It seems that every few weeks there’s a new round of headlines about birth rates. Why are they declining? Is it a crisis? And whose fault is it?
I always struggle with whether or how to include this news in this newsletter about women’s careers and lives. Sometimes, coverage of declining birth rates can be simplistic—without acknowledgment of the multitude of factors that go into the individual choice of whether or not to have a child. And, of course, women are often blamed for what is sometimes framed as the impending fall of civilization. Talk of declining birth rates can ignore the ways in which the data reveals positive change for women—from women’s increased ability to choose their life path to the decline of teen pregnancies.
So I was really interested to see a new take on declining birth rates today from none other than the Nobel-winning economist Claudia Goldin. (Known for both winning the Nobel and helping WNBA players secure their latest contract.) Often, women’s growing independence is cited as the root of birth rate free-falls. Women are selfish, pundits argue, prioritizing their careers and personal happiness over having families. It’s a global problem, with variations on the same narrative from Japan to the U.S., where the Trump administration has suggested everything from “baby bonuses” to reserving Fulbright slots for candidates who are married with children. Since 2007, the number of Americans having babies has dropped 23%; the U.S. birth rate hit record low in 2025.
But Goldin has identified the true root of the problem, below all that: male “duds” who are not appealing partners to raise children with.
“Even though a major factor in the decline of fertility is women’s increased agency, the real obstacle is the need for husbands and fathers to demonstrate their commitment in advance,” she wrote in her working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research. If men “signal they will be dependable ‘dads’ and not disappointing ‘duds,’” she wrote, women are more likely to want to have babies.
Decreasing birth rates are often among educated women. And educated women only want to have children when they can “reap the financial and personal rewards from their education while raising” them, Bloomberg reported in a new piece on Goldin’s analysis.
Goldin’s paper includes an economic model; the penalty of child-rearing on a woman’s career is directly affected by what the economist calls the “dependability” of a male partner. Dependability, though, doesn’t impact decision-making for women who didn’t go to college.
Interestingly, the speed with which a culture has evolved impacts this issue. Countries that experienced rapid economic growth—like Japan and Italy—have suffered from declining birth rates because societal norms didn’t have time to catch up to economic and workplace norms. Where economic growth was more gradual, men adjusted better to taking on more household duties, making raising kids with them more appealing.
I highly recommend reading the full Bloomberg story here. And next time you see a headline about how to get women to have more babies, remember: that’s only half the equation.
Emma Hinchliffe
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is UnHerd’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
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Another exec departure at JPMorgan. Teresa Heitsenrether is leaving after four decades at the end of the year; her most recent title was chief data and analytics officer. She'd been leading the bank's AI strategy. And her exit comes after the departure of another high-profile female exec, Marianne Lake.
ON MY RADAR
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PARTING WORDS
"If we allow ourselves to only see people a certain way, then we’re living a very limited life."
— Octavia Spencer, on her journey to leading roles in Hollywood