Here's what it takes to encourage Americans to have more babies

Washington Post

2 days ago

An analysis of where Americans keep having babies reveals what works
The Trump administration wants an American baby boom, but so far this ambition has been a bit of a bust. The much-hyped baby bonus — a proposal to give mothers $5,000 after they give birth — ended up becoming a restrictive investment account where funds are inaccessible until children reach 18 years old. Meanwhile, Trump's campaign promise to mandate IVF care appears to be sidelined.
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the United States reached its lowest fertility rate in history in 2024: Every American woman is now estimated to have 1.6 children during their lifetime, much lower than the 2.1 rate needed to keep population at its current level without immigration.
An analysis of birth rates nationally showed two forces are pushing Americans away from having children: a broad cultural shift away from traditional families and a lack of high-quality, affordable child care and housing.
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The financial burden of raising children
A family with two working parents in 2024 needed to increase its income by almost 40 percent, about $26,900 extra per year, to maintain their standard of living after having their first child, according to an analysis of data from the Economic Policy Institute.
Type in the county you live in below to find out how much it would cost in your area:
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In the United States, a family of two would need to increase their income by 39 percent, for a total of $95,300 per year, to raise the first child.
39% increase in income for raising the first child
The annual living cost of a two-adult family
$68,400
$26,900 Raising
two children requires a
67% increase in income
Raising
three children requires a
100% increase in income
Raising
four children requires a
117% increase in income
Source: Family Budget Calculator by the Economic Policy Institute, author's analysis
That's a tall order in the current economy and a stark increase from just a decade ago, when the Agriculture Department estimated that an average American family of two parents needed 24 percent additional income to raise one child.
It matters because birth rates are lower in areas where raising children takes a bigger share of a family's income, as the chart below shows:
Each dot represents one county
Percent of additional income needed to raise one child
Birth rates are available for counties with populations of more than 100,000. Only 580 counties are shown.
Source: Author's analysis of data from CDC and Economic Policy Institute
Policies that lower the financial burden for families — not just once, but consistently throughout a child's life — are key.
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What we can learn from areas of high birth rates
If encouraging Americans to have babies is a genuine policy goal of the Trump administration, it should look around the country to find what works. The birth rate in the U.S. has been declining for the past two decades. But the decline across the country is uneven. Some areas have retained a high birth rate, and in a few, the rate has even increased. If we look at the 10 counties with the highest birth rates, we can draw some preliminary conclusions about what makes a place baby-friendly:
Onslow County, North Carolina — the county that has had the top birth rate across the country in the past five years — exemplifies what subsidized child care can achieve.
Map of Onslow County, North Carolina
NORTH
CAROLINA
Durham
Charlotte
Onslow
County
Wilmington
100 MILES
NORTH
CAROLINA
Durham
Charlotte
Onslow
County
Wilmington
50 MILES
north carolina
Durham
Charlotte
Onslow County
Wilmington
50 MILES
Sitting on the east coast of North Carolina, Onslow resembles an average American place, with a population that is 69 percent White, 11 percent Black and 14 percent Hispanic. But it's cheap to live there: The median home price is about $219,000, and it costs about $20,800 a year to raise a child — both lower than the national average. What brings Onslow to the top of the chart is its large share of military families because of two nearby Marine Corps bases — and the resulting subsidized child care. The state estimated that 46 percent of students in the Onslow County public school system were from a military family in the 2023-2024 school year. School-age children from military families are eligible for federal child care subsidies.
If Onslow illustrates the effect of subsidized child care, the next three counties with the highest birth rates on the chart bring up another equally important factor: culture.
Map of the three top counties
Rockland County
a N.Y.C surburb with the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county
NY
Salt Lake City
New York
UNITED STATES
UT
Dallas
TX
Utah County
The county with the highest proportion of Mormons in the nation
Ector County
Sixty-four percent of Ector County residents are Hispanic.
Source: U.S. Census and Rockland County, and Public Religion Research Institute
Rockland County
an NYC exurb with the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county
NY
Salt Lake City
New York
UNITED STATES
UT
Dallas
TX
Utah County
The county with the highest proportion of Mormons in the nation
Ector County
Sixty-four percent of Ector County residents are Hispanic.
Source: U.S. Census and Rockland County, and Public Religion Research Institute
Rockland County, NY
an NYC exurb with
the largest Jewish
population per capita of
any U.S. county
ny
Salt Lake City
Utah
County
New York City
UT
tx
Dallas
Ector
County
The county with the highest proportion of Mormons in the nation
Sixty-four percent of Ector County residents are Hispanic.
Source: U.S. Census and Rockland County, and Public Religion Research Institute
Rockland County, NY
an NYC exurb with the
largest Jewish population
per capita of any U.S. county
ny
Salt Lake City
Utah
County
New York City
UT
Dallas
Ector
County
Tx
The county with the highest proportion of Mormons in the nation
Sixty-four percent of Ector County residents are Hispanic.
Source: U.S. Census and Rockland County, and Public Religion Research Institute
Rockland County, New York, is a wealthy exurban area with the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county. Ector County, Texas, has a large oil and gas industry presence, and 64 percent of its residents are Hispanic. In Utah County, Utah, seven out of 10 people are Mormon — the highest concentration in the nation.
What do these places have in common? They are all highly religious: 65 percent of the population in Rockland, 50 percent in Ector County and 89 percent in Utah County went to church regularly, according to data from 2020, far above the national average of about 30 percent. Religious people are more likely to have children than the nonreligious. But most Americans do not go to church today. If there's a magic bullet to restore faith in Americans, it might also restore birth rates. But that seems unlikely.
A more realistic approach would be to replicate cultural aspects among religious communities that make it easier to have babies. By culture, I mean a place where parents foster strong family relationships by spending more time with their kids and where children are valued and cared for with the participation of the larger community, so that children growing up in such an environment would themselves aspire to be parents one day.
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How does that look in a secular world? France offers an example. While France has also experienced a fertility decline in the past decade, it has slowed the decline more successfully than peer countries, including the United States. Despite the fact that France is less religious than such neighbors as Spain, Italy or Germany, it has topped the fertility rate among European peers for more than a decade.
France achieved that with policy measures that support families through every stage of a child's growth including up to three years of parental leave and tax credits covering up to 85 percent of the cost of day care or nannies. Public preschools in France are free for kids from 3 to 6 years old. The French government gives monthly support to families with special needs through cash allowances, tax credits and subsidized services until children reach age 20.
The point is not to exactly match the government-sponsored family support in France, but to design policies that foster a culture that puts the values of family first. The right policies can make childbearing more desirable. They can help to change culture and counter the trend in a secular world. It has been done here before: Oklahoma, a solidly red state, started offering universal prekindergarten education to 4-year-olds in 1998. Today, it's one of the states with the highest fertility rates in the country. If Oklahoma could do it 20 years ago, why not the entire country?