Declining US Birthrate Prompts Grim Warnings From Economists—Here’s What They Say

The declining birth rates in the United States will have a catastrophic impact on the economy in the near future if it has not already, analysts claim.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the birth rate in the US dropped by nearly 23% between 2007 and 2022, according to Axios. Although some states had a slower drop in birth rates than others, no state recorded an uptick.

Detrimental Economic Impact

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"The US birth rate is steeply declining, mimicking the patterns of other developed nations worldwide, causing the global population to stop growing sometime this century," said Bradley Schurman, an expert on demographic change, in an interview with Fox News.

Schurman added that the birthrate in the US and other industrialized countries has fallen below the replacement rate in recent years. This means that we are not even having enough babies to keep our current numbers up, much alone adding to them. He said deaths now exceed births in 75% of American counties and 50% of the states.

Brad Wilcox, a senior scholar at the Institute for Family Studies, has speculated that we may already be experiencing repercussions.

He explained that when birth rates fall below replacement levels, society suffers from a lack of tax revenue to fund social programs. This also means the closure of schools and a decline in college enrollments.

"We're already seeing low fertility fallout hitting schools and colleges," Wilcox told the outlet. "But it will have big consequences for the economy as well, given that there will be relatively fewer workers and consumers, and less entrepreneurial activity, as the population of young adults in America falls across much of the nation."

Result of Postponed Weddings

Lyman Stone, the chief information officer of Demographic Intelligence, said that even though the drop in marital fertility rates has not been as severe, these wedded couples are waiting longer to have children. He claimed that postponed or delayed marriages were the simplest compositional element contributing to declining birthrates.

The onset of earning potential is increasingly delayed, so the married couples' goals are postponed. They get married, settle down, and build up some funds later in life. The capacity to have a kid is a type of biological limitation, but all these other things and issues come later.

Stone pointed out that when individuals finally decide they are emotionally and financially stable enough to have a family, it is often too late.

Stone suggested several easy measures that legislators should take note of to support marriage and childbearing, recognizing the rising preference for bigger families.

When an individual loses a lot of benefits, it is highly impracticable for you to marry another working person. Stone thinks this issue must be resolved. He said that reducing barriers to marriage and lowering housing prices via rapid construction of new homes would significantly impact enabling individuals to have families.