Victoria Craig

OK, so when we're talking about this idea of birth rate decline, what exactly does that mean?

I want to dig into why this is happening because I think politicians sometimes like to boil this down simply to modern society, a change in gender roles, more women, you know, going to university, starting their own careers, becoming more independent.

But, John, I wonder how much of this change in demographics is really down to women's decisions.

I think one of the really interesting parts of your piece is that all of these sort of traditional reasons that we might think of, like you just said, jobs, housing, sort of economic security are one part of it.

But technology is a really big driver and particularly phones, the devices that we all have in our pockets every day.

Walk me through how that's affecting some of this.

The thing is, we've had technological innovations over the centuries throughout history.

What makes this particular shift to more smartphone usage worse than other technological shifts?

That's fascinating.

So what happens, John, if we don't reverse this demographic decline?

How could all of this affect economies of the world?

All right.

So, John, going back to this J.D.

Vance example, you know, often people will say that the solution to all of this, despite the technological innovation, looks like more job opportunities, more affordable housing, more child care for families.

Is that the right solution?

Are those policy changes the fix here?

Or is it simply just less screen time that could go quite a long way to helping reverse this trend?

This is such a fascinating topic.

John Byrne Murdoch, our chief data reporter.

Thanks so much for walking us through it.