The $200 BILLION Birth Panic. The Global Population COLLAPSE.

Kind: captions Language: en The middle class has been sterilized. Most people think the collapsing birth rate is just about money. Couples need two incomes just to survive and adding children feels impossible. They're wrong. The biggest forces driving birth rates down aren't war, climate change, or even the economy. They're bureaucracy, safety regulations, and planning decisions. The real crisis hasn't even started yet and almost nobody is talking about it. When the boys came marching home from war, they got busy in more ways than one. After World War II, there was a massive boost to the US infrastructure and economy. The high of surviving the war made a lot of people feel like the time was right to have kids and many kept having them. The birth rate continued to stay relatively steady during the 1950s, but the baby boom couldn't last and it started to decline in the '60s, dipping from an all-time high of 25.3 per 1,000 people to 14.76 in 1978. And it just kept dropping. As of 2026, the birth rate currently stands at 11.96, the lowest in over 70 years, but still far from the worst in the developed [music] world. France is currently at 10.76, while Japan is at 6.96, well below the replacement level. People just aren't having kids. While the United States population isn't dropping yet, many people are looking at the trends and wondering how bad the fallout will be. After all, the US is on the verge of the biggest retirement wave in history as the boomers all age out of the job market. So, who is going to replace them? Across the United States, we're already seeing the fallout of declining birth rates in the form of empty buildings. Chicago is ground zero for what people are calling the ghost school phenomenon. Regions don't have enough kids to fill all the seats in the buildings that they've dedicated to the next generation. A March 2026 study by the Manhattan Institute found that at Frederick Douglass Academy High School, built to seat over 1,000 students, only 27 students were currently enrolled. This wasn't an isolated case. Across Chicago, 255 schools were identified as underutilized with 145 being more than half empty. Now municipalities are facing some difficult decisions. Maintaining staff for half-empty schools is expensive and pointless, and many schools sit on valuable real estate. So districts are choosing to close schools, repurposing or selling the land, and redistributing the students. This is the most noticeable in the elementary schools. Young students being shipped off to new schools, disrupting their education and friendships. But if there aren't enough students, the district isn't going to keep operating it out of good intentions. But this might be just the prelude to a much bigger problem. The problem isn't just people choosing not to have children. It's that those who do aren't having nearly as many as they used to. Large families used to be commonplace, to the point where it was a regular staple of TV shows and movies. It wasn't just entertaining, it was aspirational for many. Today, that might as well be science fiction. The idea of an America hostile to large families started gaining traction when a mom blogger and activist, Bethany Mandel, described the strange catch-22 she found herself in. She tried to sign up her family for a community center membership. Mandel and her husband have six kids, and the family membership only had space for up to four kids. It wasn't that the institution was actively trying to exclude large families, they just didn't expect to have to accommodate them. It's the same story in cities across America. Many parents think about how the system often seems to punish them for having larger families. And ironically, it's all in the name of keeping the kids safe. For all the talk about how this is a terrible time to have kids, the truth is it's never been safer to be a child in many ways. Mortality from childhood diseases, including cancer, is decreasing. Kidnappings, which peaked in the '80s, are way down, and deaths from accidents have decreased as well. This is partially because of increased safety measures all around. But those improvements have also made raising a large family much harder. Having a kid doesn't just mean another mouth to feed, it means buying specialized equipment, baby-proofing your home, and often upgrading your car. Every new baby means another crib, another car seat, and then eventually another bedroom. Raising a child up to the age of 18 hovers at around $300,000 in the US today. Over 10% of that goes to the first year where the child is at their most vulnerable. For many large families, it was common for the new kid to be born just over a year after the previous one. Three under three sounds like a nightmare to many parents today. Every new baby means another layer of safety, and in some cases, it isn't just about buying the equipment, it's about having a home that's actually big enough to accommodate a fast-growing family. But, big cities are making that impossible. The inflation in the housing market means that single-family homes in the suburbs can easily reach $500,000 for a starter home. It's more like a pipe dream than an attainable goal to many. That leaves millions deciding that it's just easier to rent permanently, even if that means a majority of their paychecks go to the landlord. But, even on that front, it's not easy to find the perfect place to grow a family because family-sized apartments are disappearing altogether. Any apartment building above three stories is required to have two separate staircases. In the event of a fire or another disaster, no one is cut off from an exit. Sadly, this was a building code born in tragedy. A centuries-old rule that effectively removes the center of any building and forces long, narrow hallways. What's left is a thin ring of space along the windows. That works fine for studios and small one-bedroom apartments. Anything bigger becomes a problem. The most sought-after apartment in New York City at the moment is the three-bedroom setup. It's almost an essential if a family wants to have multiple kids. But, big apartments aren't big business. Thanks to the fire code and profit margins, it is much more appealing to divide the building into as many units as they can. The result is a housing market that was not built for families. In New York City's large new buildings, one-bedroom units outnumber three-bedrooms by roughly 10 to 1. So, it's not surprising that rates for larger apartments have skyrocketed by 7% in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone. Brokers describe the hunt for an affordable three-bedroom as close to hopeless. The few that reach the market disappear into bidding wars. It's not the only problem facing parents. If there is one area where having multiple children has become onerous, it is the vehicle. Most four-door vehicles are equipped for car seats. For most families, that'll be fine even if they have two kids. Once it gets larger than that, things get tricky. Three-children families weren't even considered large during the boomers' time, but now the infrastructure simply isn't there for them. Only a handful of the top 50 vehicles on the market, including the Toyota Sienna, the Honda Pilot, and the Volkswagen Atlas, are equipped to hook up to three car seats [music] in the backseat. Three car seats seems unlikely unless the family has kids in quick succession. It's all down to safety, but some say it's gone too far. Many people associate car seats with babies and toddlers, but you would be surprised by how many states regulate things. In New Jersey, typically seen as one of the most safety-minded states, strict regulations are in place that keep many kids in boosters far longer than expected. Up until the age of two, children must be in rear-facing car seats with a five-point harness. But even up to the age of eight, kids are required to be in forward-facing seats or boosters. The lack of room for three car seats in the backseat doesn't [music] sound like a big issue when you think that it's just babies and toddlers using them. >> [music] >> Having three kids in five years is pretty rare today, but it is a much bigger concern when you need to have space [music] well into childhood. Suddenly, the prospect of buying a whole new car to accommodate a growing family seems imposing, [music] or they put off having another child. It is the minivan tax, and it's having a real impact. Studies show that since 1977, the surge in laws raising the ages for car seat use have actively depressed births in these states. [music] When a woman has two children of car seat age in one of the states with stricter regulations, they are 0.73 percentage points less likely to have a third child. That means a reduction of around 8,000 births per year. Overall, there've been approximately 145,000 fewer births since 1980, and this process has only sped up. 90% of the decline has been since 2000. It's getting harder to have a large family, and that's why many people are opting out. But even if we fixed every zoning law and every car seat regulation tomorrow, there would still be another problem. People have to meet each other in the first place. In the past, people had no choice but to get out there and meet people in [music] person. Dating was done by introducing yourself to someone at your school or a public event, arranging a public date, and then seeing how you connected. But now people are able to form connections and end them without [music] ever seeing someone in person. It's all thanks to that magic little rectangle in our pockets. Smartphones mean that everyone has access to dating apps at all times. For many people, forming connections or rejecting them is as [music] simple as swiping left or right. And that's meaning a lot less fun for everyone. There's been a significant decrease in sex overall. American adults are now having sex around nine fewer times per year, down to only 54 as compared to 63. But these numbers are heavily driven by married couples. >> [music] >> For young people who have never had the chance to date offline, it could be hard to find the right person to form connections with and get that cycle started. Life becomes a series of missed connections. And even for those who do find the right partner, life becomes a game of Netflix and chill minus the chill. Life is full of distractions now, and the smartphone is a double-edged sword. Every minute of every day, we're besieged by information, notifications, and flashy offers for entertainment. While previously, a couple might have come home and enjoyed each other's company, now they're in their own world even when they're together. They might be a couple, but they each have their own tailored algorithm, and that's often more powerful than sexual attraction. It's becoming a crisis, and the governments are taking note. South Korea has one of the world's lowest birth rates, coming in at 6.69, well below replacement level. This is due to many of the same reasons as the US, including a tech-heavy culture, but it also relates to the incredibly competitive academic and workplace atmosphere in the country. People often spend the vast majority of their time grinding for success, leaving them little time to court a partner. Many of the factors that play a role in the US, like high housing prices, are even more extreme. It's led to many analysts considering the fast slide in the birth rate to be an existential threat. The government is running out of options, so they're just throwing money at the problem. Back in 2022, South Korea had the world's lowest fertility rate, 0.78 children per woman. That is barely a third of the 2.1 needed to guarantee replacement level population. With an aging population and a looming pension crisis, the government wanted to invest heavily in encouraging young people to consider family a critical part of their future. Over $200 billion the birth [music] rate. But would any of them get to the root of the problem? Some of the new initiatives included more than doubling the monthly allowance for new parents, >> [music] >> from 300,000 won to 700,000, around $500 each month. But by 2024, that had increased to 1 million won or $770. Companies were encouraged to hold baby fairs advertising their products to new and potential parents. It was South Korea's fertility Hail Mary. It did not work. The birth rate kept on sliding, and if you ask the people on the ground, the government is throwing money at nothing because they keep on sabotaging themselves. South Korea is still relatively hostile toward unconventional families with most benefits only being available to traditional male-female couples who have children. That makes this a process with many failure points. For some people, having a baby still seems like a joyous, spontaneous event, but they're quickly awakened to the other side. It is a massive, life-changing decision that comes with incredibly heavy financial costs and strategic decisions that you just don't get to opt out of. For many couples, there's a series of events that need to take place first. First, you get out there and you date, you find the right partner, then you both get settled into your careers to the point where you could afford to have a kid, and only then do you start, assuming that time doesn't catch up first. The boomers and Gen Xers can't understand why the new generations don't follow suit, but the fact is the world they grew up in no longer exists. One of the reasons big families were possible back then was because there was a traditional family structure. Dad worked a hard but steady full-time job, often the same one for 40 years. Mom stayed at home and looked after the growing brood, but today only 20% [music] of families have a stay-at-home parent with those being heavily concentrated in rural areas. In cities, two-income households are almost essential even without kids in the picture. A two-income household ups the money, but it drastically alters the logistics, creating big gaps of time where neither parent might be available. The world has changed and it is the family unit that's feeling the effect. It's easy to blame the economy for the declining population. It is an issue, but it's not the root cause. Rules and regulations have essentially been the death knell for the larger family. One child seems like a massive milestone in life, two [music] seems like a huge undertaking, three seems like an insurmountable mountain to climb. For most couples, they're not going to strap on their mountaineering equipment. They're just going to sit down [music] at the base and be happy with what they have. The declining population rate is a serious [music] crisis, but how bad could things be without any births? Watch What If No Babies Were Born for a Year to discover the horrifying truth, or click on this video.