I put “alarming” in scare quotes because many aspects of this conversation are irksome. First, while falling fertility rates might be bad for the mathematics of the economy, they tend to be good for women, the people who are biologically tasked with actually giving birth. Higher education and income tends to correspond to having fewer children, and women with fewer children also tend to be healthier themselves, and have healthier families because there are fewer people sharing finite resources. And, speaking of resources, human beings tend to use an awful lot of resources, and introducing fewer of them into an overtaxed ecosystem is good for the environment. Healthier women, less starvation, less stress on the environment—none of this is bad. But research has shown that there are women in the world who would like to have more children, but who choose not to because of reasons beyond their control. Maybe having more children is too expensive where they live, or too much of a health risk given the availability of reproductive health care. Here in the U.S., shouldering the expense of health care during pregnancy and childbirth, plus affording a single-family home in a market bloated by investor speculation, plus affording childcare, plus paying off student loan debts while saving for the future impossibly expensive education of a child is a pretty impossible ask for couples that don’t enjoy the benefits of generational wealth. If boosting the birth rate is essential to stave off economic catastrophe, then why aren’t more economists arguing in favor of making the work of motherhood more attractive for women?