More Americans are choosing not to have children and remain childfree. But is it a nationwide trend? Researchers at Michigan State University have found that childfree people are more common in some states than others.
“We’ve known that childfree adults were a large and growing group in the United States, but not whether they were concentrated in certain places,” said Zachary Neal, professor of psychology at MSU and co-author of the study. “These new data show that there’s a lot of variation. One in five are childfree in California and Michigan, but only one in ten are childfree in Louisiana and the Dakotas.”
The study –– published in PLOS One –– used data from the Civic Health and Institutions Project, or CHIP. It focused on surveys from a nationally representative sample of over 20,000 adults covering all 50 U.S. states in 2024. The surveys made it possible to distinguish childfree people from people who plan to have kids in the future or who couldn’t have kids.
The study, which is the first to examine the percent of childfree people in each U.S. state, found that although being childfree was more common in states with higher costs of living, individual demographic characteristics were more strongly associated with being childfree.
“A state’s cost of living and protection of reproductive rights are related to how many of its residents are childfree,” said Jennifer Watling Neal, professor of psychology at MSU and co-author of the study. “But those state factors matter much less than individual characteristics like marital status and age.”
Some U.S. states, including California and Michigan, have been experiencing population decline. However, Neal explained, “these findings suggest that reducing the cost of living, spending more on education or changing restrictions on abortion are unlikely to lead childfree residents to have children.”
The study underscores the need for further research to explore the casual effects behind people’s choice to be child-free in each state.
“Although some states have large childfree populations, they remain a hidden group because their decision not to have children violates a strong norm,” said Watling Neal. “We are now exploring using these data to understand how childfree adults’ social networks differ from parents.”