Americans are having fewer children. Reports this past summer showed that the fertility rate dropped in 2020, to 56 births per 1,000 women age 15 to 44. Only 5.6 percent of women in their child-bearing years had babies. Early indications for 2021 showed a further decline.

Fertility has been dropping for more than a decade. Fertility rates peaked in 2007 at 69 per 1,000 women age 15 to 44. The rate had been rising in the decade before that.

Let’s take a longer view. Much longer.