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People are having fewer kids. Their choice is transforming the world’s economy
Ashley and Nick Evancho’s 3-year-old daughter, Sophia, plays with their dog in front of their home near Buffalo, N.Y. Ashley and Nick have decided to have only one child, a choice many people are making around the world. The trend is triggering an unprecedented shift toward rapidly aging and gradually shrinking populations.
Lauren Petracca for NPR
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Lauren Petracca for NPR
Families in the U.S. and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives. NPR’s series Population Shift: How Smaller Families Are Changing the World explores the causes and implications of this trend.
Ashley and Nick Evancho say raising their 3-year-old, Sophia, is one of the most joyous things they’ve ever done. “Watching my daughter run around in the yard is otherworldly for me,” Ashley said on a recent afternoon in their home in Grand Island, a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y.
But the Evanchos also made a decision that’s increasingly common for families in the U.S. and around the world: One is enough.
“I don’t need another one. I don’t want another one. I love having only one child,” said Ashley Evancho, who works as a financial planner.
Her husband, Nick, an Episcopal priest, agreed that big families make less sense in today’s economy. “It really stacks the chips economically against you,” he said.
Sophia and her mom play together at home. “I don’t need another one. I don’t want another one. I love having only one child,” Ashley Evancho told NPR.
Lauren Petracca for NPR
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Lauren Petracca for NPR
Worldwide, the number of children born to the average family has dropped by more than half since the 1970s, according to the latest United Nations data. Economists say having fewer children is the norm for many families, especially in relatively prosperous countries like the U.S.
The trend is leading to populations that are dramatically older, and beginning to shrink, in many of the world’s biggest economies.
“This demographic issue is poised to potentially remake so much of our society,” said Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Notre Dame.
Experts say a rapidly aging and gradually shrinking population in the world’s wealthiest countries could force sweeping changes in people’s lives, causing many to work longer before retirement, making it harder for business owners to find employees and destabilizing eldercare and health insurance programs.
Already, women in the 15 countries that account for 75% of global gross domestic product, including the U.S., are having too few children to maintain a stable population. Many of those nations have fallen into the “very low” category of “total fertility rate” identified by the U.N. as a serious concern.
“For the countries below 1.4 births per woman, we see much faster population decline and a pronounced shift in the population age distribution to the older ages,” said Vladimíra Kantorová, the U.N.’s chief population scientist. The rate of births per woman in the U.S. dropped to 1.6 in 2024, the lowest ever.
In China, Japan, Italy and South Korea, deaths already outpace births. Demographers say more high-income countries would face population decline, if not for high rates of immigration.
“We seem to be kind of watching a science fiction novel,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
According to Eberstadt, worker shortages, shrinking numbers of young consumers and a growing wave of elderly retirees relying on pension and health care systems could challenge basic assumptions about global capitalism. This trend is being heightened by the fact that people in the U.S. and many other countries are living longer. The global population of people age 80 or older will triple between 2020 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
“Turning the population pyramid upside down basically upsets the business model, the background music, that we’ve had in modern life for as long as we can remember,” he said.
In one U.S. town, plenty of jobs and few young workers
Some parts of the U.S. are already feeling the population shift as communities age and begin to shrink. In Franklin County, N.Y., where storefronts sit empty in Malone, the county seat, the population has declined by roughly 10% since 2010. Half the counties in the U.S. now have more elderly retirees than children, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Brian Mann/NPR
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Brian Mann/NPR
In the U.S., the world’s largest economy, this trend has been building for decades. Families started shrinking in the 1960s, when the average American woman had between three and four children.
Now, according to U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Reserve Bank data, the typical woman will have one or two children in her lifetime, with a growing number of families opting for no children at all.
“I think it raises questions about do we want to be a more dynamic, forward-looking economy where people are optimistic about the future and about their ability to have kids?” said Kearney at Notre Dame.
With fewer children being born, population growth in the U.S. has already slowed. The population is expected to begin shrinking later this century, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. Americans are also significantly older, with the median age rising from 28.1 in 1970 to a record high last year of 39.1.
Many communities, especially in rural America, already face serious demographic challenges.
“The decline here you see started a long time ago,” said Jeremy Evans, head of the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency in rural upstate New York.
Jeremy Evans heads the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency. In developing a new economic plan for his community, Evans concluded that population loss, especially the declining population of young people, is the top concern. In many parts of the U.S., elderly retirees outnumber children.
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Brian Mann/NPR
Franklin County, which lies near the U.S.-Canada border, has lost roughly 10% of its population since 2010. Some of that is due to young people leaving, but so few babies are born here that the local hospital closed its maternity ward three years ago.
According to Evans, there are plenty of good jobs, with an unemployment rate of just 3.8%, but not enough workers to fill them. “It became obvious: We have to make this the No. 1 focus,” he said. “Our No. 1 mission is [attracting] 18-to-39-year-olds,” he said.
But economists say recruiting young people will get harder nationwide as smaller families continue to transform the American population. Last year, the number of children in the U.S. declined slightly, while the number of seniors surged to 61 million.
Eberstadt, at the American Enterprise Institute, thinks the population shift could destabilize key U.S. programs that underpin the economy, including Social Security and Medicare.
“The way public finances are organized makes no sense if you’re heading into an aging, shrinking world,” he said.
Many experts told NPR the shift toward an older, smaller population with fewer working-age residents will accelerate, if the U.S. maintains strict new limits on migrants imposed by the Trump administration.
For America’s trading partners, a demographic cliff
A man walks past a Human Resources and Social Security Bureau office, with the Chinese characters for “Social Security” visible in the background, on Sept. 2 in Chongqing, China. China’s population of retirees is expected to surge by more than 200 million people by 2050.
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Cheng Xin/Getty Images
If this demographic earthquake were only reshaping the U.S. economy, researchers say it would already pose serious challenges. But rapid aging and population decline are hitting America’s biggest trading partners far harder and much faster.
“If you live in Europe or parts of Asia, this [population shift] is everything,” said Lant Pritchett, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
He noted that basic assumptions about capitalism and economic growth evolved when nearly every country was experiencing rapid population increases. Now that era is over.
“Hard to tell what’s going to happen when things that have never happened before happen. We just don’t have any examples of countries doing this successfully,” Pritchett said.
This population shift is happening fastest and on the largest scale in China, the world’s second-biggest economy. According to Pritchett, China’s working-age population will crash by 2050, losing more than 211 million workers.
On a recent morning outside one of Beijing’s busy shopping malls, it was hard to see the massive change underway here. But Mia Li, 20, who works in China’s struggling real estate sector, said she’s already feeling it.
“Housing prices will fall and the number of homebuyers will decrease as well,” Li said. She doesn’t have children and worries that motherhood would be expensive and risky. “Having children requires financial support, but if the economy goes down, how can you possibly afford to raise them?”
Xiujian Peng, an expert on China’s population at Victoria University in Australia, said the economic impact of the trend could be profound.
“Population will decline very fast,” she said, adding that vast areas of rural China, home to many of the country’s elderly, could face “a huge problem.”
Fears of a backlash as countries adapt to fewer children
Ashley and Nick Evancho prepare dinner as Sophia plays in the kitchen. Nick Evancho told NPR that big families often make less sense in today’s economy. “It really stacks the chips economically against you,” he said.
Lauren Petracca for NPR
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Lauren Petracca for NPR
Some researchers, including Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin, think fears about shrinking families are overblown. Goldin described much of the concern as a political backlash against high rates of immigration and women’s empowerment.
Asked about economic impacts of an aging, declining workforce, Goldin said, “I am not worried about that. Scarcity is everywhere; trade-offs are everywhere. There is no optimal birth rate.”
But many economists believe nations, and companies, that hope to remain stable and prosperous through this transition need to begin adapting. Some may be able to compensate by attracting more migrant workers or boosting the efficiency of the labor force through education, automation and AI.
Experts: Small families here to stay
In Greece, the birth rate is so low that the population is shrinking and aging. On the tiny Greek island of Thymaina, schoolchildren commute by ferry to another island as a decreasing birth rate has led to school closures.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Many countries are also rolling out programs designed to encourage a return to larger families. The Trump administration included a modest package of incentives in this year’s budget, including an expanded child tax credit and a temporary program offering $1,000 investment accounts to babies born during Trump’s current term.
Some governments are going much further. Last month, the Greek government approved a multibillion-dollar tax package aimed at slowing Greece’s rapid depopulation.
“This is an existential problem for us,” Greece’s minister of economy and finance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, said in an interview with NPR.
But many experts are skeptical of policies aimed at boosting birth rates. Past programs have shown limited or no success, apparently because much of the trend toward fewer children is driven by improvements in society — from economic progress for women to declining teen pregnancies.
“One thing about [smaller families] is that it’s all accounted for by good things, which means it’s not turning around,” said Pritchett, at the London School of Economics.
Ashley Evancho reads to Sophia before bed.
Lauren Petracca for NPR
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Lauren Petracca for NPR
Ashley Evancho, the financial planner and mom who lives near Buffalo, agrees families like hers aren’t likely to have more kids, even if governments offer incentives and benefits.
“My opportunity cost, the opportunity cost to my career or my education [of having more children] is so much higher,” she said. “So the economy, the way it works, will probably have to fundamentally change.”
Reporting contributed by Jasmine Ling, NPR Beijing producer.
Washington — The House on Wednesday passed a measure that would force President Trump to end the war with Iran without congressional authorization, marking the first time the lower chamber has defied the White House on the conflict.
The House voted 215 to 208 to approve the war powers resolution with the help of four Republicans. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, who has voted against the three previous failed attempts, also dropped his opposition and voted for the measure, giving his party unanimity on the issue.
Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Warren Davidson of Ohio voted with Democrats in favor of the measure.
Democrats in the chamber erupted in applause after passage.
The vote was supposed to take place before lawmakers left for the Memorial Day recess, but House GOP leaders abruptly pulled the vote when it became clear they did not have the numbers to block it. Several Republicans were absent and others were expected to support it.
The Senate advanced a similar measure in May to rein in Mr. Trump on Iran after four Republicans joined all but one Democrat to push it forward. Three Republican absences also helped deliver the breakthrough after seven previous unsuccessful votes.
But the Senate’s procedural vote was just the first step on the way to potential passage, and Republicans will have another opportunity to block it in the coming days.
It’s unclear when they plan to vote on the House version. In a statement, House Democratic leaders called on Senate Republicans “to do the right thing.”
Support for the war from some Republicans waned after the conflict passed a statutory 60-day deadline under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which says the president must remove armed forces from hostilities if Congress has not authorized the war. The war passed the deadline on May 1, but the administration has argued that a fragile ceasefire stopped the clock in early April, though both sides have carried out attacks since then.
The Trump administration has also argued the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is unconstitutional, though that theory has never been tested in court.
Republicans who have voted in favor of limiting Mr. Trump’s military powers in Iran have been uncomfortable with the lack of congressional authorization on the war and a strategy to end it. Some fear the war’s unpopularity and the economic fallout could harm the GOP’s chances at keeping control of Congress after the midterm elections in November.
GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa, who is running for Senate, said in a private exchange at a campaign stop last week that the war could be a “political liability” if it continues beyond “the next couple of weeks,” according to audio obtained by CBS News.
But Mr. Trump said last month he was in “no hurry” to make a deal with Iran ahead of the midterms.
“Everybody’s saying, ‘Oh, the midterms, I’m in a hurry.’ I’m in no hurry,” he said.
The resolution approved Wednesday was introduced in April by Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It directs the president “to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran,” unless Congress declares war or authorizes the use of military force.
Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, earlier Wednesday called it a “stupid political vote” that “weakens the president’s hands as he’s negotiating with Iran.”
After the vote, Meeks brushed off the assertion that the war powers votes have undercut the president during negotiations with Iran. When asked whether Democrats would keep forcing votes to end the Iran war, Meeks told reporters, “You can expect us to continue to do our jobs.”
“We’re going to continue to do our constitutional responsibilities,” he said.
Fitzpatrick, who also voted in favor of a war powers resolution in May, said, “The law is the law.”
“We have to follow the law. There’s a law on the books,” Fitzpatrick said. “So you have two choices: You either follow the law or you change the law. You can’t violate the law. That’s not an option.”
During floor debate on the measure on May 20, Democrats questioned why Republicans haven’t held a vote on an authorization for military force to provide Mr. Trump with legal guardrails for attacking Iran.
“If my Republican colleagues believe this is justified, they should bring an AUMF to the floor,” Meeks said.
There’s been little momentum so far behind an AUMF introduced by Barrett earlier in May.
Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, an independent who caucuses with Republicans, argued there are “better tools” for Congress to assert its authority.
“We actually have the ability to provide direction as to how funds should be used,” Kiley said, referring to Congress’ power of the purse. “I understand why people want to use whatever tools are available, but I believe that Congress should use those tools of congressional oversight and the powers we have under Article I that really have teeth here.”
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 3 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “weak,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. The New York Times
A moderately strong, 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck in the North Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The temblor happened at 5:45 a.m. Pacific time about 40 miles west of Petrolia, Calif., data from the agency shows.
As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.
Subsequent quakes have been reported in the same area. Such temblors are typically aftershocks caused by minor adjustments along the portion of a fault that slipped at the time of the initial earthquake.
Aftershocks detected
Quakes and aftershocks within 100 miles
Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.
The New York Times
When quakes and aftershocks occurred
Sources: United States Geological Survey (epicenter, aftershocks, shake intensity); LandScan via Oak Ridge National Laboratory (population density) | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Pacific time. Shake data is as of Wednesday, June 3 at 6:03 a.m. Pacific time. Aftershocks data is as of Wednesday, June 3 at 8:01 a.m. Pacific time.
Xavier Becerra, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for California, and Steve Hilton, Republican gubernatorial candidate for California, shake hands while arriving for a gubernatorial debate at KRON Studios in San Francisco in April.
Jason Henry/Getty Images North America
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Jason Henry/Getty Images North America
SAN FRANCISCO — The primary election for California governor is too close to call, with vote counting continuing Wednesday. Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican business executive Steve Hilton lead the field with Democrat Tom Steyer in third place.
In California’s unusual primary system, all candidates, regardless of party, appear on a single ballot open to any registered voter. The top two candidates then move on to the general election, even if they’re from the same party. This year, voters had 60 names for governor to choose from.
The winner will lead the country’s most populous state, where leaders often take on national political prominence. Incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom is at his two-term limit and could be a Democratic contender for president.
Becerra, former Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden, pitched himself to voters as an experienced political leader who isn’t afraid of President Trump, but his lead caps one of the most surprising and dramatic comebacks in recent state political history. As recently as April, polls were showing Becerra — also a former member of Congress and California attorney general — languishing in single digits in a crowded field.
In his remarks at his watch party in Los Angeles, Becerra noted his underdog status.
“Here in Hollywood’s hometown, we love a good underdog success story,” he said, drawing parallels between his campaign and his immigrant parents’ success story in California. “Guess what? The underdog stayed in the fight. Like my parents, I never gave up. Never stopped putting one foot in front of the other. Never stopped believing in the beacon-like goodness of California. And thankfully, neither did you.”
Hilton is a former Fox News commentator who also served as a political adviser to former British Prime Minister David Cameron. He was endorsed by President Trump in April, helping him to pull ahead of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other major Republican in the race. Hilton has campaigned on the idea that California needs change after 16 years under total Democratic control.
The race is narrowing down after a tumultuous campaign
At his watch party in Huntington Beach, the British-born candidate — who became an American citizen five years ago — said it was the “honor of his lifetime” to receive over 1 million votes so far.
“Change is coming to California and it’s long overdue,” Hilton said. “We’re not there yet, but it’s looking good. It looks very much as if Californians really will have the chance to vote for change in November and take our state in a new direction.”
Democratic billionaire activist Steyer spent more than $213 million of his own money to boost his candidacy and push a progressive, populist message. While he was trailing Becerra and Hilton on Tuesday night, he said at his watch party in San Francisco that he remains confident he can close the gap in the days ahead.
“Together, we’ve scared the hell out of the corporate interests used to getting their way,” Steyer said. “It might take some time to figure out where this is going. We’re going to wait until every ballot is counted. We’re gonna give democracy a time to work. And we know we finished really strong.”
The early results are not certain to hold, in part because of unusual voting patterns in this primary election: Ballot-tracking data heading into Tuesday evening showed that Republicans were more likely to vote early by mail, while Democratic voters in this deep-blue state held onto their mail-in ballots or chose to vote in person. That’s the reverse of recent elections, which saw more Democrats voting by mail and Republicans tending to vote in person on Election Day.
The uncertainty on election night capped a race that remained crowded and unsettled to the end. To some extent, the race was defined by who wasn’t running.
Some of the state’s most high-profile Democrats — former Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and California Attorney General Rob Bonta — all passed on a potential bid to succeed Newsom.
The race was disrupted in April when then-U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor imploded amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Swalwell resigned from Congress shortly after the accusations surfaced and has denied assault allegations.
Swalwell had been gaining in polls and racking up high-profile endorsements, and his exit seemed to primarily benefit Becerra, who had been stuck in single digits in many polls. Ultimately, it quieted fears among Democrats who worried that the messy Democratic field could result in Bianco and Hilton winning the top spots in the June primary.
Marisa Lagos covers California politics at KQED and co-hosts the Political Breakdown show and podcast.
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