Only a quarter of Americans say they believe the country is having too few babies, while a third admit they don’t know whether there are too many, too few, or the right amount.
In 2024, the U.S. fertility rate reached a record low: 1.6 live births per woman, well short of the 2.1 live births per woman required for population replacement, according to CDC data. There is broad consensus among demographers and public health experts that the situation is concerning, posing long-term risks including labor shortages, strain on social safety nets, and economic slowdown.
Among the general public, however, only a quarter of Americans say they believe the country is having too few babies. And a third of the population admits they don’t know whether there are too many, too few, or the right amount.
Some groups are more likely to say too few babies are being born. Men are twice as likely as women to note this (35% vs. 18%), and the more education or income a person has, the more prone they are to say Americans are having too few babies. Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to believe fertility is too low (41% vs. 15%), and Catholics and White evangelical Protestants similarly stand out. However, even among those groups where awareness is higher, the percentage of those who say Americans are having too few babies is well below 50%.
And among those who do not have children, the desire to have them in the future varies by age, gender, party, and religion.
Among those under the age of 50 who do not have children, fewer than half (45%) say they would like to have them. Further, 38% say they do not want them, while the remainder are on the fence. Men are 10 percentage points more likely to say they want children than women (50% vs. 40%), with a third of women (31%) saying they “definitely” do not want children. The gap between conservatives and liberals is even wider at 27 percentage points (59% vs. 32%). Religion and race may also be significant drivers of differences, especially among Black Protestants, who tend to be more liberal but are the most likely group to desire children at 68%.
In addition to these differences, age is also a significant factor. The older the childless person, the less likely they are to desire children. Still, nearly a third (29%) of childless people in the youngest age category, age 18- 29, say they do not want to have kids.
Reasons for limiting the number of children Americans choose to have are complex, but the most commonly cited reason in the American Family Survey is insufficient money, reflecting the economic concerns many families are facing.
There is little support for government policies encouraging people to have more children, with only 22% of Americans in favor and 46% opposed. This may be tied to lack of awareness of the country’s low fertility rate and its potential implications, or it may simply reflect an aversion to government involvement in personal decisions.
What support there is for government intervention is concentrated among those who believe there are too few babies being born, with 57% supporting policies to encourage more children. This support, however, is outweighed by significant opposition to government action among the other groups. Far more Americans overall oppose government involvement than support it, though a good chunk of people are neither for nor against it.
What should we make of this data? Most Americans are not worried about a fertility crisis, and it’s not clear whether this is due to lack of knowledge or something else. Would teaching the facts of the actual fertility rate change things? We can’t answer that question with these data, but it is something to explore in the future. For now, what we know is that impressions about government involvement are correlated with impressions of whether low fertility rates are problematic.
METHODOLOGY NOTE
Between August 6-18, 2025, YouGov interviewed 3317 nationally representative respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 3000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements (using the person weights on the public use file).
The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region, and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.
The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 and 2024 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (four categories), race (four categories), and education (four categories) to produce the final weight. The overall margin of error is +/- 2.1%.