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The Trump administration is reportedly fielding ideas for how to increase the declining U.S. birth rate, a longtime priority of White House figures like Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk.
Since 1990 the U.S. total fertility rate has declined from 2.1 births per woman – enough to fully replace the current population – to 1.62 births per woman in 2023, below the replacement level, according to a March report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, part of a larger decline in birth rates in wealthy peer countries.
Experts point to a variety of causes for the trend, including the increased prevalence of dual-income households, cost of living issues, and changing social mores.
While the U.S. birth rate rests between comparable nations — higher than that of Japan, Italy, and China, on par with the UK and Australia, but lower than South Korea — the declining figure is a subject of concern for many. A shrinking population could struggle to invigorate the economy and strain the social safety net, as the population skews increasingly older.
Groups have pitched the administration on a variety of ideas, including a $5,000 “baby bonus” for new mothers, expanded child tax credits, funding menstrual cycle education, and reserving space in federal programs like Fulbright fellowships for people who are married or have children, according to The New York Times.
The motivations behind such ideas are numerous, though many align with the right’s emphasis on the family as the building block of society. Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint that’s informed many administration ideas, opens with a chapter on how to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life,” urging traditional roles for parents.
The convener of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, is reportedly involved in the birth boom discussion with the administration, urging ideas like researching root health and environmental causes of infertility, while expressing reticence over in vitro fertilization, a core cause of the administration. Others at the foundation have pushed for “natural fertility” education on how to prevent unwanted pregnancy without using birth control by using menstrual cycle tracking.
Such ideas have found a willing ear in the administration, which has said it will release a blueprint for how to increase access to in vitro fertilization next month.
Trump has vowed to be the “fertilization president,” while Vance has made a point of appearing at public events with his three children, and once called declining birth rates a “civilizational crisis” driven by “cat lades” on the “childless left.”
Musk frequently posts about the declining birth rate, and has claimed, “The childless have little stake in the future.” He is the father of at least 14 children though at least one of them has publicly criticized him for being a very critical, and absentee parent.
He reportedly wants to populate the world with more babies of “high intelligence” as part of a wider effort to get humans to Mars, according to recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal.
The push could provide a rare window for bipartisan cooperation on women’s and health issues, though it faces considerable political challenges, including a divided Congress, a conservative movement split over issues like in vitro fertilization, and liberals wary of certain wings of the wider natalist movement, which includes everyone from religious conservatives to opponents of same-sex couples and outright eugenicists.
In practice, the administration’s actions have cut a variety of directions on the birth issue.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has directed his agency to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average,” according to a memo obtained earlier this year.
At the same time, the administration’s push to slash federal spending and radically shrink the federal workforce has cut back teams that monitor fertilization issues and analyze health data, while laying off thousands from the Department of Health and Human Services and attempting to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in health research funding.
Critics aslo complain that while the Trump administration and its supporters make abortion increasingly difficult, little is being done to help families or single mothers cope with child-raising amid poverty and a paycheck-to-paycheck existence.
With cost of living a major factor in many couples’ decisions on whether to start a family, the continued economic chaos of the Trump tariffs could also play a role.
Prior to the second Trump term, justices appointed by the Republican in his first outing were the key votes in the 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, a landmark turn in U.S. policy that health experts say has caused expecting mothers to face health risks and death in states that have since moved to restrict forms of reproductive healthcare.
In addition, the dangerous crackdown on doctors for example caring for women suffering miscarriages, which end as many as 20 percent of pregnancies (50 percent for women over 45), has convinced masses of doctors to choose less risky specialties or flee states with threatening conditions for obstetricians and gynecologists, leaving women scrambling to find reproductive health physicians.
