Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb, warned of mass starvation and environmental collapse.

And the cause of this coming apocalypse, he said, was too many babies.

The only way to stave off disaster was to reduce the human

population. Countries around the world took those warnings to heart, especially communist countries.

Most famously, China adopted laws that attempted to control fertility, but so did a few other

nations, like Vietnam. Well, today, facing aging populations and record low birth rates,

countries are rethinking the edicts and incentives they designed to reduce the number of

children born. And some, including China, are even adopting incentives and policies designed to

encourage more children. Earlier this month, Vietnam scrapped its longstanding two-child policy that has tanked the

nation's birth rate and threatened its economic stability. At just 1.9 children per woman,

Vietnam's fertility rate sits below replacement, but is above much of the Western world.

Far from a population bomb, the greatest existential threat the world faces right now is a demographic winter.

It's clear that national attempts to control fertility have not worked,

and it's just as doubtful that financial incentives and appeals to national identity now can work to reverse the trend.

Now, there are many theories why fertility rates have been falling for so long, especially across Western nations.

Affluent and educated women in the West have long been told to not want children because

they would interfere with their freedom, their careers, their lifestyle choices, and their

personal happiness. Some studies also point to a pretty significant gender gap in which

women want babies, but men do not. Thankfully, that trend seems

to be changing. It might even be reversing. In short, ideas can be just as powerful as policy

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