(OSV News) -- "The problem," Pope Francis said on May 10 as he addressed an annual conference in Rome on boosting birth rates, "is not how many of us there are in this world, but rather what kind of world we're building."
It's a thesis the Institute for Family Studies apparently agrees with, announcing the June 3 launch of its Pronatalism Initiative. IFS is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based think tank dedicated to researching marriage, family life and the well-being of children.
Led by Lyman Stone -- a demographer awarded an IFS senior fellowship to establish the program -- the Pronatalism Initiative will pioneer new research as it seeks to formulate policy recommendations "to counteract global fertility decline."
Stone, the chief information officer of consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, is a former international economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service.
"The IFS Pronatalism Initiative will lead the broad and urgent interest in fertility to a clear, well-researched suite of policy solutions," Stone said in a statement released by the institute. "Fertility rebound is not only possible, it may even be likely."
Pronatalism is a cultural and religious value that promotes having children.
The world's population currently stands at over 8 billion -- but the esteemed British medical journal The Lancet nonetheless reported on March 20 that "by 2050, over three-quarters (155 of 204) of countries will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain population size over time; this will increase to 97% of countries (198 of 204) by 2100."
Terming the trend a "low fertility future," The Lancet declared that "the new fertility forecasts underscore the enormous challenges to economic growth in many middle- and high-income countries with a dwindling workforce and the growing burden on health and social security systems of an aging population."
"Our first project is going to be on housing," Stone told OSV News. "We're going to be doing a couple of studies, quite large ones actually, getting a lot more information about how the ongoing housing situation -- some call it a housing crisis -- is impacting family formation and fertility. That's going to be the first focus."
As J.P. Morgan Private Bank indicated in November 2023, "U.S. home prices are currently at all-time highs, and less affordable (relative to income and mortgage rates) than at the height of the 2006 housing bubble. That's after prices skyrocketed by about 40% during the pandemic."
On April 25, The Wall Street Journal reported the total fertility rate in the U.S. "fell to 1.62 births per woman in 2023, a 2% decline from a year earlier, federal data released Thursday showed. It is the lowest rate recorded since the government began tracking it in the 1930s."
"Housing is one of the biggest input costs for fertility," emphasized Stone. "If you want to have kids, you've got to have somewhere to put them. Obviously, the housing that we have in our country is not just a product of a free market -- there are many ways that we intervene in the housing market through the government," he added, citing loan programs and zoning as examples.
"So," Stone explained, "it's a logical place to say, 'OK, if this is a really big cost, and this is a place where the government already has a big role, could we look at nudging that role in a way that is more supportive of the family outcomes that people say they want?'"
Those outcomes, Stone noted, indicate American parents do want more children.
"The simple fact is that birth rates in the U.S. are far below what people say they want; they're far below what women say they want for themselves, personally," commented Stone. "That is a problem of reproductive autonomy -- and it's been recognized as a problem with reproductive autonomy by the United Nations State of World Population report; last year, it specifically identified this as a significant problem."
In Stone's own most recent report -- "Demographic Rearmament in Southern Europe" -- the researcher made the case for specifically pronatalist government policies. Such policies, Stone observed -- with his co-author Erin Wingerter -- were encouraged in France during the 20th century.
In a January press conference, French President Emmanuel Macron declared his country needs to pursue "demographic rearmament." Macron was quickly and predictably slammed by a host of commentators who accused him of an attempt to control women's bodies. In 2023, France recorded 678,000 births -- a drop of 6.6% from 2022, and the lowest annual rate since World War II.
Italy -- for the 15th consecutive year -- also saw births decline, hitting a record low of 379,000 in 2023. In May of the same year, Italy’s premier, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, joined Pope Francis in encouraging Italians to have more children. Meloni has backed a campaign aimed at boosting annual Italian births to 500,000 by 2033, which The Associated Press reports as "a rate that demographers say is necessary to prevent the economy from collapsing by growing the wage-earning population as retirees draw on their pensions."
During February, a Guardian headline informed readers, "Birthrate in UK falls to record low as campaigners say 'procreation a luxury.' Total fertility was 1.49 children per woman in 2022 amid rising housing and childcare costs."
"The fertility crisis in the United States and around the world demands rigorous research identifying drivers and solutions of the collapse in fertility rates," IFS executive director Michael Toscano said in a statement. "The IFS Pronatalism Initiative will build a team around Stone's research to show countries, willing to make a concerted effort, how to address their fertility problems."
"The West is facing a very real population bomb -- and not the one Paul Ehrlich or 'Soylent Green' predicted," J.P. De Gance told OSV News. De Gance is the founder and president of Communio, a Virginia-based nonprofit ministry that trains and equips churches to renew healthy relationships, marriages and the family.
American biologist Ehrlich has warned about the consequences of population growth and resource depletion, while in the 1973 dystopian sci-fi cinema thriller "Soylent Green," the issue was addressed by converting humans to food.
"The real population bomb is demographic collapse threatening the future of civilization. The IFS report shows in Europe what we're seeing in America -- declining birth rates are fundamentally a result of declining marriage rates," De Gance noted. "In the U.S., Catholic weddings have dropped more than 70% since 1970, and overall marriages are down 65% over that same span."
Without intentional marital catechesis, De Gance asserted, the message of marriage is lost.
"At this time of relational and anthropological chaos, churches fail to teach young people the skills of forming and discerning a healthy Christian marriage. We allow the dominant cultural narrative of delaying or avoiding marriage to go unchallenged," he explained. "The result of this inaction on the part of the church is increased human suffering."
Proactivity, De Gance suggested, could hold potential solutions.
"The church and the state each have roles to play here," De Gance said. "Lyman Stone and IFS believe they have found evidence of policy increasing birth rates. That's huge."
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