China has decided to allow couples to have three children and will invest more in education and child care, after decades of restricting most families to one or two children. The change is welcome, but the limited success of many other countries trying to boost births with financial incentives — and the lacklustre response to a similar change of policy in 2015 — mean it is probably too late to head off the worst of China’s demographic crisis. The effects of the great Chinese baby bust will percolate to nearly every corner of the global economy.

One of the biggest effects could be on something that is very much already on companies’ minds these days: inflation.