This is move-in week at the American university, and I keep thinking about the freshmen. They were born in 2008, most of them, into the autumn the economy fell through the floor. Their parents signed leases in August and watched the banks fail in September, and a fair number of the classmates who should have been hauling suitcases up the dormitory stairs beside them do not exist. American births peaked in 2007, sagged with the crash, and never came back. The recession officially ended in 2009. The births did not return with the recovery, and the fertility rate has since sunk to its lowest marks ever recorded. Economists can argue about why, and they do, everything from housing costs to delayed marriage to a general gloom about what was coming next. Whatever the cause, the count kept falling, and the count is all a registrar needs. The empty crib has been rolling toward the campus gates for eighteen years, and this semester it arrives.

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