Major decline in children

New Republic - The global decline in fertility is one of the major stories of the twenty-first century—maybe even the major story. It is built into our brains, bones, and infrastructure that we live in a growing and expanding world, with a few older people scattered around and buses of children rolling up to overcrowded schools. This is very much not the world that is being born.

The statistics might be familiar, but they are jarring nonetheless. Over the past 50 years, the global fertility rate has fallen from four children per woman to just over two. Whatever is causing this is happening all around the world. In 1960, the average woman in the United States had 3.5 children; in India, Latin America, and the Caribbean, almost six. Today, the number is below two in all of these places.

This decline is having an incalculable effect on global politics. Many of our political debates are, just under the surface, about the fear of population decline. This is transparently the case for, say, Social Security and immigration. The crisis of Social Security comes from the decline of the working-age population; immigration, some argue, is the only realistic mechanism to prop it up. Our debates about education are shaped by the fact that there will be fewer and fewer kids to educate. Over the next 15 years, the number of high school graduates in the United States will fall by 12 percent, creating an enrollment cliff that is just as threatening to higher education as is artificial intelligence.  MORE