B

The total fertility rate (TFR) is "the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age." Marketers keep a close eye on the population's birth rate to gauge how the pattern of births will affect demand for products in the future. The fertility rate increased dramatically in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the period of the so-called baby boomers. It declined in the 1970s and began to climb again in the 1980s as baby boomers began to have their own children in a "baby boomlet," and then fell again. In 2016, the TFR was 1.54, significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable Canadian population.