Economics of fewer kids With the nation’s fertility rate at record lows, the number of children under 18 is falling across the US. The number of children under 18 living in big US cities is down 6pc in the past decade, compared with a 1pc decline nationwide. The drop is especially stark among families with little kids: The number of children under age five in big cities fell 15pc, compared with a drop of 7pc nationwide. Contributing to the drop is a growing number of childless residents opting to stay that way, worried about the financial implications and lifestyle trade-offs of having a family. City economies are starting to feel the shift.
Families are important contributors to a city’s tax base, and middle-class families in particular drive demand for goods, such as affordable groceries, that benefit everyone. Fewer kids means less support for public schools, often one of the largest employers in many cities, and tough choices as classrooms empty out.
(Adapted from ‘America’s Big Cities Are Rapidly Losing Kids,’ by Rachel Louise Ensign and Paul Overberg, published on July 26, 2026, by the Wall Street Journal)Al-powered, oneemployee businesses Once upon a time, running a business of a certain size required a team. Al is turning that assumption upside down, and more aspiring entrepreneurs are going it alone. An analysis by the payments company Stripe shows there are thousands of solo operators on the company’s platform that are generating over $1m in revenue, with their ranks doubling between 2023 and 2025. The number of solo operators crossing the $10m threshold nearly tripled in that same span. In the past, people without business contacts or particular savvy might not have known how to get their ideas off the ground, but now Al can be a built-in business partner. Al’s ability to handle various administrative tasks makes it potentially useful for launching solo businesses in many fields. But the technology’s ability to also handle key tasks in tech, like coding, makes that field a particular hot spot.
(Adapted from ‘The Rise Of Million-Dollar Companies With Just One Employee,’ by Te-Ping Chen, published on July 29, 2026, by the Wall Street Joumal)Weaponising social media In recent months, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet from Facebook to Instagram to X for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents. Department of Homeland Security says it is trying to protect its agents and their families from ‘coordinated campaigns of violence’ that have fueled an 8,000pc increase in death threats since Trump took office. But civil-rights lawyers and former DHS staffers say the approach has swept up people expressing opinions that are protected by the First Amendment.
(Adapted from ‘How ICE Is Weaponising Social Media Against its Critics,’ by Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett, published on August 3, 2026, by the Wall Street Joumal) SpaceX’s ambitions SpaceX’s top line is rocketing, thanks as much to its terrestrial artificial-intelligence business as its rocket-and-satellite one.
The company’s Al unit made an outsize contribution to a 92p rise in revenue for the second quarter, year on year. But the company is still in the red. Moreover, building computing capacity to rent out to Al giants like Anthropic and Google requires big investments. Its Al capital expenditures were close to $16bn in the quarter, more than double the group’s total revenue. They are expected to soar even higher. Investors have baulked at the spending bill. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s boss, threw out big numbers to entice new investors. He made big promises about the Starlink satellite business, too. Even if some people roll their eyes at such Muskisms, their consequences ripple through stock markets as SpaceX spends gobs of money to refashion itself as an Al company.
(Adapted from ‘Investors Have Fresh Doubts About Elon Musk’s Grandiose Ambitions,’ published on August 5, 2026, by The Economist)