The news is filled with references to how smaller family sizes and the aging U.S. workforce are interfering with the supply of cheap labor that businesses have relied on for years. But as this article and graph show, it might not be accurate to say that economies are aging at all. Instead, they’re experiencing the latter effects of a population “bulge” created by the unsustainably high fertility rates of the baby boom, rates world governments intentionally tried to reduce to mitigate a host of problems. Today, we’re feeling the long-term effects of solutions to the 20th century population boom — solutions that were welcome and unavoidable.