The number of people in the U.S. who never want to have children has doubled over the last two decades, according to new research from a team at Michigan State University.
According to the study, the percentage of nonparents who don’t want children grew from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023.
During the same timeframe, nonparents who planned to have children in the future dropped from 79% to 59%.
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Nonparents was a larger term to include categories like “childfree” people who do not want children, “childless” people who wanted children but can’t have them and “not yet parents” who plan to have children in the future, the researchers said.
The new study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family and used data from 80,000 adults who were part of the National Survey of Family Growth.
“We knew from our prior research that childfree adults were a large and growing group in Michigan,” said Zachary Neal, MSU professor of psychology and co-author of the study. “These new results confirm this is part of a nationwide trend that has been unfolding for over 20 years.”
The researchers plan to explore childfree trends on a global scale next.
