Scientists explain decline in U.S. birth rate

Young people in the U.S. have become more worried about the future and therefore postpone having children, say scientists from Ohio State University. The study by U.S. sociologists was published in the journal Population and Developmentmen Review.

The 2019 U.S. total fertility rate was 1.71, the lowest level since the 1970s. Researchers concluded that this was not due to Americans' unwillingness to have children, but to their inability to do so.

The authors of the study used survey data. They compared the answers of people born in different years and found that women born between 1995 and 1999 wanted an average of 2.1 children between the ages of 20 and 24. The same number, 2.2 children, at that age were wanted by women born in 1965-1969.

Men, on average, wanted and wanted fewer children than women, but their responses have not changed much in recent decades either.

The percentage of people who said they did not plan to have children increased from about 5-8% in the 1960s and 1970s to 8-16% in the 1990s and 2000s. But that alone cannot explain the decline in the number of children being born. Researchers believe that people are putting off having children because they are more worried about the future, the economy, medicine and childcare than they were a few decades ago.

According to the authors, the study shows that there is no need to make young people want more children - it is more important to create the conditions for them to appear.

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