The Baby Bust in the United States began in 2008, the year of the financial crisis and the year the Great Recession began. Births and the birthrate have fallen nearly every year since the 2007 peak.
It’s easy, then, to blame the recession, and most commentators do, believing that the Baby Bust is mostly an economic phenomenon. But it’s not mostly economic. It is mostly cultural. And so if we zoom in a bit, we can pinpoint a more precise date when we stopped having babies.
