Education Policy, Business and Technology

The Baby Bust Goes to School: Are falling birthrates a crisis or an opportunity

Education Next: It’s not easy to surprise demographers, given the long timelines with which they work. But back in 2007, when the number of babies born in the United States hit the all-time high of 4.32 million, topping even the baby boom peak, few could foresee the baby bust that was about to come.

But come it did. By 2010, the number of children born in the U.S. that year had declined by 7.3 percent to 4.0 million. Perhaps that was understandable, given the shock of the Great Recession. (Birthrates declined during the Great Depression, too.) But another surprise followed: the birth rate continued to fall, even amid a historically long economic recovery, and even though the huge cohort of millennial women was reaching prime childbearing age.

Read article