Real Estate Updates from Catherine

During the first week of January, I got the opportunity to tour the Five Star Premier Residences of Chevy Chase. It’s located on Connecticut Avenue, just inside the beltway. Cindy Miller, a sales counselor there, was my able tour guide. Cindy has worked at Five Star for more than 22 years!

Five Star is a high-rise apartment building with one floor of assisted-living apartments, and the rest independent-living apartments. The independent-living floors have four different floor plans to choose from- a one bedroom, a one bedroom with study, a one bedroom with den, or a two bedroom apartment. Despite its location close to the city, many of the apartments have gorgeous wooded views of the property, or of their neighbor, Columbia County Club. Five StarChina is not alone.

The Asian giant recently abandoned its one-child policy. But other Asian countries, seeking to maximize economic growth, are also struggling with population and family-size policies as they cope with lower fertility rates among their population.

However, demographers say socioeconomic changes – not government policies – are the fundamental reasons for low fertility rates and smaller families. Simply setting a population policy that encourages couples to reproduce won't help much.

"It is not the government's job to pay people or encourage people to have more children," said Stuart Basten, associate professor of social policy at the University of Oxford. "But it is the government's job to make society a better place and to help people in their aspirations to … achieve what they want to achieve. In that