Tesla CEO Elon Musk is obsessed with America's falling birth rate. In 2019, he predicted that "the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse." Just last month, he told Fox News it's the main thing that "keeps him up at night." And according to an April 15 report in the Wall Street Journal, Musk is personally using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to sire what he has described as a "legion" of children — at least 14 so far, with four different women — "before the apocalypse."
"Low birth rates will end civilization," the billionaire warned last week on X (which he owns).
Musk's preoccupation is so intense — and his sway with President Trump so strong — that the White House is now reportedly considering various right-wing "pronatalist" policies to incentivize and encourage more births: $5,000 lump-sum "baby bonuses" for every American mother after delivery; government-funded programs to educate women on their menstrual cycles so they can better understand when they are able to conceive; even a "National Medal of Motherhood" for women with at least six children.
"Sounds like a good idea to me," Trump said Tuesday when asked about the possibility of a federal baby bonus.
But do everyday Americans share Musk and Trump’s concern?
Not really, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. The survey of 1,597 U.S. adults, which was conducted from April 25-28, shows that only 8% of them say they're "very worried" — and just 32% say they're worried at all — about the U.S. birthrate falling "significantly over the past 20 years."
In contrast, nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) say they’re “not very worried” (30%) or “not worried at all” (29%).
‘Baby bonuses’ are a lot less popular than paid family leave
Make no mistake: America's birth rate is falling. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, it hovered around two children per woman over the course of her lifetime — which is roughly the level required to maintain the country's population through births alone. Starting around 2000, expanded access to contraception slowly helped drive down America's high rate of teen pregnancies (which have continued to decline). But then the Great Recession triggered a drop off in the birth rate among women in their 20s — with no corresponding rise in births among women in their 30s. By 2023, the overall U.S. birth rate had slipped to a record low of just 1.6 births per woman as a result, and according to data released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that's basically where it remains.
Yet just one-third of Americans (33%) want the U.S. government to offer "greater incentives to have children,” while a plurality oppose such measures (44%) and a quarter (23%) are not sure. And despite Trump’s pro-natalist instincts, Republicans are no different: 44% oppose government incentives to boost the birth rate; just 36% favor them. Support for such incentives is also no higher among parents (33%) than those without children (34%).
Delving deeper into the issue, Yahoo News and YouGov asked respondents to say whether they approve or disapprove of “some recent family-related proposals.” The ideas that performed the worst were those currently being considered by the Trump administration. Slightly more Americans disapprove (41%) than approve (39%), for example, of "giving $5,000 to every American mother after delivery"; far more disapprove (64%) than approve (19%) of “awarding a national medal of motherhood to women with at least six children.”
Yet less direct — and more sweepingly structural — policies that seek to ease the financial burden on families with young children poll much better:
● 79% of Americans approve of making pre-kindergarten free for children ages 3-4; just 11% disapprove
● 62% of Americans approve of creating new child tax credits that would give $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby's life; just 22% disapprove
● And 62% of Americans approve of funding six months of paid family leave for new parents; just 23% disapprove
Allthree of these policies were floated by former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, during her 2024 presidential campaign.
Why aren’t Americans having more babies?
"One of the big questions is all these births that haven't occurred — are they just being delayed?" Ken Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, recently told the New York Times. "Are these women going to have these babies later than they would have otherwise? Or are a lot of these births going to be forgone entirely?"
The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll touches on these questions. Just a quarter of respondents ages 18 to 29 (25%) say they’re parents — but two-thirds (66%) say they hope to have children (or more children) someday.
For comparison's sake, that number — 66% — is nearly identical to the number of 45-to-64-year-olds who say they are parents (67%). In other words, the desire to have children is there, even among the youngest adults.
Meanwhile, slightly more than half (54%) of the next youngest age bracket (30 to 44) say they’ve already become parents — but a significant minority (33%) still want kids (or more kids) in the future.
That’s a lot of potential babies.
So what's stopping Americans who want children from having more — or any at all? Here are some of the top reasons, according to the poll:
I'm single (63%)
I'm not ready yet (44%)
I can't afford them (30%)
My partner isn't ready yet (11%)
I'm worried about the future of the planet (9%)
I'm worried about how it would affect my career (8%)
I have fertility challenges (8%)
It's unclear how government incentives — including ideas such as making IVF free, which Trump has flirted with — would affect these personal decisions. But what is clear is that Americans who hope to have children (or more children) in the future are far more likely to favor incentives (61%) than those who do not hope to have children (23%).
In fact, respondents who want kids approve of every single idea on the list, including baby bonuses (70% to 16%), menstrual-cycle education (71% to 16%) and even motherhood medals (43% to 41%).
The most popular proposals, however, are still the ones associated with Democrats: paid family leave (78% to 12%), child tax credits (79% to 11%) and universal pre-K (84% to 9%).
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,597 U.S. adults interviewed online from April 25 to 28, 2025. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted to the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.9%.
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