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My mother gave birth to me when she was 21. Thirty-five years later, she is thrilled that her first grandchildren are finally on the way: I’m pregnant and expecting twins later this year.

I am part of a broader trend: Millennials are having children later — or not at all. This is among the most pressing economic challenges of our time. Fewer babies born now means fewer workers — and resources — in the decades to come. That will ultimately hurt growth and make it difficult to support a large old-age population.

This isn’t just a U.S. problem. Over the past 50 years, global fertility has been halved. The decline is especially pronounced in high-income economies, where the population in already shrinking or on track to shrink soon.

On some dimension, these are trends to be celebrated. Declining fertility is strongly tied to the fact that there has been a surge in the past half-century of women going to college and launching successful careers. For example, as the birth control pill became more broadly accessible in the 1970s, it gave more women the freedom to invest in professional education, according to research by Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. The result? The percentage of lawyers and judges who were........

© Washington Post