Adults of childbearing age are having fewer children than previous generations, and this is especially true in 2023. US birth rate hits lowest level everWhile the reasons for not getting pregnant vary from person to person, the rising cost of living is a major concern for younger generations.
In fact, childless people under 50 are three times more likely to say they cannot afford to have children than older childless people (36% vs. 12%), the survey found. New Pew Research Center reportSince 2018, the percentage of young Americans who say they are unlikely to have children in the future has increased from 37% to 47% by 2023.
But while money is a factor, it’s not the primary reason cited by people under 50 for not having children. For this demographic, the leading reason is simply not wanting to have children. Pew Research Center surveyed 2,542 childless adults age 50 or older, as well as 770 adults ages 18-49 who don’t have or don’t 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 — is struggling despite theoretically being among the best off financially in the country, and they’ve long said student loans are a major obstacle. luck.
“When I think about starting a family, I don’t even know if I want to do it with student loans still outstanding,” 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 get those, they may be hesitant to have kids either.
“We have pretty stringent requirements: You have to finish school, get a decent job, earn a decent income, find a good partner and live on your own,” said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolinas Population Center at the University of North Carolina. The Washington Post On this phenomenon: “Especially in today’s world, it takes time to achieve that. Some people may feel like they’ll never be good.”
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 unhappy with their lives and the choices they’ve made, and they’re out to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Vance said. Fox News in 2021“What does it mean to turn our country over to people who have no real direct stake in it?”
In addition to a desire to focus on other things, like careers, younger people are much more likely than older people to cite environmental issues as a reason for not having children — 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 most common reason Pew cited for not having children was “not having children.”
