Want More Babies? Fix the Economy!

It’s an old expression: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s easy to spot this expression in action when considering the well-meaning proposals designed to encourage young families to have children. These proposals include Universal pre-K, subsidized daycare, and expanded child tax credit. While these ideas come from a place of compassion and a genuine desire to help, the reality is that they only reinforce the very systems that are driving families to the brink.

How could that be? Aren’t these proposals designed to help families?

Yes, in the short term, these proposed policies can certainly help. The problem is that they ignore the crumbling economic foundation beneath them. They offer temporary relief, not structural change. It amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If any of these proposals actually become policy, they will be under constant assault and thus may be torn away at any moment, leaving families exposed and quite possibly worse off. The underlying issue is that we, as a nation, have become so used to living one step away from financial ruin that we focus only on scrambling for crumbs, whereas we should be fighting for a seat at the table.

People are always going to want children. That’s never been a problem. The real problem is that most hardworking Americans no longer have the financial security to raise a family. As of 2024, more than 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, including nearly half of those earning over $100,000. These are not isolated cases of poor budgeting; they're symptoms of an economy that’s been corrupted to reward unrestrained wealth over honest work.

Consider this: after adjusting for inflation, real wages for most workers haven’t meaningfully increased since the 1970s, even though worker productivity has soared by more than 60%. What happened to the benefits of that productivity? They’ve flowed almost entirely to the top, while everyday families have fallen further behind.

One could argue that if all prices rise at the same rate, wage increases are not necessary. Under normal circumstances, that would be true, but these inflationary numbers don’t account for factors such as housing prices. In 1980, the average home cost just over three times the median income. Today, it’s closer to seven times. Rents are rising in lockstep. This means that mortgages, rent, and property taxes have, after adjusting for inflation, more than doubled while real wages have remained constant.

Another example is education. Considered a gateway to upward mobility, higher education has been pushed further and further out of reach for the middle class. Decades ago, state universities were supported by robust public investment. But today, most public universities receive a far smaller share of their budgets from state governments than they did in the past. According to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, state funding per full-time student is down nearly 16% since 2001 when adjusted for inflation. In response, universities have shifted the cost burden to students, driving student debt to over $1.7 trillion nationwide.

Finally, healthcare has become an increasing burden for middle-class families. Since World War II, companies typically paid 100% of their employees' healthcare insurance costs. These days, however, not only have healthcare costs vastly increased, but companies have shifted more and more of the healthcare insurance burden onto their employees. In fact, many companies have taken advantage of loopholes in the law to stop funding healthcare insurance altogether, shifting much of that burden onto the government through Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act. Sadly, millions of Americans do without healthcare insurance altogether, putting them one medical emergency away from homelessness.

Meanwhile, large corporations, flush with profits, lobby heavily so they can pay their workers so little that many of them qualify for public assistance. According to a LinkedIn News report, thousands of Amazon workers rely on government programs to afford food and medicine. Think about that. One of the richest companies in the world, run by one of the wealthiest individuals in history, depends on taxpayer-funded programs to subsidize its labor force. Jeff Bezos puts that burden on you and me. That’s not innovation; it’s exploitation.

And then, as if to complete the insult, these same workers face the constant threat of losing those essential programs when lawmakers decry them as “socialist handouts.” This is the vicious cycle we’ve created: wages too low to live on, support systems too unstable to rely on, and a culture that blames the poor for their poverty. And we wonder why people choose not to have children.

If we want more Americans to start families, we need to do more than pitch ideas for scraps; we need to rebuild the foundation. That means restoring workers’ rights, strengthening labor unions, implementing a living wage, and forcing corporations to carry their fair share of the social burden. It means investing in public goods that aren’t subject to the whims of whoever holds the gavel in Congress or occupies the seat in the Oval Office.

While temporary fixes are always worthwhile, we need to be careful that we don’t look at them as permanent fixes. Universal Pre-K, subsidized daycare, and expanded child tax credits may help, but they are political battles that take energy away from fixing the real systemic problems middle-class hardworking Americans face today. We need to reshape an economy that currently works against families into one that works for them. People aren’t asking for luxuries. They’re asking for the same thing past generations had: the ability to earn a fair wage, raise their kids, and sleep at night knowing they won’t lose everything if they get sick or lose their job. These are the policies worth fighting for. These are the policies that will bring prosperity for our children, their children, and generations to come.

Because this isn’t about babies, it’s about building a society worth raising them in.