Op-ed: Government’s focus on individual wealth fueling decline of families, global ‘slow suicide’

In the westernized world, fertility is falling to levels unseen in history.

The decline has prompted figures as diverse as Elon Musk and Fox’s Charles Payne to ask what’s driving the alarmingly low birth rates.

“The slow suicide of wealthy nations boggles the mind,” said Payne recently about the rapid surge towards population collapse in the West. “Why?”

Decades-old research studying data from the last 150 years shows the answer lies not just in simple economics, but in the collapse of the extended family.

The cheap answer – often cited by young Americans – involves the expense of parenthood. But if this were true historically, poor families throughout history wouldn’t have had so many children.

The true answer is modern nations have emphasized individual wealth building over family building, resulting in declining birthrates and the collapse of the extended family. 

Family, which used to be the retirement account for parents and grandparents, as well as the wealth transfer device for children, has been replaced by account numbers and tax code sections. 

The result has been the de-evolution from the extended family to the nuclear family to the fractured family. 

For centuries family was both a social and financial institution. 

Multigenerational households acted as the backbone of communities, ensuring children were raised with the help of grandparents, aunts and uncles. 

This system also helped parents to expect their own needs would be met in old age. 

In agricultural and early industrial societies, children were not simply companions but also contributors: they worked the land, added to household earnings and later provided elder care. 

Anthropologist John Caldwell’s influential “wealth flows” theory explained fertility in precisely these terms. 

When resources moved from younger to older generations, fertility stayed high; when the flow reversed, fertility fell. 

Caldwell’s theory emphasizes fertility declines when parents prioritize their own resources, such as saving for retirement, over having a large brood of children who pass wealth up to parents. 

For the U.S., the balance shifted over the last century. 

Public pension systems such as Social Security, private retirement accounts such as 401(k)s, and social insurance programs such as Medicare displaced the family’s role as a stabilizer. 

The result has been a diminished incentive to have larger families, as shown in a Federal Reserve Bank study completed in 2005, later issued as a book. 

“The data show that an increase in government provided old-age pensions is strongly correlated with a reduction in fertility,” the report found. 

One of the models in the study showed social pensions account for “between 55 and 65% of the observed Europe-U.S. fertility differences both across countries and across time.” 

Thus, instead of depending on sons and daughters, older generations have grown dependent on government tax breaks and retirement accounts. 

Seniors also have little financial interest in creating a legacy as the tax code now incentivizes spending individual wealth down to zero at retirement. 

Indeed, passing down generational wealth is actually frowned upon in America, whereas previously, parents worked their whole life to create something to pass down to their children. 

As the Fed report suggests, the effects are global. 

The United States recorded a fertility rate of about 1.62 births per woman in 2023, far below the replacement rate of 2.1. 

England and Wales hit a record low of 1.41 in 2024.  

Even France, once known for its relatively robust family policies, has slipped to 1.62. 

Across Europe, East Asia, and North America, sub-replacement fertility is no longer an anomaly but is instead the norm. 

But the collapse of fertility isn’t only about pensions and savings accounts. It’s about the social welfare state usurping family. 

Research shows the practical support once provided by family remains critical to childbearing decisions. 

A 2012 study by economists Elizabeth Compton and Robert Pollak found women living within 25 miles of their mothers were significantly more likely to work, showing grandparents still play a vital role in child rearing. 

Other studies show when a grandparent is around to help, women are more likely to have a second or third child. When that grandparent is absent, the desire to have more children diminishes. 

Meanwhile, what replaced the extended family – the nuclear family – has itself fractured.  

Rising divorce rates, cohabitation without marriage and postponed childbearing characterize what demographers call the “second demographic transition,” making families less stable. 

As a result, policymakers are scrambling to respond to plummeting birth rates. 

Countries from Sweden to South Korea, Japan to China, have tried baby bonuses, paid leave and childcare subsidies to stop the drop. 

So far, the results are disappointing. Experts note financial incentives rarely overcome the deeper cultural and structural shifts cracking the foundations of family and reduced fertility. 

The broader question is one of priorities. 

The Western model has prioritized wealth building over family building, in part, because that’s where the government pushed society in a bid to promise more “safety.” 

Collectively, however, it has produced a paradox: these safe societies are simultaneously failing to produce the next generation. 

Such failure puts the security we were promised in jeopardy. 

One example involves the impending collapse of Social Security, which has always relied on adding more workers to payrolls for tax revenue. 

Ironically, those workers are slowly leaving society because of declining birth rates – caused by the creation of Social Security itself. 

Family, then, is not simply one social arrangement among many. For modern man in the anthropological sense, it’s been the foundation of our growth. 

And family’s contraction into smaller units – with the diminished relationships replaced by an impersonal system of finance and law – marks a transformation that historically is just an experiment.  

The evidence so far suggests without family, no policy can fully reverse the slide of fertility.  

The social contract that once spanned generations is now a lonely, one-generational legal and financial agreement built up against our families – and our future.