You can't save the birth rate, so at least save your brain
Ashes to ashes, bust to bust.
Two essays today frame the breadth of human life, beginning with Eduardo Porter's on the big dip in fertility rates across the globe — the baby bust.
A bunch of solutions have been proposed here in the United States, but Eduardo writes that no baby bonus or motherhood medal is going to offset the fact that the opportunity cost for having a child is now much higher for women than in decades past. Even in countries that have devoted lots of money to subsidized child care, such as France and the Scandinavian states, fertility is still ticking lower.
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