A new CDC report shows the U.S. birth rate hovering near a record low. If the patterns of 2024 persist, American women will have an average of 1.6 children in their lifetimes. That’s a very slight increase from the nadir of 2023. The major driver of the trend of reduced fertility is that women under 30 are not having babies at anything like their historic rates.

From 2000 to 2007, American fertility experienced a modest increase above replacement level, peaking in 2007 with a “mini baby boom” largely driven by foreign-born Hispanic women. A sustained decline then coincided with the onset of the financial crisis. After the Great Recession, fertility rates continued to fall and have remained below replacement level.

This trend is starting to reshape our institutions. America’s colleges have 100,000 fewer potential freshmen than last year. The number will fall by another 400,000 in three years.

These numbers, replicated throughout the developed world and much of the rest of it, call into question the sustainability of our cultures and nations: of modern life itself. Risks to nations’ GDP, pension finances, and military strength are obvious; the effects on their creativity and vitality are less measurable but no less real. The compounding effect of lower fertility over generations means that we can already expect the future to be lonelier for many people, who have much smaller and thinner family trees. The increasing suicide rates of the elderly in rapidly aging Japan and South Korea are an ominous sign. Clearly, the normal course of human life and the passing of generations benefit the entire human family.

It is hard to think of a single major social trend that isn’t anti-fertility: Overall marriage rates are falling, while women are getting married later. Moving more and more socialization from real life into social media reduces the opportunity for people to have real social interactions.

A glib answer to the problem is increased immigration. But tolerance for immigration understandably decreases as birth rates decline. Nor would it remedy the way that modern life seems designed to frustrate people’s desire to have thriving families.

The Trump administration is entertaining a variety of other possible solutions that vary in appeal and plausibility. During the campaign, Trump promised to make in vitro fertilization more accessible. On moral grounds, we prefer the advancement of methods that do not involve the creation of “surplus” human lives. IVF may also do less than proponents think to raise birth rates, as its availability may encourage women to delay childbearing further.

Better ideas would make life more affordable for all families. Housing deregulation, while not mostly a federal matter, would reduce one of the main costs that weigh on the minds of young people considering starting or expanding their families. (It would also create jobs, particularly for young men without college degrees, which would improve their marriageability.)

An expanded child tax credit — currently $2,000 per child, it would need to be increased to $2,500 to keep up with inflation since the start of Trump’s first term — would also improve families’ finances, even if it would not by itself return us to replacement level. Similar proposals for a “baby bonus” of $5,000 would help with the up-front costs of children, though the financing details are important.

But the drop in birth rates and the loss of civilizational confidence, which is both its cause and effect, require more than improved government policies. It is a problem that demands the urgent attention of our artists, our intellectuals, and our pastors. The birth dearth has its economic dimensions, but it is ultimately a cultural and even spiritual sickness.