The US fertility crisis is a 'prophecy' of decline
I’ve seen the future — and it is bleak. People are older, lonelier, sadder, and poorer. And every year, there are fewer people than last year. Governments are loaded with debt. Social welfare programs become insolvent. Schools close. Playgrounds are empty. Innovation stagnates. The workforce shrinks. And nursing home populations boom.
This is what population decline looks like — and it’s our future.
That’s not a prediction, it’s prophecy. America’s fertility rate fell to yet another record low last year, according to newly released CDC data.
The Vital Statistics Surveillance Report shows births declined by 1% between 2024 and 2025. The general fertility rate was 53.1 births per 1,000 females ages 15-44, which equates to 1.57 births per woman — significantly below the 2.1 “replacement rate.”
There were 3,606,400 total births last year — a decrease of 22,534 from 2024. The fertility rate has decreased by 23% since 2007 — and it was none-too-high then, either.
The fertility rate is below replacement in much of the world — and it’s falling worldwide — leading demographers to predict an impending population collapse later this century. If that weren’t bad enough, here’s the rub: Once population decline begins, it never ends.
As researchers Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson warn in their book Empty Planet, “When the global population starts to decline … it will never end. We face … a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
It’s not only researchers and statisticians who are sounding the alarm.
“There are not enough people,” enigmatic billionaire Elon Musk has warned. “I can’t emphasize this enough; there are not enough people … If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble.”
The world’s richest man has done his part (he has at least 14 children) to reverse the fertility collapse — though unfortunately, he’s neglected the institution that creates civilizations and helps children thrive the most: marriage.
Indeed, our nation has a major problem. It’s refusing to create tomorrow’s innovators, doctors, lawyers and scientists. Unless this trend is reversed, we — and future generations — will soon pay the price.
Is there any hope? While there’s no silver bullet, the simple ingredients of faith, marriage, family and freedom can lead to our culture’s revitalization.
It’s these ingredients that Timothy S. Goeglein, vice president for External & Government Affairs at Focus on the Family, seeks to resurrect with his newly released book What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family.
“I love my nation so much, it grieves me when we have seemingly lost our way —particularly when it comes to marriage, family, faith, and education,” he writes.
Indeed, despite the dire decline in our fertility rate — our nation doesn’t technically have a “fertility problem” — we have a marriage problem. Our declining fertility rate is a symptom of our true diagnosis: a declining marriage rate.
Millennials and Gen Z have largely chosen to delay marriage and family formation until later in life. The average age of marriage has risen to over 30 for men and over 28 for women.
Furthermore, according to the Pew Research Center, as of 2021, 25% of 40-year-olds in the United States have never married. This is up from 6% in 1980.
Yet, couples who marry are still very likely to have children. Married men are far more likely than unmarried men to say they want children, which shows that “marriage is one of the greatest promoters of national fertility,” Glenn T. Stanton, director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, has written.
Additionally, individuals who are Christian are still highly likely to marry — and therefore have children, too. Thankfully, we’re now seeing a resurgence of religiosity among young men — most of whom identify as Christians.
There are no simple answers to increasing our fertility rate or reversing the marriage decline. But if there is any solution, it must start with a revival of Christian faith — which we may be seeing before our eyes among Gen Z men.
As Jesus Christ taught in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (ESV). If young people like me find faith in Christ and put Him before all else, the other ingredients needed for our culture’s revival will soon slip into place.
Population collapse is our collective not-too-distant future — unless America’s young people rediscover What Really Matters: faith, marriage, family and freedom.
“Each day,” Goeglein writes, “I pray we, as a nation, will realize the error of our current ways and return to the values that made us the ‘shining city of a hill’ — as President Reagan used to say – for the world to follow and emulate.”
Zachary Mettler is a staff writer and communications liaison for The Daily Citizen at Focus on the Family. In his role, he writes about current political issues, U.S. history, political philosophy, and culture. Mettler has been featured in The Daily Signal, Life News, The Colorado Independent, and The Millennial Review. In his free time, he enjoys reading, running, hiking, backpacking, and walking his dog. Find his writing at: https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com
