Sarah McCammon

There has been a really rapid shift in the way that people live and form families or don't form families as you just mentioned.

alluded to, you know, the fertility rate in the U.S.

has fallen to 1.6 children per women.

That is about half a point less than replacement.

And replacement is basically just the number that's needed to sort of maintain a steady level, stable population.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you if you subtract immigration, which is like a whole other conversation.

But, you know, this is happening already in some societies, especially in parts of Asia.

Those are some of the most prominent examples.

And what that means is as a whole, the population is getting older.

There are fewer younger workers.

This creates all kinds of questions about, you know, pension systems, elder care.

the future of the economy, especially in an economy that's really kind of been built on growth.

And so that's the big worry that I hear from sort of mainstream demographers.

If you talk to people who consider themselves sort of pronatalists who

have kind of an ideological or social or cultural reason for being concerned about this, maybe even a religiously driven concern, then you hear about things like, you know, sort of the future of the family and the future of human flourishing.

And I hear some of those things from sort of mainstream researchers too.

There are questions about why people are having fewer kids and what does it say about the choices they feel are available to them.

Well, it depends who you talk to.