Elon Musk’s Other Dread

Government-efficiency concerns pale in comparison to the birth dearth

Elon Musk has made more than his share of headlines – and enemies – in helping President Donald Trump scale back the governmental behemoth that threatens to bankrupt the United States. Cutting costs as the leader of the president’s new Department of Government Efficiency, though, isn’t the top concern for the world’s foremost entrepreneur. What keeps him awake at night, he admits, is humanity’s birth dearth.

“There’s a lot of things that I suppose that I worry about,” Musk told Fox News during a recent interview. “And some of these things will seem esoteric to people. The birth rate is very low in almost every country, and unless that changes, civilization will disappear.”

The mastermind of SpaceX, PayPal, X, OpenAI — not to mention Tesla, the electric vehicle car company that “progressives” once loved and now love to hate — harbors deep concern over humanity’s cratering fertility rate. “Nothing seems to be turning that around. Humanity is dying,” Musk added.

His blunt statement may be only slightly hyperbolic.

Extinction-Level Event?

In the United States, the fertility rate declined 2% a year between 2014 and 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Following a brief 1% resurgence in 2021, the rate turned south again and accelerated, falling 3% in 2022 to a historic low. At slightly below 1.8 births per woman, the nation’s 2025 fertility rate is below replacement level, generally reckoned to be 2.1.

Americans are hardly alone in their reluctance to reproduce. The Population Research Institute lists 96 nations – fully half the entire world — with below-replacement fertility levels. South Korea currently holds the ignominious record, with a fertility rate only 50% of that required to maintain its current population of 52 million.

Generally speaking, living creatures have a well-developed knack for self-preservation. House flies dodge the flyswatter, and squirrels scamper away (not always successfully) from speeding vehicles. Likewise, human beings are known to take extreme measures to stay alive. Witness the unfortunate hiker who hacked off his own forearm to free himself when it became hopelessly pinned beneath a boulder in a remote Utah canyon. So how can it be that, as Musk suggests, “humanity is dying”?

Civilization’s advancement is a blessing, but it comes with certain drawbacks: Life in the twenty-first century is extremely busy and expensive. While raising children has rewards never recorded on a balance sheet, it requires tons of precious time and money that can drown struggling families. Add to these disincentives endless media messaging about impending climate-change doom, and it’s no wonder that billions of people the world over have concluded that, as Yogi Berra was once credited with asserting, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

It’s easy to forget that our forebears managed to build productive societies under circumstances far more daunting than our own. An honest search of conscience should elicit the realization that we owe no less than an equal effort to ensure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for future Americans, and indeed, all fellow inhabitants of the planet.

It may be dread for the future that ultimately prompts Elon Musk to abandon his government-efficiency mission and return to the assembling of SpaceX rockets capable of planting a salvific seed colony on the distant soil of Mars.

In the meantime, the rest of us earthbound individuals have an obligation to do our part in battling the birth dearth. Government efficiency can secure the viability of the nation, but only the creation of loving families can ensure the future of humanity.

Frank Perley is a former senior editor and editorial writer at The Washington Times.