There is some interesting but also unsettling news about the young and the old among us.
The federal government reports that America's birthrate fell in 2010 for the third straight year, and that rates of births among younger women hit a new low last year. In fact, birthrates among women in their teens and early 20s dropped to their lowest levels since records were first kept in the 1940s.
Just four years ago, in 2007, U.S. births totaled a record high of more than 4.3 million. That had dropped to just over 4 million by last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The bad economy is getting much of the blame for that.
Meanwhile, there was good news that over the past three decades, the number of Americans living to at least age 90 has tripled, to almost 1.9 million. Advances in health care no doubt account for much of the increase in the number of people living past 90.
But with births falling as life expectancy rises, we are faced with the complex problem of fewer Americans who will be paying into programs such as Social Security while more will be relying on those programs.
Despite that, Washington is showing little interest in reforming entitlements to keep them solvent.
We will pay a high price for that inaction -- and that price will have to be paid sooner rather than later.