Victoria Craig

Good morning from the Financial Times.

It's Tuesday, May 26th, and this is a special edition of your FT News Briefing.

Declining birth rates and shrinking populations have become huge topics for politicians all around the world.

Today, we're digging into what's contributing to it, the economic consequences of it, and whether we need to stop it.

I'm Victoria Craig.

Let's get into it.

Five days after he was sworn in as U.S.

vice president in 2025, J.D.

Vance spoke at the anti-abortion March for Life rally in the nation's capital.

But he focused less on the topic of abortion and more on the importance of growing a family.

Vance is hardly the only politician or even business leader ringing alarm bells about birth rate trends in America.

Billionaire Elon Musk has labeled it, quote, the biggest risk to civilization.

And while declining birth rates are not a new phenomenon, the trend is accelerating in countries all over the world, from high income to low income ones.

The FT's chief data reporter, John Byrne Murdoch, has been crunching the numbers and talking to experts on this issue.

He joins me now to suss it all out.

Hi, John.

Well, it's great to have you.

Thanks for being here.

So just walk me through some of these numbers to get us started.

How significant is this shift?