What the Federal Government Can Do to Counteract the Baby Bust

During his first week in office, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy signed a memo instructing his subordinates to “give preference to communities with marriage and birthrates higher than the national average” and otherwise use its resources to help families with children, insofar as the law allows. The decision appears in line with Vice-President J.D. Vance’s recent statement that he wants “more babies in the United States of America.” Yet it is not entirely clear what the federal government can do to raise declining fertility rates. Timothy Carney considers the problem and makes a few concrete suggestions, among them: