“I think it probably should be a concern for the government, the declining birth rate,” Sarah Brewington told NPR. “There is going to come a time when everyone is retiring and there’s not going to be a workforce.”
Many researchers believe this accelerating global shift is being driven in large part by a positive reality. Young couples, and women in particular, have far more freedom and economic independence. They’re weighing their options and appear to be making very different choices about the role of children in their lives.
“It’s not that people don’t like kids as much as they used to,” said Melissa Kearney, an economist who studies fertility and population trends at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s just a lot of other available options. They can invest in their careers, take more leisure time — it’s much more socially acceptable.”
This change in decision-making and behavior appears to be accelerating. New research from the United Nations found that the number of children born to the average woman worldwide has reached the lowest point ever recorded. In every country and every culture, women are having fewer than half as many children as they did in the 1960s.
I, for one, am glad I got snipped. I’ve no interest in contributing to this pyramid scheme.
…no? as humans, our pattern recognition, while well refined, often still causes us to make completely incorrect inferences from nothing. even restricted to the realm of the medical: you need only look at what people think made them sick versus what actually does; most people will blame food poisoning on the last thing they ate, or their sickness on the last person they encountered, even when there are many other possible reasons for their sickness.
also: a pre-print by definition has not been subject to rigorous peer review–it’s roughly analogous to a draft–so i would be exceedingly hesitant to even assert something like it having “good data.” even if you’re the author you wouldn’t know definitively that at this stage.