America’s big cities are losing children. They are instead filling with single adults and childless couples struggling for self-fulfillment in expensive apartments, condos and townhouses.
The Wall Street Journal reported last weekend that the number of children under 18 has fallen by 6% in big cities over the past decade; much higher than the 1% decline overall nationwide.
Meanwhile, the nation’s birth rate continues to fall, hitting record lows in 2025. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Utah is leading the way in this ominous trend. The state’s 37% decline in birth rate since 2007 is the largest drop in the nation over that time. Its fertility rate, once a predictable first in the nation, is now sixth.
Last year, the Deseret News cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics that showed Utah as No. 10 in terms of fertility in 2025. The state’s fertility rate at that time had been either flat or in decline for 15 years in a row.
A looming demographic disaster
These two facts are not unrelated. Together, they could spell a looming demographic disaster. Utah isn’t alone, of course. Dropping fertility rates are a worldwide phenomenon. Even Mexico now has a rate below replacement level, down from 2.2 children per woman of childbearing age in 2017 to 1.97 today.
When a community loses its children, it loses its connection with the future. It loses its childish laughter and imagination. As a practical matter, this has real long-term consequences. The Social Security program has always relied on today’s workers paying taxes to support payments to today’s retirees. But today there are only 2.6 workers for every retiree, and that number is trending downward. Either workers will be hit with a huge tax increase or the program will need restructuring.
A dwindling pot of taxpayers bodes ill for all government funding. The military will be harder to maintain, and the interest alone on the national debt will be harder to pay each year.
What families bring
In large cities, as the Journal noted, the demands of families tend to induce a downward pressure on groceries and other goods. They support quality schools, which in turn produce well-educated students who end up fueling innovation and prosperity for the future economy.
Families tend to come hand-in-hand with community involvement. They pay taxes to maintain police and fire departments.
But there are other, harder-to-measure reasons why cities thrive better with children. The laughter of children in a park adds a playful energy that invigorates a community even as it reminds adults of their own childhoods.
Writing for plough.com a few years ago, Tamara Winter put it this way: “Hearing their laughter as they play in the streets — or even their crying during our commutes — reminds us that life isn’t just what happens between 20 and 40, and that we live and work not only for ourselves but for the people who will follow us.”
And cities can expand the minds of children, as well, helping them learn through large libraries or, as Winter said, the routine things of daily life, “using public transportation, finding references to the city’s past, and learning to move alongside other people in every stage of life and from every imaginable background.”
Solutions
The falling birth rate is a conundrum that so far has defied well-intentioned solutions. Governments have tried financial incentives to no avail. A Pew study recently drew a link between higher birth rates and religious observance. Practicing Christians, for example, have a rate of 2.2 births per woman of childbearing age, compared with 1.8 for unaffiliated Americans. A rate of 2.1 or above is considered a replacement rate, meaning it would grow the overall population.
Pew has also measured that religious observance has leveled off in the U.S. and is no longer dropping. But it apparently also is not growing to a level that would affect fertility.
As for cities, planners could make urban landscapes more inviting to families with children by building more parks and equipping them with safe playground amenities. The Wall Street Journal found young families avoiding cities because of worries about “costs, safety and quality of life.”
These are factors city leaders can concentrate on fixing through broader zoning laws, police budgets and even planning decisions that emphasize green spaces and parks.
Allowing cities to become childless has too many consequences to ignore.