Lyman Stone Demographer and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, writing on fertility decline, birth rates and the cost of raising ch...

“When people don't have the number of kids they want to have, they're sadder as they get older. … The real burden of low fertility in the long run is not a budget math problem. It's a heart math problem.”

Freakonomics Radio · Ideas & Essays · November 2026

Context

Dubner asked whether not having the children you wanted really leaves people unhappier later in life. Stone points to long-running surveys and outcomes after failed IVF, and argues the real cost of low fertility is emotional, not fiscal.

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Transcript

Freakonomics Radio Around 18:00 into the episode

Lyman Stone

…have. And they spend the last 40 years of their life, because life expectancy is going up, basically miserable and unattached from the next generation, feeling like they don't care about what's coming next and that they only really need society to live long enough to pay for their Social Security.

Stephen Dubner

Do you really feel that not having your own children will make you miserable and unattached from the next generation?

Lyman Stone

…antipsychotics or something. Whereas people with failed or long-delayed IVF success have these huge increases in the use of mental health services and prescriptions. That tells us that not having kids you want to have makes you quite sad. It's quite unfortunate. It usually is a story of miscarriage, infertility, disappointment, broken relationships, things like that. And all of that, to me, says the real burden of low fertility in the long run is not a budget math problem. It's a heart math problem.

Stephen Dubner

Coming up after the break, the budget math matters too. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for $15 a month. Choose from three, six…

Melissa Kearney

A lot of the exploration I've done has basically led me to rule out potential explanations.

Stephen Dubner

That, again, is the economist Melissa Kearney.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Freakonomics Radio

“Globally, if both members of a couple work from home at least one day a week, you see they have a third of a child extra. In the US, that's almost half a child extra. These are really huge effects.” — Nick Bloom, Freakonomics Radio

“The idea that this is still women just delaying childbearing gets harder and harder to buy with each year. Right now, it's like 50% of 30-year-old women have not initiated childbearing.” — Melissa Kearney, Freakonomics Radio