So, back to the Baby Bust, the question must be considered as to why we should change the clear trend in any developed country to have less people who lead happier lives?

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This baby bust was a demographic echo of the rural famines that haunted China from 1958 to 1961, reducing the size of the cohort that would have been their parents (see right-hand chart).

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Just as the baby boom of the late 1950s and 1960s pushed up the number of first-time buyers in the 1980s, so the baby bust of the 1970s has depressed the number of first-time purchasers.

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But many metro areas that are usually associated with youthfulness and aspiration are producing fewer children, including Los Angeles (sixth place on our list of baby bust cities with a decline of 12.4%), New York, NY-NJ-PA (eighth, down 7%) and San Francisco-Oakland (16th, -2.7%).

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This has the biggest implications for the baby bust generation (born 1966-1985) as they approach what should be their prime earning years and for younger baby boomers that will be facing a vacuum of demand from younger generations when they want to retire, sell the family home and down-size.

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If you drive almost anywhere in Danville, Virginia around Christmastime, you can see a 28-foot-high metal bust of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus atop the sprawling red-brick Dan River mill.

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