Michigan Ranks No. 2 in U.S. for Childfree Adults, MSU Study Finds

Michigan has landed near the top of a new national ranking few state leaders were probably hoping to lead: nearly 1 in 5 adults in the state, or 19.9%, now say they do not have and do not want children, according to a Michigan State University study. That puts Michigan second in the country behind only California, where 22% of adults report being childfree.

A First-of-Its-Kind Look at Where Childfree Adults Live

The study, conducted by Michigan State University psychology professors Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal, was published in PLOS ONE and described as a first-of-its-kind examination of where childfree adults live across the country, according to The Detroit News. The researchers surveyed more than 20,000 adults using data from the Civic Health and Institutions Project, collected between August and October 2024, and covered all 50 states. Childfree adults were carefully distinguished in the survey from people who wanted children but had not yet had them, or who were unable to have children.

Zachary Neal summarized the geographic split bluntly: “One in five are childfree in California and Michigan, but only one in 10 are childfree in Louisiana and the Dakotas,” he said, per The Detroit News. Louisiana posted the lowest rate in the country at 9.4%, followed closely by South Dakota at 10% and North Dakota at 10.1%. Kansas and Idaho also ranked near the bottom, at 11.6% and 11.4%, respectively.

Where Other States Land on the List

Michigan and California sit well ahead of most of the country. New Hampshire came in at 19.4%, North Carolina at 18.9%, Illinois at 18.8%, Colorado at 18.7%, Pennsylvania at 18.3%, Massachusetts at 18.4%, New Jersey at 17.9% and Washington state also at 17.9%. Ohio landed in the middle of the pack, at 16.2%, ranking 30th nationally for its childfree adult rate. Neal noted there is a lot of variation across states, the Detroit News reported.

The researchers also found that both California and Michigan have experienced population decline or stagnation, a demographic backdrop that has made questions about family formation increasingly pressing for state planners.

Why Policy Levers May Not Move the Needle

Despite the obvious temptation for state lawmakers to try to reverse the trend, the study's central finding is that state-level interventions probably will not work. Neal and Watling Neal concluded that lowering the cost of living, increasing public education spending, or changing abortion restrictions are all unlikely to lead childfree residents to decide to have children, according to Michigan State University. Instead, personal traits such as age and marital status showed a stronger association with being childfree than a state's cost of living.

The researchers did find that being childfree was more common in states with a larger population, a higher cost of living and less support for public education, and that people were more likely to be childfree under those state conditions. Childfree adults nationally were also more likely to be male, single, older, white and liberal, per the Detroit News report. Neal and Watling Neal said more research is needed to understand the causal effects behind people's choices to remain childfree at the state level.

A National Shift Two Decades in the Making

Michigan's numbers do not exist in isolation. Nationally, the share of U.S. non-parents aged 15 to 44 who say they intend to remain childfree more than doubled between 2002 and 2023, climbing from 13.8% to 29.4%, while the share of non-parents who still plan to have children fell from 79% to 59%. A separate 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 47% of U.S. adults under 50 without children said they were unlikely to ever have kids, up from 37% in 2018, with 57% saying the primary reason was simply that they did not want to.

This is not the first time MSU researchers have zeroed in on Michigan's childfree population. An April 2023 replication study surveyed 1,000 state residents and confirmed that 20.9% of Michigan adults, more than 1.6 million people, were childfree at the time, according to Futurity. That earlier study also found no evidence that older childfree adults experience any more life regret than parents do.

The Downstream Strain on Michigan Schools

The demographic shift is already reshaping Michigan's public institutions. The state has recorded roughly 30,000 fewer annual births compared with 2000, contributing to an 18% decline in Michigan's K-12 age population between 2000 and 2022 and enrollment drops in 80% of the state's school districts since 2009, according to the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics. State projections anticipate an additional 18% decline in the school-age population by 2050.

The fallout has reached higher education as well. Michigan's overall high school college-going rate dropped from 62.2% in 2019 to roughly 53% in 2024, a decline that has contributed to campus consolidations and the closure of smaller private colleges such as Siena Heights University, per Bridge Michigan reporting. University leadership has explicitly pointed to shrinking birth cohorts as a driver of those struggles.

Housing and Neighborhoods Built for a Different Michigan

The state's growing childfree population also raises questions about whether Michigan's housing stock and neighborhoods are built for the residents who actually live in them. A September 2022 study by the same MSU research team found that childfree adults and single parents in Michigan reported significantly lower neighborhood satisfaction than married parents, according to Michigan State University, suggesting local housing and suburban developments are rarely planned with childfree households in mind.

There may also be an economic dimension to the trend that state officials cannot ignore. Federal demographic analysis shows that 23% of U.S. adults in their 50s have never had children, and older adults without children hold higher median wealth and retirement savings compared with parents in the same age group, according to Pew Research Center. Michigan's rising childfree rate, then, is not just a story about who is choosing not to raise kids — it is a preview of the state's future tax base, school enrollment and housing demand, all shaped by decisions state policy appears largely powerless to change.