In this episode we’ll look at declining birth rates and see what Catholic Social Teaching has to say about this global long-term trend.

Here are references and notes:

1. National Center for Health Statistics - Births: Provisional Data for 2025 – report issued April 2026
2. World Bank - Interactive chart showing birth rate trends for US and all other countries
3. Which countries have fertility rates above or below the “replacement level”? - visual map
4. World Population – overview from UN
5. International Monetary Fund - The Debate over Falling Fertility - June 2025
6. How Countries might Reverse Plunging Birth Rate - 26 January 2026 - Interesting secular analysis from the Global Policy Journal
7. Harvard Gazette article on “How to reverse nation’s declining birth rate” - August 20, 2025
8. Catechism of the Catholic Church - The Family in God’s Plan - 2201-2213
9. Pope Leo’s October meeting on marriage, family gains urgency amid declining birth rates in West - April 27, 2026
10. Amoris Laetitia - 2016 - see section 42
11. The Marriage Crisis Driving America’s Fertility Decline  (April 22, 2026) and Catholic family experts tie marriage to dropping US fertility rate (August 7, 2025) - some overlap between these articles
12. ‘Dramatic’ decline in Catholic marriage (January 31, 2026) and What is causing our fertility crisis? Catholic experts weigh in (May 2, 2024) - some overlap between these articles
13. Pope Leo urges Europe to confront ‘declining birth rates,’ strengthen family life - October 14, 2025
14. Pope Francis: World's ills rooted in too much greed, not too many babies - May 10, 2024
15. Podcast website with full transcripts for this episode and all other episodes.

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