Record-low birth rates among American women and an overall decrease in the rate of growth among the world's population has become a hot topic this election cycle—mostly among conservative lawmakers and supporters—as more politicians look to incentivize reproduction with tax benefits, cash payments and federal funding for costly fertility treatments.
A newborn baby boy at Emerson Hospital in Massachusetts.
Pronatalist advocates who are dedicated to boosting birth rates include Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, conservative billionaire Elon Musk, several congressional lawmakers and other conservative voices.
Vance is among the most vocal about birth rates and has repeatedly warned that lower fertility rates threaten the solvency of Social Security, has proposed $5,000-per-child tax credits and has questioned the morality of people without children, suggesting they don't have a "direct stake" in the future of the country and describing a society without enough babies as “pretty icky and pretty gross.”
Vance has long made family formation and values a policy priority, has said Democratic leaders are "childless cat ladies" and said the push for more babies is not just because they are “economically useful” but because “children are good, and we believe children are good because we are not sociopaths.”
Earlier this year, former President Donald Trump said he would support public funding for in vitro fertilization—through which about 2% of American babies are born per year—or mandate it be covered by insurance, which could broaden the use of procedures that can currently cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Billionaire Elon Musk has called a collapsing birth rate the "biggest danger civilization faces by far" and has for years spoken on the issue, most recently warning Wednesday that the decline "will lead to mass extinction of entire nations."
Conservative think tanks like American Compass and the Heritage Foundation, now known for his leading role in Project 2025, have also denounced lower fertility rates—a 2017 Heritage Foundation report, for which Vance wrote the introduction, included a piece criticizing women for "spending a large portion of their most fertile years building their careers" and called for the end of "high-tech pregnancies."
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“There’s no question the discussion around family life, childbearing and pronatalism has gotten a lot more popular and gotten media attention because of JD Vance,” Brad Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, told the Associated Press.
The total fertility rate in the United States fell to 1.62 births per woman last year, a 2% decline from the year before and the lowest recorded rate since at least the 1930s. Reasons for the declining birthrate are varied and plentiful—women are getting married later and pushing off having children as they pursue careers and higher education; the rising cost of living has impacted the economic realities of starting a family; and the U.S. lacks affordable child care and universal paid family leave policies, to name a few. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported policies that encourage family growth—Republican senators have drafted a plan for monthly cash benefits for working families and Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed a $6,000 tax credit to parents of newborns, for example—though conservatives tend to be more vocal about the goal of boosting birth rates. Economists have warned that a declining birth rate, and aging population, could spell disaster for the nation’s Social Security program—without enough young, working people to counterbalance the number of Social Security dependents, the existing system isn’t sustainable. The same is true of other economic institutions that need to continue to replace retiring workers with those of the next generations. Experts also say that a low birth rate demonstrates an overall decline in American stability—people aren't expressing a desire to have fewer children, research shows, but they are more worried about the economic and social impacts that they are excited to start a family.
The United States isn’t the only developed nation experiencing a decline in birth rates, and it’s not the only one to be encouraging reproduction at the government level. France in 2023 had the lowest number of babies born in the country since 1946; the Japanese government has described the situation "critical" after years of a declining birth rates; and Italy's birth rate has declined more than 34% since 2008. Each country has implemented new policies to address the situation, including an Italian parental leave that can be taken until a child is six years old and Japan extending public insurance coverage to maternity expenses. Hungary's birth rate, once the lowest in the European Union, has started to increase over the last decade as the country implements policies like exempting women who have more than three children from income tax providing home buying and building subsidies that increase based on their marital status and the number of children per household.
JD Vance has long been on a quest to encourage more births in the United States (Associated Press)
How America’s Baby Bust Became an Election Issue (Wall Street Journal)
Election 2024: The Economic Reality Of Vance’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ (Forbes)
JD Vance Praised Report By Project 2025 Group Denouncing Abortion And IVF: What To Know (Forbes)