Deciding whether or not to have children is a deeply personal choice for any individual, but a growing resistance in becoming parents now has challenges for society as a whole.
The gross birth rate in the US fell more than half since the 1960s. According to St. Louis’s Fed, sixty years ago, approximately 24 babies were born for 1,000 people; In 2022 this number was 11.
This fall – combined with the fact that the country’s population is living more – is a serious concern for economists who question how economies will work with fewer people available to do the job.
Melinda Mills is a professor of demographics and health of the population at the health department of the population of Nuffield at the University of Oxford. Mills explains: “The low sustained fertility, combined with a longer life expectancy results in the aging of the population.
“This causes tensions in the job market, such as medical assistance for older populations, closing schools, rethinking housing and infrastructure and rethinking social security systems and retirement age.”
The resulting drop in GDP of this aging population can reach 4%, James Pomeroy, HSBC’s global economist, told Business Insider.
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Are Americans having fewer children?
Previously, experts believed that economies would see a postcovid “baby belly”, stimulated by a brief increase in births by 2021.
But data from 2022 and 2023 made it clear that births were returning to the pre-pandemic trend, with couples increasingly choosing a double-income lifestyle (dink) more and more [acrônimo em inglês para “double income, no kids”, ou “dupla renda, sem filhos”, numa tradução livre]as the CDC reported last year that, by 2023, US fertility rates fell to a historic low of 55 births for every 1,000 women aged 15-44.
“In a low fertility scenario, the number of traditional active people can start to fall within 20 years,” Pomeroy wrote in his last note on the subject, although Mills has warned that tension between less births and an older population is already being felt.
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She explained that many countries are already struggling to fill health positions, which previously depended on migrant workers.
“This happened in the UK, for example, where in 2022 about 33% of migrants should work in the health system,” Mills, director of the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, told Fortune.
“This has also caused political tensions, with countries increasingly facing choices related to the maintenance of the workforce and social security systems, while thinking of requalifying or encouraging existing inactive populations in the labor market.”
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For HSBC Pomeroy, this will have concrete efforts in people’s daily lives: “You will have a harder time finding someone to haircut, make your nails, assemble the x-ray machines in the hospital. The big decrease in the number of people… becomes a problem.”
Why is the “millennial” generation having fewer children?
Young people have a lot of reasons not to want children now: expensive day care centers, an inaccessible real estate market, high costs of food and household items, career interruption and the future of the planet.
A study of the July 2024 Pew Research talked with more than 3,000 people who have no children or not planning to have.
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Of those aged 18-49 – which fit predominantly in the Z and “millennial” generations – who said they did not plan to have children, the main reason is simply that they did not want or wanted to focus on other things.
In addition, 38% said they did not want to have children because they were concerned about the state of the world and 36% said they could not afford to raise a child.
Another 26% said they did not want to have children because of environmental concerns and 24% said they would have no children because they did not find the right partner.
One factor that affects birth rates is also the increased power and influence of women on the economy.
Mills explains: “The main reasons are multiple, including changes such as women who get higher education and remain in the labor market, work-family reconciliation, but also housing problems, gender equality and uncertainty for the future.
“The age of the first child is also over 30 years old in many countries for women and even greater for men 32 or older. This also causes biological limitations of fertility.
Is it possible to have a career and a baby?
Another consideration for many Dink couples is the freedom they can enjoy in their careers if they do not have their children’s pressure to support.
The choice of not having children allowed them to have an approach to “The Rose and the Gardener” in their careers – the idea that while one person can grow and take risks, the other remains the stable supporter.
Originally Posted on Fortune.com
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