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Families are having far fewer children than in the past. This is true in many countries around the world. It's true in the United States, where the birth rate last year hit an all-time low. It's true in China, where the population has begun declining, even after a one-child policy ended. So what does this mean for the world? NPR's launching a new series this morning called Population Shift. NPR's Brian Mann gets us started by looking at how this development is challenging basic ideas about capitalism.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Thinking about something this big, how the world's population is changing, how that's transforming the global economy is overwhelming. So I want to start really small with just one person, Ashley Evancho.
ASHLEY EVANCHO: My degree is in finance, and I work in financial services.
MANN: Evancho is 32, lives in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, and she's built a great career thinking in practical ways about the economy. A few years ago, she and her husband, Nick, decided it was time to have a baby. Their 3-year-old daughter, Sophia, is a joy. But Evancho says they also reached another decision.
EVANCHO: I don't need another one. I don't want another one. I love having only one child. It is, I think, a very elegant choice because I still feel like I have balance in my life.
MANN: That choice was deeply personal, but it's also one tiny part of a massive shift. Families across the U.S. and in a lot of other countries are having too few children to maintain a stable population, a trend that's been deepening for decades. Melissa Kearney is an economist at the University of Notre Dame.
MELISSA KEARNEY: This demographic issue is poised to potentially remake so much of our society in a way that people just don't seem to be thinking about.
MANN: To get a sense for how this can play out in a community and a local economy, I traveled to another upstate New York town, alone near the U.S.-Canada border. The main street is lined with handsome brick and stone buildings, but many of the storefronts are empty.
JEREMY EVANS: The decline that you can see started a long time ago.
MANN: Jeremy Evans is in charge of economic development for Franklin County, which has lost roughly 10% of its population. So few babies are born here, the hospital closed its maternity ward. Sitting in his office, Evans tells me he's worried.
EVANS: Our population will continue to decline. More worrisome to us is the decline in population of younger people.
MANN: There are actually plenty of jobs in Malone, Evans says. And he thinks more companies would come here, but there aren't enough workers. His biggest economic goal is trying to stabilize and rebuild the population.
EVANS: If you're an entrepreneur and you want to grow and you can't find employees, that can be really, really frustrating. Our No. 1 mission is 18- to 39-year-olds.
MANN: A growing number of economists say this could be the future for much of the US. In the 1970s, the average American was 28 years old. Now the average is 39. Every expert I spoke to said America's working-age population will continue to gray and eventually shrink, a pattern that will accelerate if the U.S. maintains sharp new limits on immigration. Lant Pritchett is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
LANT PRITCHETT: It's hard to maintain the dynamism of the economy. I mean, you know, you can't get people to do all kinds of work, from electricians to plumbers to everything else.
MANN: Pritchett says the impact of this population shift would be big even if it were only hitting the U.S., the world's largest economy. But families in other G7, the world's other big economies? They're shrinking even faster.
PRITCHETT: Say if you live in Europe or parts of Asia, this is everything.
MANN: Economists say many of the basic assumptions of modern global capitalism evolved when countries were seeing rapid population growth. Businesses could count on a constant increase in young workers, new consumers and bigger markets. That helped governments shore up pension and public health programs. But now deaths already outnumber births in at least three of the world's biggest economies - China, Italy and Japan. Pritchett says it's not clear how economies will work as populations age and shrink in more countries.
PRITCHETT: Hard to tell what's going to happen when things that have never happened before happen. We just don't have any example of countries doing this successfully.
MANN: The place where this population shift is already happening on an almost unbelievable scale is China, the world's second-largest economy. Researchers say over the next two decades, China's working-age population will plunge by more than 200 million people. We met Mia Li, who's 20, outside a bustling shopping mall in Beijing. She doesn't have children, and she worries motherhood would be expensive and risky.
MIA LI: (Speaking through interpreter) Having children requires financial support. But if the economy goes down, how can you possibly afford to raise them?
MANN: In this crowded city, it's hard to see the scale of depopulation and rapid aging already underway. But Li works in China's sagging real estate industry, and she says she's already feeling the change.
LI: Housing prices will fall, and the number of home buyers will decrease as well.
MANN: Economists say most people around the world still aren't aware of the scale of this population shift, which is overshadowed in most people's lives by short-term concerns, everything from unemployment and inflation to trade wars and immigration. And some experts, including Claudia Goldin at Harvard University, say they're not worried about the impact of an aging, shrinking population on the world's economy.
CLAUDIA GOLDIN: I am not worried about that. Scarcity is everywhere. Trade-offs are everywhere. There is no optimal birth rate.
MANN: Goldin thinks much of the concern about population is a backlash against high rates of immigration and the empowerment of women. But a growing number of economists think the impacts of these demographic changes will grow. Melissa Kearney at Notre Dame worries the world faces a future where the cost of having kids, everything from lost career opportunities to high daycare prices, will encourage more couples to opt out of parenting altogether.
KEARNEY: The more we become a society that's moving away from one oriented towards children. Then the cost of having kids go up, and the benefits of remaining childless and pursuing a childless life, the expectations of the workforce, all of that pushes towards amplifying the trend we're already on.
MANN: After talking to economists all over the world about this population shift, I wanted to check in again with Ashley Evancho, the financial planner and young mom in Buffalo, New York. She doesn't think families will get bigger again. Couples and women just think differently now about their lives and careers, Evancho says. And that means fewer kids.
EVANCHO: Today there are options. We have education. We have the ability to make our own choices in life. Motherhood is not the only option for us anymore, and that's OK.
MANN: Evancho says the economy and whole societies may have to adapt to what for many families is a new version of normal.
Brian Mann, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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