Summer Friday: Birth Rates; Planet Money; Tech & Bodies; State of Marriage; Opera & Democracy

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On this summer Friday, we've put together and lightly edited some recent favorite segments, including the folks from Planet Money talk about AI and other topics from their new book. Manoush Zomorodi talks about countering the effects that our tech can have on our bodies. Martha Nussbaum on the history of politics and opera. That was a really interesting one. Stephanie Coontz on marriage in the United States today, compared to other recent decades. And related to that, we start with a look at the falling US birthrate and the very different political responses to the issue on the left and right. Let's pick it up here.
Provisional Centers for Disease Control data released back in April show that US fertility rates hit another record low in 2025, marking a 23 percent decline since 2007
The data show that one of the biggest contributors driving down the birthrate is that the teenage birthrates fell significantly down seven points in 2025, for example, and births for women in their 40s increased. But it's still a huge decline overall that concerns policymakers from both sides of the aisle. Low birthrates impact economic growth overall with smaller labor markets in the future and a smaller taxpayer base to fund programs like Social Security, the worker to retiree ratio. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are putting forward solutions and they are vastly different. The Right Wing Heritage Foundation put forward a plan earlier this year that seems to put the onus on women to forego careers and get married and have kids earlier.
Progressives like New York City mayors Iran Mamdani are more focused on affordability providing things like free universal childcare. To explain what's going on with the data and which approaches, if any, might be effective, we're joined by two guests. Jill Filipovic is an attorney columnist at Slate and has a sub stack called Thru Line, and Karen Guzzo is the director of the Carolina Population Center and a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She's one of the leading family demographers in this country. Jill, welcome back to WNYC and Karen, welcome.

**Jill Filipovic** (2:29)
Thanks for having me.

**Karen Guzzo** (2:31)
Happy to be here.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:32)
Karen, as a demographer, can you flesh this out for us a little bit? How much has the birth rate declined over what period of time?

**Karen Guzzo** (2:41)
Sure. The birth rate has fallen quite a bit and it's really been a consistent decline since the Great Recession. So there's a long history that shows that whenever there's a recession, birth rates fall. But what typically happens is the economy recovers and birth rates recover. And that is not the story we've seen in the United States or any other high income country for that matter. So birth rates have fallen quite a bit and as you had pointed out, the biggest drop is really among teen births. So those have fallen about 70% since the Great Recession. And typically we would think that's good news given how long the United States spent trying to reduce our teen birth rate.
But it does put us at the point where although births are increasing in the later ages, ages 30 and above or 35 and above, they're not increasing nearly enough to offset the dramatic declines we're seeing at younger ages. And so we are at a level that is below what's considered replacement level. So on average, women should replace themselves in a partner to maintain population stability. And so we're below that number right now.
Although we are, you know, we do have immigration and we are have a long life expectancy. And so population can still grow even if birth rates are falling.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:56)
And we'll get to the immigration aspect of it and where race comes in with respect to that. But Jill, you've written a lot about what's going on with people finding partners later in life and those who have kids having the kids later in life. How does marriage, how do these choices come into the equation for you as a commentator?

**Jill Filipovic** (4:19)
Well, I think one thing that's important to note is that this is not just a dynamic in the US. This is a dynamic all over the world. Birth rates are dropping and they're dropping mostly because of pretty good news. Women or girls are staying in school longer. Women are graduating from college in higher numbers. Women are delaying marriage.
All of that is overwhelmingly positive. If you're a teen pregnancies, part of the outcome of women going into the workforce and having lives that we are using ourselves is that we can afford to be pickier about partners. Women in America are far less dependent on men for basic financial stability and also for social and cultural affirmation than we've perhaps ever been. One outcome of that is that you don't see quite so many women getting married in their 20s. That means even though we have seen births and marriage becomes somewhat decoupled in the United States, they are still relatively strongly related, and so we're seeing birth rates go down.