The numbers came out quietly. On April 9, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. general fertility rate fell to 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in 2025, another record low and 23% below the 2007 peak. Total births dropped about 1% year over year to roughly 3,606,400, with 22,534 fewer babies registered than a year earlier. The teen birth rate fell 7% to 11.7 per 1,000, down more than 72% since 2007.
Behind the small annual decline sits a much larger economic story, one that is already moving capital, reshaping household budgets, and forcing federal forecasters in Washington to rewrite their long-range models. The CDC report shows births rising only among women in their 30s and 40s; for women under 30, the rate fell sharply, with the 20-to-24 cohort dropping to 52.2 per 1,000 from 55.8 a year earlier. The U.S. fertility rate, which sat at 2.12 in 2007, is now near 1.6 and falling. The Congressional Budget Office, in its January 2026 Demographic Outlook, projects the rate will dip to 1.58 this year and to 1.53 by 2036, with annual U.S. deaths set to exceed births starting in 2030.
The proximate driver, according to most of the economists studying it, is affordability. LendingTree, citing data from Child Care Aware of America, calculated that the average annual cost of care for an infant and a four-year-old now runs $28,190 nationwide. To meet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ definition of affordable childcare — no more than 7% of household income — a two-child family would need to earn $402,708 a year. The average two-child household earns $145,656, requiring a 176.5% raise to close the gap.
“With numbers like these, it’s easy to see why birth rates are falling,” said Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. “Many Americans are saying that having kids doesn’t make financial sense.”
Other expenses compound the squeeze. An updated USDA-derived estimate puts the cost of raising a child from birth through age 18 at roughly $303,418, a 28% jump since 2023. Housing accounts for 29% of that total, childcare and education another 18%. The Brigham Young University American Family Survey released last year found that 71% of U.S. adults disagreed with the notion that having children was affordable for most people, and 43% cited insufficient financial resources as being a barrier.
The national average masks sharp local variation. According to data released by the New Jersey Department of Health and compiled by Rabbi Shlomo Schorr, legislative director of Agudath Israel of New Jersey, 5,420 babies were born in Lakewood Township in 2024, the highest of any municipality in the state and the fourth consecutive year the town surpassed 5,000 births — more than Newark, the state’s largest city, despite Newark having roughly double the population.
Lakewood, anchored by the country’s largest Orthodox Jewish community, has a median age of roughly 18 years and average family sizes far above the national norm. The financial pressure on those families is, if anything, steeper than the national picture: with roughly 42,000 students enrolled in private yeshivas, Orthodox parents in Lakewood shoulder tuition costs that range from roughly $18,140 on average for elementary school to $25,000 per child at some yeshivos, on top of the broader cost-of-living squeeze — and entirely out of pocket, since the families pay public school taxes while none of their tuition is covered by state education funding.
That communities are continuing to grow against those numbers points to a variable the standard economic models do not capture.
Duvi Honig, founder and chief executive of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, said the Lakewood data reflects a counterforce that financial incentives alone cannot replicate.
“Religion is what the president is fighting to protect, and it is the one force strong enough to reverse the woke ideology that has convinced a generation that marriage and children are not worth the cost,” Honig said. “When religious values are restored, the financial math does not get any easier, but the priorities change. You will see Christian and religious communities across America begin to grow again.”
The macroeconomic implications of the broader national decline are no longer theoretical.
IMPLAN, the regional economic modeling firm, estimated that the 2025 fertility slowdown alone will subtract $103.9 billion from U.S. gross domestic product, $86.2 billion in household spending, and 740,000 jobs that would otherwise have existed.
“An economy requires a steady stream of people who work, spend money, and replace those who retire,” said Nadège Ngomsi, an economist at IMPLAN. “When the birth rate falls and immigration slows, this necessary talent supply dries up.”
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the ratio of working-age Americans to those 65 and older will fall from 2.7 today to roughly 2.2 by 2040, intensifying pressure on Social Security and Medicare.
Corporate America is already adjusting.
Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies, cut 5,000 jobs in 2018 with its chief executive acknowledging that diaper demand in mature markets had peaked; Procter & Gamble launched its Always Discreet adult incontinence line to offset structural decline in the Pampers franchise.
Carter’s, the largest U.S. children’s apparel brand, has seen revenue fall roughly 17% from its 2019 peak.
In toys, the flip is even starker: adults overtook the preschool segment as the largest buyer category last year, with LEGO doubling revenue over the past decade by targeting adult collectors and Hasbro now drawing more than 60% of its sales from consumers age 13 and older.
Policymakers are scrambling.
Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act expanded the federal child tax credit and lifted the cap on dependent care flexible spending accounts to $7,500 from $5,000. The White House issued an executive order earlier this year expanding access to in vitro fertilization, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has publicly pushed for what he called a “Trump baby” boom.
International experience suggests the levers move slowly: France, which spends a larger share of GDP on family support than any other major economy, has watched its fertility rate slide from 2.0 to 1.68 anyway. Japan, the cautionary tale most often cited, averaged 0.83% annual GDP growth from 1991 to 2019 against the U.S. average of 2.53% over the same span.
The bottom line for American families is that the decision to have a child has become, in measurable dollar terms, one of the most expensive financial commitments a household can make.
The bottom line for the U.S. economy is that the consequences of millions of such individual decisions are now flowing into corporate revenue forecasts, federal entitlement projections, and labor force math that will shape the next half century.
JBizNews Desk
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