More Americans say its unlikely they will ever have children: poll

An increasing portion of Americans say they are unlikely to ever have children, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Forty-four percent of current non-parents between ages 18 and 49 said they are unlikely to have children someday, marking an increase from 37 percent of respondents in 2018, according to the survey. 

Just 26 percent of people in that group said they were “very likely” to have children someday, down from 32 percent in 2018, according to the poll. 

Fifty-four percent of people who are already parents said that they were not likely at all to have more children. This figure is relatively similar to where it stood at 51 percent in 2018. 

The survey comes as U.S. birth rates dropped to an especially low level in the winter during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Census Bureau said it would have expected a winter drop during the season when birth rates are typically at their lowest, but noted that the number of births during winter 2020-2021 was “unusually low.”

At the time, the bureau also added that U.S. births have declined every year since 2008, with the exception of in 2014. 

The Pew survey was conducted between Oct. 18 and Oct. 24 this year. It included 3,866 U.S. adults ages 18 to 49. That sampling was part of a larger survey of 9,676 respondents which had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.