As the COVID pandemic accelerates a decade-long trend, birth rates in the United States have plunged to historic lows.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, fertility rates fell 4% from 2019 to 2020. While the 4% drop is more dramatic, births in the United States fell nearly 1% every year since 2008, with the exception of 2014.
Utah is not immune to this national trend. Despite having a higher fertility rate than most states in the nation, Utah’s numbers fell more rapidly, dropping 20% since 2009, according to a 2021 fact sheet from the University of Utah.
Deidre Tyler, professor of sociology at Salt Lake Community College, said there are several factors surrounding the decline.
“It’s complicated,” Tyler said. “There are so many things going on at the same time. All of them together have us looking around, wondering, ‘Where are all the babies?’”
Many experts have turned to millennials – who account for most women of child-bearing age – to help explain the fall, citing economic instability, excessive amounts of debt, concerns about climate and housing costs as some of the contributing factors.
Dowell Myers, a demography professor at the University of Southern California, underlined the difficulties that younger generations encounter.
“The cost of housing, the cost of education, all these things have become more and more difficult,” Myers told CBS News. “I think the boomers themselves don’t realize how much harder it is for millennials today. And they think, ‘Oh yeah, when we were young, we had to live … on very little money, and we made do, and you can do the same.’ That’s the story, right? Well, no, it really is a lot harder for young people today. It’s amazing how much harder it is.”
Many points of data support Myers’ claim. Millennials carry 300% more student debt than their parents. Millennials are about half as likely to own a house as young adults were in 1975. And 1 in 5 millennials live in poverty.
Stagnant income, rising living costs and staggering quantities of debt have rendered millennials unable to pay the costs associated with raising a child.
Another aspect affecting fertility rates could be secularity. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, only 47% of the adult population today belong to an organized religion.
Phillip Jenkins, professor of history at Baylor University, said a decline in religious affiliation contributes to a decline in birth rates.
“We measure change in a society through fertility. There is a close correlation between a fertility rate of a particular society or nation and the level of religious involvement or participation in that society,” Jenkins said during a livestream hosted by Regent College. “The proportion of none’s (unaffiliated persons) in the U.S. has risen very dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years, in exactly the same period that the fertility rate has dropped.”
According to Tyler, this is bad.
“We are below replacement levels. In other words, we are not replacing ourselves which, if it continues, will lead to massive economic repercussions,” Tyler said.
Tyler said some of these repercussions could include mass labor shortages due to lack of eligible workers, and the number of retired people will outnumber those who can work, creating a load on the economy that will become unsustainable.
Others, however, argue that a drop in population may not only benefit the environment, but it may also signal a positive shift in society. In his column for The Salt Lake Tribune, opinion editor George Pyle echoed this position.
“A declining birth rate is a universal indicator of a more civilized society, one that is more free, more equal, better educated and, not totally by coincidence, more secular. It is hard to see how, or why, we should push back against that,” Pyle wrote.
