Making babies great again!

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How to Make American Babies Again

Subsidies for new mothers won’t have much effect. Making IVF accessible is a more promising approach.

By Leonard Lopoo, WSJ

April 29, 2025 3:28 pm ET

Though the message may have gotten lost in the flood of news out of Washington, President Trump and his leadership team have made a priority of getting Americans to have more babies. The most recent data show that the average U.S. woman will give birth 1.62 times over her lifetime—far below the replacement level of 2.1. But the policies the pronatalist White House is considering vary wildly in their efficacy.

At the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump said: “We will support baby booms, and we will support baby bonuses”—paying parents for having children—“for a new baby boom.” Vice President JD Vance has taken up the cry, saying in January that we need “more babies in the United States of America.” Officials are soliciting advice from experts on pronatalist options. Some involve subsidies for births. This would be a mistake. The better idea is to make in vitro fertilization affordable and accessible.

Other nations have tried pronatalist policies. After World War II, France expanded the Code de la famille, which included cash awards for having children and subsidized child care. Australia, Canada, Japan, Russia and Singapore have all tried to increase fertility through baby bonuses. Russia’s national government currently offers new mothers 677,000 rubles ($8,164) for their first birth and more for a second.

Baby bonuses have proved costly and ineffective. Children are expensive. From time to time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the cost of raising a child. The USDA’s latest report, published in 2017, suggests it costs on average about $234,000 for a middle-class married couple. This estimate is based on spending data and includes housing, food, clothing, healthcare and other costs between birth and age 17.

That leaves a lot out, including direct expenses after 17, the largest of which for many families is college. Higher education on its own costs on average $38,000 a year, or just over $150,000 for a four-year degree.

The USDA estimate also doesn’t factor in the opportunity cost of becoming a parent. Mothers often have to work fewer hours, turn down promotions to preserve work flexibility, or leave the labor force altogether. The estimate doesn’t include the psychological costs of parenthood. These run throughout a child’s life, from sleepless nights when a baby is sick to worries about a teenager out with his friends. Though not monetary, these are real costs, as any mother or father can tell you.

Given all these expenses, a baby bonus may sound like a good idea. But consider what a similar subsidy would mean for another life-changing cost: homeownership. Suppose you’re in the market for a house, and you plan to spend $250,000. You’re looking for the perfect home and willing to wait up to three years to buy it. While you’re searching, imagine the government announces that for anyone who buys a home within the next six months, Washington will subsidize the closing costs (which are usually 3% to 6% of the cost of the house).

This policy would push many—though not all—potential buyers already in the market for a home to move up their timelines to take advantage of the government offer. If someone is already committed to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, the extra $7,500 to $15,000 might nudge him to buy early. What the policy wouldn’t do is entice someone who isn’t inclined to buy—whether because he doesn’t have the savings or doesn’t want to own a home—to change his mind.

Baby bonuses work the same way. A small financial incentive may convince a couple to have a child earlier than originally planned, even if the offer isn’t time limited as in the housing example. But that’s it. When naive analysts look at the data and observe a rise in childbearing after such a subsidy is introduced, they are often seeing this temporary speedup in family planning. The government ends up paying for children who were already going to be born absent the baby bonus policy. But the Trump administration doesn’t want a short-lived acceleration of already inbound births.

Encouraging the use of IVF, on the other hand, would inspire births that wouldn’t otherwise happen. There are many families who would like to have children—and are committed to all the costs of parenthood—but can’t for physiological reasons. IVF often could help these people, but the costs can be prohibitive. Most private insurance policies exclude IVF, and almost all public forms of health insurance do. Yet the costs of IVF are low enough that subsidies could make a difference and allow children to be born that wouldn’t have been absent the policy.

Totally subsidizing the treatment would be expensive: The average cost of a cycle of IVF is around $12,000 to $25,000, and the success rate isn’t high. Nevertheless, there are ways to spread the cost. When Massachusetts mandated that private health insurance cover IVF with unlimited cycles, premiums increased by only about $1 a month.

There are many good options the administration could offer in its May report on expanding IVF use, including the mandating that public and private health insurance include coverage, which has great potential. Baby bonuses don’t.

Mr. Lopoo is a professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.