You've probably heard of the declining birth rate crisis.

Like Japan and many other countries, the United States is facing a low birth rate.

By 2050, I think three quarters of the countries in the world will have a declining population.

The record level decline last year is leading to fears there may not be enough children to sustain the next generation.

The magic number is 2.1.

That's how many children need to be born per couple to maintain the current population,

which makes sense.

It takes two people to create a baby, so I've been told,

and so they need to create at least two babies to replace themselves.

But here's the problem.

More than half of the world's population currently lives in a country or region that isn't hitting that number.

South Korea's not close.

Last year, its rate was 0.72.

Japan is at 1.26. the EU average is 1.53,

and the UK is at 1.49, and that is a record low.

This trend of fewer and fewer babies being born doesn't seem to be slowing down.

The global population has been increasing for decades, but the number of children being born has been declining.

And while we aren't at a crisis point yet, things are not looking optimistic.

There are a ton of theories about why people are choosing to have fewer babies or no babies

at all. But in today's

episode, we're not going to look at the past or present and try to answer the whys and hows

of it all. Instead, we're more interested in the far future and in asking the question,

...