The birth rate is declining across most of the world, but would fewer people mean a healthier planet?

That's a question many young couples are asking as they think about having a family like Annie Platt and Ryan Hawley in South Carolina.

It's daunting.

Yeah, if we're in a climate crisis that is only going to get worse.

And that's something that that child would have to deal with long after.

Yeah. I don't have to deal with it.

It's like, well, there's...

Yeah, and then their children would have to deal with it.

And their children after that.

And in Maryland, Emma Brennan and Lauren Wright wonder if future generations would even

be able to live in their city.

I feel like that's the thing we talk about a lot, just because Baltimore will be underwater, potentially.

For Sarah and Ben Brewington in Los Angeles, talk of overpopulation and environmental disaster are two of the many reasons they're not having kids.

It's the world we built, and I don't think that

I fault people for making the decision to have less kids in that world, right? Were we not just

panicking about not having enough food? And now we're panicking about not having enough children.

Like, did you have food to feed those children? But here's the thing. The consequences of having

fewer people on the planet

may be a bit more complicated. Melissa Carney studies population trends at the University of Notre Dame.

We're actually really facing the question of depopulation. Typically people say, well, isn't that

good for the environment? So then we explain or I explain, well, not

really, but it also has a lot of other potential negative consequences for the economy and society.

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