9/9/15 Economics faculty and staff

Director Martha Bailey on U.S. fertility rates at UCLA’s College Lecture Awards

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CCPR Director Martha Bailey is one of five honored professors who will share their scholarship on October 12 at the inaugural UCLA College Lecture Awards. She will speak about how America’s declining birth rates tell a more complicated and more hopeful story than headlines suggest. Her talk will contextualize today’s fertility decline within a century of history and challenge several widely repeated claims about the American family. In particular, she will use data to show that American families are not shrinking, childlessness is not climbing, fertility among the most highly educated women is rising, and the family-size gap between the most and least advantaged Americans is the narrowest it has been in 100 years.

Attend UCLA’s College Lecture Awards
When: Monday, Oct. 12, 2026, at 5:30 p.m.
Where: Royce Hall, UCLA
Register: UCLA College Lecture Awards registration

Read more: Martha Bailey to explore the history and future of U.S. fertility rates at UCLA’s College Lecture Awards, UCLA Social Sciences, Oct. 6, 2026