Fertility Decline is Widespread Across Education Levels

by Glenn T. Stanton | April 30, 2026 | Culture

As fertility levels continue to tank in the United States, and across nearly all of the developed world, it is important to ask what population groups are experiencing these declines.

Is it working-class women facing economic struggles deciding to forego childbearing because of increasing costs and the need to work full-time? Or is it elite, professional women who simply have so many other life options to pursue, so becoming a mother loses to other intriguing options?

Two leading economists, Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine, who have done important work in the world of global fertility, have newly taken up this very question and come to some interesting answers. In 2022, they explained just how dramatically U.S fertility is declining.

Things have only continued to slide further since 2020.

You simply cannot sustain a growing and prosperous nation with such trendlines. Tomorrow’s workers, teachers, health care providers, national leaders, inventors and investors, military and police force, business entrepreneurs and every other service provider any society needs always come to us as babies, being born today or tomorrow. If that doesn’t happen, we have no future. This makes fertility decline an extremely serious problem.

Working through University of Notre Dame’s Strengthening Families Research Initiative, Drs. Kearney and Levine present some concerning news on how fertility decline is widespread across various educational levels. “The decline in fertility is not concentrated in any one group.” They explain, “Instead, it is broad-based, with strikingly similar trends across women with and without a college degree.”

They tracked women born in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, finding that fertility has fallen off substantially among more recent generational cohorts, regardless of educational attainment.

The trend lines look like this for women with and without a four-year college degree.

Kearney and Levine note, “Taken together, these results point to a clear conclusion: young adults today are having fewer children, are more likely to remain childless, and are less likely to be married by ages 30 and 35 than women of the same age in earlier cohorts.” And these shifts are happening across various demographic groups. More evidence that young men and women are unfortunately placing less importance on marriage and parenthood.

This is likely because of “a range of underlying forces, including changing social norms, evolving expectations about careers and relationships, increased uncertainty in the economic and social environment, and shifts in how young adults evaluate the timing and desirability of marriage and children.”

These scholars conclude, “The decline in fertility in the United States is not a story about one group of women delaying or foregoing childbearing.” They add, “It is a broad, population-wide shift that cuts across educational lines, reflecting deep changes in how young adults are organizing their lives and making decisions about family formation.”

Our nations must find ways to encourage both marriage and increasing fertility among our young adults. Few things drive fertility more powerfully than marriage. And fertility is precisely what drives every country’s tomorrow.

God’s first command to humanity is still very much in effect. Fertility matters!

Related articles and resources:

Troubling Fertility Decline: Fixed by Pagan or Christian Sexual Ethics?

The Pressing Need to Fix Global Fertility Decline and How to Do It

Married Mothers and Fathers Are Happiest According to Gold-Standard General Social Survey

New Family Study Shows Importance of Married Parenting

Is Inflation Driving Fertility’s Decline?

American Deaths to Exceed Births Faster Than Expected, CBO Reports

U.S. Fertility Rate Falls to Lowest on Record – Again

Global Population Has Passed ‘Peak Child’ – an Ominous Milestone

Why Americans Over and Under 50 Say They Don’t Have Kids

Death of the West? U.S. Fertility Rate Falls to Record Low.