Adults of childbearing age are having fewer children than previous generations, a trend made even more pronounced by the fact that the U.S. birth rate is expected to hit its lowest level on record in 2023. While people have different reasons for not getting pregnant, the rising cost of living is a major concern for younger generations.
In fact, according to a new Pew Research Center report, childless people under 50 are three times more likely to say they can’t afford to have children than older childless people (36% vs. 12%). Since 2018, the share of young Americans who say they are unlikely to have children by 2023 has increased from 37% to 47%.
But while money is a factor, it’s not the main reason people under 50 don’t have children. For this generation, the No. 1 reason is simply not wanting to have children. Pew Research Center surveyed 2,542 childfree adults over 50 and 770 adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who don’t have or plan to have children.
Of course, young people could change their minds. But the Pew research highlights a major problem facing today’s younger generations. They may be able to secure higher salaries than their parents, but they’re paying much more for housing, child care, health care, and more. That’s why more and more of them are reconsidering having kids. In fact, the Pew report found that majorities of people over 50 and under 50 said not having children made it easier to meet living expenses and save for the future.
Even Henry (high-income but not yet wealthy), which should in theory be among the most economically advantaged in the country, is struggling: Student loan debt is a major obstacle, they previously told Fortune.
“When I think about starting a family, I don’t even know if I want to do it with student loans still to pay,” said a 29-year-old who makes $125,000 a year. “Paying off my own loans and starting to save for my kids’ student loans is not something I want to do.”
Millennials’ financial worries
It’s not hard to connect millennials’ financial woes with why they’re not having children: The oldest generation came of age during the Great Recession, and millennials across the generation are marrying and buying homes later, so many feel like their finances are in a precarious position.
A spouse and a home aren’t necessarily prerequisites for having children, but they are the societal norm, so if millennials (and younger generations today) are struggling to afford them, they may be hesitant to have kids either.
“We have some pretty strict requirements: you have to finish school, get a decent job, have a decent income, be in a good relationship, and live on your own,” Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolinas Population Center at the University of North Carolina, told The Washington Post about the phenomenon. “Especially in this day and age, it takes time to achieve that. Some people may feel like they’ll never be in a good situation.”
The rise in childless adults — or more specifically, childless women — has become a major issue in the presidential election in recent days, with footage resurfacing of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance questioning the fact that Democratic front-runner Kamala Harris has no children of her own. (Harris has two stepchildren with her husband, Douglas Emhoff.)
Democrats, including Harris, “are a bunch of childless catty-cat women who are miserable about their lives and the choices they’ve made, and they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Vance told Fox News in 2021. “What does it mean that we’ve handed our country over to people who have no direct stake in it?”
Younger people are much more likely than older people to cite environmental issues as a reason for not having children, along with a desire to focus on other things, like their careers. In fact, a Pew report found that 26% of people under 50 cited climate change as a reason, compared to just 6% of those over 50. For older groups, the top reason Pew cited for not having children was “we just didn’t have children.”
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