The Real Reason Behind the Birth-Rate Collapse Is Cultural
I recently read Felix Yang’s article “The Six Nooses: How Interventionism Is Strangling the Family’s Will to Reproduce,” published by the Mises Institute. [1] Yang contends that the collapse in birth rate is not a mysterious cultural anomaly. Instead, he argues it is the rational response of individuals living under a century of government interventions that have broken the link between parental sacrifice and long-term reward. He identifies six “nooses”: fiat inflation, pay-as-you-go pensions, medical monopolies, compulsory schooling, restrictive zoning, and the welfare state that together make raising children a high-risk, low-reward proposition. In that limited sense I agree with him: the collapse is not mysterious, and institutions matter.
Yet I do not believe the story ends there. Economic incentives are real, but they are not ultimate. The deeper reason couples increasingly treat children as an optional economic liability rather than a blessing is cultural and spiritual. As our nation has drifted from its biblical roots and turned away from God, many now see children primarily as a financial burden or a drain on the earth’s resources. Scripture is clear on this point. Psalm 127:3 states, “Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.”
Children were never valued chiefly as future providers for one’s old age; they were received as a gift. Today they are often reduced to a self-centered economic calculation, a commodity or asset omitted from the “portfolio” if it fails to add financial value. In short, children have been demoted from a gift of God to a human resource or an ecological threat.
Viewing the decision to have children solely through a financial or institutional lens overlooks deeper moral shifts that have shaped public thinking for decades. Other influences deserve attention: Darwinism (with its emphasis on survival of the fittest and the idea that humans are merely animals), Malthusian overpopulation theory, the legacy of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, and the United Nations’ Agenda 21 (now Agenda 2030). I will examine these factors in the remainder of this article.
As Paul Harvey used to say: The rest of the story….
Darwin, Malthus, Paul Erlich’s “Population Bomb and the United Nations Sustainable Development Plan
Darwin’s Evolution and Survival of the Fittest theory and Malthus’s flawed overpopulation theory have been taught side by side in the public schools as factual. The Biblical truth of human beings created in the image of God has been replaced with man evolving from animals. Only the fittest survive.
Malthus was a British economist and statistician who wrote in 1798 “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He came from the elite upper class in England. He despised the poor underclass “useless eaters” who were multiplying in the slums of England. He believed that they were a drain on the economy. He used flawed mathematical calculations to claim that the population would soon outpace the food supply if they were left to procreate. He was a promoter of eugenics and believed that the poor were inferior. His theory was embraced by the elite ruling class of England. His flawed mathematical overpopulation theory is still taught in schools today.
Paul Ehrlich and the Depopulation Agenda
In the U.S., biologist Paul Ehrlich amplified Malthusian panic with his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb (co-authored with Anne Ehrlich). As a Stanford professor and co-founder of Zero Population Growth, he predicted imminent catastrophe:
- “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death…”
- He warned of U.S. food rationing by 1980, water by 1974, and a “Great Die-Off” killing tens of millions of Americans.
None of it happened. Food production tripled while population doubled; famine deaths plummeted. Yet Ehrlich never retracted his core claims.
He went further, endorsing extreme coercive measures when “voluntary” methods failed:
- Adding sterilants to water supplies or staple foods.
- Compulsory sterilization (praising India’s forced programs and urging U.S. aid with helicopters and doctors).
- A powerful “Department of Population and Environment” with authority to take “whatever steps are necessary.”
- Withholding food aid from countries refusing aggressive population control.
- Tax penalties on larger families and other disincentives.
Ehrlich called population growth a “cancer” needing excision. His ideas shaped policy debates and influenced real-world abuses.
Ehrlich received dozens of major awards, including the MacArthur “genius” grant in 1990 and the Crafoord Prize (ecology’s Nobel equivalent). He remained a media and scientific darling until his death on March 13, 2026, at age 93.
Ehrlich’s philosophy aligns seamlessly with the Neo-Malthusian infused UN Agenda 21/2030 and school curricula, brainwashing generations that humans destroy the planet and should limit reproduction.
Schoolchildren are being taught that human carbon output is destroying the planet, humans are a cancer/disease and are encouraged not to have children in order to save the planet.[2] [3] One study actually stated, “Humans are Fueling Global Warming Just By Breathing. New Study Claims.”[4]
This philosophy fits perfectly with the push for couples not to have children. Malthus theory of overpopulation was promoted in the United Nations Agenda 21 program of Sustainable Management of the earth. Agenda 21 started in 1992 and has been taught throughout the public schools’ system since then. Agenda 21 has been followed by Agenda 2030. Every public-school child is exposed to this global governance agenda and curriculum.[5] [6]
Prince Charles, a leader in the sustainable development agenda, was infused with neo-Malthusian ideology and promoted eugenics. He publicly stated, “In the event that I am reincarnated I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.”[7]
Generations of schoolchildren have been brainwashed and fearmongered that if we do not stop having children and restrict our carbon output to net zero, the earth will cease to exist.
Magaret Sanger/Planned Parenthood/Abortion and Eugenics
Roe v Wade was passed by the Supreme Court on January 22, 1973 with the promise that abortion would be a very rare event used only for the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest. The opposite happened. Today it is legal to abort up to birth and in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth. Abortion is now legal for purely economic reasons, if the baby is defective in any way or whatever reason a person has. There is no reason excluded. Eugenics are in play. Legalized unrestricted abortion was the dream of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Abortion plays a huge role in the lower birth rates of today.
If Margaret Sanger Were Alive Today…
If Margaret Sanger were alive today, she would enthusiastically back Bill Gates’ vaccine-driven depopulation efforts. She would have appeared repeatedly in Epstein’s Lolita Express flight logs right beside Gates, helping orchestrate their shared eugenics vision. She would have been at Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico working side by side with him and Gates to develop the perfect human through “genetic seeding” and “gene editing”.
Margaret Sanger was a racist and loved Hitler. If you still doubt the depraved worldview of Margaret Sanger, the glorified founder of Planned Parenthood, just read below her own venomous, racist quotes openly calling for depopulation and racial cleansing.
Despite the desperate lies peddled by Snopes and every other liberal-controlled fact-checker, every one of these quotes is fully verifiable.
Margaret Sanger Verifiable Quotes:
“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” — Woman and the New Race, Chapter 5, “The Wickedness of Creating Large Families.” (1920)
“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…” — Letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2
“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan… I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak…In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.” — Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography, 1938, p. 366
“Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded [sic] upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit.” — Sanger, Margaret. (1919) Birth Control and Racial Betterment. The Birth Control Review.
“Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” — Sanger, Margaret. “My Way to Peace,” Jan. 17, 1932. Margaret Sanger Papers, Library of Congress 130:198.
“Birth control itself… is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives… If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.” — Woman and the New Race, 1920
“No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth…” — Margaret Sanger, “America Needs a Code for Babies,” Article 6, March 27, 1934.
“Birth Control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.” — 1923 statement on racial elements
“Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease… Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.” — The Pivot of Civilization, 1922
“The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” — The Pivot of Civilization, 1922
“Give dysgenic groups [people with ‘bad genes’] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.” — From her eugenics advocacy writings
These quotes hammer home Sanger’s relentless “human weeds,” “defective stocks,” sterilization/segregation fixation, and “racial betterment” crusade straight from her own books, letters, and papers.
The Real Crisis: We Forgot What Children Are Worth
The collapse in birth rates is not ultimately a story of rising housing costs, student debt, or career pressures: those are symptoms, not the disease. At its root lies a profound cultural and spiritual reorientation: a society that has abandoned the biblical conviction that children are a heritage from the Lord and instead absorbed a century of Darwinian, Malthusian, and eugenic ideas that treat human life as a burden on the planet or a liability on the balance sheet. From the classroom indoctrination of overpopulation panic and “sustainable development,” to the institutionalized abortion industry founded on Sanger’s vision of weeding out the “unfit,” to the quiet normalization of viewing children as optional lifestyle accessories rather than divine gifts, we have systematically devalued the very people who once embodied hope and blessing.
Yang is right that interventionist institutions have made family formation harder. He is wrong, however, to treat those institutions as the final explanation. Until we recover the older, truer understanding that every child is a reward from God rather than an economic calculation or ecological threat, no policy tweak or financial incentive will reverse the demographic winter we have chosen. The real crisis is not that children cost too much; it is that we have forgotten what they are worth.
I will end with Paul Harvey’s famous closing line: “And now you know… the rest of the story” why couples are choosing to remain childless.
[1] The Six Nooses: How Interventionism Is Strangling The Family’s Will To Reproduce | ZeroHedge
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
[3] https://rochesterbeacon.com/2024/03/18/how-many-children-should-couples-have-given-ongoing-climate-change/
[4] https://www.ndtv.com/science/humans-are-fueling-global-warming-by-just-breathing-study-claims-4680910
[5] https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/sdsn-youth-launches-global-schools-program-engage-students-sustainable-development
[6] https://www.unsdsn.org/news/global-schools-program-launches-sdg-resources-hub-for-schools-and-educators/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAg8S7BhATEiwAO2-R6q5qrjsEFfX0JqT_8J8f28qdBH1WcP0WtrlCx7ichPMqGyMLx8KNDBoCVcwQAvD_BwE
[7] https://newdailycompass.com/en/the-prince-who-wanted-to-become-a-deadly-virus