John Authers, Columnist

Pricing In the Decline in Fertility Needs Urgency

 Economic and financial research into plummeting fertility rates should be getting investor attention.

A maternity ward in Germany.

Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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Fertility is a painful and emotive topic. Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance’s criticisms of “childless cat ladies” have landed him in political hot water; some 30 years ago, the British novelist P.D. James penned a terrifying novel, later followed by a film, The Children of Men, imagining a society 25 years after the last child had been born. Lack of fertility comes to mean lack of a future. Thus the economic and financial communities are researching fertility rates, with growing urgency. They’re falling in wealthier nations — startlingly fast. Fathom Consulting offers this chart of G-7 economies since 1960: