FROM THE COMMENTS TO MY LAST SUBSTACK ESSAY:

There is an illusion in the developed west that aging well is a matter of having sufficient funds available to pay for a comfortable retirement , senescence and (though perhaps this isn’t said aloud) death. The Birth Dearth is about productivity, innovation, the ability and willingness and sheer number of younger taxpayers to pony up for the codgers. The reality became much clearer to me when my mother was dying. Mom had money. However, the care she received from her three children and seven grandchildren—the kind of care that makes the difference between a good death and a miserable, lonely one—- simply could not have been purchased at any price. I hope for their sakes that my young Scandinavian and bicoastal American relations grasp this lesson: If you don’t have children, you are signing yourself up for an old age of vulnerable dependency, with no one to advocate for you or provide your dying self with the kind of attention available only from someone who knows you well and loves you anyway. (Or, if Dutch or Canadian, for “voluntary” euthanasia.)

Of course, not all kids are good at this, or willing to be.