Around the world, birth rates are falling every year. In the USA, for instance, the total fertility rate has fallen from 2.1 babies per woman in 2007 down to 1.6 in 2023, and is still falling. The USA is following Europe on this path of low and falling fertility, and US politicians have joined their European peers in beginning to worry about it. Both Republicans and Democrats are proposing legislation they believe would help parents have more children.
Marriage and family formation are, of course, deeply personal matters. But at some point the sum of personal decisions becomes a cultural force – a demographic shift. And demography obviously affects the individual.
Critics of family policy often point out that any given proposal – a larger child tax credit, deregulation of housing, more parental leave – will barely nudge birth rates. But data suggest a feedback loop: birth rates that are low and falling tend to keep falling. And if falling birth rates lead to more falls in birth rates, then a slight upward nudge to birth rates could also cause positive momentum.
What happens when we don’t see babies and parents around us
What people consider possible is shaped by what they see. If 20-somethings don’t see bosses or older colleagues with families, then they won’t have an image of family and career working together. If young couples don’t see anyone with more than two children, then they won’t have an image in their minds of larger families, and they will have trouble imagining that for themselves.
Places with more children have more housing and public spaces for parents and children, and places with fewer children will have fewer such accommodations. A neighbourhood with fewer kids is less likely to have an indoor commercial play-place for parents to drop-in or host a birthday party. The restaurants in such a neighbourhood are less likely to carry booster seats, have thoughtful kids’ menus, and have customers who appreciate or tolerate noisy little ones.
When individuals have friends with children, then their social life will embrace and encourage children. If your friends are getting together at playgrounds, or at 4 pm gatherings in baby-proofed homes – gatherings that wrap up around 7 pm – then you will see having a kid as desirable. If your friends are gathering at the bar at 8 pm, or taking white-water kayak trips, then you will see children as inhibitors to social life.
South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world – even though births increased in
2024 for the first time since 2015[1][2] – and yet many of the businesses there seem to feel threatened by the risk of little kids showing up. “No-kid zones” keep cropping up around the country, The New York Times recently reported.[3] An overwhelming majority of South Koreans – 73% in a 2022 poll – approve of current no-kid zones.
Kim, H.J. (2025) South Korean births increased last year for the first time in nearly a decade. AP News, 28 February. Available at: https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-babies-fertility-rate-dde1e536cd8b7a65cf30fe3f91983162 (accessed January 2026).
Young, J.-Y. (2025) South Korea has a small baby bump after years of decline. The New York Times, 26 February. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/world/asia/south-korea-babies-birthrate.html (accessed January 2026).
Young, J.-Y. (2023) South Korea wants more babies, just not in these places. The New York Times, 16 May. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/world/asia/korea-no-kids-zones.html (accessed January 2026).
When fewer and fewer adults have children, then fewer and fewer policymakers, developers and business owners think about kids as they shape neighbourhoods and policy.
If the average legislative staffer has children, then the Child Tax Credit and parental leave will move to the front of the line on legislative priorities. If not, then not. If the average city councillor or city planner has children, then playgrounds, schools and daycare centres will top the agenda. If not, then cocktail bars and coffee shops might be the only concerns.
Low birth rates beget lower birth rates because the scarcity of children and parents changes norms and expectations, and alters the public imagination. Cultural conditions determine individual decisions. For more than a decade, demographers have observed that as actual family size falls, ideal family size also falls. In other words, falling birth rates lead to falling family ambitions of parenthood.
Demographer Peter McDonald hypothesised a “low-fertility trap”.[4] He describes it this way:
McDonald, P. (2007) Low fertility and policy. Ageing Horizons 7: 22–7. Available at: https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/files/ageing_horizons_7_mcdonald_fd.pdf (accessed January 2026).
The evidence:
These low and falling birth rates, now the norm across the world (especially in wealthy countries) are a cause for concern and a fitting matter for public policy debate.
The first reason: women and men in most of the world still want more children than they are having, and so the low birth rates reflect unmet aspirations. In the USA, for instance, adults say the “ideal” family size has between two and three children (closer to three), while Americans have only about 1.6 on average. The same is true in every country in Europe, according to recent studies.[5]
Friedrich, C. and Bujard, M. (2025) Intended, Ideal, and Actual Fertility in 11 European Countries. Evidence on fertility gaps in different age groups from the Generations and Gender Survey. BiB Working Paper 2/2025. Wiesbaden: Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB). Available at: https://www.bib.bund.de/Publikation/2025/pdf/Intended-ideal-and-actual-fertility-in-11-European-countries-Evidence-on-fertilitygaps-in-different-age-groups-fromthe-Generations-and-Gender-Survey.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2 (accessed January 2026).
Also, more family formation would make us happier and more civic-minded, the evidence suggests. “Families help keep neighbourhoods stable,” according to Will Austin[6], founder of the Boston Schools Fund.
Austin, W. (2022) Where have Boston’s children gone? The Boston Globe, 10 June. Available at: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/06/09/opinion/where-have-bostons-children-gone/ (accessed January 2026).
This benefit happens on the family level, too: “A large household is associated with fewer mental problems in children,” one study out of Norway concluded.[7] This effect was especially large on girls.
Grinde, B. and Tambs, K. (2016) Effect of household size on mental problems in children: results from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort study. BMC Psychology 4(31). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-016-0136-1
In Europe and the USA, we are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and alienation. Marriage and babies appear to be the best medicine.
Pregnancy is contagious
Pregnancy isn’t literally contagious. You can’t catch it in the air, and wearing a mask won’t slow the spread. But just as childlessness can spread, so can family formation. That was clear from families I met recently during Purim festivities in Kemp Mill, a neighbourhood in Maryland’s DC suburbs that has two orthodox synagogues.
“Most people that I know in our age group have three or four,” says Ava, a mother. “And then there’s another group, and they all have five, and they’re all friends with each other, and five is a great number. Five is just what they do.”
“There is an element of contagiousness,” says Yair, a father.
The contagiousness of pregnancy is a reason for optimism about tackling the Baby Bust. The critics may be right that any given policy will barely nudge birth rates – but a nudge or two may be all that’s needed to flip the feedback loop. Just a few more people having just a few more babies could repopulate a playground or save a local elementary school. That could make it more possible or appealing for the next couple to have kids, and more than one or two.
The kinds of policies that could nudge birth rates also, unsurprisingly, tend to be those that make life better for families with young children. As I’ve argued for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), these policies include making towns and cities more walkable and bikeable for children and their caregivers, and incentivising employers to be more supportive of employees who are parents[8], a topic you can read about elsewhere in this issue of Early Childhood Matters.
Carney, T.P. (2024a) Why fewer babies lead to even fewer babies. AEI. Available at: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/why-fewer-babies-lead-to-even-fewer-babies/ (accessed January 2026).
The Baby Bust has reflected a feedback loop. A 21st-century Baby Boom could happen because of the same sort of feedback loop, in the opposite direction.
