Immigration only makes our fertility crisis worse

“America is not having enough babies to keep our populations up,” Clinton continued, “So we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work.”

It’s nice that Clinton threw in that “vetted” part, especially since President Joe Biden wasn’t vetting any of the 8 million illegal immigrants he released into the country during his four years in office. But even if we were vetting every immigrant into this country, it still wouldn’t change the fact that increased immigration only makes our fertility crisis worse, not better. And fertility has been dropping in the United States for decades.

According to the latest National Center for Health Statistics numbers, 3,606,400 babies were born in the U.S. last year, down from 3,628,934 in 2024. The fertility rate — the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age — dropped to 53.1 in 2025, down from 53.8 in 2024. Demographers generally agree that a rate of 70 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age is necessary for a population to replace itself.

The cause of our nation’s fertility crisis is actually strikingly obvious to anyone who looks at the right numbers. In 1970, there were 87 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, well above replacement levels. At that time, 61% of women of childbearing age were married compared to 39% who were not. Fast forward to 1990, and the fertility rate had fallen to 71 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, lower than the 1970 figure but still above replacement level. By that time, the percentage of women of childbearing age who were married had fallen to 51%.

Fast forward to today, and just 37% of women of childbearing age are married, while 63% are single. There are actually millions fewer married women of childbearing age today (24.3 million) than there were in 1990 (29.8 million). Of course, 24.3 million married women are producing fewer children than 29.8 million women. It would be an absolute miracle if they weren’t!

To solve the fertility crisis, therefore, we must first solve the marriage crisis, the causes of which are a bit trickier to nail down. That said, there are some factors that are almost universally acknowledged to be associated with higher marriage rates, and unfortunately, high immigration levels push all of those factors in the wrong direction.

Democrats will never admit it, but the most comprehensive examination of economic research ever conducted, the National Academies of Sciences 2017 report on The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, found that increased immigration lowers wages for some native-born Americans, particularly other minorities and those without a college education.

To be clear, increased immigration does increase wages for many Americans. If you are a lawyer or doctor, you can pay low wages to an immigrant to mow your lawn, cook your food, or care for your children, giving you more time to earn money. But for Americans who are younger and less skilled, high levels of immigration cause harm. This is particularly relevant for the fertility crisis because marriage has declined the most in exactly the demographics hit the hardest by increased immigration. And higher male wages are universally associated with higher marriage rates.

It is not a coincidence that the biggest baby and marriage boom in our nation’s history began at the exact moment that the percentage of foreign-born Americans was at its lowest.

High levels of immigration also decrease social mobility. In past generations, when immigration levels were low, Americans from economically depressed places were likely to move to faster-growing places. People in slow-growing rural agricultural areas or declining mining towns could move to the big cities of California and easily find work. And this is exactly what happened in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. But by the 1980s, those entry-level jobs and houses were filled with immigrants from abroad, not migrants from other states. Thanks to this crowd-out effect, California has since become a net exporter of residents to other states. And with Americans less able to move cities to start a new household, marriage has become harder.

Hinted at above, housing is another proven barrier to family formation, and the literature clearly shows that increased housing costs drive down marriage and fertility rates. One recent study of 2,450 U.S. counties found that higher housing costs were associated with lower marriage rates, suggesting that the price of forming a household affects the decision to marry. Another study even purported to show that half of all America’s fertility decline since 1990 was caused by increased housing costs.

Separately, other researchers have linked high immigration levels with rising housing costs. The most comprehensive study looked at rents and housing prices in metropolitan statistical areas across the country, which consist of a central city and its surrounding suburbs. The authors found that not only did increased immigration cause rents and housing prices to rise in the communities where immigrants settled, but the surrounding communities also saw housing costs go up as natives fled the neighborhoods immigrants were settling.

High immigration levels are also associated with declining levels of social trust and community cohesion. Harvard Professor Robert Putnam has found that residents of ethnically diverse neighborhoods have lower levels of trust in others, lower rates of community cooperation, and fewer friends. Separate research confirms this decreased interaction carries over to marriage. Diverse neighborhoods were found to have lower marriage rates, delayed marriage, and fewer births.

If we want to survive as a nation, we cannot keep mindlessly importing more immigrants to replace our disappearing population. More immigration only makes the fertility crisis worse by making it more difficult for native-born Americans to get married and start a family.

Instead of undercutting male wages through immigration and bad trade deals, we should be investing in programs and industries that employ them. This means spending as much on technical apprenticeship programs as we do on colleges and universities. It means prioritizing economic growth over environmental activists by reforming our permitting process so we can become a country that builds again.

We also need a social safety net that rewards marriage instead of punishing it. For decades, our means-tested safety-net programs have lowered or eliminated benefits for low-income couples who get married. We can remove these penalties.

We should also help boys become men that women want to marry. Too many adolescents get lost in the vice economy of porn, weed, and mobile sports gambling. These billion-dollar industries were all illegal not that long ago, when marriage rates were higher. Let’s make them illegal again.

America cannot import its way out of a marriage crisis. A nation that wants children must make it easier for its own citizens to marry, work, buy homes, and build families. That means lower immigration, higher wages, cheaper housing, stronger communities, and a culture that helps boys become husbands and fathers.