The “moral equivalent of war” is often used to elevate an otherwise non-threatening event into an existential threat. But today, the U.S. and indeed, all of Western civilization, faces a very real existential threat, one equal to war: the global collapse of fertility and families.

In country after country, the stark, awful news emerges on a nearly daily basis: birth rates are plunging as women disengage from traditional marriage and family life, and young men do the same.

The U.S. is no exception.

Last year, the U.S. fertility rate plunged to an all-time low of 1.6 children per woman, a rate roughly 24% below the 2.1 children required just to keep population from shrinking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The details are grim: “Fertility rates declined for women and girls ages 15-34 between 2023 and 2024, remained unchanged for women ages 35-39 and rose for women ages 40-44, the data show.”

Worse, around the world, “Fertility is falling everywhere: rich and poor countries alike, booming and stagnating economies, secular and religious societies. The decline is happening far faster than anyone anticipated,” wrote economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in a recent post on X.

How serious is it? Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, says the decline will set off “a gradual implosion of the world’s economy as the population ages and dies.”

Scary stuff. Scarier still, it’s partly by choice.

Of course, in the past, children were considered a form of wealth, not a burden. Living on a farm, for instance, required workers – often children. And for much of the 20th century, parents were cared for in old age by their children, a kind family-based Social Security.

More recently, things such as abortion and the birth-control pill, both stemming from the early feminist movement, have made it easier for women to program their fertility and avoid “happy accidents” of unplanned children. The decline of religion, much of which strongly encourages families, has also played a role.

Indeed, attitudes in developed nations toward children have altered. No longer needed for economic support, they are now seen as a burden, not a blessing.

Mass-market books such as 1968’s “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich sold the idea that population growth was equal to death.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines —  hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now,” Ehrlich wrote in a book that sold more than 2 million copies.

Utterly false, of course. Yet dozens of other books, studies and reports echoed that theme, which became the left’s “common wisdom” and helped reshape the debate and encouraged often-coercive government “family planning” initiatives.

Complicating the picture in the U.S. is that young men and women today see things very differently. There appears to be a stark divide, much of it ideological.

A recent NBC Poll asked 18-29 year olds (Gen-Z) what their priorities were. As NBC reported, “Men who backed Donald Trump in 2024 rated having children at the top. Women who backed Kamala Harris rated it second to last.”

Not a good sign. On issue after issue, there was often deep disagreement between young men and young women on such questions as border security and immigration, inflation and the cost of living, with young men supporting Trump’s policies by nearly 2-1 over women their same age.

Will such political schisms bring young men and young women together to create sound, loving marriages with children? Highly doubtful.

It’s no accident. Democratic policies encourage out-of-wedlock babies and welfare dependency, while discouraging families through high taxes and literally tens of thousands of pages of useless government regulations that raise the cost of living.

Meanwhile, climate change fanatics and their “zero net growth” philosophy has doomed industrial and technological growth in much of the industrial world, a fast-moving economic disaster.

And America’s left has exported nearly all of these policies to the rest of the world.

“The United Nations, the World Bank, and bilateral donors, particularly the United States through USAID, increasingly integrated population control into foreign aid programs,” wrote Michael Munger in The Daily Economy. “High fertility rates, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, were viewed not merely as demographic trends but as Malthusian obstacles to modernization, poverty alleviation, and global security.”

Can something be done about what Munger calls a looming “demographic disaster”? Absolutely. Plenty of things.

For the U.S., here are just a few :

• Stop subsidizing “population control” through foreign aid.
• Cut overall tax rates for all, businesses and individuals, encouraging both work and job formation (and more families).
• Streamline NIMBY regulations, permits and taxes that make it costly to build affordable homes.
• Stop adding trillions to our already $38 trillion in debt each year, a financial deadweight on future generations.
• Reform Social Security through private accounts that build individual and family wealth, and stop the transfer of trillions of dollars to an obscenely wasteful federal government.
• End absurd DEI and equality rules and encourage advancement through merit, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion or gender (there are only two, by the way).
• Reform education. As the Heritage Foundation notes, “current education policies push people to delay having families until they are much older and impose barriers to accessing religious education, both of which significantly reduce fertility rates.”

These are just a few ideas. There are literally dozens of things to encourage more babies, more families, more wealth, and better lives for all. And, no, it doesn’t mean taking away women’s rights. But civilizations are built on families. If we don’t start rebuilding families now, we face a cataclysmic, possibly irreversible economic and cultural decline, both in the U.S. and the rest of the world. An unparalleled, and avoidable, disaster.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board