A version of this news analysis originally appeared in the Inside Politics newsletter, out Fridays. Sign up here to get it first to your inbox.
The Republican Party has long been against abortion.
But in the last few years, some conservatives have supplemented that message with another: The country’s dropping fertility rate is a national crisis.
A nation needs 2.1 births per woman to keep its population steady, assuming there’s no immigration. (The reason it’s slightly more than two is because some people die young or don’t have children.)
But the U.S. has been on a downward slide, going from 2.12 births per woman in 2007 to 1.62 in 2023 — the lowest ever recorded.
Other countries have lower fertility rates, such as Japan, South Korea, Italy and Spain. No developed country except Israel has a fertility rate above replacement level.
This newsletter won’t attempt to answer why that is. It will just speculate on what’s coming politically.
Trump confidant Elon Musk believes declining birth rates are a threat to humanity, just as many progressives believe the same about climate change.
At last month’s March for Life rally, Vice President JD Vance didn’t mention fertility rates specifically. But his message tip-toed there, moving away from defining abortion as a moral failing, but as being detrimental to the future: “Our society has failed to recognize the obligation that one generation has to another is a core part of living in a society to begin with. So let me say, very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America.”
The Washington Post last week profiled a pronatalist couple in Pennsylvania who want America to have more children.
According to the story, they believe “a large family isn’t just a personal preference; as pronatalists, they believe that bearing as many children as possible is what’s necessary to avoid an apocalyptic future.”
The birth and marriage memo
Then came a Jan. 29 memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation about how it plans to award funding for highways, airports and transit.
To “strengthen American families,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the DOT would “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”
There are legitimate questions about whether that makes any sense. After all, a city can have a low birth rate and still be fast-growing and in need of transportation improvements.
But some conservatives liked the idea.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted on social media that it was a “fantastic move by @SeanDuffyWI to prioritize DOT funding for communities with more families,” he wrote. “This is exactly the kind of pro-family policy we need to put children, parents, and marriage back at the center of politics. It’s time to Make America Kid-Friendly Again.”
The Heritage Foundation, of course, wrote Project 2025 — a roadmap for how it believes a second Trump term should unfold.
It calls for further restrictions on abortion rights, along with rolling back provisions that make many forms of birth control free.
It also calls for the government to treat the American family as it does the labor market, releasing monthly statistics on marriage and fertility rates; the share of children living with both biological parents; and the cost of a standard basket of middle-class household essentials.
So what does this all mean?
Will more federal agencies seek to tie funding marriage and birth rates?
Is the talk about fertility and replacement rate just a push for more restrictions on abortion?
Vance, who is anti-abortion rights, has called on the government to expand the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $5,000 per child. Heritage called for Congress to incentivize onsite child care.
Progressives will not be on board with any fertility policy that rolls back abortion rights, likely keeping the issue of fertility squarely in the conservative’s court.
And to many women (and men), the idea of a monthly news report on fertility, or a city touting a higher birth rate to build a light-rail line is … icky.
It’s unlikely Democrats and Republicans can find common ground on the issue. Charlotte’s experience with marriage is a good example.
When Raj Chetty’s study last decade found Charlotte was 50th out of 50 U.S. cities for economic mobility, it set off a panic among civic leaders. Hands were wrung. Task forces were formed.
They focused on things like improving early childhood education and building more affordable housing — even though there was no real link in the Chetty study between the cost of housing and mobility.
But the Chetty report said one of the biggest predictors of economic mobility is marriage. After all, a household with two people earning a paycheck is going to do much better than a household with one earner.
And Charlotte had one of the nation’s lowest rates of marriage.
But in the aftermath of Chetty, Charlotte leaders ignored the issue. It was too sensitive politically.
