<\/p>\n
\n Ashley Evancho and her daughter Sophia play together at their home near Buffalo, N.Y. Evancho and her husband have decided to have only one child, a choice many people are making around the world.<\/p>\n
Lauren Petracca<\/p>\n
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Lauren Petracca<\/p>\n
Ashley and Nick Evancho say raising their 3-year-old, Sophia, is one of the most joyous things they’ve ever done.\u00a0But the Evanchos also made a decision that’s increasingly common for families in the U.S. and around the world: One is enough.\u00a0The trend is leading to populations that are dramatically older, and beginning to shrink, in many of the world’s biggest economies.<\/p>\n
Experts say a rapidly aging and gradually shrinking population in the world’s wealthiest countries could force sweeping changes\u00a0in people’s lives, causing many to work longer before retirement, making it harder for business owners to find employees and destabilizing eldercare and health insurance programs.<\/p>\n
This story is part of NPR’s\u00a0Population Shift<\/a>\u00a0series.<\/p>\n For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org<\/a>.\u00a0Email us at considerthis@npr.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n This episode was produced by Paige Waterhouse and Connor Donevan, with audio engineering by Jimmy Keeley. It was edited by Andrea de Leon and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ashley Evancho and her daughter Sophia play together at their home near Buffalo, N.Y. Evancho and her husband…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-258022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}