America is running out of babies – and too many leaders think we can import our way out of the problem.
Singapore’s leaders are already saying that part out loud. With the country’s total fertility rate falling to 0.87 in 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong warned that the population could start shrinking in the early 2040s – and said the country will need carefully managed immigration to offset the birth collapse, including plans to grant 25,000-30,000 new citizenships a year over the next five years.
America is not Singapore. But the pressure of falling birth rates is real, and can push countries toward the same destination. The United States’ total fertility rate in 2024 was right about 1.6 births per woman – far below replacement.
As the founder of Communio, a national organization focused on strengthening marriages and families, I see the demographic pressure building and the temptation to treat immigration as the substitute for Americans getting married and having kids.
Nations have the right and obligation to secure their borders and govern immigration lawfully. But our immigration debate is being distorted by a deeper demographic reality. America is running out of marriages and babies, and too many decision makers would rather treat immigration as the permanent solution rather than confront both the cultural and policy conditions that are making family life less common.
Start with what young people themselves are saying. A Pew Research Center analysis found that in 2023, only 61 percent of 12th‑grade girls said they want to marry someday, down from 83 percent in 1993. And only 48 percent of 12th graders say it is "very likely" they would want children if they marry, down from 64 percent 30 years ago.
That is not a niche cultural shift. It is the upstream cause of downstream national problems: a weaker workforce, more loneliness, more instability, and fewer reasons for people to believe in the future – and the steady erosion of the institutions that hold communities together.
Even childbirth has become financially intimidating. Peterson‑KFF estimates pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care average over $20,000 for women with employer coverage, with roughly $2,700 out of pocket. We have built an economy and a culture that tells young people to delay commitment, wait for kids, and hope it all works out later – then we act surprised when many realize it won’t.
This is where the immigration conversation becomes more than economics. When housing supply is constrained, more demand chasing too few homes pushes prices higher. Families feel that pressure in rent, in home prices, and in the sense that the ladder keeps moving up as they climb.
If you want to see what the baby bust looks like when it hits the ground, look at Bellingham, Washington. The public school district is weighing elementary school closures after years of enrollment decline, which district leaders directly attribute to declining birth rates. The district’s demographer estimates enrollment could keep falling through 2035. That is the demographic future made visible: fewer kids, institutions downsizing, and communities forced to shrink because family life is no longer replacing itself.
At this point, some will say that immigration is the answer because it fills jobs, boosts growth, and supports an aging society. There is truth there. Immigration can strengthen a nation. It cannot replace one that has stopped forming families. But immigration is not a substitute for rebuilding marriage and childbearing among the people already here.
The real solution is not to import our way out, but to restore the conditions and the message that make marriage and children achievable and desirable again.
That starts with cultural honesty. If the most celebrated life script is autonomy first and commitment later, marriage becomes a capstone instead of a foundation. You cannot mock the institution for decades and then demand it perform miracles for the economy.
It also requires policy realism. If we want more babies, we have to make it easier to build a stable life early enough to have them: housing supply that meets demand, fewer cost shocks around childbirth and early childhood, and an economy where a young couple can see a future that includes a home, a spouse, and children.
And yes, it means border sanity. Enforcing immigration law and setting sustainable levels is not cruelty. It is governance. Immigration should complement a healthy society, not substitute for one.
Leaders have to say plainly what too many people feel but rarely hear: marriage and children are not a trap. They are among the strongest predictors of human flourishing.
Singapore is giving us a preview of a world where leaders openly lean on immigration to offset a birth collapse. America still has time to choose a different path.
J.P. De Gance is the founder and president of Communio, a nonprofit ministry that trains and equips churches, focusing on the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and the family. He is the co-author of "Endgame: The Church’s Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America."