Dramatic drop in fertility rates in many nations

[lpetrich]

'Remarkable' decline in fertility rates - BBC News

In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime. The fertility rate all but halved to 2.4 children per woman by last year.

But that masks huge variation between nations.

The fertility rate in Niger, west Africa, is 7.1, but in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus women are having one child, on average.

In the UK, the rate is 1.7, similar to most Western European countries.

Some of what's is making it happen:

• Fewer deaths in childhood meaning women have fewer babies
• Greater access to contraception
• More women in education and work

 Total fertility rate mentions some other likely causes:

In South Korea, a low birthrate is one of its most urgent socio-economic challenges.[40] Rising housing expenses, shrinking job opportunities for younger generations, insufficient support to families with newborns either from the government or employers are among the major explanations for its crawling TFR, which fell to 0.92 in 2019.[41][42] Koreans are yet to find viable solutions to make the birthrate rebound, even after trying out dozens of programs over a decade, including subsidizing rearing expenses, giving priorities for public rental housing to couples with multiple children, funding day care centers, reserving seats in public transportation for pregnant women, and so on.

 

[lpetrich]

An article about the US:
Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: "It's a crisis" - CBS News

New data is confirming a baby boom that some doctors expected was actually a "baby bust." Health departments in more than two dozen states provided records to CBS News, showing a 7% drop in births in December — nine months after the first lockdowns began.

Researchers say it continues a much bigger plunge in fertility in recent decades.

The number of babies the average woman in the U.S. is expected to deliver has dropped from nearly four in the 1950s to less than two today.

...
Jaspan said patients are not only worried about their health, but their finances as well.

"I get a report every morning at 5:15 about what has happened in the last 24 hours. And the first report that I see is the number of deliveries in the last 24 hours," Jaspan said. "It's less than it used to be."

...
Myers said he never expected to be talking about a global declining birth rate during his lifetime.

Asked what changed, he pointed to "the burdens of life."

"The cost of housing, the cost of education, all these things have become more and more difficult," Dowell said. "I think the boomers themselves don't realize how much harder it is for millennials today. And they think, 'Oh yeah, when we were young we had to live, you know, on very little money, and we made do, and you can do the same.' That's the story, right? Well no, it really is a lot harder for young people today. It's amazing how much harder it is."

What the US and South Korea suffer from is what many other industrialized nations likely suffer from also -- features of their economies that make it unrewarding to have children.

It is a major market failure.

 

[prideandfall]

It is a major market failure.

is it? it seems more like a perfectly natural progression for human civilization to me - in fact in many ways i'd call this a market success.
you no longer need to shit out 19 crotch fruit (15 to run the farm and the extra 4 dying to the whooping cough or whatever) to survive, children are now a luxury instead of slave labor born of economic necessity.

the natural state of biological life on this planet is for species populations to stabilize, not grow infinitely forever. sooner or later our spawn rate was going to have to taper off, and i'm honestly surprised it happened this quickly.

 

[barbos]

It's an established fact that fertility decreases with education.

 

[Bomb#20]

CBS News on Twitter: "Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: "It's a crisis" (link)" / Twitter

Okay boomer.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "The actual crisis is how entire generations are sunk w/inhumane levels of student debt, low incomes, high rent, no guarantee of healthcare & little action on climate change which creates a situation where feeling stable enough to have a kid can feel more like a luxury than a norm" / Twitter

Seriously?

Declining birth rate is action on climate change. To close approximation, your carbon footprint is equal to the number of children you have. AOC can push electric cars and high-speed rail and weatherstripping all existing buildings and massively investing in solar and wind power and whatever else she put in her green new deal all she pleases, and if she's simultaneously trying to get people to have more babies then she's part of the problem, not part of the solution.

 

[Metaphor]

CBS News on Twitter: "Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: "It's a crisis" (link)" / Twitter

Okay boomer.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "The actual crisis is how entire generations are sunk w/inhumane levels of student debt, low incomes, high rent, no guarantee of healthcare & little action on climate change which creates a situation where feeling stable enough to have a kid can feel more like a luxury than a norm" / Twitter

Seriously?

Declining birth rate is action on climate change. To close approximation, your carbon footprint is equal to the number of children you have. AOC can push electric cars and high-speed rail and weatherstripping all existing buildings and massively investing in solar and wind power and whatever else she put in her green new deal all she pleases, and if she's simultaneously trying to get people to have more babies then she's part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If guaranteed healthcare arrested declines in birthrates, countries with universal health care (like Australia and the UK) would not be seeing the same patterns as the US.

"Climate change" is a reason that makes sense to AOC, because her social group undoubtedly is full of posturers who have told her they're refraining from having children because climate change. I'd like to see a representative poll of Americans asking them if climate change concerns affected their reproductive decisions.

 

[Wiploc]

It is a major market failure.

I read that the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth may be somewhere around one billion.

This decline may be too late to save us, but you can hardly the lack of continued increase a "failure."

 

[Harry Bosch]

It is a major market failure.

I read that the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth may be somewhere around one billion.

This decline may be too late to save us, but you can hardly the lack of continued increase a "failure."

I don't know if one billion is figure! Seems a little low. But I'd more favor incenting people to have fewer kids or adopt. To incent to create more babies, when we can't adequately care for the ones that we have, and the environment can't really support, seems crazy to me.

 

[Rhea]

It is a major market failure.

I read that the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth may be somewhere around one billion.

This decline may be too late to save us, but you can hardly the lack of continued increase a "failure."

I don't know if one billion is figure! Seems a little low. But I'd more favor incenting people to have fewer kids or adopt. To incent to create more babies, when we can't adequately care for the ones that we have, and the environment can't really support, seems crazy to me.

Yeah, but Loren said "market" and the market has never cared about the human condition, or the planet's condition. So it is technically true that it is a "market" failure.

I agree with the reaction that this is not a problem. We do not have a shortage of people in any way.

 

[TomC]

It is a major market failure.

I read that the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth may be somewhere around one billion.

Here's the problem I have with this claim. It's extremely vague. "A billion" of what?

I'm confident the planet could carry 20 billion humans, if we all lived low impact lifestyles. But I'm just as confident that it couldn't carry a billion "1%-ers", in the style of consumption to which they're accustomed.

In other words, wealth inequality is a systematic problem, not easily resolved.

This decline may be too late to save us, but you can hardly the lack of continued increase a "failure."

There's also the question of when. What the planet can support is eroding as we speak. What it could support now is a lot more than it will be able to support a few years from now, due to environmental degradation.

And worse, I fully expect WWIII in the near future. A global war over shrinking resources, from fresh water to petroleum to arable land to the minerals required for high tech devices. After WWIII, fought with modern nuclear and biological weapons and other such horrors, I'm sure the carrying capacity of earth will be hugely reduced.
Again.
Tom

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Years ago the low birthrate in Italy was in the news to the point that the Pope - irony meter exploding - was getting in his two cents about how young Italian women needed to start having more children. In the end it's just economics.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Duh!

Kids are no longer unpaid farm labor.

Kids are no longer your support in your old age.

And effective contraception makes it much more a choice whether you have them or not. Most people only have kids because they want to--we are seeing a shift towards people's true desires.

 

[Wiploc]

I'm unsubscribing from this thread because of the derail.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Global declining birthrates is something that should be celebrated (or at least welcomed). It's probably one of the best things we can do to slow climate change while we look for other ways to reverse it sooner (if possible) than just relying on natural feedback cycles.

 

[laughing dog]

Getting back to the actual content of the OP, the world fertility rate is also declining (2.448 in 2020 compared to 2.468 per woman in 2018). However fertility rates differ dramatically by country with poorer countries and those with less educated females typically having much higher fertility rates. Add in climate change, and there may be dramatic migration patterns from those countries to lower fertility ones.

 

[Jarhyn]

I can't help but think "fertility rate" and "birth rate" should not be used interchangeably here.

People not wanting to have children and thus not having thrm is very different from people wanting children and not being able to have them.

This is important because the former case does not imply that anything must be done: you don't have a right to a next generation at the hands of others. YOU must embody the change you wish to see in the world.

Whereas in the latter case, there is a whole Margaret Atwood novel about that.

One just doesn't engender the personal conflicts of interest that would arise in the other, so it becomes hard to actually care about those who complain after the former.

 

[Trausti]

Isn’t the drop in fertility due in part to the modern diet and lifestyle? Lotta overweight dudes and betas drinking soy.

 

[bilby]

Isn’t the drop in fertility due in part to the modern diet and lifestyle? Lotta overweight dudes and betas drinking soy.

No, that's just (yet another) right-wing anti-reality talking point.

https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/debunking-the-soy-estrogen-problem-and-other-soy-myths/