Travel and Global Demographic Decline

Birth charges are falling world wide. While beneficiant pronatal insurance policies to assist households are a tried-and-true technique to modestly improve beginning charges, the fairly smallish results have led most individuals to conclude that there have to be necessary cultural headwinds at play. Identifying precisely what these headwinds are is more difficult. But one issue weighing on fertility could also be staring us within the face as we get again to work: journey. 

Globalization and the web have fully redrawn the journey panorama. In virtually each nation, annual tourism visits have elevated over the past a number of many years. Global airline visitors has exploded, even because the inflation-adjusted worth of tickets has fallen. AirBnB, TripAdvisor, Uber, and different apps like these, have dramatically lowered the boundaries to worldwide journey, as a would-be traveler can guide prolonged holidays comfy from house. The rise of journey might be seen simply in American knowledge: the share of Americans with energetic passports has risen from about 6% within the Seventies to 54% at this time, and 2025 noticed one of many largest jumps on report. Between 1990 and 2024, the variety of worldwide passenger departures from the U.S. rose from 0.34 per U.S. resident to 0.76—a near-doubling of worldwide journey in a era. The knowledge exhibits up in spending too: airplane tickets rose from 0.2% of U.S. shopper spending in 1959, to 0.95% in 2024, whilst inflation-adjusted costs fell. 

The cultural shift in the direction of Instagram-able trip locations could bear some share of the blame for international demographic decline.

But may journey be impacting household life? Secretary Duffy on the Department of Transportation actually thinks so, as he recently announced an initiative to make airports more family-friendly. Likewise, now-Vice President JD Vance anxious about this matter in a viral committee hearing, urging the Biden Administration to not improve costs for youngsters on flights.

As it occurs, we’ve knowledge on fertility and worldwide journey that reveals that the rise of journey (and particularly air journey) as a widespread leisure exercise in all probability is impacting beginning charges. Because the rise of airborne tourism is a worldwide phenomenon, the cultural shift in the direction of Instagram-able trip locations could bear some share of the blame for international demographic decline.

Who Travels?

In a number of rounds of the Demographic Intelligence Family Survey carried out in 2024-2025, we requested respondents (U.S.-resident females ages 18 to 44) if that they had traveled overseas within the prior three years. Of the 4,273 legitimate respondents who answered this query, about 700 had taken one international journey, and virtually 400 had taken a number of journeys. 

Who travels isn’t a giant shock. The richer a lady’s family, the likelier she is to journey. Likewise, extra educated girls are additionally extra more likely to journey. 

These variations in journey throughout socioeconomic standing clarify a lot of the racial and relationship standing variation in journey. However, Hispanic and Asian respondents nonetheless have larger charges of worldwide journey, doubtless as a result of many of those respondents could have been visiting buddies or kin again house.

It needs to be famous that training and earnings have unbiased, separate results: graduate-educated girls journey greater than bachelor’s degree-holding girls who’ve the identical earnings, and bachelor’s degree-holding girls journey greater than affiliate’s degree-holding girls of the identical earnings, and so forth. Thus, journey just isn’t simply a sign of earnings, even inside earnings teams; it’s correlated with different kinds of standing indicators.

It’s additionally noteworthy that there are variations in journey throughout household statuses. Married folks journey essentially the most, although after eradicating the consequences of earnings and training, married and single folks have related journey propensities.

But folks with kids journey much less. The descriptive statistics proven above clearly present that girls with 3+ kids journey much less, however including applicable interactions by earnings and training, in addition to controls for race, age, and marital standing, makes the impact even clearer.

For girls of the equivalent earnings and academic degree, after controlling for his or her race, marital standing, and age, having kids is related to a few 1/3 decline in journey. Most of this impact manifests on the first beginning, although there may be some ongoing decline past the second beginning as effectively. 

Thus, whilst Americans are touring extra, and as worldwide journey seems to be strongly related to social class and social standing, a stark actuality confronts potential dad and mom: when you could have youngsters, you journey much less. And, since worldwide journey is a sturdy sign of social standing, having kids creates an computerized downgrade in social standing. This is an instance of how a particular cultural norm (widespread high-status worldwide leisure journey) would possibly immediately affect concrete fertility decisions.

Travel Norms Might Reduce Marriage

But is that this impact mechanism believable? To begin with, we would ask, “Has the decline in births in America mostly been first births or higher parity births?”

Essentially, there was no decline within the fee at which American girls with two kids go on to have third or fourth youngster. Since 2007, there was a modest decline within the fee at which girls with one youngster have a second, although charges stay corresponding to the Seventies and Eighties. Where U.S. fertility has actually damaged new floor is on the development from childlessness to first beginning. The fee at which girls progress from being childless to their first beginning declined by 28% between 2007 and 2023.

On its face, then, the rise of leisure journey may probably clarify the distinctive rise in childlessness. But right here at IFS, we’ve repeatedly argued that rising childlessness is generally pushed by falling marriage, and I simply confirmed above that marital standing doesn’t predict journey. However, whereas particular person degree journey may not predict particular person degree marriage, society-wide modifications in journey may trigger society-wide modifications in marriage. 

Most notably, if women and men have very totally different views or experiences of journey, this might affect how simply women and men pair up. If girls see journey as an necessary type of identity-formation, a high-status exercise, and a useful type of leisure, however males disagree, then ladies and men would possibly discover themselves at odds over what actions they get pleasure from collectively, or that they’ve essentially divergent experiences of the world. Men who’re unwilling to journey would possibly even inadvertently broadcast to girls that they’ve low social standing. As it turns out, voluminous survey data counsel women really do value international travel more than men, and that women make up a disproportionate share of those traveling internationally for leisure. For no matter purpose, worldwide leisure journey is a disproportionately female exercise, and one that girls are likely to see as a part of their identification formation and progress.

Unfortunately, we didn’t explicitly ask respondents if journey was a purpose they weren’t having kids in any of our surveys (a spot we are going to rectify in 2026). But we did ask respondents a associated query—whether or not their household choices had been formed by a want “to maintain leisure time and personal freedom.” As it occurs, solutions to this query predicted precise journey habits:

Among childless girls, reporting that household choices had been impacted by a want to take care of leisure time and freedom very strongly predicts journey habits. With controls for earnings and training, the impact measurement is smaller. Thus, to the extent that there was a growing cultural norm toward more autonomy from any inconvenience, journey could also be an necessary a part of that change.

More immediately, girls who journey extra do report bigger gaps between the variety of kids they are saying would make them happiest, and the quantity they’ve.

Nor is that this a impartial outcome for ladies’s personal sense of well-being. We additionally requested respondents if their household life had achieved what they hoped it could, or in the event that they anticipated they’d by no means have the household that they had wished for (in addition to a impartial possibility).

When girls are below 30, these taking a number of international journeys per 12 months are the least more likely to report dangerous household outcomes—however by ages 40-44, girls taking a number of journeys per 12 months are the most more likely to report dangerous household outcomes. At virtually all ages, girls reporting a number of journeys per 12 months have the bottom odds of reporting the most effective household outcomes. Among girls who take no or only one journey per 12 months, their good household outcomes rise, whereas their dangerous outcomes are pretty steady. But for the globetrotters, outcomes are extra blended, and dangerous outcomes rise persistently.

Obviously, reverse causality could possibly be an element right here: older single, childless girls could also be extra more likely to journey internationally as a result of, with out the duties of parenthood, they’ve extra money and time! But whereas this type of choice impact does problem the view that journey is intrinsically much less rewarding than girls suppose, it really suggests the chance that journey is a excessive standing good, and other people whose household hopes have been disenchanted (particularly older childless girls) disproportionately steer public narratives and imagery round journey. Thus, journey turns into a conduit for comparatively destructive or disenchanted views of household life to permeate the tradition.

Should Families Travel?

The rise of worldwide journey as an “achievable status good,” particularly for ladies, is probably going impacting fertility. Young folks accurately anticipate that having youngsters will make journey tougher, extra expensive, and fewer frequent, and, as such, they see “less travel” as a price of getting youngsters. But as a result of journey is strongly related to excessive socioeconomic standing and different reputational items, “less travel” just isn’t merely a lack of leisure; it’s fairly actually a lack of social standing and self-worth for a lot of younger Americans. As Americans age, girls with disenchanted household aspirations come to make up a bigger share of journey and journey spending, main tourism locations and journey promoters to advertise a much less family-friendly expertise. This, in flip, makes journey more difficult for households, and the cycle repeats.

It’s tempting to counsel that the answer right here is for pronatalists to counterprogram luxurious journey: promote a norm of being completely happy staying house, taking few or modest holidays, and refusing to endorse the standing positive factors from journey. Unfortunately, that technique might be doomed to failure for no less than two causes. 

First, worldwide journey is enjoyable for most individuals! Trying to persuade those that enjoyable issues aren’t enjoyable just isn’t a method with a protracted observe report of success. Moreover, huge households who can afford to journey nonetheless journey quite a bit: it’s only a lie to advertise the concept that extra youngsters substitute the enjoyment of journey, for the reason that journey propensities rise with earnings even amongst huge households. Pronatalists ought to freely admit that it’s enjoyable to go to Italy.

Second, the underlying purpose worldwide journey has expanded is due to technological, political, and financial shifts: the Cold War ended, the web made planning straightforward, innovation and deregulation made flights cheaper, globalized enterprise gave many enterprise vacationers a style of locations for leisure, and so forth. None of those tendencies are going away. Without an precise structural financial purpose to shift the financial stability in favor of staying house, the airport will proceed to defeat the maternity ward.

Family-Friendly Travel

The extra rational strategy is to make journey extra family-friendly. My household—which consists of me, my spouse, and our 4 kids ranging in ages from 6 to three months—likes to journey. We traveled to Asia for 3 weeks final 12 months with one other household of babies, and we had a blast—and we’re intimately acquainted with the challenges of household journey. 

The Department of Transportation may improve the social standing and desirability of household life, and thus assist American beginning charges, by making a variety of tweaks to journey (a few of these are already envisioned in Sec. Duffy’s latest plan rollout, an encouraging signal):

1. Require all airports to offer separate strains at safety, customs, and immigration for households with babies. Most international locations outdoors the U.S. already do that.
2. Adjust early boarding guidelines from their present standing as “common courtesy” to precise regulatory necessities. Families with kids ought to at all times board early.
3. Require airways to assure seating collectively for households with kids no matter class of ticket buy, supplied all tickets are of the identical class.
4. Waive all federally-charged excise taxes and TSA safety charges for youngsters below age 12.
5. Provide an incentive system to encourage airways to extend the variety of bassinets on airplanes, and for airports to construct extra playgrounds inside their premises.
6. Allocate funds for the Department of State to mechanically expedite all passport functions and renewals for minors.
7. If all dad and mom touring with kids have a preclearance standing resembling Global Entry or Nexus, mechanically apply that standing to all accompanying kids below age 12.
8. Impose a brand new federal excise tax on any seat with a size X width space of 75% greater than the common seat on that flight.
9. Use DOT funds to make all baggage trolleys free in all U.S. airports, as they’re in most airports world wide.
10. Publish an annual household scorecard of airports and airways, rating them on a variety of family-travel attributes, in an effort to notify vacationers about high quality of service.

Rather than attempt to roll again the clock on journey, the Department of Transportation ought to take concerted motion to make journey cheaper, smoother, and extra accessible for households. Doing so would assist improve the flexibility of households to entry an rising high-status good in American society.

Lyman Stone is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Pronatalism Initiative on the Institute for Family Studies. He can also be the Director of Research on the consulting agency Demographic Intelligence.

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