Young People Aren’t Having Kids Because Their Friends Aren’t. So What Can Be Done?
America’s population will begin to decline by the 2050s due to a nationwide decrease in fertility, according to a new report that attributes the decline to damaging cultural norms around family life and friendship.
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The report, published Tuesday by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), points to both “peer culture” and “celebrity culture” as heavy influences on fertility, as young adults look both to friends who are similarly situated to themselves and role models who they aspire to emulate when considering whether to have children and how many to have.
“[W]ithout a new birth of family life in America, the greatest days of freedom will indeed be behind us,” the report states, since “the future of liberty for all of us depends on the future of family.”
Authored by IFS Senior Fellow Lyman Stone and Research Associate Peter Foreshaw Brookes, the report analyzes the results of a survey of 4,700 Americans and evaluates the connection between cultural norms and fertility, ultimately proposing several approaches for halting the nationwide fertility decline.
“This report comes following a massive acceleration in the fertility gap (the gap between the number of children people would like to have and current fertility rates) in the US since 2007,” Brookes told National Review in a statement. “The trends show no sign of abatement and mean incoming human tragedies, including the exacerbation of the existing growth of loneliness and meaningless.”
Stone and Brookes questioned 18- to 50-year-old Americans about the number of children their three best friends and their closest sibling have in order to evaluate how the families one is in closest proximity to shape one’s desired family size. They then asked respondents to guess how their friends would respond if they had a baby based on eight options — four “positive” and four “negative.”
They found a correlation between a respondent having friends with children and the respondent’s own desire to have children.
The report also studied the impact of “publicly admired figures” on American fertility rates. In doing so, Stone and Brookes listed the figures people said they most admired and researched how many children each one was known to have.
“Comparing family size among admired celebrities to individual aspirations, an admired celebrity having one extra child may increase an individual’s desired family size by as much as 0.15 children,” the study reported.
The U.S. fertility rate hit a record low of 1.6 births per woman in 2024, the most recent year for which there’s reliable data. That’s well below the rate — 2.4 births per woman — required to sustain the population at current levels without relying on migration.
Evidence of this decline is evident across many sectors of society and the economy, but it is especially apparent in education.
In April, the Philadelphia School District announced the closure of 17 of its schools, listing student enrollment as one of the causes. conducted by the district shows that between the 2014-15 and 2024-25 academic years, the school experienced a 12 percent decline in enrollment.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) suggests this decline is not an anomaly, predicting that school enrollment numbers will continue to decline nationwide. Between fall 2022 and fall 2031, NCES reports that total nationwide school enrollment is projected to decline by about 5 percent on average for students in preschool to twelfth grade. In states like California and New Mexico, this decline is predicted to be as much as 15 to 16 percent.
“Declining birth rates are the primary driver for enrollment declines,” an April 2026 report from Education Commission of the States asserts. “The number of births in the U.S. has fallen steadily in recent years with 690,000 fewer children born in 2024 compared to 2007.”
Since the causes of fertility decline Brookes and Stone diagnose are largely cultural, the government naturally has limited ability to make a difference. American attitudes around family formation will have to change organically, creating a flywheel effect as young adults who are on the fence about starting a family take inspiration from their friends and siblings.
“To shape behavioral intentions, it is not enough to passively have friends with kids or to admire an influencer with kids—” their report explains, “prospective parents need peers who are genuinely helpful and supportive, not just those who demonstrate big families.”
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But the authors do suggest a few “out-of-the-box policy proposals,” which aim to make material conditions more conducive to child rearing.
One such proposal is offering “generous” baby bonuses. The report explains that these five- to six-figure bonuses would expend less than 1 percent of the federal budget, thereby costing less than parental leave and child-care expansions proposed recently.
“[T]his is a fiscal challenge for all governments which finance themselves from taxation of shrinking working age populations,” Brookes told NR. “Therefore, thinking about how both governments and society at large can best respond to this social and economic problem is not merely warranted—it is incumbent upon us.”
The authors also suggest offering “child caregiver credits.” The report explains that these would give stay-at-home parents slightly better retirement benefits; decrease harmful work disruptions, especially for mothers; and illuminate how parents do “the real work of keeping Social Security solvent by raising future payers.”
The report also acknowledges that the availability of housing can have a significant impact on fertility rates. “American young people face a housing crisis,” the study explains. “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.”
Brookes told NR that the report makes these “novel suggestions” in order “to create further debate and focus minds.”
The report also emphasizes the impact of technology on fertility rates. Citing Caitlin Myers and Ezekiel Hooper’s 2026 economics study “Is the Phone Birth Control? Casual Evidence from AT&T’s 2007-2011 Carrier Monopoly,” Stone and Brookes suggest that phones, social media, and pornography “replace social life, spread new ideas, and alter the landscape of American relationships,” in turn impacting fertility.
The report predicts that the U.S. population will peak at roughly 351 million in the 2050s, at which point it will begin to decrease due to declining fertility rates. It explains that America is already in its “third historic period of extended below-replacement-rate fertility,” and this current period of low fertility has lasted longer than any thus far.
Though many research believe the American population will continue to increase in the 2050s due to immigration, Stone and Brookes disagree, pointing out that all developed countries will be competing for a limited pool of high skill labor as native populations age.
“Reliance on migration for population growth is not a credible strategy in the long run,” the report asserts.
But IFS insists that this rise in immigration shouldn’t distract from the deeper issue at hand.
“We are first and foremost a nation of families, and secondarily (though importantly!) a nation of immigrants,” the report explains.
Ultimately, Brookes is hopeful that citizens will recognize the gravity of America’s fertility decline and its direct impact on the nation’s population.
“I am optimistic,” he said, “that as society becomes aware of the scale of the problem, new and bold policy innovations will become par for the course.”
