“The demographic winter is coming”
Our planet has arrived at a concerning demographic crossroads. Over the next 50-75 years our world’s fertility rates will fall below the level needed to keep the global population stable. In some countries, this is already happening.
“What we are experiencing now, and have been experiencing for decades, is something that we have not seen before in human history, which is a large-scale, cross-national, cross-cultural shift towards preferring and having smaller families” said Dr. Jennifer Sciubba a demographer and author of “8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death and Migration Shape our World”.
A population’s total fertility rate is defined as the average number of children born to a female, over her lifetime. Global fertility rates have been declining since 1950 to 2.2 children in 2021. More than half of the world’s countries are already below the minimum population replacement level of 2.1 births per female. This trend is even more worrisome for countries such as South Korea and Serbia, where the rate is less than 1.1 child per female. Meanwhile, sub-Saharan Africa remains high, nearly twice the global average, at four children per female in 2021.
In developed countries, fertility fell below replacement in the 1970s and has fallen even further since the COVID-19 pandemic. India recently surpassed China as the world’s most populous country last year, but its fertility is also below “replacement”. University of Pennsylvania’s Jesus Fenandez-Villaverde, an economist specializing in demographics has stated “The demographic winter is coming”.
Numerous government officials have expressed concern about declining workforces, slowing economic growth and underfunded pensions, along with the future vitality of a society with progressively smaller numbers of children. As the world is approaching a low fertility future, sub-Saharan Africa will continue to grow its population throughout the century. This “demographically divided world” will have significant impact on economies and societies, according to a study by The Lancet. A global research effort by the University of Washington’s School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates that by 2050, 76% of the world’s countries and territories will be below the replacement level of fertility. “We are facing staggering social change through the 21st century” said Professor Stein Emil Vollset from IHME. “The world will be simultaneously tackling a ‘baby boom’ in some countries and a ‘baby bust” in others. As most of the world contends with the serious challenges to the economic growth of a shrinking workforce and how to care for and pay for aging populations, many of the most resource-limited countries in sub-Saharan Africa will be grappling with how to support the youngest, fastest growing population on the planet in some of the most politically unstable, heat-stressed and health system-strained places on earth.”
“In many ways, tumbling fertility rates are a success story, reflecting not only better, easily available contraception, but also many women choosing to delay or have fewer children, as well as more opportunities for education and employment” said Vollset. Global population is expected to peak in the 2070s at around 10 billion but to then begin declining with dramatic geopolitical, economic and societal consequences.
Several countries have been struggling to reverse the fall in fertility with government policies that incentivize families to have more children. Japan has been trying, unsuccessfully, more than the rest of the world, with a succession of initiatives that included parental leave and subsidized childcare. To ease the financial burden of having children, Japan offered free maternity care and a stipend once children were born. These policies briefly improved Japanese fertility rates, but only temporarily, and in 2022 their fertility rate was back to 1.26. This year’s latest government program to increase birthrates extended monthly allowance to all families with children under 18, regardless of income, free college for families with three children and fully paid parental maternity leave. Today, Japan consumes more geriatric diapers than baby diapers.
As birthrates fall further, more countries will experience depopulation. The trend of less young workers entering employment rolls will place further financial pressure on government social benefits like healthcare and retirement systems. This is glaringly evident when you look at the United States’ Social Security program, which was created in 1935. In 1940, benefits paid totaled $35 million. Those benefits increased to $961 million in 1950, $11.2 billion in 1960, $32 billion in 1970, $120 billion in 1980, $248 billion in 1990 to over $650 billion in 2009 according to Wikipedia.
Some additional consequences will include schools struggling to fill classrooms, hospitals closing in rural regions and property values becoming stagnant. Sok Chul Hong, an economist at Seoul National University, believes there is not enough public pressure for governments and society to act. “The elderly are not interested in pension reform, and the youth are apathetic toward politics. It is truly an ironic situation” he said.
Some believe policies that encourage immigration and labor innovations, like artificial intelligence, could effectively reduce some of the impact of this significant demographic shift. Fortunately, the issue is finally getting more visibility and the public awareness needed to precipitate proactive government action for the benefit of our future generations.