How to boost fertility through DOT grants

Reality TV star and Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently shat out a memo suggesting the DOT reward areas with more marriages and babies with more funding.

We love to see Republicans building on their long tradition of using transportation funding to implement regressive social policy.

It’s always a good time to remember that many “pro-natalists” are not exactly allergic to white supremacy and ethno-nationalism. This fact makes the following extra delicious: Rewarding marriage and childbirth will disproportionately benefit Mexican immigrants, who consistently spank native-born folks, especially whites, on marriage and fertility rates.

This seems more like an example of a Trump toady attempting to reward his voters and punish the Democrats than a sincere attempt to make America married and fertile again. Counties that went harder for Trump in 2024 had higher total fertility rates than those with more Kamala fans. I’m sure it’s occurred to someone already that this also panders to trad cosplayers, committed ethno-nationalists, and (other varieties of) bottom-half men (and the people who at least pretend to care about them).

Fertility rates really are falling worldwide. Marriage rates are also down from previous decades and continuing to fall.

There are all kinds of reasons we might want to worry about falling fertility, from what the situation says about us to the likely economic consequences. Then again, not everyone is necessarily afraid of a future with fewer babies.

Unfortunately, no one actually knows what’s behind our worldwide fertility fall. Here are a few things we do know.

Two years ago I wrote 5 potential reasons fertility is down. Last fall, I gave birth to the asshole theory of fertility. I eagerly await the data I need to prove my thesis.

Since then I’ve learned that shrinking marriage rates (along with romantic relationships overall) are an even bigger factor than shrinking family sizes, the main driver of fertility declines in the 1960s. And I discovered that we have a pretty decent idea about why people aren’t getting married as often.

We are also shockingly, though perhaps not shockingly, ignorant about what might effectively reverse these trends. Various governments have tried sundry programs aimed at boosting rates of marriage and motherhood, with uniformly poor results.

Getting back to boosting fertility with transportation funding, I honestly don’t love the idea. It reminds me of Ezra Klein’s “everything bagel liberalism,” which I discussed in The Council of Economic Advisers better watch their asses.

I reflexively dislike trying to impregnate women through preferential transportation funding for the same reason I dislike the idea of subsidizing childcare through domestic chip fab requirements: Asking a sclerotic, enfeebled, lumbering government that can’t do one thing on time and on budget to do two or more otherwise unrelated things at once is a perfect way to get zero things done and many people blackpilled.

However, there is one way the Trump admin might actually be able to use DOT funds to boost fertility. They could withhold funding based on whether states pass laws to boost housing production. This makes way more sense than the current proposal for several reasons.

1. Duffy’s memo never clarifies whether funding changes should happen at the city, county, municipality, or state level. This does.

2. This solves the difficulty of measuring marriage and fertility in a country where many people marry and give birth outside of where they live. A CNN writeup (hat tip Mike Tanner) points out that if Duffy calculates marriage rates based on marriage certificates issued he’ll be funding a lot of highways in Las Vegas and Hawaii.

3. This actually makes a modicum of sense.

No one decides when and whether to have a baby based on average highway width. So there’s no real way funding transportation could boost fertility or marriage directly. But there is good evidence that housing costs impact fertility.

Reminder: The consensus among researchers from the Furman Center to the Greater London Authority to the National Bureau of Economic Research to the White House Council of Economic Advisors is that average housing prices rise when demand grows faster than supply. Streamlining production demonstrably boosts supply and lowers prices. And the best way to upzone is likely at the state level.

Making transportation funding dependent on housing production would very likely lower average housing costs, which very well could boost fertility.

I don’t actually believe lower housing costs alone are very likely to boost fertility in any real or lasting way. I want to lower the average cost of housing because I enjoy economic growth, social progress, and economic mobility and dislike racism, wealth hoarding, and climate change.

I’m bringing this up mostly because it perfectly illustrates how the right and left are both bad and stupid when it comes to gender.

Lest you believe for a second both sides are equally bad, allow me to remind you that the left mostly ignores declining rates of marriage and fertility, or otherwise pretends they’re unalloyed good. GOP leaders, on the other hand, think these problems are so important that they’re willing to do anything to solve them. Suggested solutions include forcing women to stay in abusive marriages and forcing women to give birth to their rapists’ kids. (I’m sensing a theme.) The only thing they’re unwilling to try is any solution that won’t kill any women and might actually work. Transportation funding chicanery has the benefit of being a pretty benign way to fail, at least relative to their previous proposals.

While it’s not significantly more likely to boost marriage and fertility rate than any other proposed solution, at least my idea is likely to lower housing costs. And since they build most of the housing in the US, I absolutely love it that Mexican immigrants will be huge winners either way.