The latest population numbers are out, and it’s clear that America’s long-running birth and fertility crisis continues. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for 2024 was an anemic 1.62 births per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain our current numbers.
We simply aren’t making enough babies to replace ourselves.
This is not a new problem. America’s TFR has now been below replacement for half a century. If this continues much longer, it is no exaggeration to say, as Elon Musk has, that civilizational collapse will follow.
Elon is not wrong about this, although he’s going about remedying it in all the wrong ways, using four different women, along with IVF, to father 14 children.
There is talk in the Trump administration about a potential $5,000 “baby bonus” to jumpstart procreation. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Trump told reporters last week when asked about it.
To me, however, the idea sounds more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or giving a glass of water to someone caught in a burning house. It might provide some momentary comfort, but it won’t solve the underlying problem.
There is plenty of real-world evidence that one-time baby bonuses don’t produce very many baby bumps.
Russia, for example, has been paying couples willing to have babies lots of cold, hard cash since 2007. Couples currently receive 587,000 rubles (approximately $7,000) for a first child and 776,000 rubles (around $9,300) for a second—this is a huge sum of money in a country with an average household income of around $8,000.
The result: Russia’s birth rate hit a 25-year low in 2024, with 599,600 births in the first half, down 16,000 from 2023.
So what can we do to make sure that our American Titanic doesn’t hit the demographic iceberg looming ahead and sink our country?
During the campaign, Vice President Vance floated the idea of raising the Child Tax Credit, leaving more money in the pockets of young couples. Following up on this proposal, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) has introduced something called the Family First Act.
This would boost the IRS’s Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $4,200 for each young child, $3,000 for kids aged 6 to 17, and even add a new $2,800 credit for pregnant moms. After all, as Moore, the father of four, knows, life begins at conception.
Such an increase in the Child Tax Credits would greatly help cash-strapped parents, while encouraging those just starting out to dream bigger when it comes to family size.
But there may be even more help coming for families, this from a seemingly unlikely source: Trump’s tariffs.
To stop other nations like China from cheating on trade, Trump has imposed across-the-board tariffs of 10%, with higher tariffs on specific goods and countries. China’s $400 billion in imports, for example, is being slammed with 145% tariffs.
The amount collected in tariffs is already rapidly rising, increasing from 6 billion in February to 15 billion in April.
When Trump wins his “tariff wars”—and he holds all the cards—these import duties will generate an estimated $400 to $500 billion in revenue for what he calls the “External Revenue Service.” This windfall will be used to reduce taxes on low- and middle-income Americans who last year paid about $365 billion to the IRS.
As Trump posted on Truth Social, “When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year. Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created, with new plants and factories currently being built or planned. It will be a BONANZA FOR AMERICA!!! THE EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE IS HAPPENING!!!”
Eliminating the income tax would save the average household in the U.S., where the median household income is now $80,000, some $5,600 a year.
But economic inducements to be fruitful and multiply, however generous, will probably not be enough. Every European country has pro-natal policies in place, but not one—from Sweden’s 480-day parental leave policy to Hungary’s interest-free loans for home purchases—has put them back in positive territory birth wise.
Hungary’s TFR is on par with the U.S., while Sweden’s is only 1.45—and falling.
The truth is that no country—regardless of what combination of “family friendly policies” they put in place—have ever has ever succeeded in raising its birth rate back to replacement once a drop in babies is well underway.
It turns out that there are some problems that money just can’t solve. It is not just the economics of raising children that is driving the birth rate down, but a culture that has become profoundly anti-marriage and anti-family.
Young people are bombarded with messages on social media and movies from Hollywood that portray marriage as oppression, and babies as burdens.
Wholesome shows like The Brady Bunch, with its focus on the positive dynamics of large families and resolving family conflicts with love and humor, have long since disappeared from the media.
Instead, you have shows highlighting dark themes and dysfunctional relationships like Yellowjackets. This series, which has become a cult classic, follows a high school girls’ soccer team riven by fractured relationships, trauma, betrayal and secrets. Stranded in the wilderness by a plane crash, the girls viciously turn on each other, resorting to ritual violence and even cannibalism.
It is incumbent upon each of us to help create a Culture of Life in our families, emphasizing to our children and grandchildren the joys of family life and the blessing of children. Flood social media with positive postings about the magic of family love.
Those of us who have children know that they are living, laughing signs of God’s presence in our lives. Raising such little images of God takes you on what is perhaps life’s greatest adventure.
Spread that message far and wide.
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An earlier version of this article was published on LifeSiteNews on April 29, 2025.
