1916: Population Shift: How Fewer Kids Could Reshape Money, Work and Housing

Summary

Podcast Summary: So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

Episode 1916: Population Shift—How Fewer Kids Could Reshape Money, Work and Housing
Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Farnoosh Torabi
Guest: Sarah McCammon, NPR National Political Correspondent

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Overview

This episode explores the global decline in birth rates and its profound effects on the economy, workforce, housing, and the future of society. Host Farnoosh Torabi and guest Sarah McCammon, co-lead of NPR's "Population: How Smaller Families Are Changing the World," examine the root causes and downstream impacts of shrinking family sizes. The conversation draws from Sarah’s year-long international reporting across countries like Finland, Greece, and the US, offering insights into why people are having fewer children, the economic and cultural implications, and challenges for policymakers and families alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Investigate Population Decline? (05:36–07:17)

• Sarah’s Reporting Motivation:
  • Interest in how public policy shapes private decisions, especially around reproductive rights.
  • The prompt for the project: Not just “Why are birth rates falling?” but “What does this mean for the future?”
  • "It's the product of a lot of things that I think most of us would consider positive... but it also raises some big questions about the future of how we live." (06:43, Sarah McCammon)

2. Finland’s Story: Strong Safety Net, Low Birth Rates (07:45–10:11)

• Supportive Policies:
  • Paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers.
  • Subsidized or free childcare based on income.
  • National healthcare and subsidized higher education.
• Still Declining:
  • Despite these, Finland’s birth rate is at ~1.3 (vs. US’s 1.6), both below the “replacement” level of 2.1.
• Why?
  • Cultural, social, and personal dynamics at play, not just policy.
  • Sarah: "There appears to be, according to their research, a gap between the number of children people say they want to have and the number... they're actually having." (11:11)

3. Changing Relationships and the Role of Technology (10:11–13:33)

• Shift in Relationship Patterns:
  • Issues finding suitable partners—especially for highly-educated or financially successful women.
  • Rise of loneliness and changing social habits; online dating challenges.
  • "Ana Rothkirk... noted that young people are spending more and more time on their phones, on social media, and that's shaping the way that they interact." (12:10, Sarah)
  • Young people less likely to engage in risky behavior, but also less likely to form relationships and have children.

4. The Consequences of Shrinking Populations (14:57–17:37)

• Economic Impact:
  • Societies built on constant economic growth may face stagnation or decline.
  • Aging populations and fewer workers could strain eldercare and public services.
• Community Effects:
  • School closures, especially in rural or island communities (e.g., Greece).
  • "There's a big difference between having eight kids and having three kids and having one or none." (15:30, Sarah)
• Immigration:
  • Often proposed as a fix, but politically contentious.

5. Unique Pressures in the United States (17:37–20:16)

• Top Challenges for Families:
  • Cost of raising children, childcare, and housing are major deterrents.
  • "[Having] another child is significant. There’s almost always an opportunity cost there." (19:26, Sarah)
  • Women’s increased role as breadwinners means parental leave and work interruptions carry higher stakes.
• Delaying Parenthood:
  • Greater emphasis on “readiness”—financial, career, housing, and emotional.

6. Persistent Gender Dynamics and Evolving Norms (24:42–26:00)

• Societal Norm Shifts:
  • Smaller families or none at all now the norm—feeds back into social expectations.
  • "The culture has made it much more normal to not have children or to have a small family. That is the norm now." (25:19, Sarah)
• Men’s Role:
  • Men increasingly aware and supportive, but the core burden still falls to women.

7. Fertility Trends and Interventions (26:00–28:21)

• Delayed Childbearing:
  • More births among women 35+, shifting the calendar but not necessarily the overall birth rate.
  • IVF lets people have children later, but isn’t boosting rates overall.
• Policy Interventions:
  • No “silver bullet”—financial incentives or family benefits offer only temporary or modest effects.
  • Poland’s incentives led to a temporary bump, then a return to trend.

8. Politics and Rhetoric (28:21–30:07)

• People’s Resistance:
  • Some balk at pronatalist rhetoric, especially if it seems to push women back into traditional roles.
  • Others want supports focused on existing families/children, not just encouraging more babies.
  • "One woman... said she's disgusted when she hears conservative political leaders trying to promote childbearing. They want the government to stay out of it." (29:02, Sarah)

9. Housing Market and Family Size (30:07–34:51)

• Impact on Housing:
  • Fewer children could alter housing demand in the future, but current real estate issues stem from lack of new supply.
  • Shifts in what families see as “required” to be “ready”—owning a house, certain income, etc.
  • "The bar for entry into parenthood is seen as, as higher than it maybe it once was." (33:25, Sarah)
• Changing Expectations:
  • Past generations managed large families with less space—today’s standards have shifted.

10. Information Overload & Decision Paralysis (34:51–36:00)

• More Knowledge, More Pressure:
  • Abundant parenting advice and data may overwhelm would-be parents.
  • Social media magnifies “keeping up with the Joneses.”

11. Sarah’s Personal Reflection (36:25–38:54)

• Experience as a Parent:
  • Became a parent young, without proper maternity leave—had to return to work after a few weeks each time.
  • Wonders if better benefits would have led her to have a third child.
  • "Had I had the kind of benefits available that someone has, say, in Finland... would I have had another child? I might have. I really like babies. I really like kids. I always wanted to be a mom." (37:28, Sarah)
  • Recognizes others thrive without kids, and values the independence smaller families allow.
  • Conclusion: These decisions are fundamentally reshaping society.

12. Adapting to the New Normal (39:14–39:58)

• Adaptation vs. Reversal:
  • Unclear if the trend will reverse—"We’re going to have to figure out what it looks like to live in a world with fewer people."
  • Technology and AI might fill some future gaps, but it’s all speculation for now.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "It's the product of a lot of things that I think most of us would consider positive... but it also raises some big questions about the future of how we live."
  —Sarah McCammon (06:43)

• "There appears to be... a gap between the number of children people say they want to have and the number... they're actually having."
  —Sarah McCammon (11:11)

• "The culture has made it much more normal to not have children or to have a small family. That is the norm now."
  —Sarah McCammon (25:19)

• "Had I had the kind of benefits available that someone has, say, in Finland... would I have had another child? I might have."
  —Sarah McCammon (37:28)

• "These decisions are really changing the world and in ways that policymakers and communities and families are going to keep contending with."
  —Sarah McCammon (38:35)

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Timeline of Key Segments

• 05:36–07:17: Sarah on how the project began and key surprises
• 07:45–10:11: Deep dive into Finland’s experience with low birth rates
• 10:11–13:33: Cultural changes, technology, and relationship dynamics
• 14:57–17:37: Economic and social consequences of a shrinking population
• 17:37–20:16: US-specific factors—cost, opportunity, career effects
• 24:42–26:00: How societal norms and gender roles are evolving
• 26:00–28:21: Delayed childbearing, fertility treatments, policy interventions
• 28:21–30:07: Political rhetoric, public resistance, and focus on existing families
• 30:07–34:51: Housing market implications and the high bar for “readiness”
• 34:51–36:00: Information overload and pressure from social media/parenting advice
• 36:25–38:54: Sarah’s personal story and reflections
• 39:14–39:58: Adaptation versus reversal—what’s next?

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Tone & Language

• Insightful, empathetic, and data-driven: The conversation is open, reflective, and grounded in lived experience and substantive reporting.
• Nuanced: Both host and guest caution against simple answers, recognizing the complex mesh of factors at play.
• Candid: Personal experiences are woven in, highlighting not just statistics but emotional realities.

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Takeaway

The global decline in birth rates is a multifaceted phenomenon, shaped by economic pressures, changing social norms, policies, and evolving personal choices. No single policy can fully address it, and the future may belong as much to adaptive strategies and new societal models as to efforts to reverse the trend. Understanding and preparing for a world with smaller families is essential for families, policymakers, and economies alike.

Transcript

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[Farnoosh Torabi (Intro)]

You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 minute do financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh herself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to SO Money.

[Sarah McCammon]

I think a lot of Americans look at Europe and especially the Nordic countries which have this reputation for these robust social policies and think, wow, that must be nice. And like you said, Finland offers paid parental leave to both mothers and fathers. They have a big emphasis on gender equality and making those benefits available regardless of the sex of the parent. And the government actively tries to promote fathers taking leave so as to balance the load. There's heavily subsidized or in some cases free childcare, depending on income of course, national health care, subsidized higher education, a variety of things that aren't available in the US and and yet the birth rate in Finland is still quite low. It's been dropping since roughly 2010.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Welcome to Sew money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. The question we're answering today what happens to society when people decide to have fewer kids or maybe none at all? What does that mean for our economy, our housing market, the workforce and our financial futures? Today we're looking at one of the most consequential demographic shifts of our time, the global decline in birth rates. And we're doing it with someone who has spent the last year leading an extraordinary international reporting project on exactly this. My guest is Sarah McGammon, National Political Correspondent at NPR and co lead reporter of the series Population How Smaller Families Are Changing the World. You may have seen the headlines, but Sarah's work goes far deeper, across countries like Finland, Greece, and of course, here in the United States. To understand why people are having fewer kids and what the downstream effects look like on everything from the labor market to aging, immigration, childcare, housing and the future of economic growth. We chat candidly about the financial pressures families face, why even countries with generous social safety nets are not reversing the trend, how shifting relationship patterns and cultural expectations factor in, and what all of this means for you, whether you're raising kids right now, hope to someday, or are simply planning for your financial future in a world that may look very different in the decades ahead. Sarah also opens up about her own experience becoming a parent in her 20s without paid leave, and what she might do differently today, as well as what economists and policymakers are still struggling to understand. Let's get into it.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Sarah McCammon, welcome to Sew Money. It's great to have you.

[Sarah McCammon]

Good to be here. Thank you.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

I've been looking forward to speaking with you. I've been following your work. And one of your latest deep dives is this very elaborate report on this population shift. This is a series on npr. I'll let everybody know the title. We'll also link it in our show notes so everybody can go and listen to this on their own time. And we're going to talk about it for much of our time together. Population Shift, How Smaller Families Are Changing the World. You essentially help lead this major global reporting effort on population decline. Sarah, so tell us how you first landed on this topic. What did you expect to discover? And in the end, what was the most surprising thing that you learned?

[Sarah McCammon]

So I've been covering politics for really more than 10 years, national politics for a decade. And about a decade before that, I was working at NPR member stations in the Midwest and South covering a variety of issues, including politics. And for a lot of my time the last several years, I've covered reproductive rights and reproductive rights policy. And so I'm really interested in the way that public policy shapes people's lives. And I'm also interested in the reverse, how people's individual decisions about things like their reproductive decisions, how that shapes the larger world and how those. How policy and culture interact. And last year, I think about this time, my colleague Brian Mann, who has covered a variety of issues as well, including rural decline, came to me and said, I've been looking at this data. It's one of these trends that's obvious when you think about it. But I hadn't been thinking much about population decline. I think we all know that people have smaller families these days. You know, we could probably all think about our grandparents or great grandparents. One of mine had 14 kids, another one had nine, and I've got two. And I think that's pretty typical these days. And the data supports this, right, that people are having a lot fewer children. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this. But the thing I hadn't thought about and what Brian, my colleague, came to me to talk about was what does this mean going forward? Because. Because while it's the product of a lot of things that I think most of us would consider positive, including women having more access to education and professional opportunities, as well as reproductive health choices, it also raises some big questions about the future of how we live. And so we wanted to dive into that, and that's what we've been doing.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Wow. So let's dive in. There were many case studies. You interviewed folks in Finland, in Greece, and obviously here in the United States. Let's start with Finland. Finland is famous, famous for its paid leave. They also have subsidized childcare, health care, extensive support for families. But the birth rate there has dropped sharply. What's the real story there? What did you find is behind the birth rate dropping?

[Sarah McCammon]

I wanted to go to Finland because of what you just described. The reality that parents in Finland have access to social policies, to public support that I think many Americans could only dream of. Here in the US there's no national mandated parental leave, even maternity leave. Some states have taken steps in that direction. Lots of private employers certainly have, especially in recent years. But at the federal level, it's really just. The Family and Medical Leave act, which passed in the back in the 1990s, doesn't apply to all workers. In fact, it doesn't apply to a lot of workers, and it doesn't provide paid leave. It just basically provides job protection for certain Healthcare situations, including maternity leave. I think a lot of Americans look at Europe, and especially the Nordic countries, which have this reputation for these robust social policies, and think, wow, that must be nice. And like you said, Finland offers paid parental leave to both mothers and fathers. They have a big emphasis on gender equality and making those benefits available regardless of the sex of the parent. And the government actively tries to promote fathers taking leave so as to balance the load. There's heavily subsidized or in some cases free childcare, depending on income, of course, national health care, subsidized higher education, a variety of things that aren't available in the U.S. and yet the birth rate in Finland is still quite low. It's been dropping since roughly 2010, and it's lower than replacement. So I want to talk about, if I could just talk Briefly about terminology, 2.1 is the number that demographers talk about a lot because an average of 2.1 children per woman is considered replacement level. That's just what it takes to maintain, maintain a population. The US what's that?

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

0.1 is that just.

[Sarah McCammon]

The 0.1 is to account for things like infant mortality and things like that. It takes just a little bit more than 2 to replace the population. The US is around 1.6. Finland is a little below 1.3. And at that rate, the country is going to face, and is already arguably facing a lot of questions about its economy, about elder care and so forth. And so I was just very curious about why is Finland's birth rate even lower than the U.S. given that there are all these supports in place. And I think the answer to this question is almost any researcher would tell you it's complicated and there are many reasons.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Yeah, one of the reasons, maybe, and I think you found this in your research, is that women are like one is enough, or there's an issue of loneliness a little bit, I think, and also not finding the right partner. Women in Finland are successful and in America too, we find, and I've looked at women who are, for example, high earners in their peer group and they are struggling sometimes with finding kind of their quote, unquote, financial equals or professional equals, at least what they think should be their partners in life. And so as a result of that, do not find their life partners. And then as a result of that, don't have children because they want to be in partnerships to have children. That's their choice. And that was something that you found mirrored in Finland.

[Sarah McCammon]

It's certainly a theme that came up in my reporting. I talked to there's a researcher named Anna Rothkirk who, who works for a foundation that does a lot of research into Finnish families. And this is an organization that has been involved in comprehensive sexual health education. So it's not some kind of an ideological, as far as I can determine, it's certainly not a, like a right wing organization that's trying to promote some kind of return to traditional families or push women to have more children. And they say that their focus is on figuring out, explaining the current trends, figuring out why there appears to be, according to their research, a gap between the number of children people say they want to have and the number of children they're actually having. And this is something that shows up in other research in the United States as well. And it's somewhat contested from what I understand, but the idea seems to be that people say they want, on average, a couple of kids, but only have 1.5, 1.6, depending on which study you look at. And so what's driving this gap? Is there something that's going on in the culture that's keeping people from having children they would like to have? And one of the, one of the theories is that relationships are changing, the culture is changing around them, in part because of changes in technology, perhaps. It's been posited as one possible reason. Ana Rock here noted that young people are spending more and more time on, on their phones, on social media, and that's shaping the way that they interact. She said you have to make a child, you have to be in an embodied relationship, so to speak, most of the time. And so the way that interact has changed. Younger generations are less likely to engage in risky behaviors like drinking alcohol and using drugs, but they're also less likely to have had sex. And most of the time, sex is what makes babies. And so I think researchers are still trying to figure out how, how much of a factor what I just described is. But there does seem to be something going on with the way that young people form relationships and the way they think about their lives. And I also interviewed a young woman in her 30s in Helsinki who talked about just the men she meets in online dating. And she described meeting men who were, she said, pornified, talking about her in very vulgar ways and ways that don't foster a committed, serious relationship in which to raise a child. And she was frustrated by what she was encountering, also what she described as young men who seem to be radicalized by extremist ideas they hear online. Again, I don't want to say that any one of These things is the reason for declining birth rates. But these are things that researchers are looking at.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

That's really fascinating. It's great that you went to all of these different regions of the world and how these different themes were popping up. I want to later talk about what you found in the US and even in Greece. And I probably should have asked this at the top, but can you summarize for us a little bit of what are the outcomes of a declining population? And I also want to go back to history because you mentioned families had dozen kids right, in their families back during maybe the agricultural days. And my, even my husband's grandfather, great grandfather, he was one of, I think, 18 kids. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, rural. And there was a need actually to have a big family like that. And as we industrialized, people went to work, you actually couldn't have that many kids. And I wonder maybe was there a concern back then that families were shrinking and we went with it? The world didn't fall to the wayside. The world adapted. And I do wonder, are we overblowing this a little bit or is there. Are there actual threats? Because now we have gone from like a world where we had 18 kids to now almost couples having no kids. So now we're at like rock bottom potentially. And now could we. Could the pendulum swing perhaps, but talk a little bit about what people are really worried about. And I know there's like, concerns who's going to take care of the elderly. Right. And things like that.

[Sarah McCammon]

Yeah, it depends on who you talk to, what they're worried about. But I think the concerns that pop up the most are particularly in societies like Greece or Finland where again, the birth rate is just below 1.3 over a couple of generations, you get a multiplier effect. If that persists, where the population is just not able to be sustained, you get to a point where it's a spiral, a downward spiral in terms of, of birth rates. There's a big difference between having eight kids and having three kids and having one or none. Now, one of the other things we could talk about is one of the solutions to this problem for some of these countries, including the U.S. has been immigration, bringing in workers from other places to fill the gaps. But that in and of itself is controversial. You certainly see that in the United States. And the biggest worries are generally economic. We have a world global economy that is predicated on growth. Largely, it's built into the free market capitalist system that things will get bigger and better over time. And without growth, it's not clear how economies function. And then there's just the. And we're not even just talking about stasis, we're talking about decline. Right. So what happens when you have a society? And one of my colleagues in Asia has done some reporting on this for our series, a society that's rapidly becoming not just smaller, but older, much more older people than younger people, older people who need care and also aren't able to be in the labor force, continuing to push forward the economy. This is a challenge and it's a worry for a lot of these countries. In Greece, for example, where I spent some time a couple months ago, it's particularly pronounced on some of the small islands, which have always been a challenging but beautiful place to build a life. And we reported on the reality that a lot of schools are closing or consolidating because in some of these small island communities, they face really challenges analogous to some of the rural communities in the United States, in that as population declines, it becomes harder and harder to sustain a school, and then it becomes harder to sustain a community because there's a spiral effect. So these are the kinds of things people are worrying about. And then the other bucket is what I alluded to earlier, just the sense that what does it mean for human happiness and thriving? Obviously, many women, many families are choosing to have fewer children because it's more manageable. It allows them to spend time doing other things, building careers. But are people, in some cases actually not having children they want to have? And why is that a product of something that's missing in their life? Perhaps, perhaps a relationship, perhaps economic opportunity, perhaps just a sense of optimism about the world. And so to the extent that's driving some of this decline, I think researchers say that's something to look at as well.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Wow. All right, let's talk about the US Often people here will cite the cost of having a family as the number one. I mean, there are many studies. I've looked at them. I've interviewed many couples and individuals. I want to have a kid, I want to have a family, but I'm not sure I can afford to. That's a big one. Or even if I have one, I don't know if I can have a second because the cost of childcare, I don't have enough benefits. And then you have the case study in Finland, which suggests even if you have all of these social benefits, it's still tbd, if that's going to encourage people to have more kids. So what did you find in the US as the variables that are leading people to reconsider the family size.

[Sarah McCammon]

We talked to couples in several states. Some of them we went and visited in person. But we've had conversations with couples in Colorado, New York, South Carolina, California, and everywhere we go or hop on a zoom call. The themes are similar. We do hear a lot about the cost of living, the cost of raising a child, the cost of child care, the cost of housing. Those are all very much on young couples minds. And we talked to a lot of couples because these we wanted to talk, especially to people who were unsure. We've also talked to people who are quite, quite confident of the decision not to have children or to have a small family. And these are all themes we heard. And I think another important factor is that the trade off for women has really changed in modern society. Many women, many households rely on the the female partner's income. And I'm talking of course about heteronormative families here because they're easiest to compare to trends from the past. Women are generate major generators of income in many households. They're the primary breadwinner or equal to their husbands. And so the cost to the family when a woman has another child is significant. There's almost always an opportunity cost there. So that's something people are thinking about. I interviewed a woman mother in New York who just has one child and she said there are a lot of reasons why she stopped at one. She and her husband originally thought they'd probably have a couple of kids, maybe three. She had some health challenges with her pregnancy that she described. But also she said if I get pregnant and especially if I have a complicated pregnancy, that's time out of the workforce. That's time away from my career. I don't know what that means for my family. So these are all really complex considerations that people are thinking through as they decide whether and when and how many kids they want.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

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[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Do you ever wonder if men were having the babies we'd have this problem?

[Sarah McCammon]

We tried to talk to. We did talk to men as much as possible because you know, well, this decision, women have primary control over it, right? But of course, men are a factor and an important factor. And one of the, one of the things I'd like to do in the future is also talk to LGBTQ couples who face a when we talk to at least one couple in the Baltimore area to two women who are thinking about having children in the future. But obviously the decision tree is a little bit different for those couples than it is for heterosexual couple couples who can very often make a child with things they have around the house, so to speak. But I think that men understand that they're part of this conversation. The men I've talked to are very much thinking about the well being of their partners and the well being of the whole family. But they're all making these decisions, male or female, gay or straight, in a context where the culture around us has made it much more normal to not have children or to have a small family. That is the norm now. And that's a norm that shifted dramatically from a few decades ago. And I think it's A chicken or an egg question at a certain point, are people, as people make these decisions, it changes the norms, it changes the expectations. And then that, that I think then feeds into the way people in the future make these decisions and what they expect for their own lives.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

You brought up health as also a reason that for some women, having a child or a second child is not possible. When you look at the data now versus years ago in terms of fertility, are women less fertile now than years ago? Do we know anything about that?

[Sarah McCammon]

It's a good question. I haven't done a lot of direct reporting on that question. And there's certainly it's something that comes up in the conversation around birth rates. Are our sperm counts lower than they used to be? Are women female and male fertility? What's going on with it? I don't have the answers to those questions. I think it's something that we'd like to report on in the future. But it is a question that comes up. I will say certainly people are. Women are delaying having children. The data from, I believe the CDC suggests that women over 35 are having more children per capita than they did in the past. Right. So a larger number of women are shifting their childbearing years into later in life. And that, of course, has ramifications for fertility. While many women have children over 35 or even over 40, there's a pretty, pretty linear decline after a certain age. And you can argue about exactly when the cliff happens, but there's definitely a drop off leading up to menopause. And there's a confined window of time in which women can naturally get pregnant. We all know this. And at the same time, there are fertility interventions available, in vitro fertilization and other types of fertility treatments that have extended that timeline for some people. And from the researchers I've talked to, things like IVF don't appear to be increasing the birth rate, but they maybe allow people to shift the window of when they have children a little bit later. Of course, there are trade offs with everything and there are risks involved in waiting as well as trade offs for having children earlier in life. And those are all things that people have to consider when they're making these decisions.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

It just seems like we're in this experimental phase. But did you find a country or region that has seen some positive results or some reassurance from any kind of any. Anything that they put in place, a model, a support system? In your reporting, you wrote about how Finland has made some steps to support the birth rate. Have you seen any countries successfully Reverse this or make moves to improve the birth rate.

[Sarah McCammon]

From the researchers I've talked to, the consensus, if there is one, seems to be that these interventions have modest effects at best, and they're quite expensive. Even when you talk to conservative leaning pronatalist researchers, is that a lot of these policies, they might work for a little while, but there's certainly not a silver bullet or a panacea if the objective is to increase the birth rate. Poland implemented some financial incentives a number of years ago, and the birth rate jumped up for a while, but then leveled off again, at least to a large extent. It's not clear that these policies were work in the long term and they're expensive for governments. I still hear some of these advocates say they would like to try things. One of the groups I've talked to is the Institute for Family Studies, which is conservative leaning. A lot of people would group it under the sort of pronatalist camp. And they're spending a lot of time looking at ways to encourage women and families to have more children and to increase the marriage rate, that kind of thing. And they acknowledge that it's tough to do. And there's not one single policy. But they said they'd like to see the Trump administration get creative and experiment with different ways of reversing this. But I also heard from some of the women I spoke to here in the US the idea that one woman in South Carolina who is on the fence about whether she and her husband want to have children said she's disgusted when she hears conservative political leaders trying to promote childbearing. They want the government to stay out of it. And another woman, the mother in New York I mentioned, said she would like to see more support for the children who already exist and for families that have already formed. And, you know, I just hear a recurring theme everywhere I go of a lot of fear among young adults about bringing children into the world, a sense that the future might be inadequate to support a good life.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

I can't speak for them, but I will say that for me, when I hear sometimes that rhetoric, especially coming from the right, I can't help but assume that there is this subtext of we need to keep women at home to raise these children. And so while we it's yes, I get the math that a decline in birth rate is not ultimately a good thing for many reasons, but we need all hands on deck for this. This cannot be just the thing that moms do. And I worry that we become the society that in order to progress this, we were we regress in a lot of the, that we have done to promote female equality. So that's, I think that for me at least is what terrifies me in that sort of rhetoric. But we didn't even touch on things like the housing market. So just to get even more granular about some of the, the impacts of this. So we talked about like the workforce and elder care, but also the housing market. We talk a lot about real estate on this show. And in the suburbs, these big houses, these smaller families. Have you talk to policymakers or economists or real estate experts even about the shift in real estate building, what's going to happen to all these homes and also pricing of these homes? Are we going to see a devaluation of real estate as these, as the demand for these large homes decreases over the years if we don't reverse the, the decline in population?

[Sarah McCammon]

I don't know about long term. I don't think anybody is projecting any kind of short term major shift in the cost of housing because, and this is not my area of expert, but my understanding from other reporting is that housing, housing starts have lagged behind normal benchmarks for a long time. And we would just, we just aren't building as much housing in this country as we used to or as I think most experts would agree we need. And that's showing up in high housing costs really all over the country. That's definitely a theme that we heard from people we spoke to. One of the stories for the series that one of our colleagues reported profiled a family in Wyoming who was struggling with the cost of housing there. And that's Wyoming, a place I think a few years ago we would have thought of as a really cheap place to live. But those places don't really exist in the same way anymore. And some of the data suggests that the housing cost increases since approximately the COVID era have affected rural and smaller city, smaller municipalities even more than some of the larger cities. So there's really nowhere you can go that's safe from these high housing costs. And for young families thinking about how do we fit into a house, how do we get into one at all and how do we fit a number of children into the room that we have? It's a real concern. So this is something I've also heard folks at organizations like the Institute for Family Studies who again are conservative leaning and want to openly want to promote having more children that they've talked about as a concern and as something that policymakers need to address. So I think there's some consensus there that, that housing is a real challenge for young families.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Yeah. But to your point, it is a lack of supply at the end of the day. And people can just knock down the houses and rebuild. I suppose they can reconfigure the home. And at the end of day, the. Some people just like a big house.

[Sarah McCammon]

The other thing, the other thing that comes up is that, and I think this may be related, is that the bar for entry into parenthood is seen as, as higher than it maybe it once was. The sense of what it takes to be ready. You hear about that a lot from young couples. And some of the researchers I've spoken to are looking at this too. The idea that there's a feeling that you have to be. You have to be established in your career, you have to be done with your education, you have to be have a house or ready to buy one before you can have a child. And I don't think that was always the case. I live in a four bedroom house built in 1913 and it was built with one single bathroom, one full bath. That's it. There's another half in this house because somebody added one in a closet at some point along the way. But I think about in this house, on the one of the walls or the door is the printout of a little girl's name. It says Joanie, who used to live here, who knows when. And I just think about all the kids that must have grown up in this house. And probably if what we know about historical patterns are true, probably a lot of these kids were sharing bedrooms with siblings, maybe a couple of siblings, and the whole family was sharing this one bathroom. So expectations have changed for how Americans expect to live. And I'm not suggesting that we all need to cram eight children into a four bedroom, one bath house. But I think that this, I'm really curious about this idea that the bar has gone higher and people feel, they feel like they can't start families until they've checked all these boxes that in many ways are harder to check than ever.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

You can thank the Internet again for that and technology and social media understanding of what is sufficient, you know, and keeping up with the Joneses has magnified quite a bit over the last 20 years in many realms, including parenting. And that was actually one of my questions for you is do we feel as though our sense of readiness, whether that's financial readiness and just mental and emotional readiness, because there's so much like advice now on parenting and we have a lot of data now on actually, are you happier as A parent and a lot of mixed feelings about that. And people are overwhelmed to make this decision. It's a big decision and before people were making it blind more blindly and for better or worse. So we are now at a place where we have a lot of information, maybe too much information, what it entails and how much it costs and how well we could actually perform as parents. And that puts a lot of pressure, I think, on parents. It could just put you at a standstill rather than encourage you to make a move.

[Sarah McCammon]

And I don't want to minimize how expensive and difficult it is in the modern world. It's not just, it's not. Even if families were willing to cram into a smaller house, getting that house in the first place is harder than ever. And the costs of essential goods and services for life have gone up, healthcare costs have gone up. In addition to house, people are contending with real challenges that shape these decisions, to be clear.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Yeah, just for the basics. So after all your reporting, Sarah, you're a mom, right? I am. And so what has shifted in your own thinking about family size and the economics of raising kids today?

[Sarah McCammon]

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about how I made the decisions that I made. I had, I'm in my 40s, I had my kids relatively young at 1 at almost 26 and 1 at 30, which I guess is not really that young biologically, but is for women. Professional women in my field is pretty young. A lot of my friends in their 40s have very young children, whereas I have teenagers. And I think about the environment in which I made those decisions. I didn't have access to maternity leave at either of the local stations I was working at that time. That made it really tough, to be honest, having to go back to work. I think in one case went back after eight weeks and the income that was coming in was only from my sort of carefully squirreled away vacation time, sick time. The second one, I went back to work after five weeks just because I felt pretty good and I didn't have that much time. And so I wanted to spread out the rest of it over part time leave. And I think women make those decisions all the time. And it's not easy giving birth to a child or adopting a child. Taking a new child into your family is a beautiful thing, but it's also a huge amount of work. It's a huge commitment for a woman who gives birth. It's a physical and psychological toll. And then to have to bounce back into the workplace is really difficult. And I think had I Had the kind of benefits available that someone has, say, in Finland or even my current employer has great benefits. Had I had those things available, would I have had another child? I might have. I really like babies. I really like kids. I always wanted to be a mom. I'm one of those people who just use that the calculation for everybody is so different. And I also know plenty of people who don't thrive in that kind of environment. And yeah, I think about the challenges I face, and I think about the challenges, the way those kinds of decisions and calculations are replicated among women and couples all over the country every day. And I think. I'm not sure that this is a trend that's going to just reverse itself at some point. I think the reality is we're going to have to figure out what it looks like to live in a world with fewer people and how to balance the competing concerns that are shaping those decisions. I always say I'm really happy I had children, but some days it's really tough. And so I certainly understand when I talk to people who say I don't want kids or I want to limit my family size. Having the kind of economic freedom and the independence that comes with that decision is really compelling for a lot of people. And it's changing the world. I think that's the biggest takeaway from our reporting, is that these decisions are really changing the world and in ways that policymakers and communities and families are going to keep contending with.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

Thank you for sharing that. And at some point, do you think we just have to adapt or do you think it's going to just be this fight till the end to try to reverse this, or we just have to learn how to adapt and shape societies differently? Did any economist or policymaker suggest this?

[Sarah McCammon]

Yeah, I think a lot of questions are unanswered about the role of technology, and that's something that we hear about a lot. What are, what are ways that technology is just exploding? Right. With AI and other technologies, we're almost in a new frontier. And so will technology be able to swoop in and fill in some of the gaps that individual workers would have filled in the past? Quite possibly, but I don't think we know exactly what that looks like yet.

[Farnoosh Torabi (Interviewer)]

We'll have to have you back for an update. Thank you so much. Sarah McCammon, we have a link to your reporting on population shift, how smaller families are changing the world. Sarah McCammon, thank you so much and hope you have a great rest of your year and happy New Year. It's just around the corner.

[Sarah McCammon]

You too. Thanks so much for having me. It's good to talk with you.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Thanks so much to Sarah McCammon for joining us. She's a national political correspondent at NPR, and her series is called Population Shift How Smaller Families Are Changing the World. We have the link to that in our show Notes. I'll see you back here on Friday for AskFarnouche. And until then, I hope your day is so Money.

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