European papers have the story of their continent's continuing decline in birth rate.
The United States is slated to continue to grow, but, when you look close, our growth now is mostly from immigration.
The demographic story deserves a great deal more attention, partly because it is not at all clear what the numbers mean for the future of civilization. People in the higher income brackets, I think some investigation would show, are not reproducing themselves almost anywhere in the West, and their counterparts in the rest of the world are probably not much different.
An Italian friend despairs of the trend, saying he feels that he lives in a "museum country." (He does acknowledge that it certainly is a beautiful museum.) Young people in Europe have no optimism that they can get ahead in an "exhausted" culture that lacks self-confidence. Or is the reality, rather, they just want to enjoy their youth without the annoying burden of children? Or is all this hand-wringing overlooking the fact that somehow "the rich get rich and the poor get children" generation after generation and still the standard of living keeps going up?
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