Why more U.S. adults are choosing not to have kids

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An increasing share of adults under 50 say they’re unlikely to have kids — and the major reason is, well, they just don’t want them, according to a report from Pew Research Center out Thursday morning.

The U.S. fertility rate is at a historic low, posing problems for future economic growth, and the survey takes a crack at figuring out what’s going on.

By the numbers:

47% of adults under 50 without kids say they’re unlikely to have them — up 10 percentage points from 2018
Of those who said they’re unlikely to have children, 57% said “they just don’t want to.”

44% said they wanted to focus on different things. 38% pointed to the state of the world, other than the environment. And 36% said they couldn’t afford to raise a child.

13% cited infertility or other medical reasons.

64% of young women say they just don’t want children, compared to 50% of men.

Within the last year, Pew surveyed 770 adults under age 50 and 2,542 adults age 50 and older without kids.

The older folks had different reasons for not having children — at the top? “It just never happened.”

Birth rates are falling in most rich countries.

In the U.S., it’s the child-free group — not people having fewer children — that’s driving much of the decline, per an analysis reported in the WSJ. “Childlessness accounted for over two-thirds of the 6.5% drop in average births between 2012 to 2022.”

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