Can President Donald Trump make having babies great again? The White House is reportedly considering different proposals to encourage people to marry and have children. One idea that is gaining momentum is a $5,000 incentive for new mothers. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” the president said when reporters asked him about the concept on April 22. Can a Trump baby bonus reverse the nation’s declining birth rate? So far, it has not helped other countries.
Trump Baby Bonus
The United States maintains a plethora of child benefit programs. On the fiscal side, the Child Tax Credit offers up to $3,600 per child under six years old. Eligible families and children can receive medical care through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Households struggling to afford food can utilize two federal initiatives: the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
This has not been enough to spur baby production. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that approximately 3.6 million babies were born in the United States last year, up 1% from the record low registered in 2023. The US birth rate has been tumbling steadily since the financial crisis nearly 20 years ago.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has been adamant about the benefits of having children. “The birth rate is very low in almost every country, and unless that changes, civilization will disappear,” Musk said in a recent interview with Fox News. He is correct, too, even just based on economics: Fewer people means fewer workers to prop up America’s exorbitant and failing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid system.
While the SpaceX and Tesla Motors executive has undoubtedly provided his share of children to the global gene pool, the rest of the developed world has not. In fact, even in countries that maintain far more generous child support programs than the Trump baby bonus, the birth rate has not been stimulated. Based on World Population data, the only places in the world with sufficient baby output are Africa and South Asia.
Let’s take a look at birth rates across the globe.
Hungary for Kids?
In May 2024, Liberty Nation News’ Kelli Ballard reported that three-quarters of countries will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain the population size by 2050. This number will reach 97% of nations by 2100. Ballard presented two important points: “The question is, how to fix it? Or, given societal life now, is it even possible to reverse this trend?” Governments everywhere are scrambling to fix a problem they helped create in the first place.
Hungary has ostensibly been at the epicenter of an international push to incentivize households to have children. The government has implemented several measures to stimulate the birth rate beyond one-time or monthly benefit payments. Budapest exempts women raising four or more children from paying personal income taxes for life. The government also offers loans for families with at least two children to purchase homes, subsidies for large families to buy bigger automobiles, and compensation for grandparents caring for their grandchildren.
Despite these enormous benefits, Hungary’s population is still shrinking. In 2024, births fell at a faster pace than deaths: 77,500 children were born, and 127,500 people died. Even the marriage rate dropped last year, sliding 25%. International migration helped offset the nation’s population decline.
In Australia, parental leave, family tax benefits, child care subsidies, and parenting support initiatives have not been enough to entice women to have kids. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the birth rate reached a record low of 1.5 births per woman.
Canada has various child-related benefits, but the national fertility rate reached a record low in 2023 for the second consecutive year. “Canada has now joined the group of ‘lowest-low’ fertility countries, including South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan, with 1.3 children per woman or less,” Statistics Canada said in a September report. “In comparison, the total fertility rate for the United States was 1.62 per woman in 2023.” Like Hungary, Canada’s population growth has been fueled almost entirely by immigration. In 2023, for example, 98% of the nation’s population increase resulted from immigration.
China’s population has been declining for three straight years. But while Beijing has experienced a baby bump following the country’s end to strict pandemic-era health policies, the birth rate has been steadily declining for a long time. This has forced the Chinese Communist Party to take action, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping telling women to “marry early, have children, and retire late.”
The Why
Pew Research Center published a July 2024 study titled “The Experiences of U.S. Adults Who Don’t Have Children.” Researchers spoke with individuals 50 and older and determined three reasons why people have not had children: “It just never happened” (39%); “Didn’t find the right partner” (33%); and “They just didn’t want to” (31%). Researchers also found further causes for the lack of kids: People wanted to concentrate on other things, infertility, and concerns about costs and the state of the world.
They also interviewed adults under 50, and the justifications for why they do not have children were more concerning for the future of mankind: 57% do not want to have kids, and 44% want to focus on other things. Additional explanations included the costs of raising a child, geopolitical worries, and environmental anxiety.
Suffice it to say that taxpayer-funded child-support programs can be ubiquitous, but politicians cannot force people to have children, no matter how beneficial it is to themselves and society.
What Did Aristotle Say?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 11% of American men in their prime working years (25 to 54) are neither employed nor looking for work. A recent Morgan Stanley study concluded that 45% of women aged 25 to 44 are expected to be single by 2030. Ultimately, the human experience is dwindling.
In his work titled Nicomachean Ethics, the great philosopher Aristotle emphasized the importance of family in accomplishing “eudaimonia,” a term that describes a well-lived existence. He espoused that humans achieve fulfillment through meaningful endeavors and virtuous actions, and raising children contributes to achieving eudaimonia, which is far superior to enduring a nihilistic stint on a blue marble traversing the universe.
