11/06/2023

Millennials Aren’t Having Kids

Here are the reasons why

The U.S. birthrate languishes at its lowest level in history. Thus, when our friend and colleague Herman Wong suggested running the numbers on only children, we lit up with the cheap joy of answering a question to which we already knew the answer. With fewer kids overall, Americans are surely cranking out one-hit wonders in record numbers, right?

Not so fast!

Every two years, the Census Bureau quietly appends a battery of fertility-related questions to its workhorse monthly questionnaire, the Current Population Survey, our go-to source for everything from the unemployment rate to Americans’ moving habits. It’s smaller than the immense annual American Community Survey, but it’s one of the few major surveys that asks how many times American women have given birth.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.