Are Men to Blame for the Birth-Rate Collapse?

S ociety is running out of babies , and no one can agree on why.

Most people around the world, including Americans, live in a country where overall fertility is below what demographers call the “replacement rate,” meaning that without migration, the population will shrink from one generation to the next.

In some places, the birth rate is so low that each generation is set to be half the size of the previous one.

A number of theories have been put forward to explain why this is happening.

Some experts point to smartphones and social media, others to the cost of child care, still others to existential dread or overparenting.

Claudia Goldin, the Nobel Prize–winning labor economist, favors another explanation: It’s the men.

In a widely discussed new working paper , she argues that husbands still fail to do their fair share of housework and child care, forcing their wives to choose between procreation and career success.

As a result, women are making the economically rational decision to have fewer kids.

“The more that men can credibly signal they will be dependable ‘dads’ and not disappointing ‘duds,’ the higher the birth rate will be in the face of greater female agency,” Goldin writes in a companion essay .

Goldin’s theory is attractive because it promises to resolve an uncomfortable tension in the fertility discussion.

Historically, falling birth rates have accompanied increases in women’s education and autonomy.

This was widely seen as a good thing when it meant going from seven kids on average to two or three.

Now that birth rates have fallen below replacement, however, calls to reverse the decline can sound like attacks on feminism itself.

But if Goldin is right, there’s no tension.