I read an absolutely fascinating cover story from Sunday's print edition of The New York Times Magazine called, "No babies?"

You don't have to read the entire article (It's a long one) to get the gist: Europe's birthrate is in drastic decline and the implications this trend are severe.

Author Russell Shorto throws some numbers out early in the article to illustrate how low the birthrate is:

• Birthrates in Southern and Eastern Europe have dropped below 1.3. At this rate, a country's population will cut in half in 45 years.
• In 1960, Europe represented 12.5 percent of the world's population. Today it is 7.2 percent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 percent of the world will be European.
• In Germany, birth-to-death ratios result in an annual population loss of 100,000.

Sounds like I need to get over to Italy and start making babies ASAP. I'll jump on getting my dual citizenship to make it legit.