For U.S., Europe exhibits the methods on the tough politics of fertility

ROME — Long-term demographic trends are not usually sources of hot-button electoral issues, but the topics of birth, death, family size and fertility rates have emerged as a front-row partisan issue in the U.S. presidential election.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has commented about “childless cat ladies,” candidates have competing promises for the child tax credit, Republican nominee Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of illegal aliens, and campaigns are clashing over abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilization access. All are related to demographics in one way or another.

Although the issue is only now gaining prominence in American politics, it’s common in many democracies on the other side of the Atlantic. Falling birth rates, declining family sizes, and a dearth of younger workers to support the growing ranks of senior retirees are familiar campaign issues with massive electoral consequences across Europe.

Political leaders of the left, right and middle have struggled with ways to encourage voters to have more babies.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban hosts biannual demographic summits with pro-family events to boost the country’s fertility rate. This spring, French President Emmanuel Macron, in many ways Mr. Orban’s ideological nemesis in clashes over European Union policy, announced a comprehensive package to boost France’s demographic picture. Even with less than two children per woman, France has one of the highest fertility rates on the continent.

Key features of the Macron “demographic rearmament” plan are free fertility tests for women ages 18 to 25 and more and cheaper options for those seeking help conceiving.

“Our France will also be stronger by relaunching its birth rate,” Mr. Macron told reporters just hours after government statistics found yet another drop in birth rates for 2023 from a year earlier. “Until recently, we were a country for which this was a strength. … It’s been less true in recent years.”

Population researchers Stein Emil Vollset and Natalia V. Bhattacharjee of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine warned in a study this year in the British medical journal The Lancet that policymakers face a “demographically divided world” with vast consequences for domestic societies and the global economy.

“We are facing staggering social change through the 21st century,” Mr. Vollset said of the study’s findings. “The world will be simultaneously tackling a ‘baby boom’ in some countries and a ‘baby bust’ in the others.”

The questions are already hitting home for some countries.

“The biggest problem in a country with a falling fertility rate isn’t related to any specific economic area,” Maria Rita Testa, a demography expert with Rome’s Luiss University, said in an interview. “The biggest problem is that it starts to tear at the social fabric of a country. It changes the way the country functions and how its residents interact with each other.”

Case study: Italy

Once as famous for large families as it is for pasta and pizza, Italy has become a case study in troubling demographic trends.

Italian women now have an average of 1.30 children over their lifetimes. The country hasn’t had a birth rate above the “replacement rate,” estimated at 2.1 children per woman, since 1975.

Italian towns are selling houses for $1 to save them from being abandoned completely.

The government in Rome pays to educate Italian children, but many of the best and brightest seek their fortunes abroad because of a lack of jobs. Rural schools and hospitals are closing, companies are downsizing, and each trend only decreases incentives for larger families.

“In a society with fewer children, people become more materialistic, more hedonistic, more focused on careers, on entertainment, on travel. There’s less altruism. Public policy becomes less forward-looking,” Ms. Testa said. “The economy is weakened as well, not just because there are fewer consumers and fewer workers, but also because, as the average age increases, workers become less efficient.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has begun addressing the country’s demographic problems with various aid programs and tax breaks aimed primarily at female workers with at least two children. Given the scope of the problem, however, the measures are considered modest.

“The trouble is that by the time this kind of problem becomes obvious to most people, it’s critical,” Ms. Testa said. “It’s the ‘de-standardization’ of life trajectory, where the idea of finding a partner and starting a family early in adulthood are no longer the norm. Once that takes hold, as it has in Italy and in many other countries, it’s very difficult to reverse.”

The demographic push has unfortunate political overtones for some. Though modest, Ms. Meloni’s incentives remind Italians of some of the policies of former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In the 1920s and 1930s, he paid bonuses and offered discounted train fares to couples who married early.

He instructed companies to hire fathers over single men and levied a “bachelor tax” on the incomes of single men. Families with six or more children paid no income tax at all. Newspaper articles highlighted the cash prizes Mussolini’s government gave the women with the most children in each Italian province.

Even such dramatic reforms had a limited impact. Italy’s fertility rate fell over the 15 years leading to World War II.

U.S. challenges

Although effective measures remain elusive, the issue is as real in the U.S. as in Italy.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the birth rate in the U.S. last year was 1.62 per woman, reversing a modest two-year increase after the onset of the pandemic. The latest figure is the lowest since the Great Depression.

Although American fertility rates have long been above those of peer countries in Europe and East Asia, the U.S. hasn’t been above the “replacement rate” — the birth rate required for a generation to precisely replace itself — since 2006.

The U.S. population has slowly and steadily increased since the end of World War II, topping 340 million for the first time this year, according to Census Bureau estimates. That compares with less than 300 million 18 years ago when the population first dipped below the “replacement rate.”

The primary reason for the increase is net immigration, another trend hotly debated in politics.

Demographic experts say a decline in the U.S. population would exacerbate problems such as retirement and education costs, government tax revenue, health care, reduced innovation and a weakened military.

Nobody in Italy or the U.S. is suggesting reforms of the magnitude of Mussolini’s. Although Ms. Testa praises Ms. Meloni’s initiatives and the U.S. child tax credit and maternity leave, she said they are insufficient. The one effective solution, she said, is to create more, better-paying jobs.

“I always tell people that the key is to help women and couples to feel financially secure earlier in life and to help make the job market compatible with family life,” she said. “Without that, developed countries risk seeing fewer stores selling baby diapers and more selling adult diapers.”