Trump's recipe for more babies. Will it work?

Mary Ellen Klas*

The birth rate in the US is quite low, 1.6 children per woman, far below the 2.1 rate that is calculated to be necessary to maintain the population. This is not surprising, as the decline began in 2007.

The policies that Trump is attempting to pursue to increase birthrate are surprising.

Among the proposals is a "baby bonus," 5,000 euros for every American woman who gives birth to a child, an education plan for women about menstrual cycles to better understand the process of conception, and offering scholarships to married parents.

The pro-natalist policy began at the Department of Transportation where Secretary Sean Duffy, a father of nine, issued a memo in February dictating that “communities with higher-than-national marriage and birth rates” be given priority in transportation funding.

I have no doubt that these policymakers are sincere. President Donald Trump has declared that he wants to be the “fertility president.” Elon Musk, the father of about 14 children and head of Trump’s quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, has said that “civilization will crumble” if we don’t increase the birth rate. And Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s agenda that Trump is pursuing, wants the president to use government policies, including the tax code, to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.”

But they are attempting to fuel a "baby boom" at a time when other government policies are destroying programs that help women and children.

DOGE has cut funding for the Bureau of Maternity and Child Health in the Department of Health, for the Institute of Human Development, and for the Center for Disease Control and Reproductive Health.

Even after Trump issued an executive order promising to make in vitro fertilization more available and affordable, DOGE dismantled the CDC’s Assisted Reproductive Technology team, which monitors the effectiveness of IVF programs across the country. DOGE has also laid off federal employees who run programs for pregnant mothers on Medicaid, canceled funding for maternal and postpartum care, and eliminated more than $12 billion from state health departments, including $2 billion earmarked for childhood vaccination programs. These short-sighted cuts are unlikely to help increase births.

One of the people the Trump administration has consulted on this effort is demographer Lyman Stone, director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the conservative Institute for Family Studies. His research suggests the White House is being too liberal in its plan to offer families a $5,000 “baby bonus.”

“More money brings more babies,” Stone wrote in 2020. “Anyone who says otherwise is mischaracterizing the research. But it takes a lot of money.”

Stone argues that low birth rates in the U.S. and other high-income countries are due to low marriage rates and a decline in young people's incomes. He has been a proponent of subsidies that encourage marriage, and he supports the American Family Act, a Democratic plan to expand the child tax credit and give parents with more children higher tax credits.

Government incentives for children would cost the US billions, but the approach has been tried with some success in many other countries, he notes. A “child bonus” in Australia boosted fertility but cost more than $100,000 per child. A British study found that 50% higher welfare spending on children in the UK led to 15% higher birth rates. Russia’s policy of giving “maternity capital” of $11,000 to mothers of second or third children since 2007 has increased second births by 2.2%. But Singapore’s plan to pay child bonuses to couples with three or more children has had only limited success.

Stone concluded in 2020 that to reach the replacement rate needed to support the American population without immigration, the fertility rate would need to rise to 2.07 children per woman.

“To achieve this, we would need the current value of child benefits to increase by anywhere between 52% and 400% of household income,” he wrote. “For the average woman, this would mean providing a child benefit for the first 18 years of a child’s life worth about $5,300 per year, in addition to the benefits currently provided, which range from $32 more to $200 per year.”

These amounts are probably impossible to achieve, Stone acknowledged, so he suggests the government pursue additional policies, such as removing barriers to marriage by reducing the marriage tax penalty for two-income families and expanding the child tax credit into something he calls a “parental paycheck.”

Other researchers say the scope of solutions should include expanding paid parental leave and subsidized childcare, as well as more affordable housing to reduce the cost of starting a family.

Of course, the choice to start a new life is not just a financial calculation. It is also a profound act of hope. And Americans are not feeling particularly hopeful right now. Polls show that more than half the country is worried about a constitutional crisis. Wall Street is nervous; consumer confidence is at its second-lowest point on record; and most Americans are not confident in Trump’s handling of the economy. Only 15% of younger Americans think the country is on the right track.

You would think that the Trump administration would want to focus on increasing — not cutting — funding for maternal and child health, repairing self-inflicted economic wounds, and lowering the cost of living for working families before asking young people to forget all their problems and bring children into the world. This lack of awareness of the situation is not just ironic, it is irresponsible.

*Politics columnist at Bloomberg.