What would it take to raise the birth rate?

[Previous: The fertility freeze]

The birth rate is falling worldwide. What can we do about it?

First of all, how sure are we that this is even a problem?

Politicians and demographers worry that a shrinking population will have catastrophic consequences for the future. It will strain welfare programs, since there will be fewer working-age people for each retiree. It will create social stress and dislocation as towns and villages empty out and wind up abandoned. It will create headwinds to economic growth, since there are fewer people buying and consuming.

These worries may turn out to be true. But there could be benefits as well.

The benefits of shrinkage

A shrinking population means that more land could be allowed to revert to wilderness, giving nature a chance to recover from human pressure. Endangered species will find new habitat; overexploited ecosystems could regenerate. A smaller population requires less resources, lessening our carbon emissions and other forms of planet-ravaging pollution.

When humans are an increasingly precious resource, it will incentivize society to invest more resources into each child, rather than treating people as disposable. It will decrease inequality, since workers in greater demand will gain bargaining power. It will speed the development and adoption of labor-saving technologies. It will make war and other pointless, destructive activities more unthinkable.

However, it's true that a plummeting population would be bad. Ideally, we'd want the birth rate to level off and the population to stabilize. How can we encourage this?

What do all these countries have in common?

The striking thing about the declining birth rate is that it's happening across many different countries, including many that seem to have little in common.

The birth rate is falling in the highly unequal and hyper-capitalist, politically polarized and bitterly divided United States. Perhaps that shouldn't come as a surprise. It's falling in the warring, violent petro-mafia-state of Russia and its bombarded, besieged neighbor Ukraine. Perhaps that shouldn't come as a surprise either.

On the other hand, the birth rate is also falling in the social democracies of Europe, with their generous welfare states and expansive safety nets. It's falling in wealthy, highly developed Asian nations like Japan and South Korea, which tend to be more culturally homogeneous than the West. It's falling in authoritarian-yet-rising China, where grueling work is the norm but industrialization is speeding along. (In fact, the Chinese birthrate is falling so fast—even after abolishing the one-child policy—that the government is paying cash to families with children in an attempt to raise it.)

If the birth rate were falling in some countries, but holding steady or rising in others, that would be less surprising. If that were the case, we could compare the political and cultural factors in these nations to see which one was most likely to be responsible.

On the other hand, when the pattern is so consistent, it points to some deeper underlying causality that's affecting everywhere the same. Is there anything that all these disparate countries have in common?

Here's one stab at an answer. There is a trend that unites people across culture and income levels, and that has a plausible connection to the birth rate. That trend is urbanization.

An urban species

For almost all of human history and prehistory, the majority of people lived in the countryside. Not anymore.

Around the year 2007, humanity became an urban species. That year, for the first time ever, there were more people living in cities than in rural regions.

This trend has only accelerated since then. As of 2024, almost 58% of humans lived in cities. By 2050, it's projected to be more than two-thirds. In more developed regions, it's already higher: 84% of North America's population is urban.

There are reasons why cities are taking over the world. For one thing, cities are where the jobs are.

The economy is shifting away from farming and extractive rural industries, and toward white-collar, knowledge-industry jobs that benefit from concentrations of talent and resources. This builds on itself over time: workers want to go where the jobs are; companies want to go where the workers are.

What does this have to do with the birth rate? The answer is obvious: cities are crowded.

In spread-out rural regions, land is cheap and there are few barriers to population growth. However, in an urban setting, space comes at a premium. If your apartment doesn't have an extra bedroom, having kids requires moving to a bigger place. That can be a costly proposition, if it's financially feasible at all.

The repercussions of super-expensive housing don't stop there. It also makes it harder for young adults to move out from their parents' houses, delaying them from starting families of their own. It causes a trickle-down effect that increases the prices of everything else, including school taxes and daycare. It forces even people who have homes to devote a greater and greater share of their budgets to upkeep, leaving less for everything else.

With the deck so heavily stacked against them, it's no surprise that some people decide kids are a luxury that's simply too expensive to afford. And what makes it worse—in America and other countries—is the NIMBY problem.

Not in my backyard

NIMBY, short for "Not In My Backyard", is a term for people who fight all new development near where they live. Because of restrictive zoning laws and burdensome community approval procedures, they frequently succeed in blocking it. Often, NIMBYism stems from home owners who want to keep real estate prices high—because that benefits them when they sell. It's like any other monopoly, artificially restricting the supply of a good so they can charge whatever they want.

The only way to reduce housing prices is by creating more housing in desirable areas. It's basic supply and demand. However, NIMBY opposition has stalled most new construction and kept prices sky-high in the United States, as well as other Western nations with similar legal regimes, like Canada and Australia.

The good thing about this theory is that, if it holds up, it gives us a policy lever we can use.

If the decline in birth rate is for cultural reasons—i.e., people just want fewer kids—it will be very difficult to change. However, governments can and should enact policies to limit the power of NIMBYs and incentivize the construction of new housing.

Big cities like New York have taken a tentative step in the right direction with pro-housing initiatives like City of Yes, one of the few good ideas espoused by departing mayor Eric Adams. Some places have gone farther by eliminating single-family zoning, allowing denser development everywhere—or, more radical still, designing car-free communities where all that road space is instead reserved for humans.

Will all these policy changes, even added together, be enough to budge the birth rate?

There's no way to be sure at the beginning. As long as prices keep climbing, that's a sign that there's a backlog of unmet demand. Nothing is going to change until we satisfy it.

We'll only know we've created enough housing when prices stabilize or fall—and it's only then, when we've restored affordability to our communities, that we'll be able to see if the birth rate begins to rise again.

Building enough housing for everyone who wants it will be an enormous task. However, if the population doomsayers are right, nothing less than the survival of humanity is at stake. Isn't that worth building some apartments?