Americans, including Utahns, are having fewer babies every year. Americans feel that parenthood is too hard, and millennials don’t seem up to it at all — and “too expensive” and “selfish” are the two explanations I hear the most from millennials or their frustrated elders.
But who’s having babies?
“The single greatest predictor of a place’s birthrate anywhere in the world is probably the religiosity of that place,” writes Tim Carney.
And it gets pretty interesting:
“If the cost of raising kids was the real obstacle, people with more money would have more kids, but that’s not the reality. Americans are richer than we used to be and yet we have fewer children. The birthrate was far lower in 2019 than it was during the great recession. The wealthiest countries have low birthrates and the poorest countries have high birthrates. Americans in the top income quintile generally have fewer children than those in the bottom four.”
Read more here