Birth rates across rich countries are collapsing, and the main reason is cost — bad news for young people priced out of parenthood and for governments counting on future workers and taxpayers.

• Young people still say they want kids; they just can't afford them, with the cost of raising one child eating close to half an average American salary.
• Wages stopped tracking productivity back in the late 1970s, while homes went from about two years of income to five, and childcare costs tripled the level regulators call affordable.
• Mothers get hit twice: each young child cuts a woman's pay, and the lifetime gap runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Baby bonuses have failed everywhere they've been tried — South Korea spent $200 billion and ended up with a lower birth rate, because most of the money went to babies that were coming anyway.
• The shrinking workforce may matter less than feared, since AI is expected to wipe out huge numbers of jobs over the same period.

Outlook: Expect more cash-for-babies schemes and more disappointing results, because governments would rather write checks than fix housing, wages, and childcare.