LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
The U.S., like many postindustrial nations, is facing falling birth rates. Countries such as Japan, Singapore and Korea have tried paying couples to have more children. Some offer free childcare, subsidized housing for families, and others have even engaged in matchmaking with little luck. But if this trend continues, the worry is that there will be fewer young people to support a growing number of old people. Here's President Trump in 2023.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom. How does that sound? That sounds pretty. I want a baby boom.
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FRAYER: And the White House is entertaining a variety of policy proposals from pronatalist groups to reverse this trend. Lyman Stone has been studying this issue for years and is a prominent figure in that movement. He's the director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, and he joins us now. Thanks so much for being here.
LYMAN STONE: It's great to be with you.
FRAYER: So I guess just first give us a definition of pronatalism. I think we might know what it is but maybe not know that word.
STONE: Yeah, it literally just means in favor of births or more births. So if you're a person who thinks that it's not a good thing that U.S. fertility rates have fallen by 25% in the last 15 years, if you're a person that thinks it would be good if births were higher, then you are a pronatalist.
FRAYER: The worry is that it will lead to fewer young people supporting an economy of no workers and mostly older folks - retirees. And that's expensive?
STONE: To be honest, I don't think that's actually the biggest problem with falling fertility. I think the biggest problem with falling fertility is we know from decades of high quality surveys that American women, on average, want to have about 2.2 to 2.3 kids. And yet they're only going to have 1.6. The average woman is going to be missing half a child, or rather, we could say every other woman is going to be missing a child.
FRAYER: And so what are the best ways to reverse this decline?
STONE: Well, most of the decline is driven by one factor, and that is declining marriage. It's just that people are getting married later and getting married less at all. So we need to be thinking about, yes, the cost of childbearing. Things like a child tax credit are useful, but we also need to think about why people aren't marrying. And a big factor is housing. If people can't afford a house, they're less likely to get married. And so we need to be thinking about making housing more affordable by building more of the types of houses that people want to start a family in. That means not just small apartments.
FRAYER: What do you think about the ideas being entertained by the White House? There's a proposal for $5,000 for every new baby born. There are suggestions of government-funded programs to educate women on menstrual cycles so they can better conceive, idea of a national medal of motherhood for those who bear lots of children.
STONE: So look, if the White House wants to try 25 different things, I'm in favor of them trying 25 different things. A bigger child tax credit is the most important place to start. After that, things like baby bonuses, love it. Great. I'm all in favor. You know, other things - providing fertility awareness, education - which I should note is not just about menstrual cycles - right? - because it turns out a lot of fertility delay is because people are badly educated about how to make babies. Our sex ed is all about how not to make babies, and we don't really tell people how to make babies when the time comes that they want to.
FRAYER: Immigrants tend to have a higher birth rate. Is that not just, like, a really good answer to your concerns?
STONE: It doesn't matter how many immigrants come into the country. If the people who are here - whether they're immigrants or natives, doesn't matter - if they're still having half a kid less than they say they want, that's still a problem, right? So look, I'm all in favor of a higher rate of legal, regulated immigration. It just is totally irrelevant for the question of family formation.
FRAYER: This movement to increase the birth rate attracts people from really, like, all over the ideological spectrum, including some people who've been, you know, labeled extreme. There's been support from white supremacist groups for, you know, white women to have children. So my question is, is there some baggage here? Does any of that bother you?
STONE: Look, a couple weeks ago, I spoke at the natalism conference, and there were speakers there that - I think The Guardian referred to some of them as far-right white supremacists. That is so antithetical to everything I believe. And then a couple weeks after that, I was presenting papers at the Population Association of America, big demography conference. And there were a lot of people at that conference who believe that fetuses aren't people and so it's OK to kill them. I think those are both bad views.
But I also say if one were to go and, like, talk to a bunch of white supremacists, what one would actually find is that they tend to complain about high birth rates. Most white supremacists are not out there saying, let's have a bigger child tax credit. Why? - because they worry that it will create dysgenic fertility, that is, it will subsidize breeding by people they see as unfit. People who have these really, like, hardcore racist beliefs - they're not pronatalists. They don't support any of these pronatal policies.
FRAYER: What do you say to young people who are really concerned about overpopulation, and that's why they're not having children?
STONE: I have three kids, and my fourth is going to be born in October. And the most terrifying thing to me is the idea that the world that I am going to leave them is going to be so deteriorated that the inheritance I give to them is not one of honor and of something they can be proud of and of a world full of joy, but of one of suffering and loss. So in climate change and beyond climate change - things like deforestation, accumulation of various pollutants, all these things - these are some of the most credible threats to my ability to provide a good life for my children in the long run. And so I think we absolutely have to tackle this.
FRAYER: That's Lyman Stone, director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. Thank you so much.
STONE: It's good to be with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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