A new study by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) has identified soaring housing costs as the single biggest factor preventing Americans from having as many children as they would like — surpassing concerns like childcare expenses, job security, and student debt.
“Housing cost concerns are more influential on young adults’ plans than childcare costs, work schedules, job stability, student debt, healthcare access, paid leave, desire for leisure time, personal health, or other care obligations,” the report concluded.
The conservative think tank, which advocates for policies to boost the U.S. birth rate, surveyed more than 8,000 Americans aged 18 to 54. While 30% cited the cost of childcare and 26% pointed to the desire for more leisure time, it was housing costs — flagged by 25% of respondents — that had the most powerful influence on family planning.
“Housing costs were unique in having a very large effect and being extremely common,” said Lyman Stone, director of IFS’s Pronatalism Initiative and coauthor of the report. “They explain the largest total amount of foreshortening of intentions.”
The findings align with a broader conservative push to address the nation’s declining birth rate, a cause championed by Vice President JD Vance. “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us,” Vance said in 2019. In his first speech as vice president, he told March for Life attendees, “I want more babies in the United States of America.”
Rather than focus on expanding childcare subsidies or paid parental leave, Vance and groups like IFS favor policies that support parents who stay at home and expand access to affordable housing. This includes proposals to build homes on federal land, cut red tape, and ease land-use regulations to spur construction.
Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and IFS cofounder, emphasized that the kind of housing Americans want also matters. “There’s that desire to give your kids a backyard and have space to spread out when it comes to having and raising a family,” Wilcox told Business Insider. In the IFS survey, 79% of respondents said they preferred to live in a detached, single-family home, although only 59% currently do.
Wilcox also noted IFS has been in discussions with the Trump administration’s Domestic Policy Council and supports their efforts to sell federal land for housing development. “For a lot of ordinary people, the most preferred and fruitful path to pursue here is to try to figure out ways to make affordable single-family housing more accessible to working middle-class Americans,” he said.
Academic research backs the IFS findings. Economists Lisa Dettling and Melissa Schettini Kearney found in a 2012 National Bureau of Economic Research paper that a 10% increase in home prices led to a 1% decrease in births among non-homeowners. In a February 2025 update, they linked the rise of low-down-payment mortgages in the 1930s to a significant birth rate increase, contributing to the post-war baby boom.
“Maybe how easy it is to have kids is less about can they take three months off work versus ‘do I have a bedroom to put this kid in for the next 18 years?’” Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, told Business Insider.
While conservative pronatalists and Democrats may differ in their housing priorities, both sides agree that the U.S. must build more homes to address affordability — a critical step in reversing America’s declining birth rate.
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