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The following is reprinted from the Homeland Institute (website, Telegram).

Of white Americans aged 18 to 35, 87.3% of Democrats, 85.1% of Independents, and 72.2% of Republicans plan on below-replacement reproduction, meaning two or fewer children.

33.2% of all respondents, 35.9% of Democrats, 38.5% of Independents, and 23.1% of Republicans said that the financial cost of raising children overall was a barrier to having children.

9% of all respondents said that the financial cost of raising children overall was their single biggest barrier to having children.

Republicans were more likely to vote for a candidate with pro-natalist policies at 37.5% than those who were less likely at 18.5%. Independents were more likely to vote for a candidate with pro-natalist policies at 28.4% than those who were less likely at 21.4%.

22.5% of all respondents and 26.9% of Republicans ranked lifetime income tax breaks for parents as the incentive most likely to induce them to have children.

In February of 2024, a BBC article about South Korea’s catastrophically low birth rate sparked a broad discussion about what exactly is driving low birth rates across so many countries. Our executive director, David Zsutty, has discussed the matter in further depth.

Birth rates substantially lower than 2.1 births per woman are dangerous because a rapidly dwindling population often leads to calls for immigration as a quick fix instead of addressing the underlying problems. This is perilous, because immigration will oftentimes escalate to such an extent that it begins to replace the native population, while ironically exacerbating many of the issues that lead to low birth rates to begin with, such as a high cost of living (especially for housing) combined with lower wages and a hyper-competitive labor market.

This prompted us to explore which pro-natalist policies would best ameliorate America’s low birth rates, along with which ones would be most electorally viable. And more importantly, to what extent can low birth rates be solved by state intervention at all?

The Homeland Institute polled 779 respondents characteristic of white Americans age 18-35. 85.6% of the respondents were registered voters, and 14.4% were unregistered. This poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3% and was conducted from April 5 through April 17, 2024.

I. Natalist Attitudes

We began by exploring natalist attitudes overall. There was a clear trend across party lines of people wanting to have more children than they currently plan on having.

Republicans displayed stronger pro-natal attitudes. Almost a third of Democrats and Independents each would still have no children at all even if they could have as many as they want, compared to only 15.4% of Republicans. Additionally, slightly over a quarter of Republicans at 25.4% said they would have four, five, or more children if they could have as many as they want, compared to only 10% of Democrats and 15.7% of Independents who said the same.

It should be sobering that 87.3% of Democrats, 85.1% of Independents, and 72.2% of Republicans plan on below-replacement reproduction, meaning two or fewer children.

If white Republicans had as many children as they want, the birth rate for their segment of the population would be at least 2.54, which is above the 2.1 replacement rate and well above their actual projected birth rate of 1.7 based on how many children they already have or plan on having.

The birth rate for Independents if they could have as many children as they want would be 1.8, and their actual projected birth rate is 1.14. For Democrats, these numbers are 1.67 and 1.11. For white Americans as a whole, they are about 2.0 and 1.32.

The current birth rate for white Americans is 1.6, and based on our poll findings we can expect it to drop to about 1.3 over the course of a generation.

But if white Americans could have as many children as they want, their birth rate would be almost at replacement level at 2.0, with Republicans gradually replacing Independents and Democrats.

Admittedly, some respondents might have wildly unrealistic ideas about the conditions under which they could have as many children as they want, such as owning a mansion. But there is still a substantial gap between how many children they want and how many they currently plan on having. The Republican gap is the largest at .84 (compared to the Independent gap of .66 and the Democrat gap of .56) despite Republicans also having the highest projected birth rate.

This means that pro-natalist policies should have at least some positive impact and should favor the Republican birth rate the most.

II. Barriers to Children

The next section of our poll explored the specific reasons why people aren’t having children, inviting respondents to select all options that applied to them.

The financial cost of raising children overall garnered the most responses across party lines, with 33.2% of all respondents, 35.9% of Democrats, 38.5% of Independents, and 23.1% of Republicans selecting this option. The cost of good housing was notable at 17.2% of all respondents, 16.8% of Democrats, 21% of Independents, and 11.9% of Republicans, as was the cost of medical care and insurance at 16.3% of all respondents, 17.3% of Democrats, 21% of Independents, and 10% of Republicans.

Concerns about the type of world their children would be born into, doubts about whether they would make a good parent, and children interfering with having fun were also high overall. But these answers were driven by Democrats and Independents, who listed these reasons at roughly double the rate as compared to Republicans. Concerns about the environment, climate change, etc., the cost of paying for their children’s college education, and a preference for adoption were even more highly skewed towards Democrats and Independents.

Interestingly, the difficulty of finding a suitable partner and the quality of K-12 education were much more often chosen by Independents than either Democrats or Republicans. While the government is ill-suited to playing matchmaker, a candidate who wants to attract Independent voters may want to consider advocating for better K-12 education either as a stand-alone policy or part of a suite of pro-natalist policies.

Women are an essential part of childbearing and rearing, so we also broke down the responses among women:

Slightly more women than men of all parties responded that they plan on having or already have two or more children. The number of women who just don’t want to have children was almost the same as for men across party lines. The number of women who answered that the financial cost of raising children was the main factor in their decision overall stayed roughly the same across party lines.

10.2% of Democrat and 11.9% of Independent women selected the difficulty of finding a partner, compared to only 3.9% of Republican women. This 3.9% among Republican women was a sharp drop from the 8.1% of Republican men and women who selected the difficulty of finding a suitable partner, which means that there is a high number of white Republican men who are having difficulty in finding a partner.

Among Independent women, the quality of K-12 education shot up to 23.8%, as did the cost of paying for their children’s college education to 19%, both numbers of which were higher than Democrat and Republican women.

Doubts about whether respondents would make a good parent slightly decreased among Republican women to 8.7%, but spiked to 22% of Democrat women and 22.2% of Independent women.

Children interfering with doing fun things decreased slightly to 18.6% among Democrat women from 19.5% for all Democrats, and also to 7.1% among Republican women from 8.5% of all Republicans, and rose slightly to 22.2% of Independent women from 18.3% of all Independents. This should challenge the notion that women are driving low birth rates by putting off childbearing for frivolous reasons, even if they are louder about it on social media.

There was a slight rise in the number of all women answering concerns about climate change, etc. to 12.8% compared to 11.9% of all respondents, and the world their children would be born into to 23.8% for all women compared to 20.9% of all respondents. In stark contrast, only 3.1% of Republican women listed concerns about climate change, etc., which was exactly the same number for all Republicans combined. Furthermore, 12.6% of Republican women listed concerns about the world their children would be born into, which was almost exactly the same as 12.3% of Republican men and women combined. This shows that white Republican women, like Republican men, are practically immune to the anti-natalist propaganda about climate change and the environment, which is suspiciously almost entirely directed at white countries with low birth rates rather than developing countries with high birth rates. Republican women are also no more easily swayed by dramatic hand wringing about the general state of the world than Republican men.

We next asked what was the single biggest barrier to having two or more children.

We also broke the results down for female respondents:

The financial cost of having children overall was the number one reason for 9% for all respondents, 9.7% among Democrats, 9.3% among Independents, and 7.6% of Republicans. Among women this was also the top reason at 8.6% for all female respondents, 10.4% of Democrats, 8% of Independents, and 6.6% of Republicans.

The difficulty of finding a suitable partner was the second top reason for Republicans at 4.4%. Concern about the type of world their children would be born into was the second top reason overall for Democrats at 7.4% and Independents at 8.2%, but for Republicans was the third top reason at only 2.4%. Among Democrat and Independent women this was also the second top reason, for Democrats at 7% and Independents at 12.8%. For Republican women, this number dropped even lower to 1.6%.

Among Republican women, doubts about whether they would be a good parent, infertility or other medical issues, and the physical pain of childbirth all ranked higher than concern about the general state of the world at 2.5%. While the numbers at this level are very low (six respondents for 2.5% of Republican women) and thus prone to outliers, they are highly suggestive that Republican women substantially differ from their Democrat and Independent counterparts.

Adoption was unusually high among Democrats at 3.7% of all Democrats and 5.2% of Democrat women, suggesting that liberals and especially liberal women have a strong outgroup preference and/or low ingroup preference.

The other options received very few or no results, including “other,” which indicates that our polling covered all major reasons for why people forego having children.

That almost a tenth of respondents at 9% answered that the financial cost of raising children overall was the main factor, as did 0.9% who answered that the cost of housing is the top reason for why they don’t have or plan on having two or more children, indicates that there is a slim yet promising segment of the population who would respond favorably to financial incentives. But how much of an increase could we expect?

Let’s assume that the respondents who listed the cost of housing and the financial cost overall as the single most important reason for why they currently have or plan on having no children or a single child each had one one additional child because they were able to afford to do so. This would result in about a .1 increase in the white American fertility rate from 1.6 to 1.7, and would increase our projected future fertility rate from 1.3 to 1.4. This is a bare minimum projection because it assumes that each respondent in this tenth of the white American population only had one additional child, so the actual increase would probably be slightly more.

We can therefore take .1 as the bare minimum increase due to pro-natalist polices as discussed above, and a .3 increase as a maximum increase discussed earlier regarding how many children respondents would have if they could have as many as they could. The actual increase from adopting pro-natalist policies would be somewhere between these two numbers, and it would be reasonable to assume it would be around the average of these two figures at a .2 increase.

Hungary corroborates our projected 0.2 actual increase in the white American birth rate. Hungary was able to increase their 2011 birth rate of 1.23 by .32 to its current rate of 1.55, which is close to our .2 projected increase. While 1.55 is still below replacement level, it is nevertheless a marked improvement over 1.23.

Aside from pro-natalist policies, some of these births may have come about because the general mood in Hungary improved and there was more optimism about the future after the post-Soviet malaise finally dissipated. This would correspond to respondents in our poll listing concern about the world their children would be born into as a barrier to having children. Thus, Hungary suggestively corroborates our poll findings.

We still don’t know what the absolute minimum birth rate is before triggering a demographic catastrophe characterized by tyranny of the old, calls for migrant workers, and exploding national debt. South Korea’s birth rate of 0.7 certainly meets that threshold for demographic catastrophe. Japan’s 1.26 probably does as well.

Time will tell what number is enough to avert disaster, but given the stakes, it is best to aim for as big a cushion as possible.

This is especially true given that a natural rebound cannot be relied upon. Edward Dutton has argued that politics is mostly genetic, and that because only people who are most genetically predisposed to having children and who tend to be conservative are doing so, then we should expect to see a rebound in birth rates along with a swing toward the Right in political attitudes. However, as discussed by Christian Secor, Japan is much further along the path of demographic decline than the West and has not yet seen a rebound in birth rates and true nationalism. This suggests that a natural rebound is either not inevitable or that it is far from imminent. Due to human biodiversity, Europeans and Japanese may have different thresholds for a rebound. This is a completely unknown factor, however.

Even if state intervention cannot increase the birth rate to a 2.1 replacement level, it must be employed to stave off the catastrophic death spiral that we see in Japan and South Korea.

Relying on a natural rebound brings to mind Oswald Spengler’s maxim that “optimism is cowardice.” State intervention is required.

III. Electoral Viability

But how electorally viable are pro-natalist policies? We next asked: “For a population to remain stable in size, each woman needs to have on average 2.1 children. America’s birth rate per woman is currently 1.7. If a politician were to propose policies to address America’s declining birth rate, how likely are you to vote for him or her?” and broke down the respondents by party and also by women.