546.72 today. My $87,000 purchase would have been worth $546,720 today.
Errata: “couple weeks”.
“The overall Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for the US Amish population is approximately 6.1 children per woman. This is significantly higher than the stable population replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman and drives their population to double roughly every 20 years.
However, fertility rates vary significantly depending on the specific Amish sect and their level of technology adoption:
Swartzentruber Amish: The most traditional group, which maximally rejects modern technology and embraces intensive agricultural labor, averages 10.4 children per woman.
Mainline Old Order Amish: The broader Old Order population averages about 6.1 children per woman.
New Order Amish: The most progressive sect, which selectively adopts certain modern conveniences and utilizes some birth control, averages around 5.8 children per woman”
*******
At this rate we will all be Amish eventually.
🙂
With current expected lifespans, I won’t live long enough to be anything other than a dead body with my soul wherever He sees fit to place it.
[T]he decisive factors live in culture, faith, and community”.
Repeat, please. Again. And again.
The higher and higher cost of housing is part of the problem. People need to live somewhere. Wages have not kept up with housing costs and many young people cannot afford a decent home. I wish that I had an answer.
Mobile homes.
🙂
Housing and lending (banking) are among the most heavily regulated and interfered with markets one can participate in.
Global birth rates are declining due to endocrine disrupting chemicals such as pesticides and plastics. It’s a biological problem with profound moral implications. It cannot be solved by blaming people as selfish.
Endocrine disrupters may very well be playing a role in the loss of fertility, but that’s not the only element of natality.
Ceteris paribus, If that were the sole or even a significant cause, married couples in traditional ages (20’s) seeking infertility treatments would be through the roof.
Also, there are “natural” endocrine disruptors. If you are freebasing flax seed, you’re getting phytoestrogens. I know a woman with a hormone sensitive cancer who was told to avoid flax and a few other “superfoods”.
Also, since the chemicals are environmental, they’d be affecting those groups that are more child friendly such as the Amish, Muslims, Mormons, some Protestant sects and more tradition leaning Catholics.
Instead every social antecedent required for conception and birth is down. Dating, sexual activity, marriage -which when it does occur is often later and there are plenty of professed “DINKES” (double income, no kids, ever). Plus, something like 20% of Gen Z claims identity in the alphabet groups.
Every social policy pursued by our ruling elite for decades has been opposed to the initiation and stability of marriage as family formation. Divorce is rampant, hormonal contraception (also an endocrine disruptor) is rampant.
I wish this was as simple as getting rid of stupid plastics.
The future belongs to those who show up.
The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world.
When my husband and I were unable to have children, we adopted two. It has been wonderful. Its been my observation that younger couples are very fixated on “stuff” —an expensive home, and expensive car, an expensive lifestyle. Obtaining those things usually means the wife “has” to work for the couple to gather the needed cash. Increasingly, women define themselves by their job and what they earn. That is unfortunate.
I have a Masters Degree. Worked very briefly but what I really wanted was to be a stay at home mother. And so I was. My choice, not a default that was forced on me. A saying I came across years ago has stuck with me: “Nobody ever lay on their death-bed and said ” I should have spent more time at the office”.” These couples dont know what they are missing. Sad.