(Vox) – The drop has frightened lawmakers and commentators alike, with headlines warning of a coming “demographic crisis” or “Great People Shortage” as economies find themselves without enough young workers to fill jobs and pay taxes. To stem the tide, the world’s leaders have tried everything from generous social welfare programs to pink-and-blue awareness campaigns to five-figure checks to veiled threats, all to relatively little avail. “Even the richest, savviest, most committed governments have struggled to find policies that produce sustained bumps in fertility,” Trent MacNamara, a history professor at Texas A&M who has written about fertility rates, told Vox in an email. “If such policies were discoverable, I think someone would have discovered them.” (Read More)