Commentary: Immigration Cannot Solve the U.S. Birth Dearth
May 9, 2025 Star News Contributor
Babies
by Steven Camarota
Like all other First World countries, the United States is experiencing a significant decline in fertility. President Trump has suggested paying Americans to increase the nation’s fertility rate. He is right to be concerned. Low fertility and increasing life expectancy are the two primary drivers of population aging. Some have argued that because immigrants tend to have more children, immigration can fix this problem. But the latest fertility data show that immigration has at most a small impact on birth rates.
Immigration does add significantly to the number of births. In 2023, about one in five births in the United States was to an immigrant mother. What matters for population aging, however, is birth rates.
One of the easiest ways to measure the impact of immigration on the nation’s birth rates is to use the annual American Community Survey (ACS), collected by the Census Bureau. The immigrants (or foreign-born) in the data include everyone who is not a U.S. citizen at birth — naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors such as guest workers and foreign students, and illegal immigrants. The Census Bureau is clear that illegal immigrants are included in the data, although some share are missed. The survey asks all women ages 15 to 50 if they’ve had a child in the last year.
With the ACS we can calculate a total fertility rate (TFR), which represents the number of children a woman can be expected to have in her lifetime if present trends continue. As a general rule, a TFR of at 2.1 is “replacement level” – the minimum necessary to maintain the current population in the long run — putting aside people entering or leaving a country.
https://tennesseestar.com/culture/commentary-immigration-cannot-solve-the-u-s-birth-dearth/starc/2025/05/09/
