Hungary’s fertility rate dropped to a record low in 2024 despite its best efforts to reverse the birth dearth through economic incentives. Those advocating for similar policies in the United States could learn from Hungary’s unsuccessful pro-natal programs, which have a track record of negligible results everywhere they have been implemented.
Nordic countries have the most generous family policies in the world, yet fewer children are born there almost every year. Even in socially conservative Poland, where the “Family 500+” program is widely popular, the fertility rate has declined to its lowest level since World War II in 2023.
A Lancet study projects that sub-replacement fertility will occur in 95 percent of countries by 2100, and that pro-natal policies will increase fertility rates by just 0.2 (the required rate to sustain a population is 2.1).
The common narrative justifying these policy proposals is that raising children has become unaffordable. But if men and women worldwide are forgoing child-rearing due to financial concerns, the expected outcome of pro-natal incentives would be notable increases in fertility. The ineffectiveness of these programs suggests an alternative explanation: Raising the next generation isn’t a main priority of 21st-century adults.
Polls
The U.S. doesn’t have an explicit pro-natal policy, but a Pew Research Center poll indicates that its outcome would likely be negligible. A majority (57 percent) of U.S. adults under 50 who never want to have children say “they just don’t want to” is a major reason. The next most popular excuse is “they want to focus on other things.” Only 36 percent say affordability is a top concern. One-fifth admit they “really don’t like children.”
These aren’t the views of a fringe, anti-natal minority. Nearly half (47 percent) of childless adults under 50 say it’s unlikely they will ever have kids, up 10 percent from 2018.
Child-rearing costs aren’t dissuading Americans from reproducing — they just seemingly prefer to spend their income on travel, sports betting, Netflix, and Gucci bags than on diapers and playpens. As a Journal of Economic Perspectives study concluded, the declining fertility rate in the U.S. is driven by “shifting preferences,” not economic conditions.
Flawed Explanations
Literacy, improvements in health, industrialization, urbanization, contraception, and women’s increased access to higher education and labor markets are often cited as broader factors precipitating downward trends in fertility. But this explanation is becoming increasingly insufficient because birth rates are dropping worldwide in rich and poor countries alike. Myanmar and Nepal, which are designated by the United Nations (U.N.) as “Least Developed Countries” (LDCs), are both experiencing sub-replacement fertility.
Israel, meanwhile, ranks “very high” in the U.N.’s Human Development Index and exceeds the U.S. in female labor force participation. But Israel maintains a commendable fertility rate of 2.9.
This is a result of Jewish cultural values, which prize marriage and child-rearing, especially among Ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose fertility rate is more than double the national average. But even secular, native-born Jewish women in Israel say the ideal family consists of three children, whereas European women view two children as ideal.
Israel’s tense national security environment can’t entirely explain its high fecundity. The Ultra-Orthodox Jewish fertility rate is nearly identical in both Israel and the U.S., suggesting that culture and religion are important in propelling Jewish natalism.
According to economist Lant Pritchett, the decisive factor that determines a country’s fertility is the desired number of children women say they want to have. Where fertility is high, women want many children; where it is low, women want fewer. Cultural customs and social norms, not government incentives, appear to strongly influence reproductive patterns.
So why do women worldwide suddenly desire smaller families? Demographers and economists can only speculate as the global fertility crisis worsens and low birth rates become irreversible in many countries, such as South Korea (0.7) or even China, approaching 1.0.
Depopulation Agenda
Could the post-war global depopulation agenda of the U.N. Population Fund and numerous international nongovernmental organizations — the Population Council, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Club of Rome, etc. — have contributed to the baby dearth by incessantly promoting neo-Malthusian and anti-natal ideology worldwide?
Overpopulation anxieties remain widespread globally, even as fertility rates plummet, and nearly 40 percent of young people say they are hesitant to have children due to climate change.
Humanity is woefully unprepared for the specter of depopulation later this century, especially central European and Asian countries that refuse migrants to temporarily offset low birth rates. The current baby bust may result in serious economic, political, and social consequences as the working-age population shrinks and nations experience dwindling resources to provide health care, pensions, and other services to the elderly.
Affluence and Growth
Demographer Nicholas Eberstadt has outlined how prolonged affluence is not incompatible with depopulation, but an aging society places renewed emphasis on the importance of economic freedom.
Sustained growth amid demographic decline will require a less burdensome tax and regulatory environment, lower barriers to trade and investment, and ample opportunity for knowledge creation, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
In the 14th century, the Black Death wiped out almost one-third of Europe’s population. Nearly 700 years later, we do not face the peril of a deadly pathogen, but a malady in the human heart, which often no longer wishes to love and nourish posterity.
Such was the blight of ancient Greece in the 2nd century B.C. According to Polybius, decadent lifestyles that prioritized money and pleasure over marriage and child-rearing — in addition to the widespread practice of infanticide — contributed to depopulation and the collapse of Greek civilization.
A similar fate in our time will not be circumvented through public policy, but only through a revival of pro-natal social norms and a culture that celebrates and cherishes life.