# U.S. Fertility & Family Affordability Report 2026: Methodology Version: 2.0 Released: 2026-09-02 Canonical URL: https://financefirst.co/reports/us-fertility-family-affordability-2026 ## Scope This report explains the U.S. fertility decline through four separate lenses: period fertility, childlessness and delayed parenthood, household affordability, and long-run demographic consequences. It then reviews U.S. and international policy evidence. It does not forecast births, identify one cause, claim that one policy produces a target fertility rate, or score legislation. ## Six claim classes Every major claim is labeled as an observed statistic, survey response, study result, official projection, FinanceFirst calculation, or FinanceFirst scenario. Period total fertility rates do not equal completed cohort fertility. A delayed birth may later occur or may be forgone. Childlessness at age 30 is not permanent childlessness. ## Source hierarchy Primary government releases and datasets are used for policy amounts, births, state fertility rates, child care prices, income, rent, budget baselines and trust-fund projections. Peer-reviewed and high-quality academic studies are used for causal or quasi-causal evidence. OECD is used for a bounded cross-country synthesis. Survey attitudes are separated from observed births, expected births, period fertility rates and completed fertility. ## National fertility and timing The CDC 1990-2023 series supplies final annual general fertility rates and total fertility rates. CDC final 2024 data add 3,628,934 births, a GFR of 53.8, a TFR of 1.5995, mean age at first birth of 27.6, and counts by live-birth order. CDC provisional 2025 data supply 3,606,400 births and a GFR of 53.1. Provisional 2025 values are never combined with an invented TFR. The first-birth-age series covers 2010-2024. Census 2024 childlessness estimates use age groups and remain cross-sectional. A 2012 Census processing change limits long comparisons. ## Pew sample interpretation Pew surveyed U.S. adults in 2024. The percentages reproduced in this report apply only to adults ages 18-49 without children who said they were not too or not at all likely to have children. That subgroup contained 770 respondents; the reported margin of sampling error was plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. Respondents could choose multiple major reasons, so the percentages neither sum to 100 nor allocate shares of the national fertility decline. No credible dataset allows the national fertility decline to be cleanly divided into X% financial pressure and Y% changing preferences. ## Singapore package The new maximum S$62,000 package is modeled as S$20,000 at age 0 (S$10,000 Baby Gift, S$5,000 CDA First Step Grant and the maximum S$5,000 CDA co-match), S$2,000 per year from ages 1 through 16, and S$10,000 at age 17. The broader official statement of almost S$70,000 also includes an existing S$5,000 MediSave grant and approximately S$2,500 in Edusave contributions. It is never treated as cash paid at birth. ## Currency conversion Currency translations divide Singapore-dollar amounts by 1.2744 SGD per USD, the Federal Reserve H.10 noon buying rate for August 28, 2026. This is a spot conversion, not a purchasing-power-parity comparison. ## U.S. cost scenarios Every national scenario uses 3,606,400 provisional U.S. births in 2025. A one-time payment is births multiplied by the per-child amount. Birth-cohort commitment is the undiscounted face value promised to that cohort. Present value discounts age-specific payments at the stated annual rate. A mature steady-state annual cost assumes an equal-sized birth cohort each year and all age cohorts concurrently receive scheduled benefits. Figures are gross and exclude administration, eligibility, take-up, tax interactions, offsets, macroeconomic effects and behavioral responses. The default budget denominator is CBO's $7.4 trillion FY2026 outlay projection. Dividing a scenario by that denominator is a scale comparison, not a budget score. ## State dashboard The dashboard covers all 50 states. It contains no composite ranking. Center-based infant child care prices use each state's latest nonmissing DOL NDCP median through 2022 and are annualized as weekly price times 52. 48 states have an observed DOL price; Indiana and New Mexico remain explicitly missing. Household income and gross rent are 2024 ACS one-year estimates. Births and general fertility rates are final 2024 CDC values. The one-year GFR change subtracts each state's comparable final 2023 rate from its final 2024 rate. The PFML field records whether DOL identifies an enacted state paid family and medical leave law, not individual eligibility or generosity. For transparency, the dataset also publishes a national CPI context translation from each observed DOL year to July 2026 using BLS CPI-U series CUUR0000SEEB03. This is an index exercise, not an observed or imputed current state price. The original DOL value and vintage remain the primary state fields. Child care share of income equals annualized center-based infant price divided by 2024 median household income. The illustrative median-price benchmark adds annualized median gross rent and annualized infant child care price, then divides by median household income. Both measures mix separate medians and source periods. They are descriptive scale comparisons only, not the budget of a typical household, and do not establish that costs cause a state's fertility rate. ## Missing values and outliers Missing child care observations are retained as blank, never imputed. Alaska and Missouri have lower price-coverage fields in their latest available DOL rows; coverage is published beside each estimate. No observations are winsorized or removed. Static charts show only observed values and disclose the observation count. ## Evidence review The evidence matrix separates fertility outcomes from poverty, child outcomes and labor-supply outcomes. The policy scorecard uses qualitative labels: Strong evidence, Moderate evidence, Mixed evidence, Limited evidence and Not established. Labels summarize the direction, recurrence and causal quality of cited evidence by endpoint. They are not numeric scores, political rankings, ROI estimates or predictions of a U.S. response. Timing, benefit design, birth order, eligibility, labor markets, housing, child care supply and cultural context can alter results. ## International case selection Cases were selected only where a primary source, peer-reviewed study or OECD synthesis adds a distinct lesson about cash, leave, services, policy systems or transferability. Simple before-and-after fertility-rate comparisons are not treated as causal evidence. Singapore's 2026 effects are explicitly unknown because the package is new. Singapore appears after the U.S. diagnosis. Its latest resident TFR is 0.87 for 2025, versus 0.97 in 2024. Those resident measures are compared directionally with the U.S. national period TFR because the population concepts differ. The package timing is reconstructed exactly and is not treated as cash at birth. ## Trustees sensitivity interpretation Fertility and immigration actuarial balances are copied exactly from the 2026 Social Security Trustees long-range sensitivity analysis. FinanceFirst does not recalculate them. The tables vary one demographic assumption while retaining the Trustees' other specified assumptions. Values are percentages of taxable payroll, not dollar estimates. The common 2034 combined depletion year is reported because these demographic changes do not solve the near-term reserve gap in the official sensitivity exercise. ## Calculator participation and administration adjustments The calculator always shows the universal gross baseline. Its optional scenario multiplies benefits by the eligibility share and take-up rate, applies the selected administration percentage to cash outlays, and compounds recurring benefits by the selected indexation assumption. These are user inputs, not observed program parameters or a legislative score. ## Reproducibility Run `build_analysis.py` with the bundled Python environment. It reads snapshots in `sources/`, creates the publication data, writes deterministic charts and produces a checksum manifest. The final workbook is built separately with `build_workbook.mjs` using the publication CSV files. The methodology PDF is created from the same source and rendered for visual verification. ## Corrections Version 2.0, released September 2, 2026, changes the canonical report title and URL, leads with the United States, adds long-run fertility, first-birth timing, childlessness, birth-order, BLS childcare inflation context, a study registry, fuller CBO and Medicare analysis, and synchronized downloads. The original publication timestamp is preserved. Report possible errors through https://financefirst.co/corrections-policy or info@financefirst.co.