Fertility Decline and the University Education

Just caught Louise Perry’s excellent 5/23/2026 Wall Street Journal Op Ed “Falling Birthrates Are a Mystery”. The observation that ”…Everyone has an explanation that supports a pre-existing political position…” is provocative, as are the several explanations that are explored.

However, three potential explanations are omitted, two that are often mention and a third, rarely.

First – consider the decline in religious belief.  Beyond the oft mentioned correlation, society by society, of decline in belief and decline in births, it resonates that a lack of belief in an afterlife, and of any potential reward or punishment therein, would encourage a tendency to “party now – let the future care for itself”. There’s no good reason to endure the hardships of raising children if one has no thought for, and nothing owing to, the future.

Second – meditate on a combination of the lesser need to have children to work the farm and to support one in one’s old age, and the impact of better health.  Those farms that remain are largely mechanized, so children are no longer needed to work; Social Security and job pensions take on one’s old age support. Further, back when many children died of infection or poor sanitation, one needed more children to insure that a few remained.  Vaccination and clean water supplies have cut the number of children one needs that a few might survive.

Third – Not mentioned is the deleterious effect of the rising popularity of university education, at least in America and similar cultures.  Generations ago, kids married soon after high school, and quickly began producing children. They married someone met in high-school, church, or neighborhood – all local.  They (generally the husband) took a job locally; they continued to live locally.  Thus, a robust local support network was in place for early marriage “on a shoe string”, and for raising children.  Usually both sets of grandparents were present nearby (and young enough to be useful, as they had had their kids early), as well as aunts, uncles, cousins, and church and neighbor relationships going back years.  Not only was expensive childcare (mentioned in the article) not needed, but Grandma’s attic likely contained an old crib, a starter bicycle, toys, outgrown clothes. Further, folks were available to cook the occasional meal, walk the first-grader to school, loan a twenty, and much more.

When kids go away to college, they meet kids from across country, marry them, and cannot set up house near both extended families.  They delay marrying, and especially having kids, for the years of college, and often more years to establish themselves in the chosen profession (often in a city new to the both of them, and bereft of family and other support).  Following their example, many non-college bound kids are encouraged to delay having kids, so as to “explore themselves”, as well. The longer one delays having that first kid, the fewer kids one will have.