The Birth Decline Is a Blue State Problem

Red states are for babies

This morning on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, where I do a weekly Friday hit, he asked me about what’s really driving the thought processes of young families — beyond concerns about the price of milk, eggs, and the like. My answer was the increasing gap between life in red and blue states, which is driving family desires to move to places like Florida even if they’re not as conservative as the state’s current leadership class. The gap between neighborhood that welcome families and children, that offer low taxes and educational choice, and blue state communities that are increasingly unwelcoming to such things while offering less and less in exchange for higher taxes, crime, and educational indoctrination.

Steven Malanga has more on the dynamics of childbirth in America today:

The relentless decline in global fertility accelerated during Covid-19, pushing humanity closer to failing to achieve a replacement-level birthrate—the point below which a new generation is smaller than the previous one. Though the U.S. for decades had defied a trend that saw several prosperous industrial nations fall short of that benchmark, the so-called birth dearth recently has reached the United States. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, in 2020, the number of children born per adult woman in the U.S. hit an average low of 1.64. Rather than trending up after Covid, the total fertility rate fell to an all-time low of 1.62 last year, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per women. 

There’s plenty of speculation about the cause of collapsing birthrates at home and abroad. Population experts attributed the first big declines, seen during the Industrial Revolution, to scientific advances that lowered infant mortality and increased birth-control options, and to prosperity-boosting technological gains that made children as workers less valuable to parents. But as birthrates kept falling below replacement levels in the decades and centuries that followed, observers have focused on factors like the decline in marriage, increases in divorce, and even rising housing prices as possible explanations for the globe’s fertility slowdown.

Of course, many factors influence national birthrates. One thing that stands out in the United States, however, is how fertility differs among the states—ranging from a low of 1.27 in Vermont to nearly replacement-level in South Dakota. Notably, the states with the highest birthrates are overwhelmingly Republican, and those with the lowest are disproportionately Democratic. What, if anything, can this tell us?

While it can be perilous to make quick assumptions about correlations, there is an unmistakable correspondence between states’ birthrates and their political affiliation. The 17 states with the highest general fertility rates are all designated by Cook Political Report as Republican, or GOP-leaning, including such Republican strongholds as North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Utah, and Texas. By contrast, the bottom six states—and nine of the ten states with the lowest fertility rates—are all either Democratic or Democratic-leaning. (Nevada, which Cook deems marginally Republican, is the one exception, with the tenth-lowest birthrate.) Others near the bottom include Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, and California. Only two Democratic states have birthrates above the national average, compared with 20 Republican states with above-average fertility.

Some states have switched places over time. After the U.S. national rate declined to 1.73 births per woman in 1976, it began climbing again, reaching replacement level in 1990—a rare rise among countries. U.S. birthrates then stayed near or slightly above that level for some 20 years before a slow but steady decline following the Great Recession of 2008, which accelerated during Covid. Some states, however, have fallen further and faster than others. California has experienced the steepest decline, from a birthrate of 2.47 in 1990, then the nation’s third-highest rate, to just 1.47, the ninth worst today. Utah’s rate has also tumbled since 1990, but unlike California’s, it remains well above average, while rates in Indiana, North Dakota, and Kentucky have fallen the least.