Blythe Terrell

So here's where I land.

I do not see a silver bullet here that will fix this.

Right.

I don't think we've got evidence for that.

But I think it would be smart to do these policies that could move the needle, that help people have kids if they want them.

This stuff we're talking about, like affordable child care, parental leave.

And plus, I just think those things are good to do for parents if you want people to want to be parents.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

That's where I am right now.

So I think the U.S.

fertility rate is pretty far from being at a crisis level.

I actually, I talked to a bunch of nerds about this, demographers, economists, who told me that like, okay, if your fertility rate is below one, that is concerning.

Like that is low.

And you're going to start to see some of these effects we talked about.

But most of them were actually like not panicking about rates that were like 1.5 or more, which is where we are.

They were like, if you can keep that, if you can keep that kind of stable, if you can make it sort of stable, you can adjust other stuff.

Like you can do things to make it so that you're...

Your health care, your other services, like, don't fall off a cliff, right?

Like, you can plan for it.