Posted on 06/05/2026 4:07:20 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
Human beings are unique among living creatures in being able to alter their own fertility deliberately, imposing their own constantly changing choices and preferences on childbearing. We are now watching a revolutionary transformation of human birth choices play out around the world in a way that only science fiction writers could have imagined even a generation ago. Humanity is in the midst of a headlong global birth crash—a plunge underway all around the world, in rich and poor regions alike, very possibly presaging an indefinite global depopulation, with our “peak human” moment coming shockingly soon. For many decades, demographers assumed that the postwar drop in worldwide birth rates would lead to an eventual equilibrium, with childbearing converging in one region after another at a little over two births per woman, the level required for long-term replacement. No longer. Instead it is now apparent that are witnessing a spreading worldwide march into the terra incognita of prolonged sub-replacement fertility, with no hints yet of how far humanity’s birth rates will ultimately fall, or when—if ever—they will recover.
Read the full working paper here.
1. Many countries had their greatest number of annual births back in the 1800's or earlier. For example Italy had the most children in one year in 1887. It's 2025 total was only 28.3% of the 1887 peak, at level comparable to the 1500's. For France it was 1828, 198 years ago. We need to go back centuries for many countries to find comparable birthrate numbers to today. "China’s demographic records are much spottier, but here too it may well have been about three centuries, i.e. the early 1700s, since a birth total as low as 2025 was registered."
2. Actual TFR is not 2.1 as universally cited; due to child mortality in Africa, and sex-selective abortions and female infanticide in China, Vietnam etc., the global TFR is 2.18. (If you kill off baby girls, the survivors have to have even more children to make up the difference, which isn't happening.)
3. Global birthrates are probably already below replacement. The stats lag by a couple years so it won't be "official" for a while yet, but unless an unreported baby boom is going on, simple extrapolation of figures from the last compilation for 2023 (when the birthrate was 2.25 and TFR 2.18) suggests we are crossing into sub-replacement territory globally right about now.
4. "The fascinating, by now unique, exception to these global trends is Israel—the lone affluent democracy where national fertility levels have actually risen over the past generations, powered wholly by a rise in Jewish fertility, from about 2.4 birth per woman in 1995 to 3.1 in 2024."
5. The drop in birthrates is plainly not due to them somehow becoming "unafforable" in a world that has become dramatically more prosperous: "In fact, modern societies the world over have more of almost everything than ever before—more income, more food, more education, more health care, more housing, more private vehicles, more travel, more free time and vacation. Practically the only thing they don’t have more of is: children!"
6. The declining birthrate is not due to infertility but choice: "In the postwar era, the best statistical predictor of a society’s achieved fertility is the number of children its woman say they want. As a predictor, it seems to be about 90 percent accurate across countries and time—not perfect by any means, but better than any other indicator yet discovered." 8. Excepting Israel, birthrates are declining hard everywhere - Africa and Latin America very much included. South Africa is dropping below TFR right about now, and other African countries are close behind. Much of Latin America already has TFRs lower than the US (Puerto Rico is at 0.89 children/woman, Chile at 1.03, Costa Rica at 1.12, etc.). "With today’s “existence proofs” that sub-replacement fertility can characterize poor, largely illiterate, rural societies (Nepal, Myanmar), Islamic Theocracies (Iran), and countries without national family planning programs (Brazil), many favored academic pet theories about materialist “thresholds and preconditions” for fertility decline clearly need to be tossed out."
9. Growing numbers of countries are dropping below TFR=1.0, such that each generation will be less than half the size of the preceding one; the most extreme examples are getting down around 0.5 (each generation less than 1/4 the size of the prior generation), and still dropping.
How about: “Stop murdering so many babies”?
Evidently I screwed up the HTML a bit around #6-9. #7 was a follow-on to #6: “It would appear that tradition, duty and sacrifice are exerting less of a call on our moderns than they did in the past, while the allure of convenience, autonomy and self-actualization are increasingly affecting even family formation. (Whatever else one can say about their many marvelous attractions, children are definitely not convenient.)”
There are more people than ever.
Who cares?
,,, and disregarding commentary from UN “experts”.
Not surprising. It’s been known for many years that the more affluent the population the lower the birth rate.
I prefer to not be near most of them
Agreed. And note that while laws against abortion would be helpful, the fundamental issue is whether a woman wants children or not. A saying I have is that abortion is and will always be a battle that is fought one heart at a time (regardless of the legal situation).
Except the birthrate is also dropping prior to or without the development of affluence, as noted in the paper.
,,, maybe people whose countries are being hammered by mass illegal immigrants.
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
...and, civilization has risen and collapsed countless times on this planet. We are nearing the end of ours.
Odd how these things seem to go in cycles.
Not long ago there were concerns about population growth in general. Earth not being able to sustain a never ending growth in human population.
Now it’s a crisis that birth rates are slowing.
Next they will claiming that there is a specific ideal number of humans that must be made permanent. Much like they demand of weather patterns and coastlines.
In 1919 the population of earth was about 2 billion people... Now it’s over 8 billion and growing daily. There is absolutely no need to worry about the ‘birth rate’.
and the population is expected to keep growing for more than 50 years
I would argue that global prosperity and technological innnovation are closely linked to raw population. A growing population provides more engineers and scientists and inventors, whose progress then benefits everyone. And it provides greater competition, driving innovation and efficiency. And younger workers and scientists are known to be more innovative and productive than elderly ones.
So the picture we can look forward to in the future is one where populations are in retreat, emptying out of smaller towns and cities to maintain services in remaining settlements (I don't think it is coincidence that Japan is facing increasing bear attacks and fatalities as its population retreats.)
Survivors will hole up amidst neighborhoods rusting and decaying around them, struggling to maintain critical infrastructure like power and water and sewer systems that are overbuilt for the remaining population; extreme tax rates will be needed to provide basic support to the politically dominant, elderly, population. Measures like the ongoing Canadian genocide will spread to attempt to relieve the population pressure and demand for medical services from the elderly population.
Consumers will find themselves with little or no choice for consumer goods and services, as the number of companies and providers declines. The economy will stagnate, with recession quarter after quarter being the norm, not the exception as a shrinking workforce, punishing taxes, stagnant innovation and lack of competition such the life out of the economy.
And this is my rosy scenario. My less rosy scenario gets into a world of resource wars for human labor, with widespread slavery (implicitly or explicitly) as warlords try to secure that most valuable of all resources, and nation-states cut deals or wage wars to secure their supplies of the same.
Those are the official claims, by the same people whose predictions have overstated the actual numbers all along. My prediction is around 20 years (less for non-ideal conditions like a serious general war or pandemic). We will see who is more accurate.
Note also that in the final stages of population growth, it consists of very elderly people hanging onto life in nursing homes while fewer and fewer babies are born. As such the population will feel like it is in decline for most purposes such as labor and innovation and infrastructure investment, decades before the population number begins an absolute decline.
Good summation. and it’s pretty obvious.
The most people ever, there is no shortage of people.
If someone is complaining about a shortage of people for what they want, then we should probably look into what they are doing and how they are doing it, is it some sort of government pyramid scheme, it is some sort of labor exploitation or voter replacement exploitation, or what?
It’s a terrible thought, but think of how many people there would be today if it were not for World War 1, the Spanish Flu and World War 2.
Our current population is draining our resources at a staggering pace... Think of China... They build a new coal plant every week in China and they use half the worlds coal... And the world burns more coal today than they did in 1919 when Coal was king. They’re even reopening coal mines in North America that have been closed for year to keep up with the demand for coal.
The idea that we can sustain adding billions and billions more to a world already awash with humans is complete insanity.
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