A 2025 working paper by economists Lisa Dettling and Melissa Schettini Kearney indicates that low-cost mortgages initiated in the 1930s contributed significantly to the US baby boom. Federal programs like FHA and VA-backed loans facilitated homeownership, resulting in approximately 3 million additional births from 1935 to 1957, accounting for about 10% of the baby boom. These programs reduced marriage age and increased family sizes, highlighting a connection between housing affordability and birth rates, which may have implications for today's declining global birth rates.
If you want Americans to have more babies, it helps if it's cheap and easy to buy a house.
The researchers found that two mortgage insurance programs led to 3 million additional births between 1935 and 1957, accounting for about 10% of the spike in births associated with the baby boom.
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