Has the Earth's Population Explosion Fizzled Out? Why are Women Choosing to Have Fewer Children?

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Adam and Jeff return to the airwaves after an unexpected hiatus of several weeks that was prompted by a storming of the Omaha Bugle headquarters by local college students who occupied the broadcasting center and shut down operations to underscore their support for free speech. Fortunately, the students eventually left when they ran out of snack foods and energy drinks in the break room. However, they still vandalized the building and sprayed graffiti on all of the cars in the employee parking lot (except for the car owned by Jeff which was in a parking space that was apparently deemed to be too far away to be worth the trouble). Anyways, order was eventually restored and the first broadcast by the Omaha Bugle was released; it focused on the fact that national populations are shrinking throughout the world. East Asia, particularly Korea, Japan and China, have seen their populations begin to decline in absolute terms with Korea itself having a birth rate that is only 1/4 that of which is needed to stabilize the population. This decline is being mirrored to varying degrees throughout the world. Being males, Adam and Jeff then proceed to discuss why women might be choosing to have fewer children while acknowledging that the broadcast would probably have been better served had an actual woman been asked to discuss why women might not want to have as many children as in past generations. Nevertheless, they do offer a number of reasons such as the high costs of raising children, the desire of more women to have careers, and even the preference for a childless lifestyle that is viewed by many as being less problematic. Jeff then brings up some of the ways in which shrinking populations will invariably affect everything we make and consume; it will mark a complete reversal of the centuries-old paradigm of steadily expanding production and steadily increasing consumer demand for many products.