Trustees for the Social Security trust fund projected this week that fertility will decline faster than previously anticipated, a change that raises fears about the health of the program and the broader economy and that some experts say is still overly optimistic.The trustees revised down the long-run projections for the national fertility rate in their annual report on Tuesday, which also showed that the Social Security retirement trust fund is expected to run out sooner than expected.
They said that the total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, will settle at 1.75 over the next 25 years, down from 1.9 projected last year.
Yet the fertility rate has already fallen below the trustees’ projections. It stands at 1.6 right now, the lowest in a century, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data.
And other projections of the fertility rate are even more conservative.
For example, the Census Bureau projects the fertility rate will be at 1.61 by 2045, while the Congressional Budget Office assumes a long-run decline to 1.53.
