A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Trump administration is changing how the Department of Transportation gives out money for highways, airports and public transit. It's prioritizing communities with high birth and marriage rates. Here's Steve Harrison from member station WFAE.
STEVE HARRISON, BYLINE: Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. To help people get around, it wants to expand its transit system, building new rail lines. It's counting on billions in federal grants.
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HARRISON: Transit advocate Shannon Binns with Sustain Charlotte is worried the city could lose out under the new rule from the U.S. Department of Transportation. That's because Charlotte has a higher-than-average birth rate, but its marriage rate is lower than the national average.
SHANNON BINNS: I think, you know, it's safe to say probably most people who saw that were surprised because that's just so different than what we've ever seen as the priority for U.S. DOT.
HARRISON: Population matters in transportation funding, but he says the birth and marriage rates criteria spelled out are new. Administrations often put their political imprint on how money is spent, says Peter Rogoff, who led the Federal Transit Administration during President Obama's first term. He says former President Biden, for instance, pledged 40% of transit dollars to disadvantaged communities. This new directive, he says, will hurt large cities in blue states.
PETER ROGOFF: You look at the lowest fertility rates by major metropolitan area - San Francisco, which has a huge federal project, which is a rail tunnel to extend into downtown San Francisco.
HARRISON: He says low-birth-rate cities - all Democratic strongholds - get billions of dollars of transit funding - Los Angeles, San Jose, Denver, New York.
ROGOFF: It seems not so coincidental to me.
HARRISON: But some conservatives say the new funding directive isn't about hardball politics. It's about a growing concern that the U.S. and other industrialized nations aren't having enough children. The U.S. has fallen below what's considered the replacement rate of 2.1 children for each woman.
BRAD WILCOX: Just 1.6 babies per woman on average. We've never had fertility, you know, so low in this country.
HARRISON: That's conservative Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
WILCOX: Policymakers, not just in the United States but across the globe, are scrambling to try to figure out if there are any levers they can pull to help people have the kids they would like to have.
HARRISON: A DOT spokesman said in a statement that strong population growth is a factor in funding but did not say why marriage rates were added. It's likely a first step to making marriage and fertility a talking point, says conservative Meg Kilgannon. She's with the Family Research Council and wants more policies to promote marriage and child-rearing.
MEG KILGANNON: The pro-life movement are going to have to shift their thinking about why it is we're not having babies. It's not just because of abortion. They're not even being conceived.
HARRISON: But can the DOT do anything about people not having children or staying single? Attorney Kym Meyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, who often focuses on transportation, says the memo doesn't make sense, especially the focus on marriage, which she says is...
KYM MEYER: A cultural choice, potentially a religious choice that has absolutely nothing to do with whether you need to get around to work and to the store and take your kids to school.
HARRISON: In the case of Charlotte, it's not clear if transit funding could be secured because of its higher birth rate or jeopardized because relatively few Charlotteans say I do.
For NPR News, I'm Steve Harrison in Charlotte.
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