Dr. Joshua Wilde of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science was extensively quoted in a recent New York Times Headway newsletter examining declining birth rates across the United States and other high-income countries. The piece situates these trends within broader social and economic contexts, emphasising how decisions about whether, when, and how many children to have are shaped as much by structural conditions as by personal choice.
The article explains that as education and incomes rise, people almost everywhere tend to have fewer children, pushing fertility below the level needed to keep populations stable. Despite growing political interest in pronatalist ideas, the evidence from countries that have tried for decades suggests there’s no simple policy switch that reliably makes families have more babies.
Dr. Joshua Wilde emphasizes that the one big exception—the mid-century Baby Boom—was a rare, hard-to-repeat mix of fast growth, rising wages, and unique social conditions. He also notes that fertility measures can swing in the short run as people delay or accelerate births during crises, making long-term projections uncertain. The takeaway: low fertility is a stubborn, global trend—and the real challenge is how societies adapt, not how quickly they can rewind history.
Read the full New York Times article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/headway/birthrates-progress-newsletter.html.
