The Obvious Answer To America’s Vanishing Babies
July 2, 2026
On the same day last month, two prominent opinion writers both addressed the U.S. fertility decline: Louise Perry wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “Falling birth rates are a mystery,” while Jessica Grose at the New York Times stated that it is “not a mystery” why fertility rates are falling, pointing to the significant drop in teen births as the most likely culprit.
From a demographer’s perspective, the U.S. fertility decline is not a mystery at all. The data clearly point to the massive drop in the number of children women have during their 20s as the direct cause.
