.png?trim=0,0,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "More Americans are saying it’s too expensive to have children, and it’s limiting how big families are growing – UK Times")
For the first time in the 11-year history of BYU’s American Family Survey, respondents named finances as the top reason for limiting family size, citing it twice as often as any other factor, amid widespread concerns about rising everyday costs.
The 2025 results, released Friday, show that seven in 10 Americans now say raising children is too expensive, a 13-point increase from last year.
“To get 70 percent of Americans to agree on something, just that alone is telling us something,” Susan Brown, director of Bowling Green State University’s Center for Family and Demographic Research, who is not affiliated with the report, told the Washington Post.
Conducted by BYU’s Wheatley Institute and Deseret News from August 6 to 18, the poll surveyed 3,000 people selected to reflect national demographics of gender, age, race, and education, with a 2-point margin of error.
The results highlight how financial concerns are shaping Americans’ decisions about if, when, and how many children to have, as the U.S. birth rate remained near a historic low of 1.6 children per woman in 2024, following a record low in 2023.
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Financial constraints are the leading factor limiting family size, with 43 percent of respondents citing “insufficient money” as a reason to have fewer, or any, children, the survey showed.
Close behind, 41 percent of participants said that none of the listed factors, including “relationship instability,” “lack of family support,” and “conflict with career goals,” influenced their decision.
Among the other factors cited, the most common were “lack of personal desire” and “lack of a supportive partner.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture historically published an annual report estimating the cost of raising a child to adulthood (excluding college), which has long been regarded as the standard reference.
The last report, from 2015, calculated that a child born that year would cost an average of $233,610 for a middle-income, married couple. Adjusted for inflation through June 2025, this figure rises to $322,427.
Costs vary by income level, as lower-income families might spend around $241,106, while higher-income families could face expenses as high as $513,722.
Isabel V. Sawhill, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, told US News that the USDA estimate assumes a 2.2 percent inflation rate, lower than today’s rate, so the real cost of raising a child could be even higher.
Amid concerns over the declining birth rate, conservatives are promoting the “pronatalist” movement, encouraging larger families through supportive government policies. Many Americans support or are neutral toward such programs, polls suggest.
Rising economic pressures, from higher grocery and energy costs to job losses, are influencing spending and voter priorities, as seen in campaigns like Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral victory.
Policymakers are exploring solutions, such as New Mexico’s free child care pilot and President Trump’s proposal for 50-year home mortgages.
The survey also revealed partisan differences in attitudes about factors limiting family size. Democrats were more likely than Republicans or independents to cite financial reasons, though majorities across all groups supported expanding the child tax credit.
Republicans were least supportive of broader government assistance, such as universal day care or direct payments to parents.
Experts caution, however, that even generous government programs may have a limited impact on birth rates.
“It’s really hard to say that you would have a child if given X amount of money from the government, because I think that’s just not the calculus,” Gibson-Davis said. “It is a very intimate, personal decision that people make.”
