Rising housing costs have caused fertility rates to fall

Home prices may be the real birth control.

A new study by Benjamin K. Couillard, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Toronto in Canada, finds that surging housing costs are responsible for more than half of the decline in US fertility rates since the early 2000s.

Couillard’s analysis, which draws on US Census Bureau data to track rent patterns nationwide, concludes that, had housing costs remained flat after 1990, roughly 13 million additional children would have been born by 2020.

The research attributes 51% of the total fertility decline between the 2000s and 2010s to rising rents and home prices.

“That’s a surprising result,” Couillard said. “It suggests that housing costs are a major driver of fertility decline. Housing abundance is not just about affordability