The number of births fell shockingly last year in a number of countries. There are experts who believe that the decline of the Earth's population may occur decades earlier. In developed countries, the population may even halve by the middle of the century.
The Earth's population has increased drastically in recent decades. Seeing the great increase, those who like to extend the rising graphs to infinity, cried out that the human population will soon reach a size that the earth's resources will not be able to support. Following the data from developed economies in the last 1-2 decades, as well as the perceptible after-effects of China's one-child program, demographers are increasingly of the opinion that population growth will stop on its own in the future as a combined effect of various processes, and after that the number of the human population will slowly decrease. starts. According to the current forecast of UN experts, this may take place around 2080. However, this forecast is of course not an exact number and is the result of countless assumptions that can be considered extremely uncertain. The two most influential of these are that
how fast reproductive rates are falling in sub-Saharan Africa
and how quickly China can recover from the shock caused by the one-child policy.
As Nick Parr, professor of demography at Macquarie University in Australia, pointed out, no evidence of the latter has yet been received, despite the fact that UN experts are counting on it.
In any case, the latest data paint a terribly gloomy picture. According to a recent compilation by analysts at the British HSBC Bank, in most countries that produce monthly or at least quarterly data series on the number of live births, the number of births will decrease significantly in 2023, by slightly more than 4 percent after 3 percent in 2022. By the way, the 3 percent in 2022 is roughly in line with the rate experienced after the Covid-19 epidemic, but now it has accelerated.
According to their model, the world's population would reach its peak in 2039, more than 40 years before the date predicted in the UN's current base case scenario. In developed economies, the process may result in their population falling from today's 1.3 billion to 1.15 billion by 2050, and to 650 million by 2100. On the current trajectory, the population in an average developed market economy would be halved by the end of the century.
It is common to think that population decline only causes problems in developed economies, but this is far from the case, as the same thing is happening in many other parts of the world. With few exceptions, very many places are experiencing rapid declines in birth rates as populations become more urbanized, infant mortality rates collapse, and contraception becomes more readily available.
The situation in China is worse than previously estimated, according to recent data. The number of births fell by 5.6 percent to just over 9 million last year. Thus, the total fertility rate is only 1.02 children per woman. As a result, the population decreased by 0.14 percent in 2023, and the number of births is now 2 million fewer than the number of deaths.
Even though the number of births is still three times higher than in China, there is a danger that the same processes will start in India. Challenges and changing economic and social factors are pushing people to have children later. In addition, problems such as obesity, stress, smoking and pollution are making fertility problems worse. Although preliminary data suggest that the number of births will increase slightly in 2023, the fertility rate is already below the replacement rate of 2.1. If births started to decline, India would follow a similar pattern as seen elsewhere.
The most extreme story globally is South Korea. The number of births decreased by 8 percent in 2023, which means that the total fertility rate (in the third quarter) in the country was around 0.7 children/woman, so that it was still around 1.5 in the late 1990s was typical.
According to experts, there are basically 3 types of reasons for the drastic decrease in the number of births, which are interconnected and reinforce each other's effects. These
• social changes
• economic challenges
• healthcare
The first is perhaps the best known. Women participate in a larger proportion of the labor market, and the date of starting a family tends to be postponed. Many couples want to take advantage of the opportunities provided by a career and a higher income even before the arrival of children. In addition, according to the surveys, the pandemic and the restrictions that accompanied it only strengthened the feeling among young people that they missed out on a lot of things that still need to be experienced before starting a family.
According to surveys, concerns about climate change also play a role in the decline in willingness to have children
Problems representing economic challenges have been transformed in the last decade. In the past, it was typical that the number of births slowly decreased as the income level rose, as economic growth went hand in hand with the social changes described above. Now, however, with the drastic rise in toolkits and real estate prices, housing is becoming a serious problem for a relatively large number of young people in the developed world.
According to analysts, a 10 percent increase in housing prices leads to a 1.3 percent decrease in the birth rate, with a stronger 4.9 percent among renters.
Added to this is the fact that obesity, environmental pollution and certain bad eating habits drastically affect the fertility level in a negative direction. This is confirmed by the fact that the postponement of starting a family also works in this direction, as the reproductive capacity of both women and men decreases with age. Advances in technology may offset this, however artificial insemination programs are ineffective and currently expensive.
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