The Case for More Babies on this Labor Day
Vice President JD Vance
On Labor Day Americans get a day off to recognize the many contributions of workers to “America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.” But in the coming years, there may be far too few of us working to call for a celebration. To make Labor Days great again, it seems Americans need to make more babies.
Call this the confession of an erstwhile optimist. In our 2012 book, Douglas Sylva and I said America was exceptional. At the time, while cynicism and social engineering sent European birthrates plummeting, U.S. fertility rates hovered near the replacement rate of 2.1 children per mother. Now at 1.6, America is where Europe was a decade ago and may never recover.
So, when Vice President Vance opened his very first public appearance in office with the words, “I want more babies!” we saw this not just as chumming the waters for the Trump administration’s base but more of a strategic call to arms. None of the plans for an American “Golden Age” can bear fruit if there is no reckoning with the country’s looming demographic crisis. The question is whether Americans will respond. Given the headwinds, all bets are off.
A sobering CBO Report on the U.S. Population Projection for 2025-2055 shows decline in birthrate for the foreseeable future:
The overall population and labor force is not growing much, and this is negative for economic growth, military preparedness, government revenues, educational institutions, risk-taking, capital formation, innovation, and overall economic and cultural flexibility and responsiveness.
Source: Congressional Budget Office, “The Demographic Outlook: 2025-2055,” Jan. 2025
Anyone who claims to know exactly what happened is worthy of suspicion, but data show a fertility rate decline in the wake of the recession of 2008 such that by 2019 it was twenty percent below replacement level. The Covid-19 pandemic seemed to push it down further and from there it did not recover.
Truly worrying is that U.S. institutions keep on spending like its 2012, and refuse to admit the new demographic reality. As an AEI report shows, the Trustees of the Social Security Administration, which has a built-in incentive to produce optimistic forecasts of population growth, woefully overestimate future birthrates, threatening what little faith and resources might be left in America’s pension system:
Clearly a major cultural change has occurred affecting fertility, which CBO is recognizing in its population projections. By contrast, the Trustees’ Reports for Social Security and Medicare, and by extension, the Financial Report for the US Government and long-range budget projections coming from the Office of Management and Budget, which rely on the assumptions of the Trustees, project that the fertility rate will increase from 1.70 in 2025 to 1.90 by 2036. (The Census Bureau, like CBO, also projects a 1.60 rate.)
Source: M. Warshawsky, “Will the US Population Soon Fall?” Nov. 2023
What can be done? As far as foreign spending goes, the Trump administration can try to break the hold that the family planning industrial complex has had on U.S. policy and spending since the end of the Second World War. Findings from DOGE’s deep dive into U.S. foreign aid included ludicrous expenditures. The truth is anything but funny. Programs have resulted in egregious human rights abuses against women and girls.
What can be done at home? As AEI’s Warshawsky noted, “Clearly a major culture change has occurred affecting fertility.” That’s putting it mildly. Many teenage girls have told me they don’t want children. When I ask why they say, “Kids are too much trouble.” (To which I say, “you should know.”)
And that leaves parents with a weighty responsibility for bringing about the culture change that favors families again. After all, it is the family that raises all the workers that ensure “America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.” Plenty has been written on the evils of social media on the culture and the uphill battle for parents. This Labor Day, Americans do well to put pessimism aside. Couples who really want to make future Labor Days happy can spend the time off making a baby, or at least showing the younger generation why a family is more than worth the trouble—it’s the reason behind the celebrations.