The United States’ Low Birth Rate is Not a Crisis, Experts Say
UMD Researcher’s Survey of Demographers Reveals Shared Lack of Concern
Of all the things you may feel you need to worry about right now, the United States’ low birth rate isn’t one of them, finds a new survey of experts on human population.
The 190 experts who answered University of Maryland Department of Sociology Professor Philip Cohen’s survey, which was fielded August 24-September 4, 2026, hailed from a variety of academic disciplines; economics, sociology, political science, geography and more. They all study population trends, however — and are therefore demographers — and all had recently published a paper in an academic demography journal.
The majority of the surveyed experts (52.7%) said that the United States’ fertility rate of 1.57 “should be monitored, but no intervention is necessary.” Another 19.7% said the fertility rate — a measure of how many children, on average, a woman has over the course of her lifetime — is “not a problem at all.” Only 3.2% said the current fertility rate represents a “demographic crisis.”
According to Cohen’s working paper on the survey, the majority of experts also agreed that the U.S. government should not intervene unless the national fertility rate reaches 0.8. However, 43% said that even then, the government shouldn’t get involved.
“Birth rates have generally been falling as long as we have been measuring birth rates, and periodically, people get upset about it,” said Cohen, who is currently working on a 2027 book for Princeton University Press about population panic. “There was a birth rate panic in the 1920s and 30s, which was really big among Nazis and other fascists, and it’s coming up again today.”
Cohen says there are a number of yet-unclear reasons why people are having fewer children. He says some people are having fewer children for “good” reasons, like being presented with travel or career opportunities and therefore waiting longer to have a child, at which point they may only want one. And, if they desire more children, some people are having fewer because of “bad” reasons, like not being able to afford healthcare or childcare.
“The biggest factor is people moving their childbearing to older ages, for different reasons,” he said. “But although we use the word ‘fertility’ for birth rates, it’s mostly not about people failing to get pregnant.”
On a related note, the survey asked demographers to identify what they believe are the “most important population-related issues facing the world in the next 20 years.” Very few respondents (9.5%) put “low fertility and population decline” among their top three issues. Rather, the greatest consensus was found among the 65% of respondents who ranked “climate change” and the 52.6% who ranked “aging” among their top issues.
Respondents’ opinions on other issues potentially threatening the world — including inequality, migration, threats to public health, reproductive rights and health, war, hunger, obesity, high fertility and population growth, and urbanization — were more greatly varied.
“I hope this survey lowers the temperature a bit, and helps people see that we don’t need to have this panicky, knee-jerk response about the birth rate. We don’t need to try to raise birth rates to make society better,” said Cohen. “We don’t need to turn back the clock on family change, on gay rights, on legal divorce, on women’s employment and education — these are all things that drove down the birth rate in the long run. I hope this helps people focus on all the ways we can make life better, instead of making more of us.”
While Philip Cohen’s working paper, which reflects the opinions of more than 190 demographers across a range of disciplines, is awaiting peer-review, you can read “Demographer Views about U.S. Fertility: Results from a Survey” in preprint form here.
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Published on Thu, Oct 8, 2026 - 1:50PM