Earlier this month, The Washington Post highlighted a troubling trend that many young couples in Massachusetts already feel. America’s fertility rate hit a historic low in 2025. CDC data shows about 3.6 million babies were born nationwide last year, a 1% drop from 2024. The decline pushed the general fertility rate to 53.1 births per 1,000 women, the lowest ever recorded and nearly 23% below 2007 levels.
In Washington, officials often treat this as a cultural issue or an abstract demographic problem. In Massachusetts, the reality is concrete. I regularly speak with married couples in their late 20s and early 30s who followed the expected path: college, careers, marriage. Yet they still do not. Their reason is simple. They want kids, but they cannot afford them.
The numbers explain why. The median single-family home in Massachusetts now costs nearly $650,000. In Greater Boston, the price exceeds $1 million, the second most expensive metro area in the country. A household must earn about $175,000 to qualify for that mortgage. Since 2000, median home prices have surged 73%, while inflation-adjusted median household income has grown just 4%. That gap has turned the housing market into a barrier.
Renting offers little relief. Massachusetts ranks as the third most expensive state for a two-bedroom apartment. Many young working couples spend more than a third of their take-home pay on rent alone. That leaves little for savings, student loans, or family costs. Under these conditions, delaying or forgoing children reflects basic math, not pessimism.
The impact shows most clearly among women ages 25 to 29, where birth rates fell 4.4% in just one year. These are prime family-forming years. Yet many are waiting or walking away, not because they do not want children, but because the economic foundation for family life feels out of reach.
Massachusetts is already paying the price. A recent Suffolk University poll found that one in three residents has considered leaving due to the high cost of living. Pioneer Institute research shows outmigration now stands at 10 times the 2013 level. The state is losing young families, workers, and future taxpayers to more affordable places.
That outflow carries a steep price. A Boston University analysis estimates that outmigration cost the state $4.3 billion in adjusted gross income in a single year. Most of those who left earned under $200,000.
As an attorney who has fought for people left behind by broken systems, I see a clear failure of affordability. Young couples are making a rational decision. Raising a family in Massachusetts has become economically unrealistic.
Solutions exist. We must cut housing bureaucracy and zoning restrictions to increase supply. We should treat child care as critical infrastructure. We also need to reform taxes that are driving talent away.
Ed Markey has served in Washington for more than 50 years while housing costs rose, birth rates fell, and young families left. Speeches are not enough. Massachusetts needs a senator who treats this affordability crisis with urgency for families who want to stay and build a future.
The children not yet born cannot vote, but their parents can. They deserve leadership that understands this birth rate collapse is not a culture war issue. It is a warning from a generation priced out of the American dream in its own state.
John Deaton is a candidate for U.S. Senate, a veteran, and the lead plaintiff in Deaton et al. v. Clerk of the House.