Personal Background and Upbringing Insights

Birth rates are plummeting around the globe, as half the world's population now lives in countries with sub-replacement fertility rates. Total population is already falling in Japan, Italy, and China, and global population decline looks likely to begin within a few decades. Yet as American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Tim Carney points out in his new book Family Unfriendly, the United States bucked these worldwide trends until relatively recently. As of 2007, the U.S. was above replacement fertility and even trending upwards, but since then births have fallen off sharply. 

On this episode of the Permanent Problem podcast, Tim Carney joins host Brink Lindsey to discuss why low fertility and population decline are problems worth worrying about, examine the social and cultural trends that are pushing us away from parenthood and family, and take a look at the exceptional places that continue to embrace big families for clues as to how things might turn around.