Would a baby bonus boost the birth rate?

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 15 minutes.

Trump’s first 100 days.

April 29 marks President Donald Trump’s 100th day of his second term in office. This Thursday and Friday, we’ll be breaking down the president’s first 100 days in a two-part series, covering how he’s executed on his campaign promises, what he’s accomplished, and the issues that have defined his presidency so far before giving him an initial grade. Part 1 will be free for all readers, while Part 2 will be for members only. 

Today's topic.

Boosting the birth rate. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has heard a range of proposals to increase the fertility rate in the United States. While taking questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday, April 22, President Donald Trump expressed support for a “baby bonus” that would pay $5,000 per delivery to the women who have children, calling it a “good idea.” Additionally, advocates and policy experts have pitched the White House on scholarship allocations for married people or parents, new government funding for education on conception, and a “National Medal of Motherhood” awarded to women with six or more children.

Back up: The U.S. total fertility rate, which estimates the number of children a woman would give birth to in her lifetime given current, age-specific fertility rates, has steadily declined since 2007, reaching about 1.63 births per woman in 2024. In developed countries, epidemiologists define 2.1 children per woman as the “replacement rate” — the rate at which a country can maintain its population over future generations. The U.S. total fertility rate has been below this level since 2008. Globally, fertility rates have also fallen in recent decades; the global total fertility rate was 2.3 children per woman in 2023, down from 2.6 in 2007 and far below the peak of 5.3 in 1963. 

Experts point to a variety of factors for the declining rate, such as women choosing to have children later in life compared to past generations, increased access to contraception, economic uncertainty for people in child-bearing years and new cultural attitudes toward parenthood, among others. However, the trend varies across demographic groups in the U.S., with fertility rates increasing among Hispanic and Asian women in 2024, while declining in other racial and ethnic groups. 

The White House has not officially indicated which proposals, if any, it is considering adopting, but several prominent members of the administration have long advocated for urgent action to address the trend. Vice President JD Vance has centered the issue since his first campaign for public office and regularly decried an “anti-child ideology” in the U.S. on the campaign trail in 2024. Separately, in March, White House adviser Elon Musk suggested “civilization will disappear” if countries do not take action to reverse the trend in birth rates.

Recent administrations have taken steps to support new parents, primarily in the form of a child tax credit for families below a set income threshold ($200,000 for individuals, $400,000 for joint filers). During his first term, President Trump doubled the credit from $1,000 to $2,000 — this increase will sunset in 2025 unless Congress passes an extension. In 2021, President Joe Biden temporarily raised the credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6 and to $3,000 for other qualifying children under age 18, but Congress did not renew the increase at the end of the fiscal year. 

Other countries have implemented financial incentives for childbirth, though the results have been mixed. In Australia, the government introduced AU$3,000 payouts to parents for each birth in 2004, which was followed by a slight, temporary increase in the national birth rate. Similarly, Hungary has offered incentives to new parents for over a decade, which initially coincided with an increased birth rate; however, the country’s rate has decreased since 2021. 

Today, we’ll dive into the debate over the U.S. birth rate and incentives for new parents, with views from the right and left. Then, my take. 

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the baby bonus proposal, with some saying it would help families.
• Others suggest that cultural shifts away from traditional families have caused declining fertility rates.
• Still others say Trump needs to give younger generations optimism about the future to boost the U.S. birth rate. 

In The Deseret News, Leah Libresco Sargeant made “the case for a baby bonus.”

“The current child tax credit helps children by trusting their parents, most of whom use the credit for essential needs like food and housing… However, when the government overcomplicates our benefit programs, or tries to dictate specific parenting approaches, working families often get left behind. With every overengineered detail, the initial intent of the program is easily overshadowed,” Sargeant wrote. “A ‘baby bonus’ is an effective way to provide support to more families with fewer complications. Every family has unique needs, and flexible assistance can help parents serve the best interests of their children in their particularity.

“For a worker with only guaranteed unpaid [Family and Medical Leave Act time off] after the birth of a child, a baby bonus can act as paid family leave. For another family, it could help defray the costs of converting a guest room for a grandmother to stay long term to help older kids adjust to a new baby. In another family’s case, a baby bonus might cover additional childcare for an older child while the mother is hospitalized to reduce the risk of a preterm delivery,” Sargeant said. “Support for families is most effective when it follows the principles of subsidiarity, trusting parents to wisely use the funds they receive for their children.”

The Washington Examiner editorial board argued “a baby bonus won’t solve our fertility crisis, marriage will.”

“Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week show that despite a 1% increase in the birth rate, people are still not having enough babies to prevent the U.S. population from declining. President Donald Trump acknowledged the problem Tuesday, saying he wants to reverse the trend in a welcome change from the last administration,” the board wrote. “The New York Times suggests the falling birth rate is a good thing, as it is being driven by a decline in teenage pregnancies. This is simply false. Teenage pregnancy rates are falling, which is a good thing, but even at their height in the 1970s, they accounted for just 6% of all births.”

“The decline in overall birth rates is actually being driven by women between the ages of 18 and 33, and it is not due to women wanting smaller families… According to Gallup, more people want big families today than in 1971, and women are more likely to want three or more children than men. What is really causing the birth rate to collapse is the decline of marriage,” the board said. “As recently as 2007, when women were having enough babies to sustain our population, 55% of women between the ages of 20 and 44 were married. Today, just 45% are, and the fall has been steepest for women under 30. If Trump, like Vice President JD Vance, wants more babies born in the United States, his administration should focus on helping young men and women get and stay married.”

In The Spectator, Kristina Murkett wrote about “how Trump could reverse America’s baby bust.”

“Across the world, countries are trialling increasingly creative and dramatic policies to try to reverse the fertility decline. In Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s self-proclaimed mission is ‘procreation, not immigration’, mothers with two or more children are now exempt from income tax for life. Yet none of them have shown any signs of real success,” Murkett said. “The reason these initiatives fail is that low birth rates are an existential problem, not an economic one… Government interventions do not work because they do not compensate for the opportunity cost of having children. Modern life frames parenthood in terms of what you give up rather than what you gain: not only in terms of your career but in every aspect of your lifestyle.”

“We have removed the extended family and community networks that make parenting more manageable, and no subsidy can compensate for these huge social and cultural changes. If Trump wants to boost the birth rate, then he needs to make parenting joyful again. Doom-mongering about economic downturns and impending social collapse is unlikely to inspire anyone to have more children, a decision that normally signals confidence in the future,” Murkett wrote. “Yet joy is a hard thing for a policy to promise: how can the state deal with intangible incentives like purpose, belonging or love? Parenting is about finding meaning, and this is something that money can’t buy.”

What the left is saying.

• The left argues other Trump administration policies undercut its desire to boost the fertility rate. 
• Some say the government should prioritize helping women navigate the complexities of having children over financial incentives.
• Others argue the pronatalist movement is driven by ulterior motives. 

In Bloomberg, Mary Ellen Klas wrote “a baby boom? In this economy?”

“The pronatalist push started at the Department of Transportation where Secretary Sean Duffy, the father of nine kids, issued a memo in February dictating that ‘communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average’ be given preference in transportation funding… President Donald Trump has proclaimed that he wants to be ‘the fertilization president.’ Elon Musk, the father of an estimated 14 children and head of Trump’s quasi-government Department of Government Efficiency, has said ‘civilization is going to crumble’ unless we raise the birth rate,” Klas said. “But they are trying to usher in a Trump baby boom at the same time Musk and DOGE are slashing federal programs that help women have more kids.”

“DOGE has slashed funding to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Center for Disease Control’s Division of Reproductive Health,” Klas wrote. “Of course, the choice to create a new life isn’t only a financial calculation. It’s also a profound act of hope…You’d think the Trump administration would want to focus on increasing — not cutting — funding to maternal and child health, repairing its self-inflicted economic wounds, and lowering the cost of living for working families before asking young people to forget all their troubles and bring children into the world.”

In The Sacramento Bee, Robin Epley argued “if Trump wants more American babies, then he needs to help more mothers.”

“Enticing young Americans into parenthood would first require instituting federally mandated, paid parental leave. It is a policy failure for the likes of which the U.S. is alone among industrialized nations, and an embarrassment we share with only six other countries,” Epley said. “According to the National Partnership for Women & Families, paid parental leave improves maternal and infant health, including their physical health and well-being; women who receive paid leave have a lower chance of reporting intimate partner violence; and an increase in paid parental leave decreases rates of infant mortality.

“Second, America needs to give parents — and especially mothers — the chance to continue their careers by making child care more affordable… And last but not least, America needs to make pregnancy and birth safer,” Epley wrote. “If the Trump Administration truly wanted to make motherhood a compelling prospect, it would be far harder than doling out a national award for prolific mothers or giving women a class on menstrual cycles. Despite all their blustering efforts and policies reminiscent only of dystopian novels, America’s birth rate will stay stagnant as long as American parenthood remains a prohibitive cost.”

In The Washington Post, Philip Bump suggested “the pronatalism movement often contains more than a hint of great replacement theory rhetoric.”

“[I am] an advocate of having children. I understand that parenting isn’t easy and that I am advantaged in doing so by having a partner and a steady income… What I do not understand, though, is the prevalent idea that having children is an essential element of reconstructing some idealized version of America — that having a clutch of kids is how we make America great again, in all of the ways that phrase manifests,” Bump said. “Women are not dependent on men in ways they were a century ago, a shift away from a traditional ideal that can be grating to conservatives. But the underlying politics has another dimension: That fewer Americans are having babies means the nation is more reliant on immigration to backstop population trends.”

“Many of pronatalism’s proponents object as much or more to who is having babies in America than to the fact that Americans are having fewer babies. For every 1,000 White women in 2024, there were 51.7 babies. For every 1,000 Hispanic women, there were 66.1 births. There does not appear to be a robust effort from pronatalists to learn how Hispanic U.S. residents are succeeding where White residents are failing. Because the idea that Americans are being ‘replaced’ is centered on the idea that it is non-White babies who are serving as the replacements.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Before having my first child, I supported many of the policies Trump is considering.
• I still like these policies, but now I am much more skeptical that they’d impact the fertility rate.
• I think deep social factors are driving the decision to put off having children, and I don’t think policy alone can solve that. 

If we covered this story four months ago, before I had my first child, my opinion would have been pretty different than it is now. 

Generally speaking, I have believed that policies like the bipartisan child tax credit, the “baby bonus” the Trump administration is considering, and easing the affordability issues of parenting is the best way to encourage births. And I’ll say upfront that — like JD Vance, Elon Musk, and many others across the political spectrum — I think our declining fertility rate is a dire issue that we’d be wise to try to reverse. But now that I’ve become a parent myself, spoken with other parents, and read the studies of programs designed to address these issues — I’m much less convinced that they will actually move the needle (which is not a reason not to do them, but just to say they may not help encourage births).

First, my own experience: My wife, Phoebe, and I are fortunate enough not to be debilitated by the financial burden of having a child. Our son is a little over three months old, so most of our cost burden so far was his actual birth — the hospital billed us $40,000, almost all of which was covered by insurance. The rest has been the clothes, various necessities (car seat, stroller, bassinet), and of course the toys that dominate his day. Some items, like a new stroller or car seat, can cost as much as a used car. But for the most part, these items are easy to find used or cheap (at least, pre-tariffs!) or are gifted to you, and even top-of-the-line options still won’t add up to more than about $5,000.

The real costs are still coming, starting this September, when Phoebe and I will both be working and our son will need daily childcare. Putting him in a daycare walking distance from us in Philadelphia will add a staggering $35,000 a year in childcare costs. Soon, he’ll start to outgrow all the stuff we were gifted or started with, then he’ll start eating solid food, and eventually we’ll need to find a new place to live with more space. 

Up to this point, though, the biggest cost of parenting has not been monetary but time. Phoebe and I have limited access to childcare now — our parents don’t live in the house with us, or around the corner, or in some cases even within driving distance. We moved from New York to Philadelphia so Phoebe could attend law school, so we also don’t have our “village” — a lot of the close friends we made in our 20s do not live here. We are, like so many potential parents, victims of modern life, living in an urban area, starting our own nuclear family unit. I don’t know any policy prescription that can solve that.

That brings me to the three challenges that I most often hear from other parents: Finding affordable childcare, finding affordable housing, and losing time for your career and social life. I don’t think there is much public policy can do to change how someone feels about having less time to see their friends, travel, or pursue career goals. A “baby bonus” or child tax credit can maybe put a dent in finding affordable childcare, but a few thousand dollars is small potatoes on the bills I’m staring down — and I don’t think a one-time payout would affect many people’s decision to have a child. To me, by far the most impact the government can have on encouraging more births would be implementing Abundance-like policies aimed at making housing more affordable — if the government implemented one new “pro-birth” policy, this would be my pick 

Now, finally, for the data. Like a lot of new parents, before we had our first kid, I started reading economist and parenthood writer Emily Oster. Just this week, in her newsletter Parent Data, she examined the effectiveness of paying people to have babies in order to increase the fertility rate. Oster’s conclusion was equal parts jarring and convincing. “I want to give a reality check about how much these policies might matter,” she said, before sharing this chart on fertility rates:

“Despite the variation in family support, fertility rates have consistently declined across all four of these countries,” she writes. “In fact, in 2022 the U.S. had the highest fertility rate,” despite Norway and Sweden being “countries with clearly excellent family supports.” The U.S. is not, and Canada is somewhere in the middle.

Oster  examined several studies on social programs from countries like Russia, Canada, South Korea and Israel, and concluded that if “we are looking for a policy answer to why global fertility rates have declined, these are not it.” She does say the policies that provide child care, paid maternity leave or fertility services can increase fertility rates, but often temporarily and marginally. More than anything they are just “good for infant health, parents’ earnings, and gender equality.” 

The jarring reality is that no country on Earth has solved this problem in a sustained way through policy — which is to say nothing of how the issues we face in America like obesity, poor diets, environmental chemicals, and access to birth control could be impacting fertility rates. My estimation is that these are less important than the socioeconomic forces, but they are there nonetheless — and, at the margins, are likely to constrain the success of policy initiatives like this one. 

Ultimately, I find Oster’s data and her analysis convincing, and it conveniently aligns with my personal experience. I think there are plenty of good reasons for the government to pursue pro-birth policies, but I don’t think they’ll be effective in encouraging more births — the decreasing fertility rate seems so much deeper than just a financial question. 

This is, in my view, primarily a social and cultural issue: Young Americans live different lives than they did 50 years ago, with different goals, different dreams, and different pursuits. Both parents are often focused on their careers, which diasporizes their family and friend village. On top of that, young Americans have growing numbers of peers who don’t want kids so they can be free to travel, socialize, and pursue their careers without limitations. The upshot is that people on the fence about having kids today feel more societal pressure not to than in years past. 

We’re going to need to turn those cultural pressures around if we want to meaningfully impact fertility rates. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I don't understand federal endowments to Ivy League schools at all. Harvard is rich isn't it? Why not send billions to community colleges who need it?

— Matt from San Antonio, TX

Tangle: The key term here is “endowments.” Harvard actually has its own endowment, funded by private donations and managed by private investment managers, in excess of $53 billion. That money — along with tuition — is primarily what the university uses to fund faculty salaries, academic programs, financial aid, and new buildings on campus. And though Harvard’s endowment is the largest of any school in the world, it’s no outlier, either.

The money Harvard gets from the federal government, on the other hand, is tied to individual research programs and contracts. We didn’t really explain how this process works in our initial piece on the funding fight, but the university itself — its buildings, its faculty, its administration — isn’t subsidized by this money. Rather, postgraduate researchers and faculty at universities submit applications for federal grants to fund their research initiatives. 

These grant proposals are then reviewed by professionals at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and sometimes the Departments of Education or Defense. These programs are all overseen by the federal government, which in the past has loosely guided policy for how it approves grants. The Trump administration, in tying grant approvals to other policies at a researcher’s institution, is taking a different approach.

This grant money funds scholarship at these schools — that is, the equipment and personnel that make universities uniquely positioned to carry out specific research programs. Although it might seem somewhat absurd that rich institutions like Harvard have to appeal to the government for money, government grants and private endowments are actually different things for different purposes.

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Under the radar.

On his 100th day in office, President Trump has yet to nominate any federal judges. At this point in his first term, Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, had already been confirmed, and his first federal judge nomination was moving ahead for confirmation in May. Similarly, President Biden sent his first batch of judicial nominees to the Senate in his first 100 days, and seven were confirmed by June 2021. Judiciary Committee rules mandate that the committee must wait 28 days after receiving a nomination before moving forward, so Trump’s first nominees will not be voted on until June at the earliest. Axios has the story.

Numbers.

• $29,419. The estimated annual cost (minus tax exemptions or credits) of having a child in the United States, according to a 2025 study by LendingTree. 
• $297,674. The estimated total cost (minus tax exemptions or credits) of raising a child over 18 years in the U.S. 
• 3.8. The fertility rate (the number of births per woman) in the U.S. in 1957, the highest yearly fertility rate since 1940, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• 1.6. The fertility rate in the U.S. in 2024.
• 73.4%. The percent decrease in the number of births per U.S. woman in the 15–19 age range between 2000 and 2024. 
• 48.3%. The percent decrease in the number of births per U.S. woman in the 20–24 age range between 2000 and 2024.
• 4.6%. The percent increase in the number of births per U.S. woman in the 30–34 age range between 2000 and 2024.
• 44% and 29%. The percentage of Americans who think the ideal number of children for a family to have is two and three, respectively, according to a June/July 2023 Gallup poll.
• 2%. The percentage of Americans who think the ideal number of children for a family to have is zero. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about SCOTUS hearing Trump’s immunity case.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the fox and deer on a midnight stroll together.
• Nothing to do with politics: A man was rescued from Mt. Fuji — then returned to get his phone, requiring another rescue.
• Yesterday’s survey: 3,538 readers answered our survey on the arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan with 43% opposing the arrest. “While Judge Dugan may have committed a criminal offense, other sources have commented that such behavior in no way rises to the level of a felony. The appropriate response would be to file a criminal complaint prior to an arrest,” one respondent said. 

Have a nice day.

Dr. Z is beloved in his Baltimore neighborhood, where he’s known for seeing patients regardless of whether they can pay for medical care. When he was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago and couldn’t pay for treatment, his patients rallied together. “Whatever needs to be done to save Dr. Z, we're gonna do it, collectively,” one of his patients said. And they did — sourcing nearly 1,000 donations and raising $100,000. “I am the happiest man on the planet, no matter what the outcome,” Dr. Z said. CBS has the story.

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