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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Business
Eduardo Porter

Falling fertility, debt and AI: is the US headed toward a population crisis?

a group of babies laying down in a hospital nursery with some of the outlines of babies colored in to highlight population decline
Fertility is falling everywhere, in rich countries with low fertility rates and poor countries where it is comparatively high. Composite: The Guardian/Alamy

Remember environmentalist Paul Ehrlich’s 1960s-vintage prediction about how overpopulation would deplete the Earth’s resources and condemn millions to starvation? His Malthusian condemnation of humanity’s voracious appetite has kept a grip on the debate over the future of the planet, even scaring the young out of having children.

Ehrlich was wrong. Yet as we have come around to the thought that overpopulation won’t kill us all, we are being walloped by another demographic emergency: we are not having too many kids, we are having too few. This problem is real.

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