It is not the biggest part of President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill,” but it is perhaps the most frustrating. “Money accounts for growth and advancement,” or “MAGA accounts,” were stuck into the tax portion of the reconciliation bill that is still working its way through the House.

Under this new spending program, the Treasury Department would create a savings account and deposit $1,000 in it for every U.S. citizen born. Families would then be able to add $5,000 to the account every year. The money would then grow, tax-deferred, and can’t be withdrawn until the child turns 18. At that point, the money could be withdrawn, with only capital gains taxes being paid, for approved items such as higher education or housing. Wall Street firms are, of course, drooling at the opportunity to manage this money … for a fee, of course.

Recommended Stories

• DOGE loses its bite as Elon Musk steps back from role
• Pope Leo is going to oversee a revival of traditional Catholicism in America
• Paying parents to have babies

If $1,000 for every child born in the United States sounds like a big expense, don’t worry. The program is only funded through 2028, at which point no new accounts will be created. If you have a child in 2029, you are out of luck. The expense is being sold as a “pilot program,” but how exactly are lawmakers supposed to analyze the effectiveness of a program that won’t start paying out until 14 years after the original spending expires?

Additionally, we already know from similar 529 college savings accounts that these programs benefit wealthy families. If you are born to parents who can afford to put aside $5,000 for you into a savings account every year, you do not need, nor do you deserve, government subsidies.

The price tag for the MAGA accounts is $13 billion, but that is $13 billion that could have been spent on better ways to help young people start productive lives today. And if there is one thing the Trump administration should be focused on, it is helping young men and women start families.

In 2007, Americans were successfully projecting themselves into the future with 2.12 births per woman. That number has since dropped to 1.6 children and could go lower, as it has in other countries, such as China, where it is 1.18 births per woman, and South Korea, where it is .78 births per woman.

The decline in births in the U.S. has touched every demographic. Births among Hispanic women have declined the fastest, but the slowdown has affected black, white, and Asian women as well. Women with college degrees, women without college degrees, and women without high school diplomas are all having fewer children.

The biggest drop-off has occurred among women between the ages of 20 and 24, although women through age 35 also saw modest declines. Women over 35 are actually having more children today than they did in 2007, but there simply aren’t enough women in this age bracket having children to make up for the decline in younger women giving birth.

The simple problem is that fewer women are getting married, and when they do, they are getting married later in life. The average age of first marriage for women was 25 in 2007 and has risen to 29 today. As recently as 2007, married women still outnumbered single women 51% to 49%. By 2010, the number of single women matched the number of married women, and the percentage of married women has only continued to fall.

On average, married women have twice the number of children as unmarried women. So, as the percentage of women in their prime childbearing years (20-45) who are married went down from 54% in 2007 to 42% in 2022, the birth rate has tumbled with it. 

The falling birth rate is not being caused by married couples having fewer children. It is being caused by more women never getting married or having children. 

So, any time you see a politician from either party talk about helping young families, the first question you should ask is, “How is this going to help young men and women get married?”

MAGA accounts don’t do that, nor do baby bonuses, child tax credits, parental leave, or free child care. Finland, Norway, and Sweden all offer generous government-funded parental leave programs (68 weeks at 80% pay in Sweden) and government-run child care (completely free for poor families in Finland), yet their fertility rates are 1.25, 1.43, and 1.44, respectively. Building out the Democratic Party’s “care economy” will do nothing to increase the number of young families.

So, if baby bonuses, tax credits, and child care don’t increase birth rates, what does?

Well, research shows that wealthier men are both more likely to be married and have more children than less wealthy men. Looking at wages on a local level from 1980 through 2009, those communities in which men’s wages rose had higher birth rates than communities in which men’s wages did not. Female wage gains had little impact on fertility. Other research shows that in communities in which non-college-educated men have low unemployment rates, non-college-educated women and college-educated women are more likely to be married.

The takeaway is that if we want more women to have more babies, we are going to have to find more men who can step up and be supportive husbands. And if we aren’t raising young men’s wages, then we aren’t helping young people get married, and we aren’t solving the fertility crisis.

There actually are some parts of the “one big, beautiful bill” that will help raise male wages. They are just not in the tax part of it. The House Judiciary Committee included funding in the bill to help the Department of Homeland Security secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants. It is well established that illegal immigration lowers American wages, particularly young male wages. The more illegal immigrants the Trump administration can deport, the more jobs and higher pay are available for young men born here.

But we need to get those men working. The percentage of young, able-bodied men not in the labor force has risen steadily from just 5% in 1980 to 11% today. Fortunately, the Medicaid work requirements passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee will help push these young men into the workforce. 

Most importantly, the House Natural Resources Committee included language in its portion of the bill that will allow developers to pay a fee that would prevent judicial review of any permit issued by the federal government. This is a huge win for male wages.

Under current law, when a federal agency is required to act in any way that might affect the environment, it must go through an environmental review process created by the National Environmental Policy Act. These NEPA reviews can take years and cost millions of dollars, but the reviews themselves are not what end up killing or delaying so many infrastructure projects. It is the citizen suit provision in NEPA that empowers any activist anywhere in the country to sue in federal court and challenge the thoroughness of the environmental review. It is this litigation, and the threat of litigation, that is so harmful.

The House Natural Resources Committee NEPA reforms still require federal agencies to do environmental reviews. Still, if the developer of whatever infrastructure project is being reviewed pays a fee, then activists would be blocked from challenging that review in court. The litigation threat would be nullified. This will greatly boost both the construction and energy industries as more pipelines, powerlines, factories, and homes are built. Both the construction industry (88%) and the energy industry (73%) are overwhelmingly male, meaning boosts to these sectors will predominantly help young men.

In 1975, according to the census, only 25% of men aged 25 to 34 had incomes of less than $30,000 per year, and almost half of them, 48.7%, owned homes. By 2016, the percentage of men aged 25 to 34 making less than $30,000 a year had risen to almost half, 49.7%. 

HOW THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BECAME A GENDER POLARIZATION MACHINE

The news isn’t all bad for men. The percentage of young men making more than $100,000 a year has almost doubled, from 3.3% in 1975 to 7.6% in 2016. But those successful young men can only marry so many women. It is those men at the bottom of the economic ladder who are failing to attract a mate and start a family.

If we want to make the American family great again, it is those young men the Trump administration needs to help. Not enough of the “one big, beautiful bill” does that.