The secretary of health and human services has frequently raised concerns about the nation's declining birth rate
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- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the country’s falling birth rate an “existential crisis” at a White House event on maternal health on Monday, May 11
- Kennedy repeated a concern about declining sperm density in young men, and said young women are “walking around” in a “toxic soup” that damages their fertility
- While several studies have found that men’s sperm counts have declined in recent years, researchers say the issue is not settled, and measuring long-term trends is notoriously difficult
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. characterized the U.S.' declining birth rate as an “existential crisis” driven by environmental factors that have worsened reproductive issues among both men and women.
“It's a threat not only to our economy,” Kennedy said at a White House event discussing maternal healthcare on Monday, May 11, but also “to our national security.”
Kennedy, a former independent presidential candidate, said the department is currently investigating the impact that metabolic health, obesity, endocrine disruptors, pesticides, and what he called a “toxic soup that our young women are walking around in” may have on fertility.
“The fertility crisis for women began in 2007,” he said at the event, referencing government data showing fertility rates have generally declined since then. Kennedy added that men are experiencing a fertility crisis of their own, repeating a concern that sperm density in young boys has fallen in recent years.
“In 1970, men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today,” Kennedy said Monday. “This is an existential crisis for our country.”
The health secretary has often pointed to the statistic, a finding from a 2022 review of global trends in sperm count, and others like it as a reason for the country's falling birth rate. The 2022 review, published in the academic journal Human Reproductive Update, does not specifically mention teens.
“We have fertility rates that are just spiraling,” Kennedy told Fox News' Jesse Watters in April 2025. “A teenager today, an American teenager, has less testosterone than a 68-year-old man.”
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While several studies have found that men's sperm counts have declined, the issue is still up for debate, and measuring long-term trends is notoriously difficult.
The idea of a global decrease in sperm count is “an important hypothesis, but the data is not good [enough] to be able to draw conclusions,” Dolores Lamb, a researcher who studies male reproductive health at Weill Cornell Medicine, told Scientific American in 2023.
President Donald Trump has also voiced concerns over the falling birth rate in the U.S., the reversal of which he promised to make a priority of his second term. Over the weekend, the administration proposed a new rule that would make it simpler for employees to offer fertility benefits, including in vitro fertilization.
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