Each year brings versions of the same headline: “U.S. birth rates drop to new record low.” Barring the truly unexpected, 2007 will forever stand as “peak baby” in the U.S.; fertility rates have dropped by nearly a quarter since then (from 69.5 births per 1,000 women to 53.1 in 2025).
It’s not just us, of course — outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the globe seems to have read P. D. James’s The Children of Men as an instruction manual. Headlines show a world slipping ever closer to stagnation and sterility. It is possible, if not likely, that the world’s population will begin to shrink right around the time our nation celebrates its tricentennial.
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