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Pronatalismthe belief that low birth rates are a problem that must be reversedis having a moment in the U.S. As birth rates decline in the U.S. and throughout the world, voices from Silicon Valley to the White House are raising concerns about what they say could be the calamitous effects of steep population decline on the economy. The Trump administration has said it is seeking ideas on how to encourage Americans to have more children as the U.S. experiences its lowest total fertility rate in history, down about 25% since 2007. As demographers who study fertility, family behaviors, and childbearing intentions, we can say with certainty that population decline is not imminent, inevitable or necessarily catastrophic. The population collapse narrative hinges on three key misunderstandings. First, it misrepresents what standard fertility measures tell us about childbearing and makes unrealistic assumptions that fertility rates will follow predictable patterns far into the future. Second, it overstates the impact of low birth rates on future population growth and size. Third, it ignores the role of economic policies and labor market shifts in assessing the impacts of low birth rates. Fertility fluctuations Demographers generally gauge births in a population with a measure called the total fertility rate. The total fertility rate for a given year is an estimate of the average number of children that women would have in their lifetime if they experienced current birth rates throughout their childbearing years. Fertility rates are not fixedin fact, they have changed considerably over the past century. In the U.S., the total fertility rate rose from about 2 births per woman in the 1930s to a high of 3.7 births per woman around 1960. The rate then dipped below 2 births per woman in the late 1970s and 1980s before returning to 2 births in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since the Great Recession that lasted from late 2007 until mid-2009, the U.S. total fertility rate has declined almost every year, with the exception of very small post-COVID-19 pandemic increases in 2021 and 2022. In 2024, it hit a record low, falling to 1.6. This drop is primarily driven by declines in births to people in their teens and early 20sbirths that are often unintended. But while the total fertility rate offers a snapshot of the fertility landscape, it is not a perfect indicator of how many children a woman will eventually have if fertility patterns are in fluxfor example, if people are delaying having children. Picture a 20-year-old woman today, in 2025. The total fertility rate assumes she will have the same birth rate as todays 40-year-olds when she reaches 40. Thats not likely to be the case, because birth rates 20 years from now for 40-year-olds will almost certainly be higher than they are today, as more births occur at older ages and more people are able to overcome infertility through medically assisted reproduction. A more nuanced picture of childbearing These problems with the total fertility rate are why demographers also measure how many total births women have had by the end of their reproductive years. In contrast to the total fertility rate, the average number of children ever born to women ages 40 to 44 has remained fairly stable over time, hovering around two. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Americans continue to express favorable views toward childbearing. Ideal family size remains at two or more children, and 9 in 10 adults either have, or would like to have, children. However, many Americans are unable to reach their childbearing goals. This seems to be related to the high cost of raising children and growing uncertainty about the future. In other words, it doesnt seem to be the case that birth rates are low because people are uninterested in having children; rather, its because they dont feel its feasible for them to become parents or to have as many children as they would like. The challenge of predicting future population size Standard demographic projections do not support the idea that population size is set to shrink dramatically. One billion people lived on Earth 250 years ago. Today there are over 8 billion, and by 2100 the United Nations predicts there will be over 10 billion. Thats 2 billion more, not fewer, people in the foreseeable future. Admittedly, that projection is plus or minus 4 billion. But this range highlight another key point: Population projections get more uncertain the further into the future they extend. Predicting the population level five years from now is far more reliable than 50 years from nowand beyond 100 years, forget about it. Most population scientists avoid making such long-term projections, for the simple reason that they are usually wrong. Thats because fertility and mortality rates change over time in unpredictable ways. The U.S. population size is also not declining. Currently, despite fertility below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, there are still more births than deaths. The U.S. population is expected to grow by 22.6 million by 2050 and by 27.5 million by 2100, with immigration playing an important role. Will low fertility cause an economic crisis? A common rationale for concern about low fertility is that it leads to a host of economic and labor market problems. Specifically, pronatalists argue that there will be too few workers to sustain the economy and too many older people for those workers to support. However, that is not necessarily trueand even if it were, increasing birth rates wouldnt fix the problem. As fertility rates fall, the age structure of the population shifts. But a higher proportion of older adults does not necessarily mean the proportion of workers to nonworkers falls. For one thing, the proportion of children under age 18 in the population also declines, so the number of working-age adultsusually defined as ages 18 to 64often changes relatively little. And as older adults stay healthier and more active, a growing number of them are contributing to the economy. Labor force participation among Americans ages 65 to 74 increased from 21.4% in 2003 to 26.9% in 2023 and is expected to increase to 30.4% by 2033. Modest changes in the average age of retirement or in how Social Security is funded would further reduce strains on support programs for older adults. Whats more, pronatalists core argument that a higher birth rate would increase the size of the labor force overlooks some short-term consequences. More babies means more dependents, at least until those children become old enough to enter the labor force. Children not only require expensive services such as education, but also reduce labor force participation, particularly for women. As fertility rates have fallen, womens labor force participation rates have risen dramaticallyfrom 34% in 1950 to 58% in 2024. Pronatalist policies that discourage womens employment are at odds with concerns about a diminishing number of workers. Research shows that economic policies and labor market conditions, not demographic age structures, play the most important role in determining economic growth in advanced economies. And with rapidly changing technologies like automation and artificial intelligence, it is unclear what demand there will be for workers in the future. Moreover, immigration is a powerfuland immediatetool for addressing labor market needs and concerns over the proportion of workers. Overall, theres no evidence for Elon Musks assertion that humanity is dying. While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, in our view the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated. Strong investments in education and sensible economic policies can help countries successfully adapt to a new demographic reality. Leslie Root is an assistant professor of research at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Karen Benjamin Guzzo is a professor of sociology and director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Shelley Clark is a professor of sociology at McGill University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Spain’s black olive exporters, subject to harsh tariffs since U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, are warning it will be difficult to survive an extra 15% they now face under the European Union’s latest trade deal with the United States. EU goods now face import tariffs of 15% half of Trump’s threatened rate, but much more than Europeans had hoped for after striking a trade deal with Trump on Sunday. Spain, the world’s top table olive exporter, has seen its share of the U.S. black olive market plummet from 49% in 2017 to 19% in 2024 after Trump imposed tariffs of more than 30% at the request of Californian olive growers. The measures only affected black olives and don’t apply to green olives, olive oil or semi-processed olives. Spanish farmers have taken steps to increase green olive sales and to diversify their markets since the tariffs were first imposed, but warn the additional increase will be hard to swallow. “It would be unviable (for black table olives),” said Eduardo Martin, secretary of Asaja, a Spanish local farmers’ association in southern Seville province, a region that produces the most olives. The initial trade measures coincided with a severe drought that forced Spanish producers to cut around 400,000 work shifts for pickers out of a total of 2.5 million, according to industry estimates. Sales of Spanish black olives to the U.S. dropped by 70% in the first year. “The worst was the first year,” said Gabriel Cabello, president of Andalusia’s Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives in Seville province. “In the second year, we learned that this was here to stay and that we had to do things differently.” To mitigate losses, Spanish exporters shifted focus to Europe and the Middle East, regions with a tradition of consuming table olives. They also ventured into Asian markets, while switching to shipping more green olives to the U.S. because they are subject to lower tariffs. Tariffs also spurred innovation, with some Spanish exporters selling black olives stuffed with salmon or cheese for the first time, which helped boost sales in Europe and Asia, Cabello said. Still, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture estimates it has lost 239.6 million euros ($278.51 million) in black olive sales since the tariffs were introduced, nearly a third of the 707 million-euro total export value from the last harvest. WEATHERED THE STORM Among the 25 Spanish exporters active before the tariffs, only four major players remain, according to Asemesa, Spains Association of Table Olive Exporters. Agro Sevilla, one of the larger players with the financial resources to lobby the U.S. for lower rates, expanded green olive exports and managed to reduce black olive tariffs to 10% from 31%. The company successfully demonstrated that they received fewer European subsidies than the U.S. had estimated. Its U.S. sales have been gradually growing since 2023. “We cannot give up on the world’s largest consumer market for black olives,” said Agro Sevilla CEO Julio Roda. In a twist, Aceitunas Guadalquivir, another major Spanish olive producer, acquired Bell-Carter Foods, one of the two leading U.S. companies that had advocated for the tariffs, according to a statement issued in 2022. The company is among several Californian companies that have imported raw olives from Spain, which are exempt from the tariffs, according to Asemesa. Aceitunas Guadalquivir did not reply to a Reuters request for comment about such exports. “When California has low production, they import raw olives to finish processing them in the United States, mostly from Spain,” said Asemesas Secretary General Antonio de Mora. Spain exported 6,300 tonnes of semi-processed olives in 2024 alongside 36,000 tonnes of green olives and 9,800 tonnes of black olives. The U.S. measures failed to bolster domestic growers. Imports of table olives surged by 40% in the first eight months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2017, trade data shows, with Egypt, Portugal, and Turkey increasing exports the most. Spanish exports of green olives to the U.S. grew by 18% during the same period, partially offsetting a decline in black olive exports. However, Spanish producers remain concerned about the new tariffs. “It’s like adding rain to wet ground,” Asaja’s Martin said. ($1 = 0.8603 euros) Additional reporting by Miguel Gutierrez Corina Pons, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Health-related stocks are not having a good day. First, Americas largest health insurance provider, UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), saw its stock drop more than 4% this morning after the company announced disappointing second-quarter results and a full-year 2025 forecast that concerned investors. And now, the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk A/S, whose shares (NYSE: NVO) trade on the New York Stock Exchange, is seeing its stock price plunge, too. Currently, NVO shares are down more than 20% at the time of this writing. But unlike UnitedHealth Group, Novo Nordisk has not reported its most recent quarterly results. So whats sending its shares lower? Heres what you need to know. Novo Nordisk cuts full-year 2025 guidance The main driver of Novo Nordisks significant share price fall today is the companys announcement that it is revising its previously published sales growth and operating profit growth for its full fiscal year 2025. On May 7, Novo Nordisk stated that it expected full-year fiscal 2025 sales growth to be between 13% and 21%. At the same time, it said it expected its operating profit growth to be between 16% and 24%. Now, however, the company had drastically cut both forecasts. Novo Nordisk now says it expects full-year fiscal 2025 sales growth to be between 8% and 14% and operating profit growth to be between 10% and 16%. In a statement, the company said its lowered sales outlook for 2025 is driven by lower growth expectations for the second half of 2025. This lowered growth is due to lower growth expectations for its GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs, Wegovy and Ozempic, in the U.S. market. For Wegovy in the US, the sales outlook reflects the persistent use of compounded GLP-1s, slower-than-expected market expansion and competition, the company said. It added that as far as Ozempic was concerned, the updated outlook is negatively impacted by competition in the U.S. Novo Nordisks main competitor in the GLP-1 arena is the American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, who makes the drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. Novo Nordisk names new CEO Besides revising its 2025 growth forecasts downward, Novo Nordisk also made another announcement today: It named a new CEO. However, this announcement probably had little to do with the stocks fall this morning. Back in May, Novo Nordisk announced that its longtime CEO Lars Fruergaard Jrgensen would be stepping aside. At the time, the company cited its declining share price as one of the reasons for the CEO shakeup. It also said Jrgensen would stay on as CEO until a successor was found. Now, one has been. Today, Novo Nordisk announced that Maziar Mike Doustdar will be assuming the position of president and chief executive officer, effective August 7, 2025. Doustdar is currently the companys executive vice president of international operations. Announcing Doustdars ascent to the CEO role, Novo Nordisk chair Helge Lund said: This is an important moment for Novo Nordisk. The market is developing rapidly, and the company needs to address recent market challenges with speed and ambition. I believe Novo Nordisk will build on its strengths as a global leader in obesity and diabetes, and Mike has a clear vision of how to unlock the full potential of the opportunities ahead. Doustdar will officially take over as CEO one day after the company reports its second quarter 2025 results on August 6. Novo Nordisk shares have fallen dramatically since last summer While the GLP-1 drugs Wegovy and Ozempic have been a massive source of growth and profits at Novo Nordisk in the first half of this decade, recently, the company has faced increased competition in the GLP-1 marketplace, which has partly contributed to investor concerns. Partially as a result, Novo Nordisk stock has steadily declined since last summer. Over the past year, NVO shares are down more than 57%. And since the beginning of 2025, the companys share price has declined more than 35%. As of the time of this writing, NVO shares are down just over 20% this morning to $55.17 per share.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Heres a stat that would likely make financial adviser and radio personality Dave Ramseywho has long advocated for Americans to pay off their mortgages early as a key pillar of his debt-free philosophyat least somewhat pleased: A staggering 39.8% of U.S. owner-occupied housing units in 2023 were mortgage-free, marking a new high for this data series. Thats up from 39.3% in 2022 and 32.8% in 2010. Among the 85.7 million U.S. homeowner occupied households, 34.1 million are mortgage-free. The other 51.6 million have an outstanding mortgage. So why did I say itd only make Dave Ramsey somewhat pleased? Well, the reason is that a higher percentage of Americans are mortgage-free isnt necessarily because so many are paying off their mortgages faster. Instead, it reflects a powerful underlying demographic shift: the aging composition of the American population. As Americans live longer, the U.S. fertility rate declines, and the massive baby boomer generation ages into their senior years, the U.S. population has skewed older. Since older homeowners are more likely to have paid off their mortgages, the aging composition of the American population means a larger share of homeowners are achieving mortgage-free status each year. The other thing is that when older Americans sell their house and buy another home, theyre more likely to rollover their equity and purchase that next home in all-cash. Given that most demographic forecasts expect the composition of the American population to continue shifting upward in age, the share of mortgage-free households could also continue rising in the years to come. The wild card? If reverse mortgages get more popular and more older Americans take on mortgage debt again to tap into their equity.
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E-Commerce
The notoriously unrealistic beauty standards for women are about to get even less realistic. The star of a new ad for Guess in the latest issue of Vogue is a willowy, AI-generated model, whose synthetic status is only called out in a a fine-print caveat. Now that AI has hit the ads of fashions bible, it seems only a matter of time before similarly unrealistic models proliferate throughout its editorial pagesmaybe even the cover. AI-powered marketing agency Seraphinne Vallora is behind the design of Guesss corporeally challenged vixen. According to the BBC, the process for generating such a model involves five AI-specialist employees, takes about a month to complete, and costs up to somewhere in the low six figures. The result is a glossy, golden-tressed Aphrodite; an Animorph at the precise midpoint between Kate Upton and Margot Robbie, strapped into a striped maxi dress. What might be more striking than who she looks like, though, is who she doesnt look likeand why. Beyond a six-figure price tag, offering no real savings from a typical photo shoot that employs real photographers, hairstylists, and makeup artists, it also threatens to further unravel the progress the fashion world has made in diversity over the past 15 years. How fashion got less homogenous If the Greek chorus of Doves Real Beauty ads didnt spell it out clearly enough, racial and body diversity made huge strides in fashion throughout the 2010s. In a decade-ending retrospective from late-2019, Vogue traced the turning of the tide back to Michelle Obama. The former First Lady championed diverse American design talent, while global fashion houses clamored to outfit her. As the Vogue piece puts it, An arbiter of style in Washington and beyond . . . Michelle Obamas presence in the fashion world became a part of her image and American history. Around the same time, models like Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman started to speak openly about the indignity of being the only Black model at fashion shows. Bethann Hardison, a pioneering Black model, went a step further. After noticing the pitiful diversity on display at New York Fashion Week in 2013, she sent an open letter to each of the major fashion design councils in New York, London, Paris, and Milan, calling out the abundance of houses featuring only one Black model or none at all. Although many of the letters recipients responded without much enthusiasm to the suggestion, a change came anyway in the years ahead. The back half of the decade was full of diversity wins in fashion. A 2017 report from The Fashion Spot assessed 241 shows at that years New York Fashion Week, and found 27.9% of the models were minorities. That figure represents a near doubling from the 15.3% the publication found in its first report two years earlier. At the same time in 2017, semiretired pop star Rihanna introduced her forcefully inclusive Fenty Beauty brand and its lingerie line, Savage x Fenty, offering a high-profile showcase for models of all races, sizes, abilities, and gender expressionsincluding trans and nonbinary models. The brands enormous success seemed to confirm that this approach was perhaps something worth emulating. By January 2020, Ashley Graham had become Vogues first plus-size cover model, while body positivity advocate Lizzo followed suit that September. Considering how quickly Vogue ended up repeating its milestone cover move, though, it might come as a surprise that the magazine hasnt had another plus-size cover model in the five years since. Goodbye body diversity, hello Ozempic Lizzos appearance on the Vogue cover in fall 2020 reflects the social justice reckoning that followed George Floyds murder at the hands of police that summer. (The cover copy hovering near the knee-line of her dazzling red dress reads: Lizzo on hope, justice, and the election.) In retrospect, that cover appears to be a product of its momenta moment that quickly faded. In December 2023, Vogue Business described the preceding 12 months as the year fashion backtracked on diversity, citing post-pandemic macroeconomic challenges, a brewing backlash to DEI, and a handful of major fashion brands such as Alexander McQueen and Gucci choosing white men as their new creative directors. (Indeed, it was the uncontroversial nature of those hiring decisions that seemed to signal a return to the old ways.) DEI backlash has since been felt everywhere in the business world, including the fashion industry. As a Forbes reporter wrote of New York Fashion Week in fall 2023, Black designers made up approximately 15% of the weeks calendar, and the stereotype of the thin, white model prevailed on many of the runways. Meanwhile, the emergence of Ozempic may have quelled the appetite for plus-size fashion inclusivity that had been building throughout the 2010s. The earlier drumbeat of body positivity has now been replaced by a conga line celebrating sudden, miraculous weight loss. With the increasing visibility of GLP-1 meds and their effects, self-acceptance no longer seems culturally aspirational; instead, looking like your most chiseled possible self once again does. Of the 8,703 looks shown during fashion week this past spring, 0.3 % per cent were plus-size, dropping from an already low 0.8% the previous season. Body diversity may have peaked in fall 2022 at 2.34%, two months before the New York Post surveyed the fashion industry and the broader landscape of prominentfemale bodies and concluded in a headline: Bye-bye booty: Heroin chic is back. Now, fashions retrenchment is coinciding with the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated AI image-generation tools. Deep learning models vs. supermodels Although the first digital supermodel, a Black woman named Shudu Gram, was created in 2017, the age of the AI model only began recently. Fast-fashion retail giant Mango launched its first advertising campaign featuring purely AI-generated models last summer, while H&M started developing digital twins of models like Mathilda Gvarliani this past March. Proponents say the growing use of AI in fashion modeling showcases diversity in all shapes and sizes, Associated Press reported in 2024, allowing consumers to make more tailored purchase decisions that in turn reduces fashion waste from product returns. That sunny projection does not seem to line up, however, with the reality of the process that birthed the new Guess ad. According to the BBC article, Seraphinne Vallora created 10 draft models for Guess cofounder Paul Marciano to choose from, with Marciano selecting one brunette and one blonde, which the agency further refined. That description makes it seem as though the agency isnt intentionally perpetuating the stereotype of models as unattainably fit, white goddesses, but rather that this is simply how that particular iteration shook out. The agencys Instagram, however, is a talent pool teeming with similar models. Asked by the BBC about its social media homogeny, the owners threw their Instagram followers under the bus. “We’ve posted AI images of women with different skin tones, but people do not respond to them, cofounder Valentina Gonzales told the outlet, we don’t get any traction or likes.” Incredibly, the agency seems more willing to suggest that its fans are low-key racist than it is to admit that Seraphinne Valloras tech might be bad at generating AI approximations of women of color. But that’s the excuse the founders use to explain the lack of body diversity more broadly, claiming they have not yet experimented with creating plus-size models because “the technology is not advanced enough for that. This line offers a blueprint for other companies exploring the AI fashion model space in the near future. Its a cop-out explanation that absolves anyone on the agency side or client side of intentionally dialing back diversity in fashion to pre-2010 levels. Either group can now just say that theyd love to feature people of color or plus-size models in a campaign, but sadly their hands are tied. With DEI now thoroughly demonized, the chances of anyone in either company flagging it as a problem are considerably smaller than an AI models waist size.
Category:
E-Commerce
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