White House floats incentives to boost US birth rate

The Trump administration wants to see more babies born in the United States

and the White House is floating different ideas on how to convince families and women to make it happen

According to the New York Times, one idea is to give $5,000 cash to every American woman after they deliver a baby

Another idea is to set aside 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children or want more children

The Fulbright program is the U.S. government's flagship international educational exchange program

A third idea is to provide menstrual classes for women to teach them how to better understand their cycles if they want to become pregnant

Trump appeared to be on board with the $5,000 baby bonus when asked about it Monday by the New York Post in the Oval Office

Sounds like a good idea to me, he said. He also signed an executive order expanding access to in vitro fertilization while calling himself the father of IVF

However, $5,000 wouldn't even cover the hospital bill for labor and delivery, especially for the uninsured

The current cost to give birth in the U.S. is estimated to be $32,000 on average before any potential insurance compensation, according to the National Partnership for Women Families

Trump confidant Elon Musk has long warned of the economic effects of a declining birth rate

He said it's something that keeps him up at night in an interview with Fox News' Brett Baer

You know, the birth rate is very low in almost every country

And unless that changes, civilization will disappear. America had the lowest birth rate, I believe, ever

That was last year. Places like Korea the birth rate is one replacement rate That means in three generations Korea will be 3 or 4 percent of its current size And nothing seems to be turning that around

Humanity is dying. The ideas come at a time when the government is seeking for ways to incentivize women to have more children

as the birth rate has been declining over the decades. In 1950, there were just over 24 live births per 1,000 women, which dropped to 11.4 live births by the year 2019, according to the CDC

The agency says 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2024

Families and women consider many factors when deciding to have children. Can they afford it? Is labor and delivery safe? Are they concerned about climate change

Currently, 55 other countries have pronatalist policies in place, encouraging more child rearing

According to the Institute for Family Studies, more countries have adopted pronatalist policies since 2015

Hungary and Poland implemented pronatalist policies in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Both saw an uptick in births, with Poland's rates rising by more than 10 percent in 2017

By 2019, the rate in Poland fell to about 6 percent. At its peak after implementing the new policies, Hungary saw a mere just over 2% rise in childbirths in 2017

and they began declining again later that same year. Would pronatalist policies work for American families

Well, that's undetermined. The Institute for Family Studies says they helped to increase births in the short term, but usually decline again

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan. For more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com