The government wants you to have more children.

As the U.S. fertility rate continues to decline, President Donald Trump’s administration is considering ways to encourage people to have more children.

The “big, beautiful” tax bill, which passed a House vote on May 22, included a $1,000 one-time deposit from the federal government into a savings account for children. Other proposed solutions included a $5,000 one-time “baby bonus” for mothers of newborns.

But experts say that these proposals aren’t nearly enough.

“The financial incentives they are proposing fall almost laughably short of what it actually costs to raise a child,” said Jessica Calarco, professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

A March report from Lending Tree found that over 18 years, it costs over $297,000 to raise a child, about $29,000 annually after tax exemptions and credits, and about a 25% cost increase since 2023. The cost includes five years of child care, as well as basic things such as shelter, clothing and food. 

Addressing wider issues like affordable child care and health care would be more encouraging, said Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. 

“If they were more serious about it and they made preschool, pre-K universal and health care universal, it’d be great for children,” said Cohen. 

However, even in countries with more robust social safety nets, financial incentives have not had a lasting effect on birth rates. For example, the birth rate of Finland, which provides free universal child care and health care, hit 1.32 in 2022, below the replacement level of 2.1.

According to Calarco, that’s because raising children not only takes money — it takes a lot of energy that people have to divert from other areas of their lives.

“We know that when people have more opportunities other than parenthood, they don’t necessarily want to have their whole lives revolve around raising kids,” said Calarco.

Calarco said this is particularly the case for women, who often shoulder the majority of the burden of raising children. According to data, women tend to want fewer children as their access to education and employment increases.

Low birth rates are a population trend that has been a long time coming as people invest more time into individual children rather than a large number of children — essentially, quality over quantity.

“It’s not that people love parenting less. It’s just that, with one or two children, you’re putting as much or more into parenting as people ever did when people had four or five,” said Cohen.

While pundits treat birth rates as a crisis — namely due to the so-called decline of family values, and issues surrounding social security payments — experts say it won’t be a big issue for a few decades.

“It’s not a tomorrow problem,” said Phillip Levine at Wellesley College. 

Plus, Calarco said, there are other ways to fix the Social Security payment issue, such as eliminating taxable earnings caps.

“There’s so much easier fixes, but they mean oftentimes asking the wealthiest in our society to pay more,” said Calarco. “That’s something that many are not often willing to do.”

Immigration would also be another solution. But Trump’s current immigration policies make it clear that it is not a lever the administration is willing to pull.

“That sends a strong signal about which children we actually want in the U.S.,” said Calarco.

Calarco and Cohen said that certain rhetoric around falling birth rates should be treated with skepticism — especially since, in the past, they have been accompanied by authoritarian governments. 

“Authoritarian rulers, they all say they want to raise birth rates and they always fail,” said Cohen. “And the reason they say it is not because they really think they’re going to raise birth rates, it’s because the politics of saying that really serves them well.”

Levine said while it is an issue for both sides of the political aisle to be aware of, things aren’t so simple as sending out checks or providing other incentives.

“It’s a perfectly plausible topic that deserves the public’s attention,” said Levine. “It’s just not obvious what lever to pull to change it.”