The Baby Bust: Our National Reproductive System is Broken

On both sides of the Atlantic, and in advanced Pacific Rim economies like Singapore and Japan, the swift decline of childbirth drives some of the world’s most serious social problems. Virtually all Americans understand at this point that the crises in our public and private pension systems and in old age programs like Medicare are largely a result of the baby bust. Our entitlement programs were based on the assumption that each generation would be larger than the last. As that assumption has been proven untrue, many of our most important social programs are becoming unaffordable.