The Global Fertility Crisis
By: Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, originally published August 4, 2025, Human Life International
In recent years, birth rates all over the globe have been falling precipitously. The drop in birth rates has been especially dramatic in developed nations, many of which fell far below replacement birth rates decades ago.
During this time, however, there is one developed nation that conspicuously resisted the trend. In the United States, fertility rates continued to hover near the replacement level throughout the 90s and early 2000s.
Sadly, in recent years this has changed…dramatically.
According to the latest data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2023 fertility rates in the U.S. fell to the all-time low of 1.6 children born per woman, which is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to sustain a population. Countries with fertility rates below this gradually experience an overall older demographic and a decrease in population size over time.
And as reported in a new study, the traditionally held replacement-level birth rate of 2.1 may actually be too low. Because of variations in fertility, mortality, lifestyles, and that many adults choose not to welcome children, human populations may need a fertility rate of at least 2.7 children per woman to reliably avoid population decline, extinction.
Global Birth Rates Are Falling
As you can see on this graph, fertility rates peaked in the U.S. in the late 1950s, fell steeply throughout the 1960s and early 1970s (when contraception and abortion became widely available), before rising in the 1980s and 90s.
Beginning in 2008, however, the fertility rate began to fall once again.
Granted, in comparison with other nations such as South Korea and Japan, the U.S. fertility rate is comparatively healthy. In South Korea, the birth rate has fallen to the suicidally low .72 births per woman (Yes, you are reading that correctly. The average South Korean woman give birth to less than a single child.).
In such nations, it is becoming increasingly rare to see children playing on the streets. Schools are shuttering their doors. Entire towns and villages are being emptied out, as the elderly residents die, and the younger residents migrate into the metropolises—the only places that still have the promise of work.
It is no longer considered apocalyptic fear-mongering to speak about the coming disappearance of entire nations. Countries like South Korea and Japan (1.3 TFR) are already experiencing rapidly decreasing populations. However, the effects of shifts in birth rate have a significant lag, and compound over time. In coming decades, the rate of decline will rapidly increase.
Even a sudden, dramatic increase in the fertility rate in a country like South Korea won’t be enough to reverse the population trend. This is because the decades of low birth rates have already led to the significant aging of society.
There are currently far fewer women of child-bearing age in South Korea than there would have been three or four decades ago. Even if each South Korean woman should suddenly decide to have significantly more than the current 0.72 child on average, it would be too little too late. It would take multiple generations of a significantly increased birth rate to reverse the trend.
The Decline of U.S. Birth Rates
One question that demographers have asked, is why the U.S. has resisted the trend until recently? Why has the U.S. birth rate been so much higher than its European or Asian counterparts?
There is not likely to be any one single answer to such a complex question. One part of the answer is surely that is the U.S. has maintained its status as the most youthful, vibrant, and forward-looking of the developed nations.
The U.S. is the “land of promise.” While many other wealthy nations have become stagnant and set in their ways, the U.S. is still the land of innovation, in which optimism is in the air, and the future appears bright.
And then, of course, there is the fact that the U.S. is also easily the most religious of all the developed countries. And, as it turns out, religiosity is strongly correlated with fertility.
The question, then, is what changed?
The fact that fertility rates began dropping in 2008 suggests one obvious answer: that it is the market crash of 2008, with its associated increase in unemployment and general life stress, that is responsible.
This seems a plausible hypothesis, but for one fact: the economy completely recovered from the 2008 crash years ago. Stock markets are currently at their highest levels ever. Unemployment levels are at nearly the lowest they’ve ever been in recent history.
But fertility rates are continuing to drop!
From Baby Boom to Birth Drought
While the fast-paced modern economy does come with significant challenges for younger generations, especially in the form of information overload and stress, hard data shows that the generations that are currently of child-bearing age are significantly wealthier than the doom-mongering headlines in the papers suggest.
In fact, while Millennials and Gen Z often complain of being hard put upon, at least in comparison with their parents, the reality is that they are significantly wealthier than their parents’ generation.
This phenomenon of greater wealth, yet a much greater sense of poverty, has been labeled “money dysmorphia.” As Tali Sharot tells NPR in the interview linked here, if the younger generations feel poorer, it is likely only because they are continually comparing themselves to others, thanks to the ubiquity of social media, and the filtered lives that one encounters therein.
In other words, if younger generations are choosing not to welcome children because they believe they are poor, then they are operating under an illusion.
The Hidden Costs of Choosing Career Over Children
The reality is that many younger people aren’t choosing to welcome children because their priorities have shifted. Parents in far poorer societies routinely choose to welcome significantly more children than the average American adult.
And no, contrary to the complaints of pro-abortion organizations, this isn’t simply because couples in developing nations don’t have access to contraception and abortion. Many of these nations are awash in contraception provided by the multi-national NGOs.
Instead, parents in many developing nations speak about the enormous meaning and joy that welcoming children brings into their life. Meaning, in other words, is almost certainly the key word. Not wealth. Not the economy.
The question is: What do people find meaningful? Is it raising a family? Or is it independence, travel and food?
Why Marriage and Family Are in Decline
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” Christ says in the Gospel of Matthew. Increasingly, the hearts of Americans are not invested in the next generation, but rather in themselves.
If we are to look for the one thing that has shifted most dramatically in the U.S. in recent years, one couldn’t do much better than to look at the levels of religiosity among the younger generations.
In the late 90s, the percentage of Americans who are Christian began to fall, while the percentage who call themselves “religiously unaffiliated” (the “nones”) significantly increased. As noted above, religiosity is one of the strongest predictors of fertility rates.
Why would this be? Because, in short, a religious person is likely to place meaning in significantly different things than an atheist, or agnostic.
Rebuilding a Culture of Life
Many people accuse Christianity, with its emphasis on sin, to be a “negative” religion. In reality, however, Christians tend to be far more optimistic than others. Certainly, if choosing to bring children into the world is a sign of optimism (as it is generally agreed it is), then Christians are far more optimistic than their non-religious peers.
Consider the quotation at the beginning of this article. In it, Pope Leo XIV speaks of the family as the “cradle of the future of humanity.”
In the same homily, Pope Leo praises the fact that in recent decades the Catholic Church has canonized multiple married couples. “By pointing to them as exemplary witnesses of married life,” he said, “the Church tells us that today’s world needs the marriage covenant in order to know and accept God’s love and to defeat, thanks to its unifying and reconciling power, the forces that break down relationships and societies.”
This is a very different understanding of marriage than one will find in secular society! To the extent that many people even bother getting married these days, it is often for motives that are far less lofty: perhaps because the couple “feels” like they are in love and enjoy one another’s company; or because the couple shares similar interests in travel, or some other hobby.
Why Children Bring Meaning To Life
Furthermore, many young couples are themselves the children of divorced couples and thus have a keen awareness of the fragility of marriage. Without strong ideals, strong role models, and thanks to the compounding trauma of generations of failed marriages, they often give up as soon as they face their first real difficulty.
However, the Christian view of marriage, as a sacrament bestowed by God, elevates the couple’s mind to things loftier than their transient feelings. As Pope Leo put it in that homily,
For this reason, with a heart filled with gratitude and hope, I would remind all married couples that marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful (cf. Saint Paul VI, Humanae vitae, 9). This love makes you one flesh and enables you, in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.
He continued,
In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation. It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.
This is how the world can reverse its course towards geriatric stagnation: by recovering a sense of the wonder of marriage, the beauty of family life, the dignity and holiness to which every human being is called!
No amount of economic stability or wealth can give a young couple hope. While it is true that we must take measures to make it easier for couples to afford to welcome children, this will not reverse the demographic slide. Various nations, including Canada and the Nordic countries, give very generous tax breaks and cash payouts to couples with children, and yet they continue to see low birth rates.
It is the spiritual renewal of the U.S., and the whole world, that will bring in a new springtime of hope and fill our streets and playgrounds with children once again.
Fr. Shenan J. Boquet is president of Human Life International and a leading expert on the international pro-life and family movement.