World Population Day: Stop framing low birthrates as a “crisis”

The flood of alarmist “baby bust” stories contrasts with demographic reality and people’s perception of population issues.

July 11 is World Population Day, an international observance day established in 1989 to enhance awareness of population growth and its links to development and the environment. While the global fertility rate is declining, the world’s population is still very much growing. Nevertheless, media coverage of population issues nowadays focuses almost exclusively on decreasing birthrates, often making these sound like a terrible development.

The “crisis” framing

Recent studies on possible links between smartphone use and declining birthrates received widespread media attention. Like most coverage of the low fertility trend, many of the articles about the studies used alarmist language, some even referencing human extinction.

The common framing of low birthrates as a “crisis” leading to, at best, economic stagnation, and, at worst, the disappearance of the human species, is at odds with environmental and demographic science, as well as public perception of the issue.

The science

“Baby bust” alarmists perpetuate the myth of infinite growth, ignoring that our planet has physical limits. A continuously increasing population may sound desirable from the point of view of our Ponzi scheme economic systems, but it’s not compatible with the laws of physics. We have already transgressed seven of nine critical planetary boundaries and are using natural resources almost twice as fast as they can regenerate. If we are headed towards extinction, it’s because of our failure to rein in our growth addiction, not because people are having fewer babies.

According to the latest United Nations projections, the human population likely won’t peak until we reach a staggering 10 billion. We’re nowhere near population decline at a global level. Population aging and decline at national levels do bring socioeconomic challenges, but these are all surmountable with available policy measures.

Not to mention that in the US, fertility rate decline is primarily driven by a big drop in teen births – no sane person should be lamenting this (and yet, some MAGA Republicans are). At the global level, fertility decline mostly just reflects the welcome fact that women and girls are gaining more decision-making power over their bodies and lives.

Public perception

There are countless benefits to smaller family sizes that extend well beyond environmental ones. The majority of people seem to know this, yet their views aren’t represented by the barrage of “birth dearth” media stories. The comment sections under pronatalist articles are very revealing, for example: there is no shortage of readers questioning the portrayal of low fertility as a negative development.

Multiple surveys confirm that people are more likely to think that we are facing problems of too many people, than of too few. In January 2022, YouGov asked 5,000 Americans whether they think overpopulation or underpopulation is of greater concern to the United States or world in future decades. For the U.S., 40% said overpopulation is of greater concern, and just 15% said underpopulation is of greater concern. The difference was even starker for the world, with 53% saying overpopulation is the bigger concern, and just 10% saying underpopulation is.

A January 2026 YouGov poll asked people whether they think the U.S. would be better off or worse off if it had 100 million more people: 45% of respondents said “worse off,” while only 8% said “better off.”

Nevertheless, people are being exposed to many more media stories about prospective population decline than about presently occurring and projected growth. In another YouGov survey of Americans conducted on behalf of Population Connection in June 2025, 31% of respondents said they had seen headlines about declining birthrates in the past month, while just 11% reported having seen headlines about global population growth. In this survey too, people were more likely to say that they are concerned about population growth than about declining birthrates.

This makes a lot of sense – with the exception of those who live in depopulating rural areas, most U.S. adults have experienced an increase in traffic, crowding, housing pressure, construction, and competition for jobs, alongside a decline in green spaces, during their lifetimes.

The threat to reproductive rights

Perhaps the most important reason to drop the “crisis” framing is because of the real risk it presents to women’s hard-earned reproductive rights. The most militant pronatalists tend to be anti-feminists who believe women’s sole reason for existing is to bear and raise many children, and who promote a return to traditional gender roles.

The Trump administration has implemented all kinds of concerning measures to try to increase the birthrate, including launching the website Moms.gov which directs pregnant people to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, and by hijacking Title X, turning it from a program that helps low-income individuals access family planning services to one whose primary aim is to boost conceptions. Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services has just cancelled millions of dollars in teen pregnancy prevention grants.

The irony is that surveys indicate that many people actually desire to have more kids, but they feel limited by concern over the state of the world and affordability. It’s appalling that our government is sneakily trying to coerce more women and girls into giving birth, when they could instead be helping people fulfill their desired family sizes by making this country a little less dystopian.

The more media stories describe declining fertility as a crisis, the more people will think that drastic attempts to increase births are acceptable. Let’s please start recognizing low birthrates as the largely positive development they represent.