Seventy years. That's all it took for American fertility to crash from 3.58 babies per woman down to 1.62—a brutal 55% nosedive. We've been stuck under that critical 2.1 replacement threshold since '71. What does that mean? Each generation now produces 40 to 50 percent fewer children than the last. Native-born numbers? Even worse. The workforce isn't just shrinking—it's bleeding out.