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Throughout the OECD, birth rates are in decline. 1 Women in the majority of the developing nations are delaying childbirth and having fewer children, a trend that has precipitated considerable anxiety among states concerned with the dwindling proportion of their working populations and the complex economic and political consequences of an ageing citizenry. Consequences are said to include depressed economic growth through increased demand on welfare and healthcare provision, and a reduction in taxation revenues as a smaller proportion of the working population support a larger proportion of retirees and those with chronic illness (Martins et al. 2005). As Neilson notes, this demographic shift has serious political consequences:

These changes in age profile threaten the economic viability of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation-states, tearing at the fabric of their once liberal notions of citizenship …