American Birthday Accounts Can Help Solve Our Coming Population Problem
August 10, 2026
America is running out of Americans. Our birth rate has fallen below 1.6 children per woman, well under the 2.1 needed just to keep the population from shrinking, and far below the 2.4 children that Americans themselves say they actually want. While forecasters at the Social Security Trustees and the Census Bureau paint a rosy picture of the future, the reality is stark: The only way that U.S. population growth will continue beyond the next 35 years is if record-high migration rates continue and the country experiences a major increase in fertility. Neither seems likely.
America’s population peak may arrive as soon as 2054. It’s not coming so soon because Americans don’t want children. Rather, the combination of long years of schooling, delayed career progress, expensive housing, and a broken dating market have conspired to push family formation ever later in life.
