Declining birth rates (population decline) are back in the news, and this time the conversation took an unexpected turn. Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, drew widespread criticism after lamenting on X that the teen birth rate has fallen 72 percent since 2007. Yes, TEEN BIRTH RATES!

She sees that as a problem, but she’s not the only one. Of course, her assertion that hormonal birth control is “killing population growth” and that biological destiny compels women to have babies sparked immediate backlash, even from within her own political circle. Now, setting aside the suggestion that teenagers making better decisions is somehow hurting our future, I think the reaction points to something more important than one polarizing social media post. Population decline is real, and it will have a dramatic impact on our future.

Fertility in the U.S. hit a record low in 2025, part of a decades-long demographic shift playing out across virtually every developed nation. Unfortunately, the debate over what is driving the decline, and what, if anything, should be done about it, is far more nuanced than the reaction to Miller’s post suggests. We are being told, again, that population decline is a catastrophe and that the solution is more children. But what if such calls are nothing more than a scare tactic? What if those calls miss the larger point entirely?

As mentioned, Miller is only one example, but there is no shortage of alarm over the global population decline in recent years. And they have a point. Fertility rates are collapsing worldwide, and by some estimates, we could reach a tipping point as early as 2030. As a result, politicians, economists, and commentators are all urging people to have more babies. However, the question worth asking is: Why? Another good question might be: Is that even responsible? Understand that the same people pushing you to reproduce are the same people who require more consumers and taxpayers to maintain their power and wealth. My question is: Does their urgency serve you, or does it serve them?

The Ponzi Problem

A Ponzi scheme works on a simple premise. Early investors are paid returns from the capital contributed by newer investors. The system continues to function as long as the pool of new participants keeps growing. However, the moment recruitment slows, the math collapses. Well, I’m sorry to inform you, but our modern Keynesian economy operates on a remarkably similar logic, except the currency is babies.

Every child born today represents a future taxpayer and consumer. That future taxpayer will fund Social Security and Medicare, service national debt obligations, and generate the consumer spending that keeps the broader economy expanding. Fewer babies means a narrower base, and a narrower base means the pyramid begins to invert. This reduces power and resources. Let’s dig into that a little.

At the time of this writing, the United States carries over $34 trillion in national debt. That figure is only manageable under the assumption that a sufficiently large future workforce will be available to service it. In 2024, the U.S. fertility rate sat at approximately 1.6 births per woman. The replacement rate, the number required to maintain a stable population without immigration, is 2.1. That gap means the base is already shrinking. This means that fewer workers will support more retirees. Fewer taxpayers will service larger debt loads. Fewer consumers will drive an economy built for an ever-increasing population. So, what happens to a Ponzi scheme when the new investors stop showing up? That’s our future in a nutshell, and that’s why there is a sense of urgency about it.

Indeed, this is a problem for those in power, but it is also a problem for the average American who gets left holding the bag. Sure, having more babies would, in theory, kick the can a little further down the road. But is that the answer? Ponzi schemes are illegal because they are fundamentally wrong. Well, if that’s true, then how ethical is it to conscript your children into one?

The Environment We’re Reproducing Into

Before accepting the premise that more reproduction is the solution, it is probably worth examining the environment we would be bringing those children into. In my opinion, humans have not learned the most basic lessons about chemicals, health, and civility. We poison ourselves with toxins, eat the wrong foods, tolerate social decay, and indulge in behaviors that fragment our communities. Violence and unrest are rising. Heck, men and women seem to hate each other, and divorce rates are simply unacceptable. Yet, we are expected to bring children into this environment?

Of course, the economic reality compounds the concern. Social Security is projected to run out of funds. The dollar is weakening day over day and year over year. Most people carry some form of debt, and for many, it is debt they will never escape. Families are being priced out of homes. Jobs are being displaced by robotics and artificial intelligence. Food security is becoming fragile. In fact, let’s dig into that last point a little more.

The average American family now allocates roughly 13 percent of its after-tax income to food, a figure that has risen steadily since 2020 and now rivals rent, utilities, transportation, and debt service. Persistent soil degradation from monocropping, fertilizer and water constraints, concentrated supply chains, and climate-driven yield volatility translate into price spikes that outpace wage growth for the bottom 60 percent of households… the same group being encouraged to have more children. Well, when chicken, beef, eggs, and staple grains become 20 to 40 percent more expensive over a three-year period, families do not simply cut back. They defer medical care, skip vehicle maintenance, or fall behind on rent and student loan payments.

The result is a daily triage in which nutrition is traded against other non-negotiable obligations, eroding long-term health, financial stability, and the very capacity for upward mobility the system claims to reward. Well, I probably don’t have to tell you that poor nutrition also affects brain function, which in turn harms decision-making and cognitive abilities. But even when one does overcome that mountain of nonsense, they are then “rewarded” with more taxes. It’s a predatory system.

Demanding that people reproduce faster while ignoring these foundational failures is a prescription for deeper chaos and more misery. What sense does it make to add millions of new mouths to feed when so many parents cannot even cover their own basic needs? The narrative that more people equals more prosperity may hold at the top of the pyramid, but it definitely collapses quickly for everyone at the middle or the bottom.

Is Decline a Signal?

Here is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, but also more interesting. What if population decline is not purely a catastrophe? What if it is, in some sense, a corrective signal given to us by nature?

If you have followed my work for a while, you probably know that I think nature wouldn’t set us up to fail. Well, nature does not tolerate chronic imbalance. We can look at a thunderstorm to understand that principle. However, when a system is stressed beyond its capacity to sustain itself, biological and ecological mechanisms also activate to reduce that load. This is an observable process. Think about it. Certain animal populations collapse under disease pressure when resources run short. Some amphibian species adjust sex ratios in response to environmental stress. Insect populations decline in regions with high pesticide saturation. In each case, the population response is not random. It is proportional to the severity of the imbalance.

Humans are biological organisms embedded in systems of resources, stress, and social stability. Chronic psychological stress, nutritional deficiency, endocrine disruption from environmental chemicals, and economic precarity all suppress reproductive hormones and fertility at the physiological level. I do not believe that these are lifestyle choices in isolation. More often than not, they are measurable biological responses to environmental conditions. For example, when cortisol is chronically elevated, reproductive function is suppressed. When nutrient density drops, hormonal architecture weakens. When social trust erodes, the drive to form stable reproductive partnerships diminishes. Well, what if our bodies are simply reading the environment and responding accordingly? That response, at the population level, would likely manifest as declining birth rates.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. I’m not suggesting that decline is desirable or that it should be accelerated. What I’m saying is that the signal deserves to be read rather than blindly overridden. In my opinion, pushing pronatalist campaigns without addressing the underlying stressors is analogous to suppressing a fever without treating the infection.

That said, the numbers don’t lie. Global fertility could dip below replacement by approximately 2030. The United Nations projects the global population will peak in the 2080s, while more aggressive models, such as those from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, place that peak around 2064. By 2050, approximately 76 percent of countries are expected to have fertility rates below replacement. By 2100, that figure reaches roughly 97 percent. In fact, more than 63 countries have already passed their population peaks. Now, factor in war, disease, economic collapse, and deliberate non-reproductive choices, and the decline may accelerate far faster than current projections suggest.

• Global fertility could dip below replacement by ~2030
• UN projects global population will peak in the 2080s
• More aggressive models (e.g., IHME) place the peak ~2064
• By 2050, ~76% of countries are expected to have fertility below replacement; by 2100, ~97%.
• Already, 63+ countries have passed their population peaks
• Etc.

What the Alarm Is Really About

Most people reading the headlines about population decline would probably benefit from asking a clarifying question: who is alarmed, and why? It seems to me that governments are alarmed because fewer people mean less tax revenue and less political legitimacy. Corporations are alarmed because fewer consumers mean shrinking markets. Creditors are alarmed because smaller economies generate less capacity to service debt. In my opinion, the alarm is structurally self-interested. I say that because the inverse is also true: fewer kids mean more money for the average American to live their day-to-day lives.

Now, that does not mean population decline poses no genuine challenges. It does. Healthcare systems, infrastructure, and social safety nets were designed around growth assumptions. Adjustment will be painful and disruptive. However, the solution being offered, simply having more babies with people you’re likely not going to spend your life with, does not address the structural failures that produced the decline. If anything, it only postpones the reckoning while adding more people and stress to a system that is already failing to support the ones already here.

Build a Society Worth Reproducing In

Indeed, most of us carry a biological drive toward reproduction, and that drive deserves respect. However, the point is not to advocate for decline. The point is to resist the reflex of pronatalist campaigns that treat reproduction as a policy lever while ignoring the conditions that make reproduction feel untenable for millions of people.

Of course, there is something else that needs to be addressed directly. The United States now sees roughly 40 to 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce, and the downstream consequences for children raised in fractured households are well-documented: elevated rates of poverty, educational underperformance, mental health disorders, substance abuse, and involvement in the criminal justice system. Can you guess who benefits from those outcomes? Unfortunately, if we are having children simply to prop up existing structures, this is the life many children are going to be doomed to.

And while it could be argued that a strong family helps to prevent the preceding, I would counter with the idea that, thanks to Marxist influences, our society is currently and proactively turning the sexes against each other. The necessary cohesion just isn’t there. Hence, reproducing at scale into a social environment where family dissolution is effectively a coin flip is not a pro-child position. It is a pro-number position. Again, there’s a clear winner in that game, and again, it’s not the people.

The point is that if population decline is a corrective signal, then the response is not to override it. The response is to address what is generating it. That means restoring integrity to food systems and nutritional environments. It means reducing the chronic stress load that suppresses reproductive biology. It means confronting economic structures that transfer wealth upward while pricing families out of stability. It means rebuilding the social trust and civil conditions that make people willing and wanting to bring new life into the world. If we don’t have these things, what’s worth preserving?

Now, I would be remiss not to suggest that technology offers us at least some partial solutions. Technologies such as hydrogen, AI, robotics, and innovations in housing and food production can reduce pressure on food and housing supplies. However, I would also argue that such technologies will reduce the need for large power structures, which might be why they are often resistant to them. At the same time, I should warn you that technology deployed in the service of the same extractive power structures will not restore the balance the signal is pointing toward. We should navigate this with care.

I’ll close with a simple summation. No matter how you cut it, a population decline will be painful, particularly for those whose power depends on perpetual growth. However, it may very well create the conditions for something more durable. Beware the scare tactics, and remember that if everything were so right, everything wouldn’t feel so wrong. I don’t think the answer is having more babies in a broken system. I think the answer lies in creating a society worth reproducing in. The key is in the contrast.

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