We don't know what the economy will look like with shrinking population, but I mean you cannot have economic growth without population growth.

Why are people in developed economies having fewer and fewer children? Is it really because raising children is simply too expensive

or are there other factors at play?

We should not be so sure that we can count on people wanting children.

And why are some families bucking this trend and having five, six, seven or even eight children?

How does having children impact a woman's long-term happiness.

Today I sit down with social scientist and researcher

Catherine Pachaluk, author of Hena's children,

the women quietly defying the birth dearth.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Keller.

Catherine Pachaluk, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Thanks, it's great to be here.

Catherine, you talk about the situation of low birth rates and you address it from a whole

series of angles that I hadn't frankly thought about.

And then one of them is, frankly,

is this even an issue?

Aren't we in a better position?

Isn't it what happens in civilized affluent societies that birth rates are lower and then

and that's actually a good thing is this a is this a real problem at all yeah

okay well putting on my demographic hat for a minute, demographers use this magic

number of two, sometimes 2.05, 2.1, as a kind of a special number. It's the number above which two children per woman or

per couple, above which a population will grow, even modestly if your births are about 2.5 or 3, below which your population will

...