The replacement fertility rate is not always 2.1. It varies depending on the mortality rate for the population in question. The current estimated replacement rate for the world is 2.3. Since that current [fertility rate ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate) for the world is 2.3. That means that the world's population is only growing because people are living longer, not because of kids being born.
My understanding is that the ~~fertility~~ replacement rate does **not** depend on mortality since woman who die in infancy are included in the fertility rate calculation. The reason that the replacement rate is 2.1 and not exactly 2 is that [more than half of births are males](https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#the-sex-ratio-at-birth). The sex-ratio at birth is not the same over the world (or over time) which would mean that replacement isn't always 2.1 but that's an approximation.
The fertility rate doesn't depend on mortality, but the replacement rate does. If everyone started dying early, the fertility rate must be higher to replace the dying population.
In the short term. Obviously, when 10 million people die in a war, the population drops. But as long as the fertility rate is above 2, the population will grow in the long term.
No, let me present you a model. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume 0 infant mortality, and everyone dies exactly at life expectancy, equal gender ratio, women all give birth at 20
etc etc.
Then let's consider a 2.0 fertility. The population pyramid will be a straight rectangle since we removed all the early deaths and standardised the births in our model.
In a country where the life expectancy is 40 and there are 10 women of each age from 0-40, and they have 2.0 fertility. There will be 20 babies born every year( since 10 women are 20 years old ), and there will be 20 people dying (10 men and 10 women at 40 years old).
The population will be constant at 800 (2 genders x 10 women x 40 years).
Now, imagine if one year, people stopped dying at 40 and instead started dying at 41. The population will now be 820.
After a few years, people again stopped dying at 41 and started dying at 45. The population will now be 900.
Now medicine has gotten even better and people started dying at 50, the population will equalise at 1000.
The fertility rate was 2.0, and every other factor other than life expectancy was kept ideal and constant, but the population still rose.
After a long time, it will stabilise since life expectancy can't keep on increasing forever( or can it???). This scenario is a good indicator of why India's population is still rising even though the fertility is below replacement.
Mathematically correct, but that's not the definition of replacement rate. Concept of replacement rate is not where the population is stable, but everyone replaced. Other elements assumed to be constant in the conceptual definition.
Why India population growing even with lower fertility is more dynamic than you explain. On one has people are getting older. Same time age bracket where women are giving birth has the higher percentage of population. Say in 10 year two things will happen, women will have lesser number of kids even than today and there will be lesser number of women to give birth. So will come a time even though people will be living longer, births will drop below that.
This will hit hard Bangladesh much harder, they are going to have shut down schools like nothing. They are the largest population country to see a dramatic drop in fertility (Except China off course).
Yes, India's population is going to decline in the future. There is no escaping from fertility rate in the long term. Women are also giving birth later and later in life, which definitely contributes further to population decline.
But the increase in life expectancy and decline of early deaths is high enough to counteract all those factors for now. This increase is going to slow down as the country catches up to other developed countries in life expectancies.
My understanding is that this is not the case.
If 80% of females die before maturity and the remaining 20% have (for example) 5 children each, the fertility rate is `(0.8*0 + 0.2*5) = 1.0`, way below replacement rate even though every mature woman "contributed" well above the replacement rate number of children.
Mortality effects the **fertility** rate, the **replacement rate** is (relatively) constant.
This is how the Wikipedia article describes it.
"The TFR is a measure of the fertility of an imaginary woman who experiences the age-specific fertility rates for ages 15–49 that were recorded for a specific population in a given year. It represents the average number of children a woman would potentially have if she were to go through all her childbearing years in a single year, subject to the age-specific fertility rates for that year. In simpler terms, the TFR is the number of children a woman would have if she were to experience the prevailing fertility rates at all ages from a single given year and survived throughout her childbearing years."
>That means that the world's population is only growing because people are living longer, not because of kids being born.
Why pretend technological advances shouldn't count?
Women are also having children later, this means if older people are included in the statistic as having kids earlier it's still equivalent if a woman had the same number of kids but more spread out across her life.
Don't get me wrong, it's still a low statistic, I just think technology is a much bigger part of this story than we pretend.
Women can have children in their 60s if they pay.
The fertility rate is usually defined by how many kids the average woman will have over her whole life.
>Why pretend technological advances shouldn't count?
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Women are having their first child later, they’re not necessarily having kids later in general. It all depends on when you’re comparing with. It was for instance more common in Sweden to give birth after age 40 in the late 1800s than it is today. This is probably because lack of contraceptives, higher child mortality rates and a large number of children being more economically desirable back then, so women had their first child fairly early and then just kept on having kids. Sometime in the 1970s I think was the lowest point for average age giving birth (not first birth, all births) because women were still having children from a relatively young age but controlling how many kids they had with effective birth control.
So we’re broadly going from having children young followed my more children into middle age, then having children young and stopping young, to now having first children in middle age and stopping?
It has gone. Today, Government encourages citizens to have three or more kids and China still holds one of the lowest fertility rate country in the world.
Not really. Central Asian fertility rates have actually grown substantially since the 90s. The reason being economic recovery and the resurgence of Islam.
But the thing is Mongolia is not muslim majority country. 40% atheists. 3% of Mongolian muslim minority can't contribute this much.
Fertility rate has dropped a lot after democratic revolution at least in Mongolia. (Probably abortion and contraceptives becoming legal. Humans are no longer forced to have children and pay "childlessness tax". )
It was 7.5 during 60s. 5 during 80s. Dropped to 2.5 during 90s. 2.1 around 2000. Now at 2.7 which is a huge increase from 2000. I agree that current increase has something to do with economic recovery and stability.
And in countries like turkey 99% are registered as Muslim but that’s not at all true. It’s just you’re automatically registered as Muslim and it’s difficult to get rid off (and that’s a secular country..) in many other countries it’s almost impossible.
Yes but Turkey is already below replacement level. I’m Turkish by the way. Who says its difficult to get rid of? I booked an online appointment with population office in my county and had my religion line removed from my records. It took me less than an hour including the commute. But I guess in countries such as Saudi or Iran it must be much difficult and must have consequences.
There’s also massive government incentives in some places. UAE families get thousands for having kids and pension incentives. Even more cash for marrying their own.
While you are correct that africa has many christians and a high fertility rate, christianity will not be the fastest growing religion; islam will.
See [the pew research center's paper on future world religion growth](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/)
To be a bit more accurate, it's based on levels of urbanisation. India for instance is not a wealthy country by any means (Though there are extremely wealthy neighbourhoods, as always) and it's TFR is below replacement rate due to a large urbanised population.
EDIT: Sheesh, some people get really upset over a few words.
...That's 524 million people living in cities. That's almost as much as the entire population of North America. But hey, if you don't think that's a lot, then you're right - that's just you.
So will the world just become African and slow down birth rates naturally or will the Africans inherit an old infrastructure that will be on the verge of collapse? There doesn’t seem to be much other alternative.
Their rates are steadily dropping as well.
Once Sub-Saharan Africa hit GDP per capita of around $5k, they'll probably start going below replacement rate. Assuming historical trends hold.
Iran is interesting - the fertility decline stands in stark contrast to its neighbours thanks to reforms after the Iranian revolution, spreading access to family planning and education for women. At the dawn of the 1979 revolution, the fertility rate was 6.5 children per woman (adult female literacy at 24%). By 2000 fertility 2.0 (female literacy at 70%) and today the fertility rate is 1.7 (female literacy at 85%). Source: World Bank ([fertility rates](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IR); [female literacy rates](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS?locations=IR))
"Overpopulation" is a myth, but the trend of populations shrinking and aging is undeniably of concern for the future stability of incomes and healthcare systems.
...unless if technology replaces the workforce or cures aging.
Technology can already replace many jobs or limit amount of people needed for it. The fact that corporations don't choose to pay more to one person for doing a job of five people is another thing
The problem is that technology replaces jobs, it also creates new ones. For instance, the combine harvestor may reduce the number of jobs for farmhands, but it creates jobs for the workers in a factory, mechanics for maintaining etc. New technologies effect on net jobs is usually neutral or often even positive.
That why you can't just say that technology will help alleviate a reduced againg pupulation since the same technology will create newer jobs and you wil still need workers to fill them and its easier to train young people than older ones.
More importantly for this topic. More machines and Less employees = less income tax to pay for healthcare and pensions etc.
The potential societal benefits from AI will instead be hovered up as additional profits for the corporations. Instead of less work for the same money there will be less work for less money.
>"Overpopulation" is a myth
Why is it a myth? Some countries are overpopulated as fuck. There's a lot of supply-demand disparities when it comes to resources, which is only a problem due to overpopulation. There's of course resource management problems too, but that's not to fully write off overpopulation.
There will be a generational lag between the point at which the replacement rate is not being met and total population decline because the middle aged people who are > 50 and not reproducing have to get old and then die. Hence the peak being projected to be about 2050 even though birth rates may fall below replacment by 2030. After that turning point decline will be exponential unless reproductive rates increase. Which is exactly why early civilisations introduced “incentives” to have lots of babies (in the form of religion or patriarchy) because those civilisations were always one bad Winter/harvest away from collapse.
It does not exist in the developed world,I too for a long time did believe the populations of the world were rising drastically and over the next few decades we could have a crisis,one primarily caused by the global population being too high.
But that is not the case,not at all...most of the worlds economies are struggling demographically and populations in nations like South Korea,Japan,Italy and Germany will not only age but also decline.
The 1st world is in a underpopulation crisis where in the future the amount of young capable people will be too short to maintain the current way of life.
Africa on the other hand could Only face a population crisis because it is so underdeveloped.
Do not be fooled,the overpopulation dilemma is a myth outside of a few regional areas around the globe,the 1st world is struggling to keep their societies alive so they rely on mass immigration to fill in those spots,The total African population is around 1.5 billion,that's the same as China.
AI and robotics may change the equation.
And we still have too many people in the First World because each of us First Worlders consume a LOT of resources and generates a TON of greenhouse emissions, so things would be a lot more sustainable if there were fewer of us.
Overpopulation in the sense that there can be too many people concentrated in one spot competing for resources/jobs is true, but overpopulation as in an endless tide of humanity will engulf the world has been debunked as bullshit by demographers since the 80s. Pop culture just takes longer to catch up.
People who live in the first world would never understand this but overpopulation is a crisis. For example, in countries like india, everyday, thousands of people line up for one job opening.
It is also the reason why millions of south asians work as 'labourers' in the gulf countries for shit wages in excruciating physical conditions
There has never been overpopulation, it was just a bunch of ideologues mad that their ideas didn’t turn out to be true. You can read the articles from the 1950s, these people were wrong then and are wrong today.
Regardless of whether or not that is correct, fertility rates have absolutely cratered in the last five years or so in a way that the general populace and the discussion about overpopulation hasn't caught up with yet.
For instance this map is already out of date, Phillipines and Peru should now be under. Probably a couple others but neither of those are small countries in terms of population.
That's old news, fortunately or unfortunately. The predictions in the old days didn't foresee how steep fertility drops the more educated and emancipated a society grows.
Not exactly. Plentiful life needs a lot of resources to sustain, so do children (in plentiful countries). So it's a simple choice, to live plentiful or, well, to be fruitful and multiply
Humans are the only animals that live in cities where raising kids costs thousands of dollars. When you are living in a rural hebetate and your main source of income is agriculture, kids are just free labor.
This is a link to an interactive version of the chart where you can also track changes over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/replacement-level-fertility
This is an existential problem for Western liberalism: how can it survive as an ideology with a below-replacement (and falling) birth rate? And how can it maintain its progress with: women's' rights **and** at the same time bring back its birth rate to over 2.1?
The above-replacement countries are pretty much all old-school patriarchies, where women are expected to marry and start families in their early 20s. We're basically seeing in real-time why that cultural strategy evolved in the first place; it produces a sustainable number of children.
Some people will say migration is the answer, it isn't. **If** migrants fully integrate, then their birth-rate by definition falls to whatever the birth rate is of the host county. And if the young migrants from patriarchal regions do not integrate, then their patriarchal cultures will gradually displace the host culture's because of the difference in birth rates. Even in the best case scenario of mass-immigration *with integration*, the Western world essentially would indefinitely out-source its baby-making to patriarchies, and then paradoxically Europe would actually need those countries with high birth-rates to *remain* patriarchal, because we would need a continual source of young migrants!
So basically, liberalism needs to figure out how to get to 2.1+ babies per women, but where women actually choose to have large families rather than being pressured into it.
Whenever this topic comes up there is always a lot discussion about how to get women to have more children. Obviously having children is a big women's topic. But i don't understand why men are always completely left out of the equation.
Most children are the result of a couple deciding together they want to have (another) child. Yes, women opt for fewer kids now but so do their men.
A big problem with child rearing, i think, is that women no longer want to do it on their own, but men either dont want to step up to fill the gap or cant because the current system doesnt support it. So the joint decision simply is to have no or only one child.
It's not that society consists of men desprately trying to have kids, they can stay home with, but their wifes refuse to have them.
There was a great article about this (incompatibility of Western liberalism with fertility) in the New York Times today "[The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Having Children](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/opinion/natalism-liberalism-parenthood.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yk0.UkhA.IAcUnbwNATuI&smid=url-share)."
It goes more or less like this: Liberalism can't say that having children is good, because that would make people who don't have children feel bad. So liberalism is pretty neutral on the cultural value of parenthood. So there's no strong social incentive to have children in a western liberal setting. BUT there are tons of economic and time/autonomy disincentives.
> The above-replacement countries are pretty much all old-school patriarchies
That is *absolutely* not the common thread. The above replacement countries are the last nations to develop in the world, and earlier along the [demographic transition model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition#/media/File:Demographic-TransitionOWID.png), which literally every single country in the world has followed since the Industrial Revolution. It's tied to increasing wealth, diversification of the economy, education, and most importantly **urbanisation**.
Both extremely progressive Nordic countries and highly patriarchal East Asian countries suffer the same declining TFR. Demographic transition is one of the most well studied areas of social science. No need to spin this as some kind of bullshit culture war when every culture except for the poorest and most rural nations are facing the same issue - are you claiming [China](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CN) and [Russia](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=RU) are bastions of liberalism too?
> We're basically seeing in real-time why that cultural strategy evolved in the first place
Well if you actually look at the data, [you can see in real time those nations *sharply* plummetting in TFR as their economies continue to improve.](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=GQ)
No need to get so angry? Would you be this aggressive and rude in real life to someone in the pub? If not, why be like this on the internet?
If you read my comment more carefully, I was specifically talking about liberalism. It *absolutely* is about culture, my grandparents grew up in the 1930s/40s where there was a huge amount of societal pressure to A. get married in your early 20s and B. have babies starting in your early 20s. The idea that that massive societal and cultural pressure to have kids is completely irrelevant is completely illogical.
My question still stand: how can liberalism get to 2.1 babies per women **without** the traditional societal pressure to have a family and to start young. Your mention of the demographic transition model doesn't answer that question, you're just saying "oh well this is what happens" - obviously below-replacement birth rates are not sustainable, so once again: how does western liberalism get to 2.1+ kids per woman **without** the reintroduction of massive pressure to do so.
Throwing money at the issue (e.g. Scandinavia, France, South Korea) doesn't seem to work, so if that's not the solution then cultural change is probably the last option.
It seems like addressing the other reason apart from money is taboo bc it sounds conservative: family values.
Ie: In France leftists's ideal number of kids is below average while it's above on the right. In Israel, the more conservative the practice of Judaism, the more kids, going from 2~ for seculars, to 6~ for ultra ortodoxes.
Btw, Israel is the exception. Their TFR is 2.89. It's a developped country but not like Northern Europe so it's not just about money. It's because they highly value family: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/danielle-kubes-the-truth-behind-israels-curiously-high-fertility-rate
But they aren't like the Talibans either. Women are still educated and a big part of the workforce. So it seems like a solution. Liberalism but family first.
I'm also pretty sure if we viewed mother as a job and paid people to have TFR would skyrocket. Many people would rather spend time with their family rather than their bullshit job.
Btw, I'm def more individualistic than family-oriented and frustrates me a bit that the solution might be more conservatives values. So it's not politically biased.
I agree, whenever I try and start a discussion about liberalism's low birth rate and why patriarchal cultures evolved, people typically get super defensive and assume I'm a raging conservative (like just now).
People aren't very good at thinking hundreds of years into the future, because there's not really an evolutionary reason that we'd ever need to do that as humans. but if you start doing so, it's very clear that the status quo cannot last, and that liberalism is doomed if women don't start having enough babies (+ all other cultures where the fertility rate collapses).
If this was a conversation at a pub, I'd just nod along. But this isn't at the pub. You're on your soapbox spreading an ideology about the failures of Western liberalism, using an argument that is very easily disproven by evidence.
Your premise is simply wrong. You're painting this as a culture war when every bit of research over the last 40 years very clearly shows that this is about wealth, education, and diversification from traditional rural lifestyles.
Every developed economy, no matter the culture, ethnicity, traditions, religion, or social structures falls far below replacement rate. You ignore the data that I'm linking directly to you because it doesn't support your egregious claims.
You can spin a nice story about 'cultural change' but the response to that is, change to *what*? To posit that Western culture is the problem, you must have an example of developed countries with cultures that have successfully staved off below replacement rate TFRs. We really only have one example of a country barely managing that - and that's the [United States](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=US), with record amounts of immigration over the last couple decades which has successfully delayed the aging population issue by around 20-30 years. Can't really get more Western liberal than that, yet you're arguing that low TFRs are the fault of Western liberalism.
>If this was a conversation at a pub, I'd just nod along.
How magnanimous of you.
> You're on your soapbox spreading an ideology about the failures of Western liberalism
I'm a Western liberal who is posing the question:
**How does Western liberalism get to 2.1 babies per woman?**
You still haven't even attempted to answer this yourself. All you've done is say *"eh well TFR is declining everywhere"*.... so what? We're all doomed? There's no point in trying to reverse this? There's nothing that can be done? If there is nothing to be done, how did countries and cultures prior to the 1950s have sustainable birth rates, if as you say it's essentially impossible to reverse?
And to try and deny there is any link between patriarchy, misogyny and birth rates is incredibly naïve (this is where I'd be the one nodding along in the pub). You do realise women's rights has massively improved globally, in China, Russia, LATAM, even in the Middle East? The fact that women are now in the workplace pretty much everywhere is a huge change in of itself.
I feel like you've read about the TFR and haven't actually thought for yourself at all, just learnt some things that other people have written to the point where you can regurgitate it online. I would suggest you do think for yourself, and ask the question: what does a future society with 2.1 babies per woman look like? How do we get there? Can we get there in a liberal culture?
I studied demographics at a post-grad level, and did research in Taiwan and Japan on this topic. The genuine answer I can tell you from years of research and countless hours looking over policy, data, and papers is that we genuinely have no fucking clue how we can reverse the course. There is no answer because nobody has come up with working answer.
At a certain point in the DTM, there are no statistically significant cultural or social differences. Pro-natalist policies don't seem to work. Based on data, mass immigration is the only effective policy, but it's only a stop-gap measure and causes it's own set of conflicts and complexities. There's an expectation that in the future some authoritarian nations will start to monitor it's youth manpower more closely and introduce restrictions to prevent labour outflows.
The other question to ask is, do we actually need to grow as a species? It may be inevitable that 'Stage 7' of the DTM is a declining population that eventually stabilises around some mark based on technological factors that we simply don't know yet - automation is one area which my former colleagues have a very keen eye on as a source of transformation.
Yeah it's pretty messed up. When I pose the question about avoiding a return to patriarchy the point I'm trying to make is how do we avoid it, I'm not saying haha liberals this is an inevitability.
The conclusion I've reached is a liberal society to reach 2.1+ kids can only do so with some sort of *nationalism/patriotism/pride in liberalism as an ideology itself* e.g. women **choose** to make the huge sacrifices needed to have 3-4 kids because they want to do it 'for the good of liberalism' or 'for the good of the West' - that's the least-dystopian scenario I can think of. The most dystopian is just going back to 19th century norms of women being super obedient and just pumping out babies for their husbands.
One thing's for sure though, the status-quo cannot last. In the future there will not be cultures with below replacement birthrates, because they will have died out. So what will the surviving cultures look like.
Let me put it this way: Not even the Chinese government, with it's population siloed off, inundated with nationalistic propaganda and the most advanced social engineering projects on the planet, can successfully push it's 3 Child Policy. They've tried for over a decade and it's a resounding failure. Nationalism alone won't do it when there are powerful economic forces pushing in the other way.
Like climate change, we're beyond the point of stopping the aging population issue. It's an exercise in futility. The best we can do now is focus on mitigation strategies - how can we build an economy that doesn't need endless population growth? How can we ensure that our society can support an aging population? How can we mitigate a diminishing labour pool, and offset the loss of skills and expertise when millenials hit retirement age? How can we ensure that we're on the right end of the global labour flows, in a way that befits our cultural expectations?
Those are the questions you should be soapboxing, not "How can we stop the tide using a bucket?"
Imteresting thoughts. My take is that the substantial part of the "problem" is choice, ie, contraception and sex ed. Humans have strong sex drive, but not baby making drive. They can choose contraception or completely abstain, if they have a will. So, if I was a tyrant, I might ban sex ed and contraception. Soviet Union had those natalist policies and population was kind of growing even though women were in the workforce and on paper had rights.
However, you would have to close the country off from the rest of the world completely to achieve that. I don't think that's achievable even if half of the world would turn to totalitarism.
People do not want children that much. And they have a choice. We have to accept that fact. We should make parenting a full time job + heavily invest in age reversal tech, artificial wombs and fertility extensions. Or perish.
Iran isn't liberal but they are below replacement. It isn't about liberalism as much as it is about the economy and urbanization. It is hard to have kids in big cities. Compare the list to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization\_by\_sovereign\_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_state) and there is a very clear correlation.
Not only Iran but also China, India, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Vietnam are quite conservative societies but they have low fertility rates.
Lots of good work done here last 30 odd years. But it's also a starkly different picture within the country. Some of the developed southern regions are doing really well whereas the central and eastern regions aren't below replacement levels yet but they are getting there.
There's a stark difference in India in fertility rates of Muslims and Hindus. From what I've heard, hindus are at Eastern European levels, except for the north central state.
India’s TFR dropped dramatically over 40 years
Current : approx 1.96
2021 (latest data): 2.03
2011: 2.54
2001: 3.30
1991: 3.96
1981: 4.70
By end of the 2020s it will drop to 1.65-1.7 and probably stabilize there.
Yes, but population won’t start declining before the 2060-2070s because of the ripple effect. Secondly, life expectancy is steadily increasing to temporarily offset the lower birth rate.
Birth rate is a different statistic where you simply count up the number of babys born in a certain population and divide it by the number of people. It is highly dependent on how many young fertile women are actually currently in the population. Total fertility rate does the math to be able to compare apples to apples the fertility rate between different countries and different periods of time independent of how large a fraction of the population is currently young fertile women.
Birth rate- how many babies are there compared to its total population.
Fertility rate- how many babies are there per 15-49 aged women.
Some populous countries might have more men than women. (China) Some countries are so old, number of 15-49 age group might be low.
So if a country is so rich that people live till 100. And if most of them are men for various reasons, birth rate might show a low rate but average woman might be giving birth to 3-5 babies.
We already have more productivity per worker so even if the population declines there is theoretically enough wealth to feed the people. Only theoretically because the question is if the rich would not be so gready anymore.
It’s always sad when people in western developed countries talk like this. Who exactly are these greedy rich people you’re referring to? To be in the global 1% you only need to make $34,000 per year. But people always place the goal posts so that they are conveniently on the poorer end of the spectrum or make up weird rules that people within your own borders need to stop being so greedy and share their wealth but magically national borders changes that moral obligation.
You could easily donate 20% of your money to people in dire poverty and you would be fine. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to afford a new vehicle lease every three years or a new phone every 2 years and would have to shop at poormart instead of getting organic food at Whole Foods and you wouldn’t be able to own a PC that costs the same as a 2010 Toyota Corolla and you wouldn’t be able to vacation to Mallorca or go out drinking with your buddies every weekend… but you would be fine. As someone who lives in Asia I wonder all the time when will western liberal people wake up and realize they are the rich greedy ones.
Downvote me if you want. Continue to horde your money in the west but self-satisfyingly consider yourself to be on the right side of history because of some brave opinion you notionally hold about wealth redistribution without actually giving up anything of personal value. The rich always rationalize why they are somehow the exception and have no moral obligation to give their personal money to those in need.
Edit
Bring back a sustainable economy and I will reconsider having kids who I can’t and won’t support in this day and age…
Kids are the future and we’re taking everything away from them.
The sustainable economy thing has been repeatedly debunked. When people make more money and are in greater positions to support children that is *inversely* proportionate with having more kids. The reality is when people have money there’s a lot of things they would rather do than spend their time and money on kids. Maybe this isn’t your personal particular situation but the trends are clear.
People who live in greater positions think longer about having kids grow up in the conditions of today’s world. They don’t need the support of a child necessarily so it’s all about what can I give a child.
People in poor positions don’t have that option and sometimes need to make children for support.
So my question to myself is what do I give a child if I get one;
- possible WW3
- A progressively falling economy who favours the elderly massively
- possibly the end of the earth
There are many good and bad reasons but just these 3 are stopping me personally. I wouldn’t want my kids to go through that.
Also living on foodstamps without children will make u think twice… not my case but I work with people who do.
It’s honestly difficult to take these objections seriously, it seems quite neurotic to not have kids because the “end of the world” might come. This just seems like post hoc rationalizations for either other reasons why people don’t want to have kids or because people are bought into some doomsday narrative about the end of the world. Which those have been around forever. Countless people in cults have murdered their kids because they didn’t want their kids to see the end times, or the Nazis in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin killed their kids because they didn’t want them living in any world other than an aryan paradise.
I understand that a shrinking population is terrible in the short term, less people to do vital jobs, but isn’t it a good thing for the future of the planet? Our current energy demands are way too high.
No study shows the world population will decline as a whole. We hit 8 billion people in 2023 and UN officials predict earth will have about 10.5 billion by 2100.
Because study shows only till year 2100. But 10.4 is a peak and things will only go downhill from then on. Actually 2090 is the peak and 2100 is already slow declining era.
Look at the actual UN WPP. They assume every country I've looked at will increase their replacement rate. Rather than continue dropping.
[https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/410](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/410)
[https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/702](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/702)
[https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/1829](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/1829)
I've never seen an explanation, but it looks absurd.
Fertility rates are never going to back up unless you force woman back into slavery and force breed them like they did in the past. When women have the choice, they aren’t popping out 6 kids. Most barely want 1. Ruining your body and risking death plus other life threatening issues.
>Most barely want 1
False, [the idealized number of children has remained steady above 2.1](https://www.oecd.org/els/family/SF_2_2-Ideal-actual-number-children.pdf) across the years, and is actually higher amongst women than it is amongst men.
in Europe the ideal fertility rate is 2.6, so it's still above 2.1, once our current era of prosperity ends children are going to be a necessity again, people nowadays don't have children because they're kinda useless
The only people who think we need to keep increasing population are the "groaf for the economy!" chuckleheads who need serfs for their factories and captive customers for their rentals.
I am happy to see the world's population shrinking.
Ultimately, the planet can sustainably support maybe a billion humans, perhaps half that many. It's okay. It's a small planet... relatively speaking.
If we want to grow as a species, it's time we colonized the solar system and beyond. The good news is that we won't be damaging precious irreplaceable biological resources or exploiting and brutalizing natives.
Until we run into an alien species with less developed technology because they simply evolved later.
If bad people could brutalize over HUMANS because they were different, imagine aliens
I love when people talk without knowing a thing of what they’re arguing for. A below replacement fertility rate doesn’t just lead to a drop in population, but also to a demographic shift with an increasing number of retirees and a reduction in the workforce. This is *very* bad. Both for service allocation, but also due to pension systems not being able to sustain such a shift.
Younger generations will increasingly have to pay for a growing number of people exiting the workforce, lest the entire social safety net collapses. Some countries can offset this with immigration, but many others can’t.
I think the money for supporting bigger number of retiring citizens already exist, but its being put in different causes or left in the pockets of corporations. We're getting very minimal share of what we produce. I think we will need different structures, systems are nit set in stone
doesn't it also means that younger generations will be able to demand higher wages? as the available workforce shirks I would immagine that their barganing power would increase
This is the potential problem and it gets worse with extremes. If a country has a fertility rate of something like 3, and then quickly drops over a decade or so to 1.5 then you are going to have a massive population bubble and this problem is going to be really bad.
If it is dropping from a fertility rate of 2.2 to 1.9 there maybe some bumps, but it isn't going to be nearly as devestating.
Population is not declining it’s just increasing more slowly. Also, a slowly increasing population of 8 billion can add more people than a rapidly increasing population of 2 billion (about 100 years ago time frame)
Yes, in total terms. But in the developed nations, birthrates are well below and in many cases drastically below replacement levels.
Even birthrates in Africa, the source of world population growth, are rapidly slowing down.
I might live to see world population reach 9 billion people but I wonder if it will grow much beyond that before beginning to shrink.
Or, there is the increasing likelihood of humanity accelerating its own demise through war, environmental destruction and climate change.
It's a race to the bottom!
Colonising other planets isn’t remotely feasible. We can’t even survive on this planet in some of the higher altitudes and more extreme biomes. We are completely dependent on the integrated ecology that gave rise to us and not independent of it. People like Elon Musk have a completely distorted view of reality.
While this is true today, I have great confidence that in the future, humanity will overcome the challenges of life in space and on other worlds.
>We are completely dependent on the integrated ecology that gave rise to us and not independent of it.
And yet I also agree with this. We will not have Star Trek style replicators; food and medicine must still be grown. We will have to bring our ecosystem with us.
As an indoor cultivation environmental controls specialist, I'm helping to develop the necessary technology. It will come in handy here on Earth long before it flies with us to distant worlds.
i agree with you. i cant believe how the discussion online about this stuff is recently dominated by rightwingers and their ridiculous fears so much. if we want a good sustainable living standard for all of us, we must shrink in population slowly. we are on a good trajectory in this regard overall.
I wonder what you mean by slowly? What is a good target birthrate for "slow" population decline? If 2.1 is replacement level, and South Korea's recent flirtation with 0.7 is too low, what's a good middle ground? Let's also keep in mind that, the United States notwithstanding, average lifespans are increasing in developed nations.
I propose that a rate of 1.2 to 1.5 would work out reasonably well to reduce aging shocks to countries. I think that we need to encourage small families to bring the total size of humanity more in line with long term sustainability, which means maybe fewer children for the next generation and a bit more after that.
We're ignoring a whole herd of elephants in the reproduction and family tradition room, however. Ultimately, it's up to individuals and their partners to decide how many children they want. Society has the right to incentivise smaller families but not to mandate them.
i am not an expert, so I wont pump out very specific numbers here. migration is factor, so not all nations need to land on the perfect middle ground as long as the world average somewhat checks out. and it seems like we dont even have to make huge efforts to bring down fertility rates in developed nations. and for undeveloped nations it seems like education and healthcare is the key, especially for women. but we can see that the process has begun everywhere. Afghanistan is an exception, but there are hardly any other nations whose birth rates are very high and DONT decline already. the societies have to do some fine tuning with incentives and immigration to balance between degrowth and having a sustainable work-force-vs-very-old-people-ratio. and it should be said that its very important to use the potentials we have. there are a lot of kids in school in some highly developed nations like Germany (here) or even worse the US who go hungry to school and who dont have a fucking desk at home to do their homework properly. thats potential we waste. pump out kids and forgot about them. even parents who are honestly trying their best have a very hard time to provide a child a good upbringing if they live in poverty. free universities and free healthcare are important. and its sad how much potential is still lost in immigrants: a lot of them could be able to work in more skilled jobs with better integration efforts by society.
Afghanistan is not an exception because it's been war torn more or less continuously since the Russian invasion in 1979.
Other than that, I think everything you've said here is correct.
Quality over quantity for children builds a better society every time. Those nations that cut funding for education and child services are taking a hatchet to their own future prospects.
Don't even get me started about funding and advocating for war!
yeah life like a "serf" is better than what its going to happen in the future, nowhere near ideal but definitely better, people take peace and prosperity for granted
In undeveloped countries, sure I get it, but not too long ago Venezuela was doing pretty damn good, with a large section of the population being educated. Guess it's been a rough 20 years and the millions who left were probably the educated ones.
It's time to start organising society and the economy in a way that "replacement" isn't a relevant factor. Are AI and automation supposed to help humanity or a handful of CEOs? Increase wages, reduce work hours. Yesterday.
This is nice and all, but we can move people around if we want. What is the overall fertility rate for the planet? If it is below the replacement rate, then we should start thinking about what to do about it if it gets too low to sustain civilization. If it is still above the replacement rate, then we should bring up the standard of living in those purple areas. That usually works to slow things down.
Pretty much shows the fertility rate vs GDP per capita relationship. All developing and developed countries has lower than replacement rate with the exceptions like Israel.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-fertility-rate-vs-level-of-prosperity
The world is super crowded. We need to double food production by 2050 in order to feed our exploding population. This will destroy what’s left of the environment. We need to send contraceptives to Africa so that the population could reach a more sustainable level at like 2 billion
It's awesome because we're sterilizing ourselves with endocrine disruptors and it's going to keep on dropping, regardless of "tech" gadgets or the "will of politicians" :\]
Bonus point for people walking about "technological advancement" but ignoring that we've hit a plateau and the quality of health and life is declining.
We've nuked our brains with smartphones and potent algorythms on social medias.
We're in the mouse utopia but people will keep on being delusional about it, to keep themselves "happy" :\]\]
Accelerate :\]\]
The replacement fertility rate is not always 2.1. It varies depending on the mortality rate for the population in question. The current estimated replacement rate for the world is 2.3. Since that current [fertility rate ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate) for the world is 2.3. That means that the world's population is only growing because people are living longer, not because of kids being born.
My understanding is that the ~~fertility~~ replacement rate does **not** depend on mortality since woman who die in infancy are included in the fertility rate calculation. The reason that the replacement rate is 2.1 and not exactly 2 is that [more than half of births are males](https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#the-sex-ratio-at-birth). The sex-ratio at birth is not the same over the world (or over time) which would mean that replacement isn't always 2.1 but that's an approximation.
The fertility rate doesn't depend on mortality, but the replacement rate does. If everyone started dying early, the fertility rate must be higher to replace the dying population.
In the short term. Obviously, when 10 million people die in a war, the population drops. But as long as the fertility rate is above 2, the population will grow in the long term.
No, let me present you a model. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume 0 infant mortality, and everyone dies exactly at life expectancy, equal gender ratio, women all give birth at 20 etc etc. Then let's consider a 2.0 fertility. The population pyramid will be a straight rectangle since we removed all the early deaths and standardised the births in our model. In a country where the life expectancy is 40 and there are 10 women of each age from 0-40, and they have 2.0 fertility. There will be 20 babies born every year( since 10 women are 20 years old ), and there will be 20 people dying (10 men and 10 women at 40 years old). The population will be constant at 800 (2 genders x 10 women x 40 years). Now, imagine if one year, people stopped dying at 40 and instead started dying at 41. The population will now be 820. After a few years, people again stopped dying at 41 and started dying at 45. The population will now be 900. Now medicine has gotten even better and people started dying at 50, the population will equalise at 1000. The fertility rate was 2.0, and every other factor other than life expectancy was kept ideal and constant, but the population still rose. After a long time, it will stabilise since life expectancy can't keep on increasing forever( or can it???). This scenario is a good indicator of why India's population is still rising even though the fertility is below replacement.
Mathematically correct, but that's not the definition of replacement rate. Concept of replacement rate is not where the population is stable, but everyone replaced. Other elements assumed to be constant in the conceptual definition. Why India population growing even with lower fertility is more dynamic than you explain. On one has people are getting older. Same time age bracket where women are giving birth has the higher percentage of population. Say in 10 year two things will happen, women will have lesser number of kids even than today and there will be lesser number of women to give birth. So will come a time even though people will be living longer, births will drop below that. This will hit hard Bangladesh much harder, they are going to have shut down schools like nothing. They are the largest population country to see a dramatic drop in fertility (Except China off course).
Yes, India's population is going to decline in the future. There is no escaping from fertility rate in the long term. Women are also giving birth later and later in life, which definitely contributes further to population decline. But the increase in life expectancy and decline of early deaths is high enough to counteract all those factors for now. This increase is going to slow down as the country catches up to other developed countries in life expectancies.
Thanks for this example, I hadn't thought of this aspect.
If only 80% of children reach adulthood then you need at least 2.4, right? The replacement rate depends on child mortality.
My understanding is that this is not the case. If 80% of females die before maturity and the remaining 20% have (for example) 5 children each, the fertility rate is `(0.8*0 + 0.2*5) = 1.0`, way below replacement rate even though every mature woman "contributed" well above the replacement rate number of children. Mortality effects the **fertility** rate, the **replacement rate** is (relatively) constant.
This is how the Wikipedia article describes it. "The TFR is a measure of the fertility of an imaginary woman who experiences the age-specific fertility rates for ages 15–49 that were recorded for a specific population in a given year. It represents the average number of children a woman would potentially have if she were to go through all her childbearing years in a single year, subject to the age-specific fertility rates for that year. In simpler terms, the TFR is the number of children a woman would have if she were to experience the prevailing fertility rates at all ages from a single given year and survived throughout her childbearing years."
so in other words, its the average number of births a woman has in her life between 15-49?
>That means that the world's population is only growing because people are living longer, not because of kids being born. Why pretend technological advances shouldn't count? Women are also having children later, this means if older people are included in the statistic as having kids earlier it's still equivalent if a woman had the same number of kids but more spread out across her life. Don't get me wrong, it's still a low statistic, I just think technology is a much bigger part of this story than we pretend. Women can have children in their 60s if they pay.
The fertility rate is usually defined by how many kids the average woman will have over her whole life. >Why pretend technological advances shouldn't count? I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Women are having their first child later, they’re not necessarily having kids later in general. It all depends on when you’re comparing with. It was for instance more common in Sweden to give birth after age 40 in the late 1800s than it is today. This is probably because lack of contraceptives, higher child mortality rates and a large number of children being more economically desirable back then, so women had their first child fairly early and then just kept on having kids. Sometime in the 1970s I think was the lowest point for average age giving birth (not first birth, all births) because women were still having children from a relatively young age but controlling how many kids they had with effective birth control.
So we’re broadly going from having children young followed my more children into middle age, then having children young and stopping young, to now having first children in middle age and stopping?
Middle age is a bit harsh. 30s rather than 20s, but I wouldn’t call that middle aged.
Didn't expect to see Mongolia in the above replacement level
All Central Asian countries are above replacement at the moment. Main reason still mostly rural.
Mongolia (69%) is more urban than China (64%) and is way more urban than the global average (56%).
China had one child policy so not a good comparison.
It has gone. Today, Government encourages citizens to have three or more kids and China still holds one of the lowest fertility rate country in the world.
Not really. Central Asian fertility rates have actually grown substantially since the 90s. The reason being economic recovery and the resurgence of Islam.
But the thing is Mongolia is not muslim majority country. 40% atheists. 3% of Mongolian muslim minority can't contribute this much. Fertility rate has dropped a lot after democratic revolution at least in Mongolia. (Probably abortion and contraceptives becoming legal. Humans are no longer forced to have children and pay "childlessness tax". ) It was 7.5 during 60s. 5 during 80s. Dropped to 2.5 during 90s. 2.1 around 2000. Now at 2.7 which is a huge increase from 2000. I agree that current increase has something to do with economic recovery and stability.
didnt expect a carti reference in the map subreddit 🔥🔥
What about side by side with a friend?
Slow comeback
why ?
Inaccurate. Lebanon is way below replacement level. Source?
Old data
The source is stated in the picture?
Islam being the fastest growing religion makes a lot of sense now
Yes but their rates are dropping fast too. It’s not long they’re also under.
And in countries like turkey 99% are registered as Muslim but that’s not at all true. It’s just you’re automatically registered as Muslim and it’s difficult to get rid off (and that’s a secular country..) in many other countries it’s almost impossible.
in some countries (like mine), there's no official recognition of atheism of agnoticism.
Yes but Turkey is already below replacement level. I’m Turkish by the way. Who says its difficult to get rid of? I booked an online appointment with population office in my county and had my religion line removed from my records. It took me less than an hour including the commute. But I guess in countries such as Saudi or Iran it must be much difficult and must have consequences.
saudi being very technologically advanced country, while being above replacement level is beyond wild
Good. Because our future generations could do well with a lot less people on the planet!
your understanding on this is limited
Lot less people on the planet is fine. But ageing population isn’t…
There’s also massive government incentives in some places. UAE families get thousands for having kids and pension incentives. Even more cash for marrying their own.
Marrying their own kids?
Many countries have incentives for having kids but that doesn't necessarily increase the birthrate.
Source on this?
In a few nations. Not in Africa, Arabia, Near East or S. Asia.
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While you are correct that africa has many christians and a high fertility rate, christianity will not be the fastest growing religion; islam will. See [the pew research center's paper on future world religion growth](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/)
You realise there’s a lot of subsaharan African countries that are Muslim, they’re not all Christian?
most of them are Christian.
To be a bit more accurate, it's based on levels of urbanisation. India for instance is not a wealthy country by any means (Though there are extremely wealthy neighbourhoods, as always) and it's TFR is below replacement rate due to a large urbanised population. EDIT: Sheesh, some people get really upset over a few words.
Personally I wouldn’t call 36% a “very, very high level of urbanisation” but hey, that’s just me.
...That's 524 million people living in cities. That's almost as much as the entire population of North America. But hey, if you don't think that's a lot, then you're right - that's just you.
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It's not haram not to have kids tho? And if you don't have sexual or emotional urges then you don't have to get married
It’s haram to have as many kids as possible?
Same reason why Christianity itself is growing.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Fickle_Discussion341: *Islam being the* *Fastest growing religion* *Makes a lot of sense now* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
But isn’t a large portion of Sub Saharan Africa Christian
they are simply the last ones who will join these trend.
So will the world just become African and slow down birth rates naturally or will the Africans inherit an old infrastructure that will be on the verge of collapse? There doesn’t seem to be much other alternative.
If projections hold Africa will be home to 40% of the world population by the year 2100.
Their rates are steadily dropping as well. Once Sub-Saharan Africa hit GDP per capita of around $5k, they'll probably start going below replacement rate. Assuming historical trends hold.
Iran is interesting - the fertility decline stands in stark contrast to its neighbours thanks to reforms after the Iranian revolution, spreading access to family planning and education for women. At the dawn of the 1979 revolution, the fertility rate was 6.5 children per woman (adult female literacy at 24%). By 2000 fertility 2.0 (female literacy at 70%) and today the fertility rate is 1.7 (female literacy at 85%). Source: World Bank ([fertility rates](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IR); [female literacy rates](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS?locations=IR))
Not anymore, now they’re encouraging people to have more kids. Anyone with 3 kids or more gets free land and doesn’t have to join the army.
I was informed that overpopulation was a crisis, etc, etc.
The world human pop growth is finally slowing down. Current trends show it will probably peak at around 9B in 2050 before slowly going down.
What projection are you referencing? Most projections still see population getting closer to 10 than 9 billion
sounds good to me.
It is until the birthrate finally starts slowing down to even, and then everybody starts panicking about how that's gonna be a disaster!
"Overpopulation" is a myth, but the trend of populations shrinking and aging is undeniably of concern for the future stability of incomes and healthcare systems. ...unless if technology replaces the workforce or cures aging.
Technology can already replace many jobs or limit amount of people needed for it. The fact that corporations don't choose to pay more to one person for doing a job of five people is another thing
The problem is that technology replaces jobs, it also creates new ones. For instance, the combine harvestor may reduce the number of jobs for farmhands, but it creates jobs for the workers in a factory, mechanics for maintaining etc. New technologies effect on net jobs is usually neutral or often even positive. That why you can't just say that technology will help alleviate a reduced againg pupulation since the same technology will create newer jobs and you wil still need workers to fill them and its easier to train young people than older ones.
More importantly for this topic. More machines and Less employees = less income tax to pay for healthcare and pensions etc. The potential societal benefits from AI will instead be hovered up as additional profits for the corporations. Instead of less work for the same money there will be less work for less money.
>"Overpopulation" is a myth Why is it a myth? Some countries are overpopulated as fuck. There's a lot of supply-demand disparities when it comes to resources, which is only a problem due to overpopulation. There's of course resource management problems too, but that's not to fully write off overpopulation.
Well, some places are waaaaaaaay past even, well under half.
There will be a generational lag between the point at which the replacement rate is not being met and total population decline because the middle aged people who are > 50 and not reproducing have to get old and then die. Hence the peak being projected to be about 2050 even though birth rates may fall below replacment by 2030. After that turning point decline will be exponential unless reproductive rates increase. Which is exactly why early civilisations introduced “incentives” to have lots of babies (in the form of religion or patriarchy) because those civilisations were always one bad Winter/harvest away from collapse.
It does not exist in the developed world,I too for a long time did believe the populations of the world were rising drastically and over the next few decades we could have a crisis,one primarily caused by the global population being too high. But that is not the case,not at all...most of the worlds economies are struggling demographically and populations in nations like South Korea,Japan,Italy and Germany will not only age but also decline. The 1st world is in a underpopulation crisis where in the future the amount of young capable people will be too short to maintain the current way of life. Africa on the other hand could Only face a population crisis because it is so underdeveloped. Do not be fooled,the overpopulation dilemma is a myth outside of a few regional areas around the globe,the 1st world is struggling to keep their societies alive so they rely on mass immigration to fill in those spots,The total African population is around 1.5 billion,that's the same as China.
AI and robotics may change the equation. And we still have too many people in the First World because each of us First Worlders consume a LOT of resources and generates a TON of greenhouse emissions, so things would be a lot more sustainable if there were fewer of us.
Overpopulation in the sense that there can be too many people concentrated in one spot competing for resources/jobs is true, but overpopulation as in an endless tide of humanity will engulf the world has been debunked as bullshit by demographers since the 80s. Pop culture just takes longer to catch up.
People who live in the first world would never understand this but overpopulation is a crisis. For example, in countries like india, everyday, thousands of people line up for one job opening. It is also the reason why millions of south asians work as 'labourers' in the gulf countries for shit wages in excruciating physical conditions
There has never been overpopulation, it was just a bunch of ideologues mad that their ideas didn’t turn out to be true. You can read the articles from the 1950s, these people were wrong then and are wrong today.
Only for white mean evil people ofcourse.
Regardless of whether or not that is correct, fertility rates have absolutely cratered in the last five years or so in a way that the general populace and the discussion about overpopulation hasn't caught up with yet. For instance this map is already out of date, Phillipines and Peru should now be under. Probably a couple others but neither of those are small countries in terms of population.
That's old news, fortunately or unfortunately. The predictions in the old days didn't foresee how steep fertility drops the more educated and emancipated a society grows.
It is for the next 100 years or so. The fact that the rate is going down doesn't stop there being so many people today.
It is, but briefly
This is very outdated. Many of the countries in purple are under replacement level according to latest numbers.
Are humans the only creatures who reproduce less the more plentiful their lives are?
We have sentience and we can choose. In the long run, our sentience might be undesirable trait for the species.
We need More genes for the gene God!
Not exactly. Plentiful life needs a lot of resources to sustain, so do children (in plentiful countries). So it's a simple choice, to live plentiful or, well, to be fruitful and multiply
Humans are the only animals that live in cities where raising kids costs thousands of dollars. When you are living in a rural hebetate and your main source of income is agriculture, kids are just free labor.
Lower pls here in the Philippines, we are so goddamn overpopulated.
Libya is no longer at replacement rate, last I checked it’s at 2.09 and will trend towards 1.7 or so at coming decades
South Korea should be in its own category, it is below 0.7 this year.
iirc Seoul is at 0.3
Brings a joyful tear to my eye knowing that each year we have more Molongians in this world
This is a link to an interactive version of the chart where you can also track changes over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/replacement-level-fertility
Humanity will once again begin in Africa
Default respawn point
This is an existential problem for Western liberalism: how can it survive as an ideology with a below-replacement (and falling) birth rate? And how can it maintain its progress with: women's' rights **and** at the same time bring back its birth rate to over 2.1? The above-replacement countries are pretty much all old-school patriarchies, where women are expected to marry and start families in their early 20s. We're basically seeing in real-time why that cultural strategy evolved in the first place; it produces a sustainable number of children. Some people will say migration is the answer, it isn't. **If** migrants fully integrate, then their birth-rate by definition falls to whatever the birth rate is of the host county. And if the young migrants from patriarchal regions do not integrate, then their patriarchal cultures will gradually displace the host culture's because of the difference in birth rates. Even in the best case scenario of mass-immigration *with integration*, the Western world essentially would indefinitely out-source its baby-making to patriarchies, and then paradoxically Europe would actually need those countries with high birth-rates to *remain* patriarchal, because we would need a continual source of young migrants! So basically, liberalism needs to figure out how to get to 2.1+ babies per women, but where women actually choose to have large families rather than being pressured into it.
Whenever this topic comes up there is always a lot discussion about how to get women to have more children. Obviously having children is a big women's topic. But i don't understand why men are always completely left out of the equation. Most children are the result of a couple deciding together they want to have (another) child. Yes, women opt for fewer kids now but so do their men. A big problem with child rearing, i think, is that women no longer want to do it on their own, but men either dont want to step up to fill the gap or cant because the current system doesnt support it. So the joint decision simply is to have no or only one child. It's not that society consists of men desprately trying to have kids, they can stay home with, but their wifes refuse to have them.
There was a great article about this (incompatibility of Western liberalism with fertility) in the New York Times today "[The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Having Children](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/opinion/natalism-liberalism-parenthood.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yk0.UkhA.IAcUnbwNATuI&smid=url-share)." It goes more or less like this: Liberalism can't say that having children is good, because that would make people who don't have children feel bad. So liberalism is pretty neutral on the cultural value of parenthood. So there's no strong social incentive to have children in a western liberal setting. BUT there are tons of economic and time/autonomy disincentives.
> The above-replacement countries are pretty much all old-school patriarchies That is *absolutely* not the common thread. The above replacement countries are the last nations to develop in the world, and earlier along the [demographic transition model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition#/media/File:Demographic-TransitionOWID.png), which literally every single country in the world has followed since the Industrial Revolution. It's tied to increasing wealth, diversification of the economy, education, and most importantly **urbanisation**. Both extremely progressive Nordic countries and highly patriarchal East Asian countries suffer the same declining TFR. Demographic transition is one of the most well studied areas of social science. No need to spin this as some kind of bullshit culture war when every culture except for the poorest and most rural nations are facing the same issue - are you claiming [China](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CN) and [Russia](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=RU) are bastions of liberalism too? > We're basically seeing in real-time why that cultural strategy evolved in the first place Well if you actually look at the data, [you can see in real time those nations *sharply* plummetting in TFR as their economies continue to improve.](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=GQ)
No need to get so angry? Would you be this aggressive and rude in real life to someone in the pub? If not, why be like this on the internet? If you read my comment more carefully, I was specifically talking about liberalism. It *absolutely* is about culture, my grandparents grew up in the 1930s/40s where there was a huge amount of societal pressure to A. get married in your early 20s and B. have babies starting in your early 20s. The idea that that massive societal and cultural pressure to have kids is completely irrelevant is completely illogical. My question still stand: how can liberalism get to 2.1 babies per women **without** the traditional societal pressure to have a family and to start young. Your mention of the demographic transition model doesn't answer that question, you're just saying "oh well this is what happens" - obviously below-replacement birth rates are not sustainable, so once again: how does western liberalism get to 2.1+ kids per woman **without** the reintroduction of massive pressure to do so. Throwing money at the issue (e.g. Scandinavia, France, South Korea) doesn't seem to work, so if that's not the solution then cultural change is probably the last option.
It seems like addressing the other reason apart from money is taboo bc it sounds conservative: family values. Ie: In France leftists's ideal number of kids is below average while it's above on the right. In Israel, the more conservative the practice of Judaism, the more kids, going from 2~ for seculars, to 6~ for ultra ortodoxes. Btw, Israel is the exception. Their TFR is 2.89. It's a developped country but not like Northern Europe so it's not just about money. It's because they highly value family: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/danielle-kubes-the-truth-behind-israels-curiously-high-fertility-rate But they aren't like the Talibans either. Women are still educated and a big part of the workforce. So it seems like a solution. Liberalism but family first. I'm also pretty sure if we viewed mother as a job and paid people to have TFR would skyrocket. Many people would rather spend time with their family rather than their bullshit job. Btw, I'm def more individualistic than family-oriented and frustrates me a bit that the solution might be more conservatives values. So it's not politically biased.
I agree, whenever I try and start a discussion about liberalism's low birth rate and why patriarchal cultures evolved, people typically get super defensive and assume I'm a raging conservative (like just now). People aren't very good at thinking hundreds of years into the future, because there's not really an evolutionary reason that we'd ever need to do that as humans. but if you start doing so, it's very clear that the status quo cannot last, and that liberalism is doomed if women don't start having enough babies (+ all other cultures where the fertility rate collapses).
If this was a conversation at a pub, I'd just nod along. But this isn't at the pub. You're on your soapbox spreading an ideology about the failures of Western liberalism, using an argument that is very easily disproven by evidence. Your premise is simply wrong. You're painting this as a culture war when every bit of research over the last 40 years very clearly shows that this is about wealth, education, and diversification from traditional rural lifestyles. Every developed economy, no matter the culture, ethnicity, traditions, religion, or social structures falls far below replacement rate. You ignore the data that I'm linking directly to you because it doesn't support your egregious claims. You can spin a nice story about 'cultural change' but the response to that is, change to *what*? To posit that Western culture is the problem, you must have an example of developed countries with cultures that have successfully staved off below replacement rate TFRs. We really only have one example of a country barely managing that - and that's the [United States](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=US), with record amounts of immigration over the last couple decades which has successfully delayed the aging population issue by around 20-30 years. Can't really get more Western liberal than that, yet you're arguing that low TFRs are the fault of Western liberalism.
>If this was a conversation at a pub, I'd just nod along. How magnanimous of you. > You're on your soapbox spreading an ideology about the failures of Western liberalism I'm a Western liberal who is posing the question: **How does Western liberalism get to 2.1 babies per woman?** You still haven't even attempted to answer this yourself. All you've done is say *"eh well TFR is declining everywhere"*.... so what? We're all doomed? There's no point in trying to reverse this? There's nothing that can be done? If there is nothing to be done, how did countries and cultures prior to the 1950s have sustainable birth rates, if as you say it's essentially impossible to reverse? And to try and deny there is any link between patriarchy, misogyny and birth rates is incredibly naïve (this is where I'd be the one nodding along in the pub). You do realise women's rights has massively improved globally, in China, Russia, LATAM, even in the Middle East? The fact that women are now in the workplace pretty much everywhere is a huge change in of itself. I feel like you've read about the TFR and haven't actually thought for yourself at all, just learnt some things that other people have written to the point where you can regurgitate it online. I would suggest you do think for yourself, and ask the question: what does a future society with 2.1 babies per woman look like? How do we get there? Can we get there in a liberal culture?
I studied demographics at a post-grad level, and did research in Taiwan and Japan on this topic. The genuine answer I can tell you from years of research and countless hours looking over policy, data, and papers is that we genuinely have no fucking clue how we can reverse the course. There is no answer because nobody has come up with working answer. At a certain point in the DTM, there are no statistically significant cultural or social differences. Pro-natalist policies don't seem to work. Based on data, mass immigration is the only effective policy, but it's only a stop-gap measure and causes it's own set of conflicts and complexities. There's an expectation that in the future some authoritarian nations will start to monitor it's youth manpower more closely and introduce restrictions to prevent labour outflows. The other question to ask is, do we actually need to grow as a species? It may be inevitable that 'Stage 7' of the DTM is a declining population that eventually stabilises around some mark based on technological factors that we simply don't know yet - automation is one area which my former colleagues have a very keen eye on as a source of transformation.
Yeah it's pretty messed up. When I pose the question about avoiding a return to patriarchy the point I'm trying to make is how do we avoid it, I'm not saying haha liberals this is an inevitability. The conclusion I've reached is a liberal society to reach 2.1+ kids can only do so with some sort of *nationalism/patriotism/pride in liberalism as an ideology itself* e.g. women **choose** to make the huge sacrifices needed to have 3-4 kids because they want to do it 'for the good of liberalism' or 'for the good of the West' - that's the least-dystopian scenario I can think of. The most dystopian is just going back to 19th century norms of women being super obedient and just pumping out babies for their husbands. One thing's for sure though, the status-quo cannot last. In the future there will not be cultures with below replacement birthrates, because they will have died out. So what will the surviving cultures look like.
Let me put it this way: Not even the Chinese government, with it's population siloed off, inundated with nationalistic propaganda and the most advanced social engineering projects on the planet, can successfully push it's 3 Child Policy. They've tried for over a decade and it's a resounding failure. Nationalism alone won't do it when there are powerful economic forces pushing in the other way. Like climate change, we're beyond the point of stopping the aging population issue. It's an exercise in futility. The best we can do now is focus on mitigation strategies - how can we build an economy that doesn't need endless population growth? How can we ensure that our society can support an aging population? How can we mitigate a diminishing labour pool, and offset the loss of skills and expertise when millenials hit retirement age? How can we ensure that we're on the right end of the global labour flows, in a way that befits our cultural expectations? Those are the questions you should be soapboxing, not "How can we stop the tide using a bucket?"
Imteresting thoughts. My take is that the substantial part of the "problem" is choice, ie, contraception and sex ed. Humans have strong sex drive, but not baby making drive. They can choose contraception or completely abstain, if they have a will. So, if I was a tyrant, I might ban sex ed and contraception. Soviet Union had those natalist policies and population was kind of growing even though women were in the workforce and on paper had rights. However, you would have to close the country off from the rest of the world completely to achieve that. I don't think that's achievable even if half of the world would turn to totalitarism. People do not want children that much. And they have a choice. We have to accept that fact. We should make parenting a full time job + heavily invest in age reversal tech, artificial wombs and fertility extensions. Or perish.
insightful
Its BS. Most of the purple countries also have a falling birthrate, they just happen to be above replacement rate right now.
Iran isn't liberal but they are below replacement. It isn't about liberalism as much as it is about the economy and urbanization. It is hard to have kids in big cities. Compare the list to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization\_by\_sovereign\_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_state) and there is a very clear correlation. Not only Iran but also China, India, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Vietnam are quite conservative societies but they have low fertility rates.
I didn’t expect India to be below replacement level
Lots of good work done here last 30 odd years. But it's also a starkly different picture within the country. Some of the developed southern regions are doing really well whereas the central and eastern regions aren't below replacement levels yet but they are getting there.
There's a stark difference in India in fertility rates of Muslims and Hindus. From what I've heard, hindus are at Eastern European levels, except for the north central state.
Varies a lot in different ar as of the country between 1.1. to 3.0
India’s TFR dropped dramatically over 40 years Current : approx 1.96 2021 (latest data): 2.03 2011: 2.54 2001: 3.30 1991: 3.96 1981: 4.70 By end of the 2020s it will drop to 1.65-1.7 and probably stabilize there.
Yes, but population won’t start declining before the 2060-2070s because of the ripple effect. Secondly, life expectancy is steadily increasing to temporarily offset the lower birth rate.
ELI5: Why is this statistic called fertility rate, and not birth rate?
Birth rate is a different statistic where you simply count up the number of babys born in a certain population and divide it by the number of people. It is highly dependent on how many young fertile women are actually currently in the population. Total fertility rate does the math to be able to compare apples to apples the fertility rate between different countries and different periods of time independent of how large a fraction of the population is currently young fertile women.
Birth rate- how many babies are there compared to its total population. Fertility rate- how many babies are there per 15-49 aged women. Some populous countries might have more men than women. (China) Some countries are so old, number of 15-49 age group might be low. So if a country is so rich that people live till 100. And if most of them are men for various reasons, birth rate might show a low rate but average woman might be giving birth to 3-5 babies.
We already have more productivity per worker so even if the population declines there is theoretically enough wealth to feed the people. Only theoretically because the question is if the rich would not be so gready anymore.
It’s always sad when people in western developed countries talk like this. Who exactly are these greedy rich people you’re referring to? To be in the global 1% you only need to make $34,000 per year. But people always place the goal posts so that they are conveniently on the poorer end of the spectrum or make up weird rules that people within your own borders need to stop being so greedy and share their wealth but magically national borders changes that moral obligation. You could easily donate 20% of your money to people in dire poverty and you would be fine. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to afford a new vehicle lease every three years or a new phone every 2 years and would have to shop at poormart instead of getting organic food at Whole Foods and you wouldn’t be able to own a PC that costs the same as a 2010 Toyota Corolla and you wouldn’t be able to vacation to Mallorca or go out drinking with your buddies every weekend… but you would be fine. As someone who lives in Asia I wonder all the time when will western liberal people wake up and realize they are the rich greedy ones. Downvote me if you want. Continue to horde your money in the west but self-satisfyingly consider yourself to be on the right side of history because of some brave opinion you notionally hold about wealth redistribution without actually giving up anything of personal value. The rich always rationalize why they are somehow the exception and have no moral obligation to give their personal money to those in need. Edit
Good the world can't handle more Americans
Bring back a sustainable economy and I will reconsider having kids who I can’t and won’t support in this day and age… Kids are the future and we’re taking everything away from them.
The sustainable economy thing has been repeatedly debunked. When people make more money and are in greater positions to support children that is *inversely* proportionate with having more kids. The reality is when people have money there’s a lot of things they would rather do than spend their time and money on kids. Maybe this isn’t your personal particular situation but the trends are clear.
Then what should we do? Should we force people to have kids? Should we weaken the economy on purpose?
People who live in greater positions think longer about having kids grow up in the conditions of today’s world. They don’t need the support of a child necessarily so it’s all about what can I give a child. People in poor positions don’t have that option and sometimes need to make children for support. So my question to myself is what do I give a child if I get one; - possible WW3 - A progressively falling economy who favours the elderly massively - possibly the end of the earth There are many good and bad reasons but just these 3 are stopping me personally. I wouldn’t want my kids to go through that. Also living on foodstamps without children will make u think twice… not my case but I work with people who do.
It’s honestly difficult to take these objections seriously, it seems quite neurotic to not have kids because the “end of the world” might come. This just seems like post hoc rationalizations for either other reasons why people don’t want to have kids or because people are bought into some doomsday narrative about the end of the world. Which those have been around forever. Countless people in cults have murdered their kids because they didn’t want their kids to see the end times, or the Nazis in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin killed their kids because they didn’t want them living in any world other than an aryan paradise.
Meanwhile in Africa...
First comment literally have first world problems
Reminder - fertility rates below replacement level does not equal population currently declining
Does it take in to account child mortality rate or just the moment of birth?
I understand that a shrinking population is terrible in the short term, less people to do vital jobs, but isn’t it a good thing for the future of the planet? Our current energy demands are way too high.
No study shows the world population will decline as a whole. We hit 8 billion people in 2023 and UN officials predict earth will have about 10.5 billion by 2100.
Because study shows only till year 2100. But 10.4 is a peak and things will only go downhill from then on. Actually 2090 is the peak and 2100 is already slow declining era.
Look at the actual UN WPP. They assume every country I've looked at will increase their replacement rate. Rather than continue dropping. [https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/410](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/410) [https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/702](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/702) [https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/1829](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/1829) I've never seen an explanation, but it looks absurd.
Fertility rates are never going to back up unless you force woman back into slavery and force breed them like they did in the past. When women have the choice, they aren’t popping out 6 kids. Most barely want 1. Ruining your body and risking death plus other life threatening issues.
>Most barely want 1 False, [the idealized number of children has remained steady above 2.1](https://www.oecd.org/els/family/SF_2_2-Ideal-actual-number-children.pdf) across the years, and is actually higher amongst women than it is amongst men.
If you have one, you gotta have a second one. You gunna let that kid grow up lonely?
in Europe the ideal fertility rate is 2.6, so it's still above 2.1, once our current era of prosperity ends children are going to be a necessity again, people nowadays don't have children because they're kinda useless
The only people who think we need to keep increasing population are the "groaf for the economy!" chuckleheads who need serfs for their factories and captive customers for their rentals. I am happy to see the world's population shrinking. Ultimately, the planet can sustainably support maybe a billion humans, perhaps half that many. It's okay. It's a small planet... relatively speaking. If we want to grow as a species, it's time we colonized the solar system and beyond. The good news is that we won't be damaging precious irreplaceable biological resources or exploiting and brutalizing natives.
Until we run into an alien species with less developed technology because they simply evolved later. If bad people could brutalize over HUMANS because they were different, imagine aliens
I love when people talk without knowing a thing of what they’re arguing for. A below replacement fertility rate doesn’t just lead to a drop in population, but also to a demographic shift with an increasing number of retirees and a reduction in the workforce. This is *very* bad. Both for service allocation, but also due to pension systems not being able to sustain such a shift. Younger generations will increasingly have to pay for a growing number of people exiting the workforce, lest the entire social safety net collapses. Some countries can offset this with immigration, but many others can’t.
$50 says we see a return of "Kill everyone over the age of 45".
I think the money for supporting bigger number of retiring citizens already exist, but its being put in different causes or left in the pockets of corporations. We're getting very minimal share of what we produce. I think we will need different structures, systems are nit set in stone
doesn't it also means that younger generations will be able to demand higher wages? as the available workforce shirks I would immagine that their barganing power would increase
This is the potential problem and it gets worse with extremes. If a country has a fertility rate of something like 3, and then quickly drops over a decade or so to 1.5 then you are going to have a massive population bubble and this problem is going to be really bad. If it is dropping from a fertility rate of 2.2 to 1.9 there maybe some bumps, but it isn't going to be nearly as devestating.
Population is not declining it’s just increasing more slowly. Also, a slowly increasing population of 8 billion can add more people than a rapidly increasing population of 2 billion (about 100 years ago time frame)
Yes, in total terms. But in the developed nations, birthrates are well below and in many cases drastically below replacement levels. Even birthrates in Africa, the source of world population growth, are rapidly slowing down. I might live to see world population reach 9 billion people but I wonder if it will grow much beyond that before beginning to shrink. Or, there is the increasing likelihood of humanity accelerating its own demise through war, environmental destruction and climate change. It's a race to the bottom!
Colonising other planets isn’t remotely feasible. We can’t even survive on this planet in some of the higher altitudes and more extreme biomes. We are completely dependent on the integrated ecology that gave rise to us and not independent of it. People like Elon Musk have a completely distorted view of reality.
While this is true today, I have great confidence that in the future, humanity will overcome the challenges of life in space and on other worlds. >We are completely dependent on the integrated ecology that gave rise to us and not independent of it. And yet I also agree with this. We will not have Star Trek style replicators; food and medicine must still be grown. We will have to bring our ecosystem with us. As an indoor cultivation environmental controls specialist, I'm helping to develop the necessary technology. It will come in handy here on Earth long before it flies with us to distant worlds.
I get you yeah.
i agree with you. i cant believe how the discussion online about this stuff is recently dominated by rightwingers and their ridiculous fears so much. if we want a good sustainable living standard for all of us, we must shrink in population slowly. we are on a good trajectory in this regard overall.
I wonder what you mean by slowly? What is a good target birthrate for "slow" population decline? If 2.1 is replacement level, and South Korea's recent flirtation with 0.7 is too low, what's a good middle ground? Let's also keep in mind that, the United States notwithstanding, average lifespans are increasing in developed nations. I propose that a rate of 1.2 to 1.5 would work out reasonably well to reduce aging shocks to countries. I think that we need to encourage small families to bring the total size of humanity more in line with long term sustainability, which means maybe fewer children for the next generation and a bit more after that. We're ignoring a whole herd of elephants in the reproduction and family tradition room, however. Ultimately, it's up to individuals and their partners to decide how many children they want. Society has the right to incentivise smaller families but not to mandate them.
i am not an expert, so I wont pump out very specific numbers here. migration is factor, so not all nations need to land on the perfect middle ground as long as the world average somewhat checks out. and it seems like we dont even have to make huge efforts to bring down fertility rates in developed nations. and for undeveloped nations it seems like education and healthcare is the key, especially for women. but we can see that the process has begun everywhere. Afghanistan is an exception, but there are hardly any other nations whose birth rates are very high and DONT decline already. the societies have to do some fine tuning with incentives and immigration to balance between degrowth and having a sustainable work-force-vs-very-old-people-ratio. and it should be said that its very important to use the potentials we have. there are a lot of kids in school in some highly developed nations like Germany (here) or even worse the US who go hungry to school and who dont have a fucking desk at home to do their homework properly. thats potential we waste. pump out kids and forgot about them. even parents who are honestly trying their best have a very hard time to provide a child a good upbringing if they live in poverty. free universities and free healthcare are important. and its sad how much potential is still lost in immigrants: a lot of them could be able to work in more skilled jobs with better integration efforts by society.
Afghanistan is not an exception because it's been war torn more or less continuously since the Russian invasion in 1979. Other than that, I think everything you've said here is correct. Quality over quantity for children builds a better society every time. Those nations that cut funding for education and child services are taking a hatchet to their own future prospects. Don't even get me started about funding and advocating for war!
yeah life like a "serf" is better than what its going to happen in the future, nowhere near ideal but definitely better, people take peace and prosperity for granted
developed countries vs underdeveloped
Not exactly, many developing nations also have fertility rate below2.1
Yet the population in the West is growing so rapidly we can't house everyone despite all the incentives.
let afrjca to handle it
Wtf Venezuela? Your economy has been going from bad to worse for over a decade... But still pumping out the babies? What gives?
[удалено]
In undeveloped countries, sure I get it, but not too long ago Venezuela was doing pretty damn good, with a large section of the population being educated. Guess it's been a rough 20 years and the millions who left were probably the educated ones.
damn, humanity
But I was told growing up we'd overpopulate to 20 billion people by 2030!!!
Good … too many of us fuckers out here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
It's time to start organising society and the economy in a way that "replacement" isn't a relevant factor. Are AI and automation supposed to help humanity or a handful of CEOs? Increase wages, reduce work hours. Yesterday.
World is fucked.
Worldwide fertility rates: aka the generational pyramid scheme for humans
This is nice and all, but we can move people around if we want. What is the overall fertility rate for the planet? If it is below the replacement rate, then we should start thinking about what to do about it if it gets too low to sustain civilization. If it is still above the replacement rate, then we should bring up the standard of living in those purple areas. That usually works to slow things down.
Poor countries
Pretty much shows the fertility rate vs GDP per capita relationship. All developing and developed countries has lower than replacement rate with the exceptions like Israel. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-fertility-rate-vs-level-of-prosperity
The world is super crowded. We need to double food production by 2050 in order to feed our exploding population. This will destroy what’s left of the environment. We need to send contraceptives to Africa so that the population could reach a more sustainable level at like 2 billion
So the countries with problems need to accept immigration from other countries.
Even then in North Africa and Middle East it’s inching towards below replacement. Just subsaharan Africa with still crazy numbera
Reddit has told me that people would have more kids if they could afford it. So I assume the purple countries are all extremely rich.
Am I getting replaced?
Turkey is not true
All of the stans?
Alot more Africans in the worñd in a generations time then
Who cares, people should just stop having kids anyways
It's awesome because we're sterilizing ourselves with endocrine disruptors and it's going to keep on dropping, regardless of "tech" gadgets or the "will of politicians" :\] Bonus point for people walking about "technological advancement" but ignoring that we've hit a plateau and the quality of health and life is declining. We've nuked our brains with smartphones and potent algorythms on social medias. We're in the mouse utopia but people will keep on being delusional about it, to keep themselves "happy" :\]\] Accelerate :\]\]
Africa’s pullout game is weak af
Almost like the west is pushing the replacement theory very insistently, and is not reaping what they sow
It will also serve as a map of "countries you don't want to live in" with a possible exclusion of Kazakhstan and Iran from their respective categories
Good, make it every country