I admit, I shrugged.

The new birth rate numbers are out, and they're a disaster. There are now only 59.6 births per 1,000 women, the lowest rate ever recorded in the United States. Some of the decrease is due to good news, which is the continuing decline of teen pregnancies, but most of it is due to people getting married later and choosing to have fewer children. And the worst part is, everyone is treating this news with a shrug.

...

Today we see the problems wrought by the decline in productive populations all over the industrialized world, where polities are ripping each other to shreds over how to pay for various forms of entitlements, especially for old people. The debates play out in different ways in different countries, but in other ways they are exactly the same. That's because they are ruled by the same ruthless math: The fewer young, productive people you have to pay for entitlements for old, unproductive people, the steeper the bill for the entire society becomes. This basic problem is strangling Europe's economies. And while the United States is among the least bad of the bunch, it is still headed in the wrong direction.

It doesn't have to be this way. While the evidence for government programs that encourage people to have more children is mixed, the fact of the matter is that in contemporary America, 40 percent of women have fewer children than they want to.

That is the reality in every advanced economy, but ESPECIALLY in those where women have strong economic power yet there is a lot of gender bias in the culture. Basically why would a woman decide to truckle to a sexist man instead of making her own living? I agree that in aggregate it is a disaster for capitalism but it's not on women... it's on men.

Well then men better step up or capitalism will suffer.

Perhaps one of the biggest things we could do is to reduce the countless state and local regulations that make housing expensive.