Jessica Bearnot-Fjeld stands at her kitchen island, slicing green apples for an afternoon snack. Her two young children, just off the school bus, scan the cupboard for Nutella as a spread, but they come up short. No Nutella. “We ran out. Put it on the list,” Ms. Bearnot-Fjeld tells Tabitha, age 6.
Her son, Winfield, 8, reaches for the peanut butter. He’s in second grade at the same elementary school that Ms. Bearnot-Fjeld attended in this town of 4,000, to which she moved back last summer with her husband, a physician. Her sister is the school librarian and has two kids of similar age to their cousins.
Two families, four children. It’s a typical story of modern American family formation, of an ever-expanding population, each generation on average more affluent and living longer than the last.
Why We Wrote This
The decision to have a child is deeply personal. But individual choices have ripple effects. In the United States and beyond, declining birthrates are triggering societal shifts.
But Ms. Bearnot-Fjeld’s family size is not as average as it appears. In fact, it’s well above average for her generation, one born in the 1980s that came of age in a new century and ran headlong into the 2007-09 recession. Since then, birthrates have slumped by 20%, putting the United States on a path of population decline, similar to the dropping birthrates in other rich nations.
Of all the political and social debates roiling the country, the decline in…
