Tangle - Would a baby bonus boost the birth rate?

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has heard a range of proposals to increase the fertility rate in the United States. While taking questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday, April 22, President Donald Trump expressed support for a “baby bonus” that would pay $5,000 per delivery to the women who have children, calling it a “good idea.” Additionally, advocates and policy experts have pitched the White House on scholarship allocations for married people or parents, new government funding for education on conception, and a “National Medal of Motherhood” awarded to women with six or more children.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What policies do you think will help increase fertility rates? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit

of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about fertility rates and boosting the birth rate in America. As you might have noticed, this is becoming a pretty big policy discussion here. There are some proposals on the table, or I guess I shouldn't say on the table, being rumored about with the Trump administration and some proposals that have been tried that are attempting to be resurrected right now. So we're gonna break down some arguments out there about how to address a falling fertility rate

with public policy prescriptions, share some views from the right and the left, and then I'm gonna share my take. Before we do though, I wanna give you a quick heads up that April 29th today marks President Donald Trump's 100th day of his second term in office. This Thursday and Friday, we're going to be breaking down the president's first 100 days in a two-part series covering how he has executed on his campaign promises, what he has accomplished, and the issues that have defined

his presidency so far before giving him a kind of tentative early grade. Part one is gonna come out on Thursday. It'll be free for all listeners and readers while part two will be for members only and that'll come out on Friday. A quick reminder that if you wanna unlock members only posts, you can go to readtangle.com forward slash membership.

All right, with that out of the way, I'm gonna send it over to John for today's main story and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal Party won the country's federal election, securing enough seats to form a minority government and win the party's fourth consecutive term in power.

Additionally, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poliev lost his Ottawa area seat. 2. President Donald Trump signed three executive orders on Monday. The first directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to compile a list of states and local jurisdictions that do not fully comply with federal officials' attempts to arrest unauthorized migrants and pursue legal action against them. The second instructs the administration to offer legal resources to police officers accused

of wrongdoing and review existing limitations on police actions. The third calls for greater enforcement of existing rules requiring professional truck drivers to be proficient in English. Number 3. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed that a U.S. airstrike killed at least 68 people in a detention center holding African migrants. U.S. Central Command said it is conducting an inquiry into the strike. Number 4. The Trump administration dismissed all contributors to the U.S. Central Command said it is conducting an inquiry into the strike. 4.

The Trump administration dismissed all contributors to the U.S. government's National Climate Assessment, a report that aims to help federal agencies and lawmakers make decisions on climate policy and funding priorities. 5. A power grid collapse caused widespread blackouts across Spain and Portugal, shutting down transit systems and leaving millions of people without phone and internet coverage. Spain has restored 92% of its power as of Tuesday morning, but has not determined the cause. President Trump endorsing the idea of giving up to $5,000 to mothers to help increase birth

rates. Mr. President, there are reports that you're considering doing something for moms across the country, giving us a kind of bonus. How are we desiring our... Sounds like a good idea to me. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has heard a range of proposals to increase the fertility rate in the United States.

While taking questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday, April 22, President Donald Trump expressed support for a baby bonus that would pay $5,000 per delivery to the birth mother, calling it a good idea. Additionally, advocates and policy experts have pitched the White House on scholarship allocations for married people or parents, new government funding for education on conception, and a National Medal of Motherhood awarded to women with six or more children. The U.S. total fertility rate, which estimates the number of children a woman would give

birth to in her lifetime given current age-specific fertility rates, has steadily declined since 2007, with a 2024 rate of roughly 1.63 births per woman. In developed countries, epidemiologists define 2.1 children per woman as the replacement rate, the rate at which a country can maintain its population over future generations. The U.S. total fertility rate has been below this level since 2008. Globally, fertility rates have also fallen in recent decades. The global total fertility rate was 2.3 children per woman in 2023, down from 2.6 in 2007, and far below the peak of 5.3 in 1963. Experts point to a variety of factors for the declining rates such as women choosing to have children later

in life compared to past generations, increased access to contraception, economic uncertainty for people in childbearing years and new cultural attitudes toward parenthood among others. However, the trend varies across demographic groups in the U.S., with fertility rates increasing among Hispanic and Asian women in 2024, while declining in other racial and ethnic groups.

The White House has not officially indicated which proposals, if any, it is considering adopting, but several prominent members of the administration have long advocated for urgent action to address the trend. Vice President J.D. Vance has centered the issue since his first campaign for public office and regularly decried an anti-child ideology in the U.S. on the campaign trail in 2024.

Separately, in March, White House adviser Elon Musk suggested civilization will disappear if countries do not take action to reverse the trend in birth rates. Recent administrations have taken steps to support new parents, primarily in the form of a child tax credit for families below a set income threshold – 200,000 for individuals, 400,000 for joint filers. During his first term, President Trump doubled the credit from $1,000 to $2,000. This increase will sunset in 2025 unless Congress passes

an extension. In 2021, President Joe Biden temporarily raised the credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6 and to $3,000 for qualifying children under the age of 18, but Congress did not renew the increase at the end of the fiscal year. Other countries have implemented financial incentives for childbirth in recent years, though the results have been mixed. In Australia, the government introduced 3,000 Australian dollar payouts to parents for each birth in 2004, which was followed by a slight temporary increase in the national birth rate. Similarly, Hungary has offered incentives to new parents for over a decade, which initially coincided with an increased birth rate. Similarly, Hungary has offered incentives to new parents for over a decade, which initially

coincided with an increased birth rate, however, the country's rate has decreased since 2021. Today we'll dive into the debate over the U.S. birth rate and incentives for new parents with views from the right and the left, and then Isaac's tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today.

Conditions apply. Details at Fizz.ca. All right. First up, let's start with what the write is saying. The write is mixed on the baby bonus proposal, with some saying it would help families. Others suggest that cultural shifts away from traditional families have caused declining fertility rates. Still, others say that Trump needs to give younger generations optimism about the future

to boost the U.S. birth rate. In the Deseret News, Leah Labresco-Sergeant made the case for a baby bonus. The current child tax credit helps children by trusting their parents, most of whom use the credit for essentials like food and housing. However, when the government overcomplicates our benefits program or tries to dictate specific parenting approaches, working families often get left behind. With every over-engineered detail, the initial intent of the program is easily overshadowed, Sargent wrote.

A baby bonus is an effective way to provide support to more families with fewer complications. Every family has unique needs, and flexible assistance can help parents serve the best interests of their children in their particularity. For a worker with only guaranteed unpaid Family and Medical Leave Act, time off, after the birth of a child, a baby bonus can act as paid family leave. For another family, it could help defray the costs of converting a guest room for a grandmother to stay long-term to help older kids adjust to a new baby.

In another family's case, a baby bonus might cover additional child care for an older child when the mother is hospitalized to reduce the risk of a preterm delivery, Sargent said. Support for families is most effective when it follows the principles of subsidiarity, trusting parents to wisely use the funds they receive for their children. The Washington Examiner editorial board argued, a baby bonus won't solve our fertility crisis. Marriage will. Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week show that despite a 1% increase in the birth rate, people are still not having enough babies to prevent

the U.S. population from declining. President Donald Trump acknowledged the problem Tuesday, saying he wants to reverse the trend in a welcome change from the last administration, the board wrote. The New York Times suggests the falling birth rate is a good thing, as it is being driven by a decline in teen pregnancies. This is simply false. Teenage pregnancy rates are falling, which is a good thing, but even at their height in the 1970s, they accounted for just 6% of all births.

The decline in overall birth rates is actually being driven by women between the ages of 18 and 33, and it is not due to women wanting smaller families. According to Gallup, more people want big families today than in 1971, and women are more likely to want three or more children than men. What is really causing the birth rate to collapse is the decline in marriage, the board said. As recently as 2007, when women were having enough babies to sustain our population, 55% of women between the ages of 20 and 44 were married.

Today, just 45% are, and the fall has been the steepest for women under 30. If Trump, like Vice President J.D. Vance, wants more babies born in the U.S., his administration should focus on helping young men and women get and stay married. In The Spectator, Christina Merkette wrote about how Trump could reverse America's baby bust.

Across the world, countries are trialing increasingly creative and dynamic policies to try to reverse the fertility decline. In Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban's self-proclaimed mission is procreation, not immigration, mothers with two or more children are now exempt from income tax for life. Yet none of them have shown any signs of real success, Marquette said. The reason these initiatives fail is that low birth rates are an existential problem,

not an economic one. Government interventions do not work because they do not compensate for the opportunity cost of having children. Modern life frames parenthood in terms of what you give up rather than what you gain, not only in terms of your career, but in every aspect of your lifestyle. We have removed the extended family and community networks that make parenting more manageable, and no subsidy can compensate for these huge social and cultural changes.

If Trump wants to boost the birth rate, then he needs to make parenting joyful again. Doom-mongering about economic downturns and impending social collapse is unlikely to inspire anyone to have more children, a decision that normally signals confidence in the future, Merkette wrote. Yet, joy is a hard thing for a policy to promise. How can the state deal with intangible incentives like purpose, belonging, or love? Parenting is about finding meaning,

and this is something that money can't buy. ["Dreams of a Better World"] All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left argues other Trump administration policies undercut its desire to boost the fertility rate. Some say the government should prioritize helping women navigate the complexities of having children over financial incentives. Others argue the pronatalist movement is driven by ulterior motives.

In Bloomberg, Mary Ellen Claus wrote, "'A baby boom in this economy?' The pro-natalist push started at the Department of Transportation where Secretary Sean Duffy, the father of nine kids, issued a memo in February dictating that communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average be given preference in transportation funding.

President Donald Trump has proclaimed that he wants to be the fertilization president. Elon Musk, the father of an estimated 14 children and head of Trump's quasi-government Department of Government Efficiency, has said civilization is going to crumble unless we raise the birth rate, Klaus said. But they're trying to usher in a Trump baby boom at the same time Musk and Doge are slashing federal programs that help women have more kids. Doge has slashed funding for the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH's National Institute for Child Health and Human Development,

and the Center for Disease Control's Division of Reproductive Health," Kloss wrote. Of course, the choice to create a new life isn't only a financial calculation. It's also a profound act of hope. You'd think that the Trump administration would want to focus on increasing, not cutting, funding to maternal and child health, repairing its self-inflicted economic wounds and lowering the cost of living for working families before asking young people to forget all their troubles and bring children into the world. In the Sacramento Bee, Robin Epley argued, if Trump wants more American babies, then

he needs to help more mothers. Enticing young Americans into parenthood would first require instituting federally mandated paid parental leave. It is a policy failure for the likes of which the U.S. is alone among many industrialized nations and an embarrassment we share with only six other countries," Epley said. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, paid paternal leave improves maternal and infant health, including their physical health and well-being. Women who receive paid leave have a lower chance of reporting intimate partner violence,

and an increase in paid parental leave decreases rates of infant mortality. Second, America needs to give parents, and especially mothers, the chance to continue their careers by making child care more affordable. And last but not least, America needs to make pregnancy and birth safer," Epley wrote. If the Trump administration truly wanted to make motherhood a compelling prospect, it would be far harder than doling out a national award for prolific mothers or giving women a class on menstrual cycles. Despite all their blustering efforts and policies reminiscent only of dystopian novels, America's

birth rate will stay stagnant as long as American parenthood remains a prohibitive cost. In the Washington Post, Philip Bump suggested the pronatalism movement often contains more than a hint of great replacement theory rhetoric. I am an advocate of having children. I understand that parenting isn't easy and that I am advantaged in doing so by having a partner and a steady income. What I do not understand, though, is the prevalent idea that having children is an essential

element of reconstructing some idealized version of America, that having a clutch of kids is how we make America great again, in all the ways that phrase manifests," Bump said. Women are not dependent on men in the ways they were a century ago, a shift away from a traditional ideal that can be grating to conservatives. But the underlying politics has another dimension, that fewer Americans are having babies means the nation is more reliant on immigration to backstop population trends. Many of pronatalism's proponents object as much or more to who is having babies in America than to the fact that Americans are having fewer babies. For every 1,000 white women in 2024, there were 51.7 babies.

For every 1,000 Hispanic women, there were 66.1 births. There does not appear to be a robust effort from pronatalists to learn how Hispanic U.S. residents are succeeding where white residents are failing, because the idea that Americans are being replaced is centered on the idea that it is non-white babies who are serving as the replacements. All right, let's head for it with the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So if we covered this story four months ago, before I had my first child, I think my opinion would have been pretty different than it is now.

Generally speaking, I've been supportive of policies like the bipartisan child tax credit, the baby bonus the Trump administration is considering, and the idea that easing the affordability issues of parenting are the best ways to encourage births. And I'll say upfront that like JD Vance and Elon Musk and many others across the political spectrum, I do think the declining fertility rate is a huge issue that we would be wise to try to reverse. But now that I've become a parent myself, that I've spoken to other parents and read some of the studies of programs designed to address these issues, I'm just way less convinced that they will actually help move the needle.

That's related to the fertility rate question. It's not a reason not to do them. It's just to say that they might not be helpful in this specific pursuit. So let me explain why. First, my own experience. My wife Phoebe and I are fortunate enough that we did not have debilitating financial burdens by just having a child. Our son's a little over three months old, so most of our cost burden was his actual birth. The hospital billed us $40,000, almost all of which was covered by insurance. The rest has been clothes, the little necessities like a car seat or stroller or bassinet,

and of course the toys that dominate the day, the books or the playpen or whatever else. Some items like a new stroller or a car seat, they can cost as much as a used car, but for the most part, these items are easy to find use or cheap, at least pre- pre tariffs. They're gifted to you and they still won't add up to more than maybe $5,000 even for the top of the line options across the board. The real

costs for us, they're still coming. They'll start in September when Phoebe and I are both going to be working and our son will need daily childcare. Putting him in a daycare alone, walking distance from us in Philadelphia will add a staggering $35,000 a year in childcare costs. Soon he'll start to outgrow all the stuff we were gifted or started with, then he'll start eating solid food and eventually we'll need to find a new place

to live with more space. All of that stuff will increase our costs over time. Up to this point though, the biggest stress of having him has not been a monetary cost, but the time cost. It's about having limited access to childcare now. In our case, our parents don't live in the house with us or around the corner. In some cases, even within driving distance.

We moved from New York to Philadelphia, so Phoebe could attend law school. So we also don't have our village, the friends that are closest with us that we made in our twenties, they don't live here. We are like so many potential and new young parents, victims of modern life, living in an urban area, starting our own nuclear family unit.

I don't know any policy prescription that can solve that problem. Which kind of brings me to the three challenges that I hear most often from other parents. It's finding affordable childcare, finding affordable housing, and losing time for your career and social life. Again, I don't think there is much of a policy prescription

that can change how someone feels about having less time to see their friends or traveling or pursuing career goals. A baby bonus or a child tax credit can maybe put a meaningful dent in finding affordable childcare, but a few thousand dollars is small potatoes on the kinds of bills that I'm staring down. And I don't think a one-time payout

would affect many people's decisions to have a child. To me, by far the most impact the government can have on encouraging more births would be implementing abundance-like policies aimed at making housing more affordable. Now finally, for the data. Like a lot of new parents, before we had our first kid, I started reading economist and parenthood writer Emily Oster, the author of several popular books on parenting. Just this week in her newsletter, Parent Data, she examined the effectiveness of paying people

to have babies as a way of increasing the fertility rate. Osser's conclusion was equal parts jarring and convincing. I want to give a reality check about how much these policies might matter, she said, before sharing a chart on fertility rates. In the chart, she compares the United States, Sweden, Norway and Canada and their fertility rates from 2000 to 2022. What it shows across the board is that despite the variation in family

support, fertility rates have consistently declined across all four of these countries. In fact, she says, in 2022, the US had the highest fertility rate, despite Norway and Sweden being countries with clearly excellent family supports. The U.S. now famously is not, and Canada is somewhere in the middle. Since randomized experiments don't exist for this question, Ossur looked at how many people change their behavior when policy changes. She examined several studies on social programs from countries like Russia, Canada, South Korea, and Israel, and concluded that, quote, "'If we are looking for a policy answer "'to why global fertility rates have declined,

"'these are not it,' end quote." She does say the policies that provide childcare or paid maternity leave or fertility access can increase fertility rates, but often temporarily and marginally. More than anything, she says, they are just good for infant health, parents' earnings, and gender equality,

which are reasons to still pursue them. The jarring reality is that there isn't a country on earth whose policies have solved this problem in a sustained way. And that's to say nothing of how the specifically American issues of obesity and poor diets and environmental chemicals and access to birth control could be impacting fertility rates. My estimation is that these forces are less important than the social and economic forces, but they are there nonetheless.

And at the margins, they're likely to constrain the success of policy initiatives like this one. Ultimately, I found Oster's data and her analysis convincing, and it conveniently aligns with my personal experience. I think there are plenty of good reasons to pursue policies like a baby bonus, but I don't think encouraging more births is one of them. The decreasing fertility rate seems so much deeper than just a financial question.

It is, in my view, primarily a social and cultural issue. Young Americans live different lives than they did 50 years ago with different goals, different dreams, and different pursuits. Both parents are often focused on their careers, which de-asperizes their family and friend village. On top of that, young Americans have growing numbers of peers who don't want kids so they can be free to travel, socialize and pursue their careers without limitations. It's those pressures to me, more than just the financial ones, that need to change if we're going to

see fertility rates turn around. We'll be right back after this quick break. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply, details at fizz.ca.

All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Matt in San Antonio, Texas. Matt said, I was excited about Isaac's my take in the Harvard versus Trump funding question because I knew he'd first explain why in the hell Harvard gets billions of dollars from taxpayers in the first place. I don't understand federal endowments to Ivy League schools at all. Harvard is rich, isn't it?

Why not send billions to community colleges who need it? So the key term here is endowments. Harvard actually has its own endowment funded by private donations and managed by private investment managers in excess of $53 billion. It's that money, along with tuition, that is primarily what the university uses to fund faculty salaries, academic programs, financial aid, and new buildings on campus. And though Harvard's endowment is the largest of any

school in the world, it's no outlier either. The money Harvard gets from the federal government, on the other hand, is tied to individual research programs and contracts. We didn't really explain how this process works in our initial piece on the funding fight, but the university itself, its buildings, its faculty, its administration, isn't subsidized by this money. Rather, post-graduate researchers and faculty at universities submit applications for grants to the federal government to fund their research initiatives.

These grant proposals are then reviewed by professionals at the National Institutes of Health, NIH, National Science Foundation, NSF, and sometimes the Departments of Education or Defense. These programs are all overseen by the federal government, which in the past has loosely guided policy for how it approves grants. The Trump administration in tying grant approvals

to other policies at researchers institutions is taking a different approach. This grant money funds scholarship at these schools, that is the equipment and personnel that makes universities uniquely positioned to carry out specific research programs. Although it might seem somewhat absurd that rich institutions like Harvard

have to appeal to the government for money, government grants and private endowments are actually different things for different purposes. All right, that is it for your questions answered today. I'm gonna send it back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Peace. That is it for your questions answered today. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Peace.

Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On his 100th day in office, President Trump has yet to nominate any federal judges. At this point in his first term, Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, had already been confirmed, and his first federal judge nomination was moving ahead for confirmation in May. Similarly, President Biden sent his first batch of judicial nominees to the Senate in his first 100 days, and seven were confirmed by June 2021.

Judiciary committee rules mandate that the committee must wait 28 days after receiving a nomination before moving forward So Trump's first nominees will not be voted on until June at the earliest Axios has this story and there's a link in today's episode description Alright next up is our numbers section the estimated annual cost minus tax exemptions or credits of having a child in the United States is $29,419, according to a 2025 study by LendingTree. The estimated annual cost minus tax exemptions or credits of raising a child over 18 years

in the U.S. is 297,674. The fertility rate in the U.S. in 1957 was 3.8, the highest yearly fertility rate since 1940, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fertility rate in the U.S. in 2024 is 1.6. The percent decrease in the number of births per U.S US woman in the 15-19 age range between 2000 and 2024 is 73.4%. The percent decrease in the number of births per US woman in the 20-24 age range between 2000 and 2024 is 48.3%.

The percentage increase in the number of births per US woman in the 30 to 34 age range between 2000 and 2024 is 4.6%. The percentage of Americans who think the ideal number of children for a family to have is two and three, respectively, is 44% and 29%, according to a June-July 2023 Gallup poll, and the percentage of Americans who think the ideal number of children for a family to have is zero is 2%. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story.

Dr. Z is beloved in his Baltimore neighborhood, where he's known for seeing patients regardless of whether they can pay for medical care. When he was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago regardless of whether they can pay for medical care. When he was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago and couldn't afford to pay for treatment, his patients rallied together. Whatever needs to be done to save Dr. Z, we're going to do it collectively, one of his patients said. And they did, sourcing nearly 1,000 donations and raising $100,000.

I'm the happiest man on the planet, no matter what the outcome, Dr. Z said. CBS has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to REETANGLE.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership

that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor, Will K. Back and associate editors, Hunter Tasperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White.

Music for the podcast was produced by Dyett 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com. dot com with the fizz loyalty program you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan you know for texting and stuff and if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan you're not with fizz switch today conditions apply details at fizz dot c a