10 Reasons the Birth Rate Drop Could Be Irreversible

Over the past 70 years, the global birth rate has dropped from roughly five children per woman in 1950 to 2.2, and 2.1 is considered the replacement level for a continuing population. In countries such as Serbia, the birth rate was 1.1 in 2023 and continued to drop in 2024. Meanwhile, in African nations such as Chad, the average woman has seven children.

There are a number of rich and influential celebrities, such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who have sounded the alarm about this situation. There are whole movements, such as Quiverfull and the Natal Conference, devoted to reversing this trend and jacking birth rates back up. Evidence indicates that the effort will be, pardon the expression, fruitless. As many of the entries on this list will indicate, it’s a movement that is ill-served by its adherents.

Related: 10 Victims Whose Parents Never Gave Up

10 Abortion Bans Aren’t Making Up the Difference

It’s unquestionably true that since the Dobbs ruling, which took away federal protections for abortion rights in more conservative states, birth rates in those states have risen. Texas, for instance, saw a 16,000 increase from 2021 to 2022, of which about 84% were Latino/Hispanic teens. That certainly sounds like it will solve the problem, regardless of how someone feels about bodily autonomy or quality of life for parents.

As of 2024, though, it hasn’t. Even in South Dakota, the state with the highest percentage increase, in 2022, it was still 2.0, which was just shy of the replacement level. Part of this can be accounted for in the fact that even with abortion bans in place, many demographics are still seeing net birth rate drops.

Considering Texas again, the same year that Hispanic teen births went up 13,000 and 5% overall, white female births went down 0.2%, and black births 0.6%. Indeed, white teen pregnancies dropped 5%. The birth rate would have sunk much lower below replacement level without Roe V Wade being overturned (the California birth rate went down 20,000 in California in 2022, for example), but so far, the targets have not been reached.^[1]

9 Prohibitively Expensive or Dangerous Birth Process

The reader probably doesn’t need to be told how unaffordable many basic healthcare costs are getting in a number of countries. In light of the nature of the widespread birth crisis, certain allowances should be made to incentivize births. Instead, birth costs have risen so that, on average, an uninsured patient will be charged $18,865 as of January 2024.

For those who have insurance, the average cost is about $2,655. That’s if the birth is an uncomplicated vaginal procedure. If a caesarian section is required (and it is in about 30% of cases), then the price goes up to $25,820 for the uninsured and $3,200(9b) with insurance. This is in a context where, in the United States of America, 63% of employees report that they cannot afford a $500 emergency.

Traditionalists might recommend opting for a home delivery to cut down on the expenses, which is valid in a strictly financial sense. If an expecting parent hires a midwife, the services are likely to be covered by many insurance providers. However, these services are still expensive themselves: A $6,000 bill for the uninsured is typical. The financially downtrodden should know that only 21 states cover home deliveries through Medicaid.

All of this is disregarding the single greatest problem with home delivery: It is twice as likely to result in the death of the newborn. So it is little wonder that 37% of others attempting home delivery end up going to a hospital, adding thousands to their medical bill. Judging single women or couples for hesitating to go forward with such a dangerous, expensive procedure is simply absurd.^[2]

8 Birth Defect Rates Rising

There are regions experiencing as high as 50% increases in rates of birth defects, such as the United Kingdom from the nineties to the aughts. These defects include cleft lip, born with intestines outside the body, fatal heart flaws, etc. At present, one in sixteen children can be expected to be born with a significant birth abnormality. In America, the rate rose between 2005 and 2022 at roughly 10.7% per year, going from about 1% of births to 2.9%. This is a disconcerting trend for a nation where every state is already below replacement level.

This is absolutely not to say that persons born with severe birth defects do not deserve to live. However, they remain more likely to die in infancy. The extra surgeries often mean more and much greater expenses for an already very costly procedure, even for those very well-insured. Those are only the short-term problems.^[3]

7 Pollution Lowering Fertility

Multiple studies are finding that women who live in more heavily polluted areas are conceiving significantly less often, despite their best efforts. A survey of 18,000 couples in China found that those who lived in dense urban areas were 20% less capable of conceiving after one year of trying.

In America, a 2019 study of 632 women by the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Clinic found that women in environments with high concentrations of fine particulate matter in the air, which is typical in urban areas, lost their eggs and were rendered infertile earlier in life. For those who tried IVF instead, a study published in the periodical Human Reproduction in 2024 found that in neighborhoods with high levels of pollution, IVF conception failed 38%(7c) more often.

Men are also deeply susceptible to potency damage from pollution. Hagai Levine from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported in 2022 that the minimum threshold before low sperm count led to a decrease in fertility was under roughly 40 million per milliliter. Levine went on to report that between 1973 and 2018, global average sperm counts went from 104 million to 49 million per milliliter.

In 2000, the rate began dropping roughly 2.6% annually. A study published in Nature in 2022 found that fully 7% of men have been infertile their whole lives. That puts human sperm counts near a threshold where many communities will start to see a significant drop in fertility.^[4]

6 Miscarriage Rates

Miscarriage is a true tragedy but an extremely common one as well. About 20% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage or a stillbirth (stillbirth meaning self-terminating pregnancy after 20 weeks, miscarriage being those that happen earlier). You’d think medical advances, modern stress relief, etc. prevent that. In recent years, they have not. A 2018 New England Journal of Medicine study found that miscarriage rates were increasing by 1% per year. This rate is not at all consistent for the duration of the pregnancy: Stillbirth rates are about 1 in 160.

Unsurprisingly, miscarriages and stillbirths bring with them great emotional turmoil for large numbers of aspiring parents. A 2015 study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology found that 50% of those who experienced one felt guilt, and a quarter felt shame. That is a great emotional risk that many people will have to run if they decide to try for parenthood.^[5]

5 Antinatalism/Childfree Lifestyle Spreading

The notion that not having children is more moral than having them has an inherent, self-defeating obstacle in achieving widespread popularity. Its own adherents are inherently less likely to have children to carry on their values; they’re less likely to acquire the money needed for power and influence, and they’re less likely to feel the militant need to proselytize. None of this has stopped the antinatalist movement from growing in popularity in recent years.

Nor has the popularity of being a child-free woman deteriorated. In 2006, there were nine million childless women of childbearing age in the United States. By 2022, that number had grown to 21.9 million. Over the same time span, the U.S. population hadn’t come anywhere close to doubling (specifically, it went from 298 million to 338 million).

Even if a huge number of these women decide to have children after all, consider that after a woman reaches age 30, her odds of having a miscarriage or stillbirth increase dramatically. The risk reaches about 40-50% higher when a woman reaches age 40. Biological clocks are running faster and more urgently than many people realize.^[6]

4 Lowering Birth Options

With a potential baby bust on the horizon and so many wealthy futurists concerned about it, it would be sensible to make birth centers abundantly available to lower the cost by increasing the supply of providers. That has been almost the opposite of the American approach to the problem. Between 2011 and 2023, 217 hospitals stopped offering birth center services.

Instead of the closures stopping in 2024, the rate actually increased dramatically, so that 26 had stopped providing this service at the time of writing. Gynecological and perinatal services were generally still offered at these hospitals, but many women in rural areas had to have their delivery far out of state or turn to midwives whether they wanted to or not.

The reason for this is a matter of insurance providers. More than 40% of insurance coverage for births is through Medicaid instead of private or employer insurance, and the percentage is even higher in rural areas. Medicaid compensates hospitals less than half as much as private companies do. This is why these hospitals tend to withdraw these services in rural areas, particularly in states where Medicaid coverage is less generous.^[7]

3 One Child Desirability

Of course, tens of millions of women have overcome all these obstacles and reproduced. Many of them have, after experiencing the ordeal of childbirth, settled on having one. This is a perfectly reasonable course of action. A 2022 report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reviewed 188 studies and found that having a single child is where couples find the highest level of satisfaction, having achieved the biological necessity of reproducing without taking on too much time pressure among other concerns.

The issue remains that the replacement level birth rate is 2.1. The rate of women who only have one child during their childbearing years has been growing over the years, doubling from 1976 to 2015 from 11% to 22%. China’s One-Child Policy from 1979 to 2015 provides plenty of warning about how too many couples with one child can be a destabilizing matter for broader society, even though it can be highly desirable for the individual home.^[8]

2 Climate Change

Regardless of whether the changes in the climate are anthropogenic or the result of natural cycles beyond human control, the rate and extremity of climate disasters are alarming, and the severity is increasing. These sorts of concerns are taking their toll on the confidence potential parents have in the future. A July 2024 Pew Research poll said that of people of childbearing age who did not intend to have children, a quarter said that worries about the environment were their primary motivation.

Even if these concerns were to be removed from the heads of everyone, the fact that as of 2023, on average, every three weeks, America suffers $1 billion of damage from climate disasters does not bode well for future economic stability. For further context, in 2022, 32 million people were made refugees by natural disasters, and that was a 41% increase from 2008. If extreme environmental disasters continue, you can expect it to be a boon for the ranks of the antinatalist movement.^[9]

1 Romantic Disinterest

In recent years, people that are not able to get into romantic or sexual relationships have developed a stigma due to acts of violence by individuals dubbed “incels,” such as Tres Genco and Alek Minassian. That has probably left a lot of people less willing to discuss a hard fact about the contemporary state of relationships. Many young people aren’t just failing to enter serious, child-rearing relationships. They’re not even working for romantic relationships in general.

A Pew Research poll released in May 2024 found that only 40% of single people are interested in even a casual relationship, let alone a serious, committed one. The same poll found that among 18-29 year olds, 37% expressed no interest in relationships or dating at all. For those who might think that’s a phase people will grow out of, the fact is that the same poll showed that from ages 30-49, it’s 39% who have no interest in it.

Women were found to be substantially more likely to be uninterested (70% for women over 40 vs. 42% for men). This is likely to grow as time goes on since, reportedly, 44% of the most recent adult generation went their entire teen years without a relationship. That is a large segment of the population that will be less equipped to enter into relationships and contribute to raising the birth rate.^[10]

fact checked by
Darci Heikkinen