We should take no pleasure in the left’s misfortune when the population crisis will have consequences for us all.
L ast week, Dan McLaughlin shared some news that’s bound to inspire conservative schadenfreude. It’s been widely reported that America’s birth rate has fallen to a historic low in recent years. Fewer than 1.6 children were born per woman in 2024, a far cry from the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a robust population without immigration. But according to John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times, birth rates have declined far more steeply among progressive Americans than conservatives.
In his analysis of Burn-Murdoch’s article, Dan writes that in the 1970s, progressives were “just below conservatives around 2.7 children per family.” Now, the birth rate for progressives has fallen below 1.8, while the birth rate for conservatives has experienced a less steep decline to 2.4. “The irony of ‘great replacement’ theories,” Dan concludes, “is that the people progressives are scrambling to replace are themselves.”
This is correct, of course. But we should take no pleasure in the left’s misfortune when the population crisis will have consequences for us all. In the days since Dan’s post, further data have emerged that show that the U.S. could experience negative population growth for the first time ever this year as the birth rate and immigration levels simultaneously plummet. In a lengthy essay on Substack, Derek Thompson examines these statistics. He writes:
Last year, births outnumbered deaths by 519,000 people. That means any decline in net immigration in excess of half a million could push the U.S. into population decline. A recent analysis of Census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the US foreign-born population fell for the first time in decades by more than one million. While some economists have questioned the report, a separate analysis by the American Enterprise Institute predicted that net migration in 2025 could be as low as negative 525,000.
Thompson’s article is worth reading in full. But he concentrates on the Trump administration’s efforts to curb immigration without sufficiently addressing the more fundamental problem: America needs more people, and immigration is an important aspect of growth. But strong families, high birth rates, and a culture that celebrates these things are the key to sustaining a flourishing population. Importing more people from abroad is of secondary importance to reversing the birth dearth at home.
As the population ages, the workforce will shrink and the economy will contract. Welfare programs and infrastructure will be strained as tax revenues fall. With fewer people alive to innovate and imagine, America will become less dynamic. And as young people eschew sex, marriage, and community engagements to instead live isolated lives with only AI programs and virtual friends for company, the social fabric will continue to erode. The fertility crisis, more than any other social issue, urgently demands serious political engagement. Yet our political parties seem unwilling to take it seriously.
President Trump has proclaimed himself the “fertilization president,” and his administration has explored various proposals for stimulating the birth rate. So far, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has introduced “Trump Accounts,” which provide newborn children with a $1,000 investment fund. Other reported ideas include a plan to reserve 30 percent of all Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and a program for educating women about ovulation and their menstrual cycles. But these proposals are too narrow in focus to yield any significant change in American behavior, and there’s little precedent for their success.
In other countries with spiraling birth rates, similar policies have failed to encourage births. Japan has become the world’s foremost example of a nation crippled by population decline, and its government has spent decades attempting to address the crisis. Measures such as paid family leave, subsidized childcare, and extensive cash allowances have all been implemented to negligible results. This year, Japan’s birth rate has reached a new low. Just 339,280 babies were born between January and June, a decrease of 3.1 percent from the previous year. The situation is similar in Taiwan and Singapore, which have unsuccessfully attempted to boost fertility with generous cash incentives. The birth rate in both countries has never been lower.
The Republican Party doesn’t need to just develop better ideas — it needs to find better advocates for the pro-natalist cause. As the father of at least 14 children, Elon Musk has become perhaps America’s most prominent voice for increasing the birth rate, but his popularity has plunged in recent months. JD Vance is similarly vocal about the need for more babies, and his popularity is similarly poor outside of the MAGA movement.
If the Democratic Party had any sense, it would exploit the GOP’s image problem and assert its own vision of a thriving American future. Even as the birth rate has fallen, Gallup polls have consistently shown that Americans still consider two or more children to be the ideal family size. There remains a powerful appetite in this country for family formation and the fulfillment it brings. By combining pro-natalist rhetoric with a clear agenda for growth, Democrats could assert themselves as the party of families and those who wish to build them. Instead, they have been too consumed by outrage to do anything of the sort.
When the Trump administration’s plans for encouraging births first became known, the House Democratic Women’s Caucus responded with a scornful letter. Amid obligatory references to authoritarianism and The Handmaid’s Tale, it offered many of the same policy proposals for supporting families that have failed to drive births elsewhere. Still, this is the closest Democrats have even come to seriously acknowledging the threat posed by falling birth rates. Given that figures ranging from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Kamala Harris have indulged the ludicrous notion that having children might be immoral in the time of climate change, this is not surprising.
By taking the population crisis seriously, both parties would be serving America’s existential interest. But they’d also be ensuring their own political longevity. The Republican Party has enjoyed a notable “fertility advantage” in the last two presidential elections. Conservative women generally have more children, and counties with higher birth rates were more likely to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024. In 2023, red states had the highest fertility rates in America. Analyzing this trend, Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies observes that the “family friendly culture of many red states also seems more likely to turn the hearts and minds of young adults to marriage.” If the GOP can encourage more Americans to have children, it will concomitantly draw more Americans toward Republican politics.
The Democratic Party should be equally concerned with encouraging births and appealing to families if it wishes to endure at all. Just as parents are more likely to be Republicans, childless and unmarried Americans are more likely to be Democrats. Unmarried women in particular are three times more likely to associate with the Democratic Party than with the Republican Party, according to data from the Pew Research Center. But childless groups obviously cannot perpetuate themselves. As they decline, so will the Democratic Party.
Public policy alone won’t solve the birth dearth. Convincing more Americans to have children will require our institutions, communities, and pop culture products to embrace deeper pro-natal sentiment. Our alarming trends toward loneliness, sexlessness, and disconnection will need to be reversed. Young people in particular will need to be drawn out of their atomized virtual existences and inspired to once again take part in real-world relationships. Politicians can’t directly cause such cultural transformation, but they can support it through their rhetoric and the agendas they pursue. Both parties have failed to sufficiently recognize the population crisis. The time to take it seriously is now, before America irretrievably follows the path of self-extinction.