The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007
&gt; The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes.<p>What a load of bull. Obviously, there is no <i>single one</i> explanation - the entire point of such articles is that they don&#x27;t get just how bad the combination of causes actually is.<p>To explain: my generation (i.e. 1990 and onwards) have experienced <i>multiple</i> and, to make it worse, <i>overlapping</i> devastating crises with long term impact. We graduated right in the midst of a multi-year recession (first the banking crisis, then the euro crisis), as soon as that was over Europe had the refugee influx and America still reeled with the aftereffects of the banking crisis, then COVID came along, and directly afterwards Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to exploding costs of living - at the moment about 2&#x2F;3rds of the population struggle to make rent and bills, forget about &quot;luxury&quot; purchases.<p>The worst problem is rents are sucking us dry. We want to offer our children a better perspective than we had while growing up - but we can&#x27;t even do <i>that</i> as housing is barely affordable for us with our partners, if we don&#x27;t have to live at our parents&#x27; or in shared housing (=roommates). Also, both parents have to work to make rent, but that makes childcare a necessity - but childcare itself eats up a lot of money. And children <i>themselves</i> cost a lot of money as well - clothing, food, diapers, insurance, all that easily adds up to hundreds of euros a month.<p>Americans, additionally, have to fight with political changes - if I were living in the US, I would do <i>everything</i> to not make my s&#x2F;o pregnant, simply because <i>women have literally died or gotten permanently infertile because they were denied abortions for non-viable pregnancies</i>, and even if that were not the case I would not risk getting stuck with a 50.000$ bill for the birth.<p>Oh, and on top of that those of my generation who think about ethics have yet another problem... can it be ethical to birth a child into a world firmly heeded towards environmental destruction? With politicians in power actively denying climate change?<p>The US has to fix access to healthcare, and we all have to fix rents - the primary cause of people not having kids is because they literally cannot afford them.