Fertility Rates Are Down Where Home Prices Are Up

Jeff Tucker shares news of new analysis from Zillow that finds a correlation between rising home prices and plummeting fertility rates.

"The economic recovery produced a sharp rise in home prices from 2010 to 2016, and a simultaneous drop in the birth rate," Tucker writes. "Birth rates fell the most in counties where home values grew the most, and birth rates fell less and sometimes even increased in counties with smaller home price increases."

To attach numbers to those findings, "[a]n extra 10 percentage-point rise in home values was associated with an extra 1.5 percentage-point drop in birth rates for 25- to 29-year-old women."

While those fertility rates are declining, so to are young people waiting longer to buy a home. "[b]etween 2010 and 2013, the average age of a first-time home buyer was 32.5 [pdf], and as homes grew more expensive, that average age rose to 35.2 by 2017. Meanwhile, the average age of mothers at birth rose from 27.7 in 2010 to 28.7 in 2016."

According to Tucker, the analysis raises concerns that the fertility rate that plummeted during the Great Recession is not recovering along with the economic recovery. Much of the article takes a look at other data that could explain the drop in fertility among Americans.