Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

Families are shrinking worldwide, and the decline in cousins is reshaping childhood, according to a kinship study published in December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. That study projects a 38 per cent global decline in living relatives for people aged 65 by 2095, compared to 1950. Canadian data obtained by CBC News from the study's researchers projects that the average Canadian 15-year-old girl will have 3.6 living cousins in 2095, down from 15.3 in 1950. Rania Tfaily of Carleton University and Yue Qian of the University of British Columbia link the trend to falling fertility, with one-child families the most common type in Canada in the 2021 census.