The U.S. population is already close to peaking and will begin to shrink in less than 25 years unless urgent action is taken to reverse the country’s rapidly collapsing birth rate, according to a newly released in-depth demographic study.

On Tuesday, the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) released a thorough analysis of fertility data stretching back to the 1800s, finding that the U.S.’s current record low birth rate of 1.6 children per woman has caused the country to enter “its third historic period of extended below-replacement-rate fertility.” “Importantly,” the report emphasizes, “this current period of decline is already longer than previous declines, has fallen to lower lows, and is more widely shared around the country.”

If current fertility trends continue to drop at their current rate, the IFS report warns, the U.S. population will peak at around 351 million in the year 2054 — “decades ahead of forecasts.” However, “if fertility rates stabilize, population will peak around 366 million and begin declining in the 2080s.”

The report was released just a week after news broke that America’s cousin across the pond has already begun depopulating, with deaths in the U.K. now outnumbering births for the first time in 50 years. The country’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) has predicted “450,000 more deaths than births over the next decade,” with the U.K.-based Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) observing that despite the vast majority of British women expressing the desire to have children, “three million women aged 16 to 45 were projected not to have children.”

As highlighted by the IFS report, this same phenomenon is currently occurring in the U.S. as well. “[T]he gap between actual fertility rates and the number of children Americans report desiring is rising to high levels,” with surveys showing that “Americans incorrectly think they will have about 2 children each and aspire to have 2.4 children each” when the actual birth rate is currently at 1.6 children per woman.

Experts say the demographic consequences of the dwindling fertility rate will be severe. “According to our modelling, the U.S. population will peak in the 2050s, followed by a precipitous decline, if fertility trends continue,” Peter Foreshaw Brookes, a research associate at IFS and coauthor of the new report, told The Washington Stand. “As of 2025, over 65s already required over three times as much spending per head as the population average, but the number of over 65s will only continue to increase under current trends. With falling working age populations, there will be fewer young innovators and entrepreneurs enabling the productivity growth needed to support a growing elderly population with fewer young people.”

The outlook for the U.K. is even more dire, according to CSJ’s Sophie Ladd. “England is set to have 300,000 fewer nursery and primary pupils by 2030, which is roughly 1,150 schools’ worth of children,” she noted in an email shared with TWS. “This isn’t just affecting families but also putting jobs at risk with an estimated 34,000 to disappear as a result. And to add to the situation, the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] warns public debt could reach 270% of GDP by the 2070s as the costs of an ageing population mount.”

Still, Ladd believes that the birth rate in the U.K. can be boosted in part by government funding reforms, including “frontloading support to the early years, cutting wedding admin costs, and reforming tax to reflect the cost of raising children” as well as reforming pension funding in order to “redirect resources toward young families.”

The IFS report also argues that lawmakers in the U.S. can find effective ways to encourage larger families, including baby bonuses that won’t “break the bank.” “[G]enerous baby bonuses worth five or six figures can be paid for with less than 1% of the federal budget; in fact, they’re cheaper than recently proposed child care or parental leave expansions,” the report argues. Other pro-natal policies mentioned include child caregiver credits, marriage tax law reforms, and increasing the construction of family-friendly housing.

Most experts say that a cultural shift toward having more kids is more likely to reverse the birth dearth than policy reforms. The IFS report notes that “peer culture is a key factor associated with fertility,” explaining that having “very helpful versus relatively unsupportive friends can increase desired family size for young Americans by nearly an entire child per family and can increase couple intentions to have another child by about 10 percentage points.” Additionally, a pro-family celebrity culture is also important, with the report stating that “fans of celebrities who have more kids themselves want to have more children as well.” “[A]n admired celebrity having one extra child may increase an individual’s desired family size by as much as 0.15 children,” the research found.

At the end of the day, IFS’s Brookes argues, “It’s also easy to forget that this is a human tragedy: low fertility means fewer people having the children they would like to have (putting them at greater risk of depression) and fewer lives lived.”

“But there are lots of things we can do to address the fertility freefall and support people to have the children they would like to have,” he underscored. “Many have suggested that there is a conflict between cultural and economic solutions, but we at the IFS think that this is a false dichotomy. Our report talks about the importance of cultural role models and supportive friends at the same time as pioneering a proposal that would bestow large financial support for future generations of parents at a sustainable fiscal cost.”