To clarify up front, I’m not taking a political position here, just pointing out what looks like groups doing what they criticize others for. They seem to be living by their values when they like the outcomes, but other times violating their values. I’m following up my post from a few months ago Heritage Foundation promoting socialism, as usual. Charlie Kirk did too.
I’ve had a few guests on my podcast from the Manhattan Institute and I’ve attended a few of their events. I found this article last week from them: Want More Babies? We Need More Friends, whose subtitle tells what the article is about: “If Americans are to revive our sagging national birthrate, we must rebuild the ordinary social structures that made children thinkable and natural.”
It refers to a report near the beginning, and that report is what I’m commenting on. Referring to an early projection that America would grow to over a billion people:
A new report from the Institute for Family Studies, “The Demographic Dead End” … explains, in careful and sometimes alarming detail, why it [i.e. that early projection] failed and what comes next. The authors, demographer Lyman Stone and researcher Peter Foreshaw Brookes, have built what they call the most reliable published reconstruction of historic American fertility: birth rates for every state back to 1917, and for Massachusetts back to 1660. The report was released to mark the country’s 250th birthday.
I hadn’t heard of the Institute for Family Studies. It’s a 501c3. It might be that it can’t formally pick political sides, but I suspect most people in it would describe themselves as conservative. Its annual report lists articles like “Get Married—Charlie Kirk’s Most Important Advice to Young Men and Women”, “Why So Blue: Liberal Women Are Less Happy, More Lonely. But Why?”, and “What’s Killing Marriage—Unmarriageable Men or Liberal Women?”.
The institute wrote a relatively short blog post with highlights about the study, The State of American Fertility: IFS Report Warns of a Demographic Dead End, or you can read the full report, The Demographic Dead End: 2026 State of Fertility Report.
It presents data on how many kids Americans have been having historically, broken down by many demographics. It projects a shrinking American population, several possible reasons, and responses to increase population size:
if current trends in fertility rates continue and if births keep getting postponed later and later, then population will peak in the mid-2050s and then go into relatively rapid decline. In this scenario, the latter 21st century will see America in demographic—and therefore economic and political—retreat.
That’s the bad news. But the good news is that there are ways to avoid this outcome, and to make the Recovery scenario more likely—perhaps even to achieve the trends we list as a Revival, i.e. a return to replacement-rate fertility or better.
The paper then promotes its solutions.
How To Restore American Family Growth
There are five major reforms which, in combination, could restore the fortunes of American fertility. Beyond these five major reforms, we describe three key cultural domains where, if Americans want to see population revival, the culture will need to change.
Pronatal Policies
The Institute for Family Studies proposals all look to me socialist
Their proposals look to to promote larger government, central planning by unaccountable experts, redistribution of wealth, government meddling with citizens’ private lives, and more of what I hear conservatives criticizing as roads to serfdom.
Again, I’m not choosing sides, just describing what I see. Maybe I’m misunderstanding or misinterpreting. I welcome being shown what I miss.
The five major proposals:
“Reform 1: American Birthday Accounts”: “every child born as a U.S. citizen in 2026 or any future year would have some amount of money, perhaps $15,000, invested in their name.” That is, it redistributes wealth from taxpayers to babies, but really to the companies into which the money is invested. In other words: Central Planning and Redistribution of Wealth.
It says that if it worked, its success “would render the program zero-cost to taxpayers after the first eligible generation had completed their childbearing,” glossing over that the taxpayers front the money.
“Reform 2: Child Caregiver Credits“: When a family has a child, they face new expenses. One parent may also stay home from work. The result is that after having kids, families save less. Childcare, diapers, and work disruptions cause parents to approach retirement with fewer resources than they should have had based on their human capital. In dozens of countries around the world, this problem has been addressed through care credits. These credits have a simple principle: if a person has a child under the age of 5 at home, for the purposes of future Social Security benefit calculations, they should be ‘credited'”. In other words: Central Planning and Redistribution of Wealth.
“Reform 3: End Marriage Penalties“: This reform doesn’t mention specifics, but it recommends following countries that conservatives describe as more socialist: “U.S. should adopt fully individualized tax and welfare programs. Sweden, Canada, and the U.K. have all changed from joint-filing to individual-filing systems in the past.” It says that “policymakers should simply go through existing tax and benefit programs, line-by-line, and remove marriage penalties.” Such penalties may exist, but policymakers might call things penalties that aren’t, just to redistribute money.
“Reform 4: Build Family Housing Now“: “Home prices have skyrocketed to many multiples of young adult incomes. America must build more family-suitable houses.” Conservatives promote limited government and free markets as the best way to meet market demand. What does this paper promote? “The federal government can encourage this by adopting an extremely simple program: allocate municipalities and states alike a fixed sum per bedroom of housing completed each year.” In other words, Big Government, Redistribution of Wealth, and Central Planning.
“Reform 5: Institute Family-Impact Budgeting: “Congress and state legislatures must begin to undertake “family budgeting.” Legislators must ask not only how a bill might impact revenues and spending, but how it will impact marriage and fertility.” In other words, Central Planning and Big Government.
“Norm 1: Enlist Celebrity Culture“: This solution looks like it could be innocuous since celebrities are private citizens. They can choose to do what they want. But no, the paper writes “Governments interested in boosting fertility should consider enlisting the support of celebrities popular in their jurisdictions, or perhaps even finding a way to obliquely encourage those celebrities to marry and have more children.” They want Government to Obliquely Encourage. “Obliquely”? Sounds creepy.
“Norm 2: Encourage Supportive Friendship“: “The first thing governments can do … governments could consider creating ‘civil godparents,’ … governments often confer status … Governments could emulate these campaigns… local municipalities could experiment with subsidies and liability protections … While the government cannot mandate supportive friends, it can create conditions where parents and their friends get helpful nudges into helpful behaviors.” More Big Government.
“Norm 3: Promote Real-Life Socializing“: Includes things like “Expanded public funding for public sports and athletics fields,” which sounds like a nice result, but don’t conservatives value free market solutions? Why undermine free markets? Won’t such funding in the long run hurt the people its intended to help?
It continues, “Policymakers should also at least consider more creative options … charge excise taxes on data usage on Sundays, or excise taxes on digital advertising expenditures on Sundays, essentially encouraging platforms to nudge users offline at those times.”
It looks like others agree
Searching for the article led to an article in Reason, which is libertarian: Pronatalists Want To Boost Fertility With Blue Laws and Government-Enlisted Fertility Influencers. Its subtitle also reveals its point: “The Institute for Family Studies wants to increase America’s birth rate. Some of its ideas are a little far out.”
It echoes what I wrote, not exactly, but close: “Many of the proposal’s reforms are conventional and similar to the pro-family, big-government politics of Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.): doling out baby bonus money and child caregiver credits, eliminating marriage penalties in tax and benefit programs, and incentivizing more housing.”
Also, “IFS not only proposes individual pro-family policies; it also proposes a holistic change to the lawmaking process itself, suggesting that Congress and state legislatures evaluate bills by their impact on marriage and fertility.”
It refers to the report’s “government-sponsored baby-making propaganda team.”
The Reason piece closes:
In its report, IFS acknowledges that restoring the birth rate is a largely cultural and social matter. And yet, it proposes several government-enforced policies—some of which read like a bizarre … scheme—to increase the fertility rate. This approach fails to recognize that Americans do not trust their government, and they most likely do not want to be manipulated into having children by technocratic policymakers.