As the number of children per family increased, families had less money to buy food, medicine, and housing to keep their children alive, as well as to improve their lives through better housing and education. Let's say roughly half the world's people were affected to an extent of 1 life-year each, for a total of 3 billion life-years.

Human News aims to devote 1 character to each 40,000 life-years, or 1000 average lives. Thus, this story can have about (3 billion) / 40,000 = 75,000 characters. Since this article is much shorter, there is room for many related articles in the future.