It’s Mother’s Day, and fewer people than ever are having children. In the United States the birth rate has plummeted by nearly 20% since 2007. The beginning of this decade saw the lowest numbers for average births ever recorded, and the downward trend shows no signs of stopping. While the causes of the initial drop were well-understood – rates began to fall rapidly during the Great Recession in the late 2000s – economists and policy makers are puzzled by the continued steady decline. After all, birth rates always drop during a recession, but they also typically rebound as the economy improves. The opposite has happened in the United States. As the economy recovered, birth rates continued to decline to levels much lower than what social scientists predicted. Over a decade later, birth rates have dipped well below the population replacement level and more and more people between the ages of 18 and 55 report a decrease in the desire to have children. Around 49% of adults in this age range are childless, and around half of this childless cohort report having no plans to start a family.

To the casual observer the reasons for falling birth rates and the decrease in desire to have children may seem obvious. Young people are saddled with debt and struggle to gain financial independence, while the cost of raising a child continues to increase. COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on the world’s economic and social structures and may have deterred people from starting families. Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that the looming threat of climate catastrophe and accompanying “climate anxiety” is a major reason why people are not having children. In fact, none of these are real explanations, as recent studies have shown.

Research from the Institute for Family Studies suggests that COVID may have had some effect on people’s decisions not to have children, but rates were already declining well before COVID and would likely have continued to go down anyway had the pandemic never happened (in fact, the drop in births during the pandemic was smaller than expected). A recent study from researchers at the University of Maryland and Wellesley College (published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives) found “little empirical support” for a link between current economic issues and fertility rates. They write that “[a]side from the impact of the Great Recession, which contributed to the decline for the first few years of this period, we are unable to identify a strong link between any specific policies or economic factors and the declining birth rates.” The researchers also studied other measures that have been shown in previous studies to have a causal effect on annual birth rates, such as labor market conditions and reproductive health policy measures. They found that none of these measures has changed “in ways that can account for the drop in the national birth rate since 2007.” Finally, though climate anxiety may be a factor for some young people today as they decide to have children, the connection has not been rigorously studied and any conclusions we can draw are tenuous at best.

If it’s not the economy, social policies, or the pandemic, what else could be causing the birth rate decline? The University of Maryland researchers point to “shifting priorities” among people of childbearing age as a possible driver, arguing that “recent cohorts of young adults have different preferences for having children, aspirations for life, and views about parenting norms that are driving the decline.” With more economic opportunities for women and the evolution of parenting into a more time- and resource-intensive practice, more people are making trade-offs, choosing careers and other interests over having children. There is a limited amount of evidence available, however, and the changes in parenting and in young people’s preferences may only be one of many as-yet-unappreciated contributing factors.

Whatever the causes, we may wonder why this matters. What impact would fewer people really have on the world? Wouldn’t a smaller population be beneficial for the environment? Wouldn’t there be less traffic? Economists and social scientists have long studied the effects of population growth and decline on societies, and the conclusions they draw are not so optimistic. A shrinking, aging population could have drastic consequences for the United States. The University of Maryland researchers write that “a smaller workforce and an aging population would have negative implications for economic productivity and per capita income growth…the combination of a smaller workforce and an aging population puts fiscal pressure on social insurance programs, like Social Security, that rely on tax payments from current workers to pay the benefits of current retirees.” As for a smaller population helping the environment, “[we] are not aware of any evidence…that population declines corresponding to the size of the drop in U.S. fertility would have a meaningful effect on climate outcomes.”

There are more potential negative effects of a shrinking population. David Coleman, a professor of demography at the University of Oxford, predicts a decline in basic services, infrastructure, military strength, and innovation as a result of birth rates dropping below the population replacement level. An elderly population may also suffer from a lack of healthcare. Economic recessions could last longer or even become permanent. The impact of plummeting fertility rates is no doubt far-reaching, affecting nearly every aspect of our societies. The late PD James depicted an extreme version of this in her novel Children of Men (later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film), which takes place in a dystopian world in which women are no longer able to have children. It is a world of social and economic devastation, societal collapse, and perpetual crises. A frightening prospect to be sure, but not an inevitable one. Whatever the cause of declining birth rates, the trend may change. We can only hope so: the alternative is not one worth contemplating.

SAMPAN, published by the nonprofit Asian American Civic Association, is the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England, acting as a bridge between Asian American community organizations and individuals in the Greater Boston area. It is published biweekly and distributed free-of-charge throughout metro Boston; it is also delivered to as far away as Hawaii.