According to recent CDC data, United States births declined to another record low in 2025. The fertility rate now stands at 1.57 births per woman, not far above the “ultra-low” threshold of 1.3—a level associated with a “low-fertility trap,” in which fewer births becomes a self-reinforcing dynamic and difficult to reverse. Meantime, the median American is now approaching 40 years of age, up from 35 in 2001.
While the Congressional Budget Office expects the U.S. population to keep growing until 2056, the graying of America has already created severe political and economic strains for which the country remains unprepared. Most policy solutions—cutting entitlement spending, increasing immigration, or raising the retirement age—either lack feasibility or face intense bipartisan opposition. Absent a change in the political winds, we may soon see the Left and Right unite behind a counterproductive option: raising taxes.
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Like most developed nations, the U.S. relies heavily on continuous population growth. Generous senior entitlements, for example, depend on a productive workforce that significantly outnumbers the retired population. But America’s low fertility rate has shrunk the worker-retiree ratio to just 2.7 to one—down from four to one in 1965.
Prolonged low fertility deepens reliance on the welfare state, particularly among the elderly. As traditional family support networks—children, grandchildren, and extended kin—diminish, the government increasingly assumes the role of surrogate caregiver.
Yet while Social Security and Medicare are now the primary drivers of U.S. debt and deficits, neither political party wants to make the necessary adjustments to these programs to account for our aging population. Voter demographics help explain this reluctance: seniors represent an increasingly influential voting bloc that candidates cannot afford to alienate.
Donald Trump is keenly aware of this electoral reality, which is why he has worked to marginalize the Republican Party’s fiscal hawks. Since even Tea Party supporters opposed Medicare cuts, the MAGA pivot away from typical GOP fiscal prudence didn’t require a dramatic transformation. Republicans and Democrats are both committed to upholding the entitlement status quo, creating a bipartisan consensus that further entrenches a powerful gerontocracy.
More immigration could temporarily avert demographic decline and its associated problems. In 2024, the National Immigration Forum reported that the country needed a 37 percent boost in net immigration over projected 2020 levels “to prevent the U.S. from falling into demographic deficit and socioeconomic decline.” According to a separate 2024 analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, restoring the current worker-retiree ratio over the long term would require an annual immigration rate 3.5 times higher than the 2024 rate.
In the aftermath of the Biden administration’s border crisis, however, the American Right has taken an unprecedentedly hardline position against immigration, both legal and illegal. Last October, for example, Vice President J. D. Vance said that “we have to get the overall numbers way, way down.” In November, Texas representative Chip Roy introduced legislation to freeze all immigration.
Reaching the requisite levels of immigration also faces social constraints. With the foreign-born population of the United States already at an all-time high, scaling up immigration would raise concerns about assimilation and social cohesion. Even if the Democrats recapture the White House in 2028, attempting to replicate the Biden administration’s open-borders agenda would likely ignite another right-wing populist backlash, much as it has throughout the Western European democracies.
If increasing immigration isn’t a politically palatable option, neither is another possible reform: raising the retirement age.
In 2023, amid France’s ongoing pension debacle, President Emmanuel Macron signed a controversial law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64—a move supported by only 36 percent of voters. Though this new age limit was still a year below the European Union average of 65, more than 1 million people took to the streets in protest, and riots broke out across Paris.
American public support for raising the retirement age is even lower than in France—just 17 percent. In 2024, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro caused an online frenzy when he suggested raising the retirement age and described retirement itself as a “stupid idea.” He acknowledged that he had touched a “political third rail.” In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan touched it, too—and lost.
The ascendant MAGA-populist vision aims to restrict immigration while simultaneously keeping entitlement programs intact. There’s only one obvious way out of this bind: Republicans increasingly uniting with Democrats in calling for higher taxes. Given the choice between progressive economics or progressive immigration policy, many on the Right may ultimately prefer the former.
Consider: as much as 70 percent of Republicans now believe that the rich should pay higher taxes, up from 62 percent in 2019. When even a pro-business, free-market stalwart like Mitt Romney publishes a New York Times guest essay titled, “Tax the Rich, Like Me,” it suggests that a major shift is underway.
But it’s not a move toward sound policy. Raising taxes to reduce fiscal deficits has historically backfired by reducing economic output and employment levels, thus shrinking the tax base, diminishing revenue, and worsening the debt-to-GDP ratio. As three economists warned in a 2018 IMF publication: “If a surplus is increased by raising taxes, the downturn in growth may be so large that it raises rather than reduces the debt-to-GDP ratio.” Spending constraints remain the best roadmap toward long-term fiscal health and sustained economic growth.
Bipartisan agreement on tax hikes offers no solution to the U.S. fiscal crisis and merely postpones the more fundamental issue: how to convince Americans to have more children. That may prove a daunting task, however. The track records of pro-natal initiatives in countries like Norway, Hungary, Poland, and Japan illustrate the difficulties in influencing one of the most intimate and pivotal choices in life. Before pursuing similar projects in the United States, policymakers should take these struggles into consideration and adapt their efforts accordingly.
The inevitability of population decline demands a fundamental shift in perspective. Rather than clinging to outdated growth models or recklessly imposing higher taxes, we should begin adapting our political and economic systems to function within the new demographic realities.