There is a fertility crisis across the world today, a rapid decline in the number of children women have.
In the United States, that number was 1.6 children in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, well below what is required to replace the existing population.
This year’s American Family Survey set out to try to get behind the numbers — why aren’t women having as many children as they once did? What stands in the way?
And who wants to have children, anyway?
The American Family Survey is a joint project of Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute, BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, and Deseret News. The nationally representative study was conducted Aug. 16-18, and includes responses from 3,000 U.S. adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.1%.
According to the survey, 1 in 4 Americans say there are too few children being born today, while another quarter say there are just enough kids brought into this world. Another 16% of Americans say there are too many babies being born, while a third say they don’t know.
The data in the study does help fill in some of the gaps. Men, conservatives and religious people are all more likely to say there are too few children being born today.
But there is a risk in flattening Americans by dividing them along partisan or ideological lines, a risk in assigning the desire to have a family and children to one group over another.
Galena K. Rhoades, a professor at the University of Denver and the director of the Family Research Center, pointed out there is so much that unites Americans around issues of family.
“In a world today that is so polarized, I think we want to be careful that we don’t wind up polarizing family or our values around family and childbearing by political perspectives,” she said. “There may be some differences, but those are not really what’s most important.”
She pointed out that the survey has shown over the years that Americans actually hold a lot of shared values across partisan lines when it comes to family, like how we should raise our children and what we want our families to look like.
But politics does factor into dating and marriage more today than it did in the past, complicating the precursors to having children.
“In terms of how people choose partners, political affiliation has become very important in whether people decide to partner, to get married,” Rhoades said. “I think if we looked back 20 years ago, that wouldn’t have been a top value that people necessarily had to match up on.”
Today, people attach their politics to their core values in a way they didn’t in the past, she said, elevating the role it plays in relationships.
When respondents between the ages of 18-50 who don’t have children yet were asked if they “personally hope or desire to have a child someday,” 28% said definitely and 17% said probably. On the flip side, 26% said definitely not and 12% said probably not.
About half of the respondents who identify as conservatives said they definitely hope to have a child, while a third of moderates and 14% of self-identified liberals said the same.
Conservatives were nearly twice as likely as liberals to say they definitely or probably want to have a child someday.
Men were more likely to say they want to have children, as were Black Protestants, white evangelicals and Catholics.
There are, of course, people in every category who hope to have children someday. But why these differences persist says something about the culture they may be part of.
Lyman Stone, a senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, pointed out the desire to have children is probably “downstream” of other values.
“If you think that the life of the nuclear family together is really wonderful and important and good, then there are pretty good odds you think it’s good to have kids,” he said. “But if you think that the nuclear family is a site of gendered oppression, of autonomy, of intergenerational trauma, well you probably think making a new nuclear family with kids is not a great idea, right?”
But ultimately, he pointed out, surveys show people are not having as many children as they want to, leaving a gap between what people want and what they’re experiencing. This gap leaves people “disappointed” and “disconnected” from the next generation, Stone said.
It’s also a problem of family formation — fewer people are getting married — and people don’t want to have kids alone, he said. They generally want to have children with a partner.
Why don’t people have children?
When people were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “The cost of raising a child/children is affordable for most people,” a whopping 71% disagreed. This is 13% higher than last year, and the highest number in the past 10 years.
By far, the biggest barrier people cite to having children is insufficient money, with 43% of respondents saying this is a factor.
The next two top reasons, lack of personal desire (22%) and lack of supportive partner (19%), are well below cost concerns.
Christopher F. Karpowitz, a professor of political science and senior scholar at the BYU Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, who was one of the principal investigators for the survey and study, said, “It is striking that such a high percentage of Americans say that costs or insufficient funds keep them from having more children. I think it is clear that families feel like they need some help in navigating the high cost of raising children and having families today.”
The choice to get married can also revolve around economic factors, Stone said, pointing to housing policy as an example.
“The reality is that home ownership, stable housing, is a part of what enables, particularly young men to present themselves as a safe bet for a potential partner,” he said. “That being the case, we should be thinking about housing policy as part of helping people couple up.”
He said research shows affordable housing actually leads to people marrying more.
Government policy plays a role in marriage, having children
Both Rhoades and Stone said government policy can play a role in encouraging people to get married and have children.
“I think that the government can provide support just by making life easier for families, for parents,” Rhoades said.
For Rhoades, that includes things like subsidized child care, parental leave policies, food assistance and also programs that provide education and support so people can build healthy families.
She pointed to programs that provide education on what healthy marriages and parenting look like. They’re tiny line items in the federal budget, but they can make a big difference in people’s lives, she said.
Stone also said he sees a role for government policies that provide support for families, like increasing the child tax credit, eliminating marriage penalties in the tax code and making it easier to build more housing. These can all help create an environment where it’s easier to get married and have children.
But, Stone said, economic considerations can only help so much.
“If you create a society where there are just far more marriageable young people, more people get married, and as more people get married, you start to get sort of social contagion around marriage,” he said.
Living around other people getting married and having kids encourages that behavior in others, he pointed out.
“Eventually it has to be a cultural thing, right? You’re not going to get higher fertility just by spending money,” he said. “It’s a cultural choice, a very deeply personal choice for people.”
Financial incentives can, though, help get people moving in the right direction, he said.
“There’s a million things that we can do if we just decide that it’s worth trying to do something.”