Here’s another reason to suspect the baby bust is more of a cultural thing than an economic thing: Atheists are the ones having the fewest babies, even though they have the most money.

Here’s a new way to demonstrate the atheist infecundity:

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To clarify, this chart doesn’t show atheists’ or Latter-day Saints’ fertility rising and falling over time. It shows how atheists and Mormons of different ages respond to the same question, which is, in effect: Do you have a child?

The percentage of adults in charge of a minor child peaks around age 40 because that’s when the last folks have babies, and when the earliest baby-makers start seeing their kids turn 18.

The chart above, by leading religion scholar Ryan Burge, shows that at every age, it’s a minority of atheists who are in charge of a child. So if you select a random atheist adult, you can bet he or she doesn’t have a child.

The opposite extreme is the LDS folks, who have plenty of children, starting at a young age. Compare atheists to LDSers at age 30: Almost 60% of Mormons at age 30 are raising a child, while only 25% of atheists are.

The most common simplistic explanation for the collapse in U.S. birth rates is that raising a kid has become unaffordable. This isn’t 100% false (see my latest piece on housing costs), but it fails to explain so much of the baby bust. For instance, atheists are much richer than Christians.

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Almost half of all atheists (48%) have a six-figure household income, compared to about one fourth (28%) of all Christians. About 29% of Mormons have a six-figure income.

Back in 2022, demographer Lyman Stone found that women who do not attend church (or synagogue, mosque, etc) have a birth rate of about 1.3 babies, while regular church goers have 2.1 babies. In other words, the religious are replacing themselves, while the irreligious, while swimming in cash, are choosing to go extinct.