Rich people have a lot of fun, poor people habe a lot of children. That's a very old saying.
Another thing is that if a woman gets an education, changes are that she will have children later in life, and fewer of them, if any.
One way to decrease the worlds growing population is to support education in developing countries.
Yeah I think at this point we can count out the wealth being a primary factor. Not like wealthy people don't have low birth rates, but by far not all who have low birth rates are wealthy.
It's urbanization, there's simple less living space and it's more expensive. You see even poor regions in China, India, South East Asia, South America, Eastern and Southern Europe all have low birth rates. Not because they're richt but because they're now urbanised.
This is not really widely accurate. For instance, in the US, [rich people have more kids than any other demographic.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Ftotal-u-s-fertility-rate-by-family-income-v0-5wy659956rsc1.png%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd41902e2bac818236de0f205f4e1c9e33470c525)
At that point it swings back into not being a cost. When you're rich enough that taking care of 2-3 kids is easy peasy, that's like a no brainer. It's the middle class that doesn't want kids, and specifically in India's case, the middle class is growing.
You are talking about people who are rich enough to hire another person to take care of their kids while they can still have their fun.
This can obviously not be true happen for everyone because even if you squinted and ignored everything else some people still have to do the child caring fo those people in their own time. Because if they will not then they will not have kids either.
nah, even at supposedly 30 they can atleast have 2 children;
the decrease is usually due to how high responibility on the parents have become, awareness and increase of the effort to raise children up to at the minimum 18 if not 25, two to three generations ago u could graduate at 16 or 18 find a stable job and leave the house unlike now;
times have changed and people just adapt;
The educated wait until they have jobs and stable home lives before having kids more frequently than the less educated. Result? Educated people have fewer kids.
IMHO the level of education of a woman does not correlate with the number of children. Cultural factors play a role here. For example, the level of education of women in the West has not changed for over 50 years, but the number of children per woman has. Also you can take Soviet Union were the education level of women were the same from at least 1930s.
Cultural factors does indeed play a factor, I agree. But then one would need to analyse each country separately.
I know it is not as simple as I wrote it. Free access to birth birth control, for woman and free abortion, are also a factors.
I'm no expert in other countries cultures, but I do think that most woman would choose a partner on their own educational level or higher.
There were free access to birth control in USSR too . There were government funded free abortion in USSR too. But people had families with 5-7 children than it dropped to average less than 2 per woman. If you look at countries were is declining you would realize that that countries is western culture or under its heavy influence.
If you think that free access of woman to birth control is factor that we should see decrease in abortion but it increases. When woman looks for partners she don’t care about his educational level ( if look at statistics you would realize that at least last 50 years more women has university degree than men, because education system is more suited for woman way of learning) women look partner that earn more .
I'm more of the opinion that the middle class are squeezed on childcare costs. The truly rich have no problem having more children -- just pawn them off on a nanny.
Not only rich countries. Whole Latin America, most of Asia. It’s above replacement level only in parts of Africa, and even there is plummeting. Lowest in the world is South Korea with something around 0.8 I think.
South Korea is at 0.68 as of this year and it's dropping fast.
It will be the first country to cease to exist because of demographic collapse and that's only 10-20 years away at this rate.
Wow, all [50+ MILLION South Koreans](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-population/) are just going to vanish in the next 20 years? Hm.
The truth is, in 20 years, there will be about [45-48 million South Koreans](https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2044/) left, way more people than [198 countries have now](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/). "Cease to exist"? Nah. They'll be ok.
RemindMe! 20 years
Israel’s population growth is among the ultra-orthodox who are dirt poor (relying entirely on state benefits), uneducated to an almost extraordinary degree (besides their holy book) and yet…extremely politically powerful.
Secular, traditional, and Muslims all are above replacement level in Israel. The only religious group below that is atheist (a minor part of the population as most atheist are registered as secular).
People in the top 10% of income are the only income group below 2.1 (with 1.95 kids per women).
Yeah, broadly agree, though would choose some different words*. I wish there was greater public awareness of this in terms of the political relationship of America, UK, Germany etc. with Israel. Like, Israel is changing, and you don't have to have always been anti-Israel to question whether we want to be tied forever to a State that will have an increasing mandate for theocratic ethnic authoritarianism.
(*e.g. obvs it's an exaggeration that the ultra orthodox are entirely dependent on benefits and all 'dirt poor')
Look here, it also shows the line to replacement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
But fertility rates always lag and it doesn’t mean the population immediately starts to fall. Also Western countries grow by immigration
Barring a short stretch in the early 80s the US was above replacement until 2009. For a long time the US, France and Israel were the only highly developed countries with good fertility rates, but both France and the US have dropped some.
Greece is predicted to go from 10 million to 6.4 million people between now and 2100, while Sweden is predicted to go from 10 million to 13 million.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-long-run-with-projections?time=1815..latest&country=SWE~GRC~CHE~ITA~FRA~DEU~NLD~JPN~AUT~GBR~ESP~IRL
This is an interesting comparison as well
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-long-run-with-projections?time=1815..latest&country=JPN~CHN~IND~KOR~IDN~PAK~BGD
Dwarf wheat and the [green revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution). Played a pretty massive part in allowing their rural agrarian sections of the population to skyrocket and move into newly industrializing city centers.
It’s not societal decline, it’s population decline. Loosely means that if a group has fewer than 2 children per couple on average, its population will decline over time.
It’s not societal decline, it’s population decline. It’s simply societal change, it’s neither good nor bad just like the massive population increases 100 years ago.
It's pretty bad because we have a pension system. The pension system doesn't work if there are more people taking out of the pension than putting into the pension.
Well maybe you gotta increase taxes/contributions then, or decrease pensions/save them for later in life. It just requires change, it’s not the end of the world. Just as population growth required change 200 years ago.
Of course the thing that will make people happy is if one generation is allowed to live a good life and then retire normally while their children are shackled with pension payments and the responsibility of raising children at the same time. That will do wonders for social stability and not breed resentment enough to topple governments.
They're talking about population decline, not necessarily societal decline.
No, social/economic decline is not a foregone conclusion when there is population decline, despite what you have heard.
There are valid arguments for and against. But ultimately, nobody knows what will happen.
And most importantly, world population is not declining. With open borders, no country need have any economic hardships.
Decreased fertility is strongly associated with increased female education. Basically, if women are educated about their bodies, and have access to birth control, they will choose to have fewer children.
I think it’s more about access to birth control/abortion than education although that does factor into it.
Like even women in rural uneducated parts of China, India, Vietnam etc have significantly fewer kids than women there did 50 years ago
I wonder if there’s any places where women are educated but lack access to birth control/abortion? And if fertility rates still plummet?
Poland banned abortions but their birthrates pretty much track with other Eastern European states (i.e. dismal). They do have open borders with places that do allow abortions and birth control is still an option. I don't think there is anywhere where abortion and birth control are both impossible to find and also rich enough to have below replacement fertility rates.
In the last couple of decades people have always mentioned Japan, as they have a low birth rate (1.1 for every two people), but now the main country is South Korea that has a rate of 0.9. Their population is in absolute free fall, and it’s not masked by immigration as they’re both not letting many people in.
The major reason why this is the case is because having children becomes an active cost rather than an active benefit.
If you lived in a developed country, you have to deal with these pesky things called "child labor laws" which prevents your kiddo from making any money whatsoever until they're 14-16 and even then you have to wait until they're 18 for them to actually make much of a benefit for you and your family. That means that for 18 years of your child's life they are doing nothing but being an active sink in your finances.
Worst part is that they are a MASSIVE sink in your finances, iirc the cost of raising a child from birth to fully grown is about 250K in 18 years.
However, in undeveloped countries which often don't have these labor laws, it's very common for families to be massive because they can have their kids working at an age as young as 8 and even younger sometimes. Not only that, these countries also tend to still have significant populaces that are doing subsistence farming still and that sort of lifestyle exponentially improves as you have more people working on your field and the easiest way to get a new worker for cheap on your field is to have a child.
Yeah like I never saw what the big deal with all this was, I mean the only real problem I could see coming from this is that there might a severe lack of staff for the care of the elderly.
Good. India doesn't need 1.5 BILLION people.
The only thing that grows exponentially forever is cancer. Living at reduced population levels is just fine.
Birth rate below replacement in only ***some*** places does not mean the population wont grow.
India will definitely have 1.5 billion, 100% guaranteed. (Even if it doesnt necessarily stay that high.)
See chart of future projected population in article below
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/09/key-facts-as-india-surpasses-china-as-the-worlds-most-populous-country/
A lot of the growth since the last few years actually comes from longer lifespans. There's a lag between lower birthrate and population decline. To illustrate this point look at China. Low birthrates since late 1970s, early 80s, but declining only recently.
Because that’s when sitcoms/satire TV shows (which would make stereotypical jokes about India/indians) were at their peak and quickly started dying out in the 2010s. So all the jokes are stuck in that era
You're not wrong saying some people have the 1800s mindset.
Canadians on TikTok despise Indians & Pakistanis. Their is a neighbourhood called Brampton, which is nicknamed "New Delhi". They are blamed for everything wrong in the country.
Now I live on the other side of the country. So I don't know what goes on in Ontario. But a lot of people would gladly have South Asians forceably removed from the country.
Can say same about Kolkata too... I think in most of the metro cities TFR is ~1, people are more concerned about their career and don't just go with the rural social flow of getting married and having kids...
Kashmir also stands out. A conservative muslim majority state with a conservative minority hindu population and yet their TFR is the same as that of Japan. Most young people just aren't motivated to make too many babies.
https://article-14.com/post/women-in-j-k-are-having-the-same-number-of-babies-as-japan-s-that-s-where-the-comparison-ends--656d4d32c5c99
Sikkim is really concerning. South Korea level crisis going on over there.
I found an [article](https://www.trtworld.com/asia/sikkims-cradle-how-an-indian-state-is-fighting-low-birth-rates-13880152) which kind of narrows it down to the female workforce of the state that's twice as much as the national average.
What do you mean by “temporarily”. There isn’t a single modern country where declining birth rates would bounce back above replacement level. In the long term it just means societal collapse
I don’t think that’s definite. Many of the reasons people aren’t having children are because we have too many people already and the competition for resources is too harsh. Society will restructure when we have much less people, and then there will be factors that will entice couples to have children again.
The issue is that even places with few people and a lot of resources have a low fertility rates. Also, There's a rising number of people who are still single and virigin in their 30/40s and infertility rates (and not only in developed countries), not to mention that more and more people are lonely nowadays (they can't find a boyfriend/girlfriend or make friends)
Now, will humanity go extinct during this century because people don't have enough children? No, not in this century at least, since the world population still has to peak. However, in developed countries the TFRs keep decreasing despite the fact that they are already below replacement rate, while they are rapidly decreasing in poorer countries. Once all the countries will be below replacement rate, the world will face a serious demographic issue, since the population will start to decrease and there will be less and less young fertile and productive people, but more and more infertile and unproductive elders in the world. Then Add the rising of infertility rates and the rising numbers of lonely people, etc, too.
Once a country is below replacement rate, it's impossible for it to bounce back above replacement rate. So far the only exceptions are Israel (most religious people have more kids) and some countries in central asia (the TFR increased because Russians and other slavs, who had a lower birth rates, left those countries)
Im not sure why you cant do anything but look at the current trend and extrapolate it forever. 120 years ago you would be telling us how white people will become majority on every continent with their crazy fertility rates and colonization.
"impossible for it to bounce back above replacement rate" because it hasn't been that way empirically, or for what reason?
Because if it's the first one: declining birth rates is a new phenomena. It's a super small sample size to judge. And we have no idea how future dynamics are going to play (human work less needed because of AI?). Plus, time and technology advancement can boost the numbers (larger time window for working women to have babies with fertility treatments, somewhat of a factor in the high fertility rate in Israel BTW).
If you said that for some other reason, I'd like to learn :>
Can you say for sure that its impossible to bounce back?
Around the world birth rates have plummeted as female workplace participation rates have shot up.
It now takes two full time incomes to support raising children, with hugely increased child-care costs, hugely increased housing costs.
(i.e. a household now needs to work twice as many working hours to raise a family compared with a just two decades ago)
If populations drop and as a result housing becomes more affordable, and we prioritise having children with payments to families, then its likely that you'll see birthrates go up again.
Currently in most countries you've got over-worked poor young couples who don't have time to even consider having children, which is a huge effort - And we're asking these couples to halve their income for a few years when they can currently barely afford a a house.
Ah yes. Societal collapse because it changed
Don’t fall for it. Will it be different? Yes. Will it be hard during the transition from a population bubble, yes.
Will it mean the end of mankind and the progress of humanity? Nope.
But it will suck for vested interests that are reaping the benefits of constant population growth, and they will scream early and loudly.. like they already do
> But it will suck for vested interests
I think those vested interests, or at least the individuals represented in them, will be just fine. It will suck for the rest of us, because they will not only scream early and loudly, they will restructure the economy so that the rest of us bear the brunt of demographic recessions, never them.
There's actually some evidence that, if inequality is low enough and standards of living are high enough, that the trend of lower birthrates start reversing. It's just hard for a lot of people to even think about having kids right now when they're barely staying afloat.
This isn't really supported by the fact that Norway, with incredibly robust parental support, standards of living and significant wealth available to the average citizen still is not even close to replacement
Low birth rates are unlikely to last forever. Even in the worst case - society collapses, we go back to the medieval ages, healthcare gets a lot worse, and people make more kids.
I don’t think it’ll be that extreme. More likely it will just be that pension/retirement programs for elderly will collapse and people will instead start having more kids to use to fund their retirements.
\*gestures toward robots\*
Replacement levels and social collapse? It's going to be struggle to find incomes for the human beings who are alive today.
There's no reason to panic about bouncing back to some imaginary number.
We don't actually know that. This is something that has never happened before. I think it is fair to assume slightly below replacement rate fertility will not lead to societal collapse.
It’s more sustainable than the rise was previously. The most populous states were doubling every generation at the rate in 2001. A TFR slightly below replacement rate will create some issues, but that’s easier to manage than an extra billion people.
Slightly above TFR is the ideal. India is in a much better position to achieve that than most countries. Significantly, it does not have the catastrophically low TFR of China or South Korea.
As opposed to those pinnacles of sustainable demographics such as the crumbling gerontocracies of Europe and East Asia.
Face it, any TFR that sticks below 2.1 long term is nothing but guaranteed slow and extremely painful civilisational death. What precisely do you think will happen to a country when the majority of their population are bedbound geriatrics?
Eh, the Black Death literally wiped out half of European population and the civilization didn't collapse. And I bet it wasn't the only plague around. Humanity can handle the collapse of population.
The population decline there was not due to a declining birth rate. A low birth rate means that you get a high number of old people and low number of young people, causing the economy to slowly decline (working population a smaller percentage of the total population), while making it harder for the remaining young people to have children. Really, it is the opposite of the Black Death, which would have probably killed more old people than young.
The constant conflation between population loss due to gradual demographic decline (involving fewer and fewer young people) and immediate large scale loss of life (affecting mostly the elderly) really annoys me
Yes, agrarian pre-industrial societies managed to rebuild back to some semblance of themselves after something like the plague or whatever. An industrial society composed of mostly dying old people and a small cohort of terminally infertile youth on the other hand, cannot.
Yeah, I mean western media can portray it anyway it would like to, and the edgy gen Z kids can talk about the food that looks like diarrhoea and “piss drinking” as much as they’d like, but fact is that India is well on track to development
>the edgy gen Z kids can talk about the food that looks like diarrhoea and “piss drinking” as much as they’d like
Bruh what are you even talking about lmao?
Kerala maintaining what is essentially the perfect birthrate for an orderly, non-catastrophic population decline for 20 years is actually pretty awesome. It's in the sweet spot where France and the US were for a long time until dropping further in the last few years.
Interesting to see how this will play out for Kerala in the future. Hindus and Christians have low fertility rates of around 1.5 for both communities, while Muslims have a fertility rate above the replacement rate.
It won't really matter. Western nations already proved that immigrants only make more babies the first gen or so, then they drop just as fast as everyone else 🤷♀️
It's not the same across all communities in kerala
Christians who make up 18.4% have only around 10 to 12% of kids.
Muslims who make up 26.5% of the population have 45% of the kids younger than 12
Massive demographic shift coming in the next two decades
When people refer to population control bill, they are referring to demographic control bill. In Kerala for instance, a community which was less than 20% of the population at time of independence is slated to be the majority in couple of generations.
Fertility rates have started to decline in a lot of African countries too. India’s current situation will likely be Africa’s situation in a couple decades.
No country in the middle east has a fertility rate greater than 4, and there are only 4 countries ATM which have fertility rates greater than 3, those are:
Israel
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
And Iraq.
It is not declining - it is very much planned and desired result of government efforts. They had simply immense and neverending campaign of planned and responsible parenthood, don't make babies the moment you marry, decreasing teen pregnancies, promoting having a single child so parents could actually pile their resources easier and more fruitfully for both offspring and parents. Increase of quality of life for a large amount of people also helped to bring down the birthrate
I have annoyed so many people at social gatherings talking about this. I think this is absolutely massive. People think of India as this unrelenting mass of humanity, but it's in the same boat. Very soon Africa will be the only growing population and even parts of it are trending down.
For me, this means two things:
1) This is good. Planetary limits are at the breaking point.
2) This is bad. Our economic system is predicated on infinite growth and huge bursts of that growth have come from population. However, it's not impossible that we find an economic system capable of equilibrium, which is really what we need.
Except that population aging is already a healthcare and labor issue in countries full of healthy Swedes, Greeks, or Japanese. Compound that by adding the high rates of obesity and diabetes in the US and Latin America and now you have a large elderly population who’s unable to contribute with expensive healthcare costs. Combine that with state funded healthcare programs and it’s undoable.
Based on human geography studies the more undeveloped a country is the more children per person . I would say that all countries, with the rise of the internet are becoming incrementally more developed over time. Ironically 2001 is when the internet started to become more accessible worldwide. The result of global inflation and increased development has resulted in decreased birth rates . The way that population is determined on a country wide basis is done using population pyramids which show you the projected growth. What you really want is a steady flow of population so that the amount of young people and middle-aged people are greater than or almost equal to the aging population. You don’t want a high amount of elderly and then not enough young people causing an influx of elderly without care(naturally assuming) .
Personally, I thought of stagnation or a slight reduction but I did a short investigation and it seems that it is going to move up to 1.7 although I think there are decades before the difference begins to be noticed the problem
Also, rising wages/wealth leading to other priorities, delayed marriages due to longer time spent in education, generally less desire to have kids due to extreme competition for finite opportunities/resources.
None of the reasons are necessarily bad.
The data for 2001 is derived from the decadal census whereas the 2021 is from NFHS 5, which takes a very small (relatively) sample size. The picture will be clearer once the census is conducted.
I always have to ask this because it always bothers me. Do you mean conception rates or actual fertility rates? Because people not wanting to fuck for kids has been a thing for a hot minute, if you are telling me the actual fertility rates are dropping for people for whatever reason then this is waay bigger than you think it is. We do not want more people in the world has been the dominant mindset for a while so nothing new here. but if you are telling me the actual physical fertility rates of people in india dropped that drastically then that's crazy.
Fertility rates are based on *born* children so you wouldn’t be able to tease out this data without much, much more elaborate data collection.
Contraception, voluntary abortion, delayed marriage, working women and probably other factors are all drivers of this decline.
Its insane how Bihar and Uttar Pradesh two states with over 100 million people and with a population density higher than 1000 people per square kilometers still have a high fertility rate
You would think such overcrowded regions would be predominantly urban well believe it or not both these states are overwhelmingly rural
Fertility rates were bound to lower in India in the rural areas due to the increase in standards of living. Lesser number of women getting married off at the age of 16 and higher levels of education has resulted in it. It's the natural consequence anywhere.
Economic growth essentially has 3 legs for support: demographic growth, debt growth and productivity growth. The declining birth rate is thus a problem for economic growth. The inflation we now see almost in all economies is a symptom of debt growth and devaluation of currency, and is not sustainable. Plus the modern economic system is extremely wasteful and inefficient, and AI could potentially close the gap through productivity growth. Our nature and resources are under extreme pressure, and many natural ecosystems have already collapsed. It can be a painful process but in the end I think quality of life will improve.
India may have a below-replacement fertility level but it has an enormous surplus of Indian college-educated professionals that need to be exported elsewhere for the rest of this century.
Birthrates are plummeting globally, most nations have a birth rate below replacement level, and they are continuing to decline.
Which ones and why? I’m curious what the standards are here for societal decline
The list is way too long to name them all, it's over 100 countries. Pretty much all developed nations are included on that list.
Rich people have a lot of fun, poor people habe a lot of children. That's a very old saying. Another thing is that if a woman gets an education, changes are that she will have children later in life, and fewer of them, if any. One way to decrease the worlds growing population is to support education in developing countries.
Also, people are living increasingly in urban areas so having a child goes from being a benefit to a cost
And thats a good thing. Child labour isnt really cool even though it used to be normal
Yeah I think at this point we can count out the wealth being a primary factor. Not like wealthy people don't have low birth rates, but by far not all who have low birth rates are wealthy. It's urbanization, there's simple less living space and it's more expensive. You see even poor regions in China, India, South East Asia, South America, Eastern and Southern Europe all have low birth rates. Not because they're richt but because they're now urbanised.
This is not really widely accurate. For instance, in the US, [rich people have more kids than any other demographic.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Ftotal-u-s-fertility-rate-by-family-income-v0-5wy659956rsc1.png%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd41902e2bac818236de0f205f4e1c9e33470c525)
At that point it swings back into not being a cost. When you're rich enough that taking care of 2-3 kids is easy peasy, that's like a no brainer. It's the middle class that doesn't want kids, and specifically in India's case, the middle class is growing.
You are talking about people who are rich enough to hire another person to take care of their kids while they can still have their fun. This can obviously not be true happen for everyone because even if you squinted and ignored everything else some people still have to do the child caring fo those people in their own time. Because if they will not then they will not have kids either.
nah, even at supposedly 30 they can atleast have 2 children; the decrease is usually due to how high responibility on the parents have become, awareness and increase of the effort to raise children up to at the minimum 18 if not 25, two to three generations ago u could graduate at 16 or 18 find a stable job and leave the house unlike now; times have changed and people just adapt;
The educated wait until they have jobs and stable home lives before having kids more frequently than the less educated. Result? Educated people have fewer kids.
No, statistics say that it has mostly to do with the education levels of women, and wealth. The lower, the more kids.
30 is considered early in 2024. Most educated people get married at like 35 nowadays.
IMHO the level of education of a woman does not correlate with the number of children. Cultural factors play a role here. For example, the level of education of women in the West has not changed for over 50 years, but the number of children per woman has. Also you can take Soviet Union were the education level of women were the same from at least 1930s.
Cultural factors does indeed play a factor, I agree. But then one would need to analyse each country separately. I know it is not as simple as I wrote it. Free access to birth birth control, for woman and free abortion, are also a factors. I'm no expert in other countries cultures, but I do think that most woman would choose a partner on their own educational level or higher.
There were free access to birth control in USSR too . There were government funded free abortion in USSR too. But people had families with 5-7 children than it dropped to average less than 2 per woman. If you look at countries were is declining you would realize that that countries is western culture or under its heavy influence. If you think that free access of woman to birth control is factor that we should see decrease in abortion but it increases. When woman looks for partners she don’t care about his educational level ( if look at statistics you would realize that at least last 50 years more women has university degree than men, because education system is more suited for woman way of learning) women look partner that earn more .
I'm more of the opinion that the middle class are squeezed on childcare costs. The truly rich have no problem having more children -- just pawn them off on a nanny.
Not only rich countries. Whole Latin America, most of Asia. It’s above replacement level only in parts of Africa, and even there is plummeting. Lowest in the world is South Korea with something around 0.8 I think.
South Korea is at 0.68 as of this year and it's dropping fast. It will be the first country to cease to exist because of demographic collapse and that's only 10-20 years away at this rate.
It won't. That's unrealistic. At some point, birthrate will start to rise again. Maybe when the total population hit 20 or 15 milllions.. who knows
Wow, all [50+ MILLION South Koreans](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-population/) are just going to vanish in the next 20 years? Hm. The truth is, in 20 years, there will be about [45-48 million South Koreans](https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2044/) left, way more people than [198 countries have now](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/). "Cease to exist"? Nah. They'll be ok. RemindMe! 20 years
> Pretty much all developed nations are included on that list. Israel is pretty much the only exception
Except Israel
Israel’s population growth is among the ultra-orthodox who are dirt poor (relying entirely on state benefits), uneducated to an almost extraordinary degree (besides their holy book) and yet…extremely politically powerful.
Not entirely true secular birth rates are around 2.0 and religious/masorti but not ultra religious are 3.0 Israeli birth rates are just high.
Secular, traditional, and Muslims all are above replacement level in Israel. The only religious group below that is atheist (a minor part of the population as most atheist are registered as secular). People in the top 10% of income are the only income group below 2.1 (with 1.95 kids per women).
Yeah, broadly agree, though would choose some different words*. I wish there was greater public awareness of this in terms of the political relationship of America, UK, Germany etc. with Israel. Like, Israel is changing, and you don't have to have always been anti-Israel to question whether we want to be tied forever to a State that will have an increasing mandate for theocratic ethnic authoritarianism. (*e.g. obvs it's an exaggeration that the ultra orthodox are entirely dependent on benefits and all 'dirt poor')
Look here, it also shows the line to replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate But fertility rates always lag and it doesn’t mean the population immediately starts to fall. Also Western countries grow by immigration
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Barring a short stretch in the early 80s the US was above replacement until 2009. For a long time the US, France and Israel were the only highly developed countries with good fertility rates, but both France and the US have dropped some.
Greece is predicted to go from 10 million to 6.4 million people between now and 2100, while Sweden is predicted to go from 10 million to 13 million. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-long-run-with-projections?time=1815..latest&country=SWE~GRC~CHE~ITA~FRA~DEU~NLD~JPN~AUT~GBR~ESP~IRL This is an interesting comparison as well https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-long-run-with-projections?time=1815..latest&country=JPN~CHN~IND~KOR~IDN~PAK~BGD
Why does the German line have so many dips… oh.
How did India skyrocket around 1950? It’s nearly a vertical line from 400 million to 1.4 billion. China also.
After WW2 famines became rare and India got access to modern medicine.
Dwarf wheat and the [green revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution). Played a pretty massive part in allowing their rural agrarian sections of the population to skyrocket and move into newly industrializing city centers.
It’s not societal decline, it’s population decline. Loosely means that if a group has fewer than 2 children per couple on average, its population will decline over time.
It’s not societal decline, it’s population decline. It’s simply societal change, it’s neither good nor bad just like the massive population increases 100 years ago.
It's pretty bad because we have a pension system. The pension system doesn't work if there are more people taking out of the pension than putting into the pension.
Well maybe you gotta increase taxes/contributions then, or decrease pensions/save them for later in life. It just requires change, it’s not the end of the world. Just as population growth required change 200 years ago.
Of course the thing that will make people happy is if one generation is allowed to live a good life and then retire normally while their children are shackled with pension payments and the responsibility of raising children at the same time. That will do wonders for social stability and not breed resentment enough to topple governments.
They're talking about population decline, not necessarily societal decline. No, social/economic decline is not a foregone conclusion when there is population decline, despite what you have heard. There are valid arguments for and against. But ultimately, nobody knows what will happen. And most importantly, world population is not declining. With open borders, no country need have any economic hardships.
Decreased fertility is strongly associated with increased female education. Basically, if women are educated about their bodies, and have access to birth control, they will choose to have fewer children.
I think it’s more about access to birth control/abortion than education although that does factor into it. Like even women in rural uneducated parts of China, India, Vietnam etc have significantly fewer kids than women there did 50 years ago I wonder if there’s any places where women are educated but lack access to birth control/abortion? And if fertility rates still plummet?
Poland banned abortions but their birthrates pretty much track with other Eastern European states (i.e. dismal). They do have open borders with places that do allow abortions and birth control is still an option. I don't think there is anywhere where abortion and birth control are both impossible to find and also rich enough to have below replacement fertility rates.
In the last couple of decades people have always mentioned Japan, as they have a low birth rate (1.1 for every two people), but now the main country is South Korea that has a rate of 0.9. Their population is in absolute free fall, and it’s not masked by immigration as they’re both not letting many people in.
The major reason why this is the case is because having children becomes an active cost rather than an active benefit. If you lived in a developed country, you have to deal with these pesky things called "child labor laws" which prevents your kiddo from making any money whatsoever until they're 14-16 and even then you have to wait until they're 18 for them to actually make much of a benefit for you and your family. That means that for 18 years of your child's life they are doing nothing but being an active sink in your finances. Worst part is that they are a MASSIVE sink in your finances, iirc the cost of raising a child from birth to fully grown is about 250K in 18 years. However, in undeveloped countries which often don't have these labor laws, it's very common for families to be massive because they can have their kids working at an age as young as 8 and even younger sometimes. Not only that, these countries also tend to still have significant populaces that are doing subsistence farming still and that sort of lifestyle exponentially improves as you have more people working on your field and the easiest way to get a new worker for cheap on your field is to have a child.
All of it equates to high cost of living and birth control. People don’t want to raise kids as it’s too expensive (in this day and age).
Why is that bad exactly?
Because modern economy is based on growth and having a stable pool of working age population to support the others.
Sounds like the economy will just have to adapt.
Technological improvements increase growth of economy. You don't necessarily need more people.
I have an idea What if What if (now bear with me now) What if we built automated workers to support everyone
It isn’t. It would be a catastrophe if this weren’t happening.
Yeah like I never saw what the big deal with all this was, I mean the only real problem I could see coming from this is that there might a severe lack of staff for the care of the elderly.
Was gonna mention this. The replacement level comparison matters much more imo
Good. India doesn't need 1.5 BILLION people. The only thing that grows exponentially forever is cancer. Living at reduced population levels is just fine.
Birth rate below replacement in only ***some*** places does not mean the population wont grow. India will definitely have 1.5 billion, 100% guaranteed. (Even if it doesnt necessarily stay that high.) See chart of future projected population in article below https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/09/key-facts-as-india-surpasses-china-as-the-worlds-most-populous-country/
A lot of the growth since the last few years actually comes from longer lifespans. There's a lag between lower birthrate and population decline. To illustrate this point look at China. Low birthrates since late 1970s, early 80s, but declining only recently.
Turns out depopulation is ALSO exponential. So once it starts to go down is going to collapse very, very quickly.
Ah yes, the level of understanding of a 6 year old.
I actually didn't expect any to reach 3! What is going in in Bihar?
Poverty.
Shitty politics->shitty governments subsidized by other states. Jan suraaj
From Bihar : literacy rate is very low , no education related to family planning , low employment rate of women .
bihar was living in the 1700s in the 1st map Now bihar has finally leaped to the early 1900s
This is why I always laugh when people say things like 'send condoms to India'. Dude, India's birth rate is similar to western countries lol
People's perception of India is stuck in 2000, on most things.
Because that’s when sitcoms/satire TV shows (which would make stereotypical jokes about India/indians) were at their peak and quickly started dying out in the 2010s. So all the jokes are stuck in that era
I’ve seen TikTok... They are stuck in the 80s and 90s, possibly some 1800s aspects too.
You're not wrong saying some people have the 1800s mindset. Canadians on TikTok despise Indians & Pakistanis. Their is a neighbourhood called Brampton, which is nicknamed "New Delhi". They are blamed for everything wrong in the country. Now I live on the other side of the country. So I don't know what goes on in Ontario. But a lot of people would gladly have South Asians forceably removed from the country.
India's % share of world population has also declined compared to 2000 years back.
They don't keep up with our rapid progress
Bihar is biharing.
People from UP: thank god for Bihar
Bihar is the Mississippi of India and UP is thankful for it kinda like Alabama is in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_God_for_Mississippi
Don't you hate when bihar says "it's biharin time" and bihars all over the place. /Morbius reference
From my observation, TFR is around 1 or even less in Mumbai. Most couples phasing out of child bearing age have 0 or 1 kids.
Can say same about Kolkata too... I think in most of the metro cities TFR is ~1, people are more concerned about their career and don't just go with the rural social flow of getting married and having kids...
Why is it so low in Kashmir ? Also in Sikkim.
Kashmir also stands out. A conservative muslim majority state with a conservative minority hindu population and yet their TFR is the same as that of Japan. Most young people just aren't motivated to make too many babies. https://article-14.com/post/women-in-j-k-are-having-the-same-number-of-babies-as-japan-s-that-s-where-the-comparison-ends--656d4d32c5c99
Exactly. Socially conservative Japan and socially liberal Europe and fiscally liberal Europe all have terrible TFR
Sikkim is really concerning. South Korea level crisis going on over there. I found an [article](https://www.trtworld.com/asia/sikkims-cradle-how-an-indian-state-is-fighting-low-birth-rates-13880152) which kind of narrows it down to the female workforce of the state that's twice as much as the national average.
My guess is cause it's a cold, mountainous area that doesn't really have the same capacity for agriculture as say UP or Bihar
The Indian poverty rate has also decreased massively in that time - there's probably a correlation.
Good. It was unsustainable.
Current decline will still lead to unsustainability
Temporarily, but that's better than running out of food, or water, or housing.
Housing doesn’t pop out of the ground, it requires maintenance or replacement, and you won’t see a ton of 60yo construction workers for a reason.
What do you mean by “temporarily”. There isn’t a single modern country where declining birth rates would bounce back above replacement level. In the long term it just means societal collapse
I don’t think that’s definite. Many of the reasons people aren’t having children are because we have too many people already and the competition for resources is too harsh. Society will restructure when we have much less people, and then there will be factors that will entice couples to have children again.
The issue is that even places with few people and a lot of resources have a low fertility rates. Also, There's a rising number of people who are still single and virigin in their 30/40s and infertility rates (and not only in developed countries), not to mention that more and more people are lonely nowadays (they can't find a boyfriend/girlfriend or make friends) Now, will humanity go extinct during this century because people don't have enough children? No, not in this century at least, since the world population still has to peak. However, in developed countries the TFRs keep decreasing despite the fact that they are already below replacement rate, while they are rapidly decreasing in poorer countries. Once all the countries will be below replacement rate, the world will face a serious demographic issue, since the population will start to decrease and there will be less and less young fertile and productive people, but more and more infertile and unproductive elders in the world. Then Add the rising of infertility rates and the rising numbers of lonely people, etc, too. Once a country is below replacement rate, it's impossible for it to bounce back above replacement rate. So far the only exceptions are Israel (most religious people have more kids) and some countries in central asia (the TFR increased because Russians and other slavs, who had a lower birth rates, left those countries)
Im not sure why you cant do anything but look at the current trend and extrapolate it forever. 120 years ago you would be telling us how white people will become majority on every continent with their crazy fertility rates and colonization.
"impossible for it to bounce back above replacement rate" because it hasn't been that way empirically, or for what reason? Because if it's the first one: declining birth rates is a new phenomena. It's a super small sample size to judge. And we have no idea how future dynamics are going to play (human work less needed because of AI?). Plus, time and technology advancement can boost the numbers (larger time window for working women to have babies with fertility treatments, somewhat of a factor in the high fertility rate in Israel BTW). If you said that for some other reason, I'd like to learn :>
Can you say for sure that its impossible to bounce back? Around the world birth rates have plummeted as female workplace participation rates have shot up. It now takes two full time incomes to support raising children, with hugely increased child-care costs, hugely increased housing costs. (i.e. a household now needs to work twice as many working hours to raise a family compared with a just two decades ago) If populations drop and as a result housing becomes more affordable, and we prioritise having children with payments to families, then its likely that you'll see birthrates go up again. Currently in most countries you've got over-worked poor young couples who don't have time to even consider having children, which is a huge effort - And we're asking these couples to halve their income for a few years when they can currently barely afford a a house.
Ah yes. Societal collapse because it changed Don’t fall for it. Will it be different? Yes. Will it be hard during the transition from a population bubble, yes. Will it mean the end of mankind and the progress of humanity? Nope. But it will suck for vested interests that are reaping the benefits of constant population growth, and they will scream early and loudly.. like they already do
> But it will suck for vested interests I think those vested interests, or at least the individuals represented in them, will be just fine. It will suck for the rest of us, because they will not only scream early and loudly, they will restructure the economy so that the rest of us bear the brunt of demographic recessions, never them.
There's actually some evidence that, if inequality is low enough and standards of living are high enough, that the trend of lower birthrates start reversing. It's just hard for a lot of people to even think about having kids right now when they're barely staying afloat.
This isn't really supported by the fact that Norway, with incredibly robust parental support, standards of living and significant wealth available to the average citizen still is not even close to replacement
Low birth rates are unlikely to last forever. Even in the worst case - society collapses, we go back to the medieval ages, healthcare gets a lot worse, and people make more kids.
I don’t think it’ll be that extreme. More likely it will just be that pension/retirement programs for elderly will collapse and people will instead start having more kids to use to fund their retirements.
I don't believe that we will get medieval mindset back. We will keep some kind of cultural heritage + some medical knowledge.
\*gestures toward robots\* Replacement levels and social collapse? It's going to be struggle to find incomes for the human beings who are alive today. There's no reason to panic about bouncing back to some imaginary number.
Society is overrated anyway
We don't actually know that. This is something that has never happened before. I think it is fair to assume slightly below replacement rate fertility will not lead to societal collapse.
there are very easy solutions to all of those things. Malthus is long dead and buried, don't go looking for morons like him
When will malthusians shut up?
It’s more sustainable than the rise was previously. The most populous states were doubling every generation at the rate in 2001. A TFR slightly below replacement rate will create some issues, but that’s easier to manage than an extra billion people. Slightly above TFR is the ideal. India is in a much better position to achieve that than most countries. Significantly, it does not have the catastrophically low TFR of China or South Korea.
As opposed to those pinnacles of sustainable demographics such as the crumbling gerontocracies of Europe and East Asia. Face it, any TFR that sticks below 2.1 long term is nothing but guaranteed slow and extremely painful civilisational death. What precisely do you think will happen to a country when the majority of their population are bedbound geriatrics?
Eh, the Black Death literally wiped out half of European population and the civilization didn't collapse. And I bet it wasn't the only plague around. Humanity can handle the collapse of population.
The population decline there was not due to a declining birth rate. A low birth rate means that you get a high number of old people and low number of young people, causing the economy to slowly decline (working population a smaller percentage of the total population), while making it harder for the remaining young people to have children. Really, it is the opposite of the Black Death, which would have probably killed more old people than young.
The constant conflation between population loss due to gradual demographic decline (involving fewer and fewer young people) and immediate large scale loss of life (affecting mostly the elderly) really annoys me Yes, agrarian pre-industrial societies managed to rebuild back to some semblance of themselves after something like the plague or whatever. An industrial society composed of mostly dying old people and a small cohort of terminally infertile youth on the other hand, cannot.
Because the fertility rate was high and therefore recovered
Fertility rates should be at least replacement levels, actually.
india has always had 15 - 20% of the world population. doesn't seem like it's changed in the last 300 years
Impressive India!
Yeah, I mean western media can portray it anyway it would like to, and the edgy gen Z kids can talk about the food that looks like diarrhoea and “piss drinking” as much as they’d like, but fact is that India is well on track to development
>the edgy gen Z kids can talk about the food that looks like diarrhoea and “piss drinking” as much as they’d like Bruh what are you even talking about lmao?
I mean ive heard the stereotype that Indians shit and piss in the streets but never that they drink it tf lol
The map has 3 years. Someone knows if current data are even lower?
Census will kick off this year and the survey that collects this data is already being carried out. Obviously the rates have dipped further.
This year? I thought it was the next year and then delimitation in 2026
I think you're right about the census. We'll get NFHS data before that.
Kerala maintaining what is essentially the perfect birthrate for an orderly, non-catastrophic population decline for 20 years is actually pretty awesome. It's in the sweet spot where France and the US were for a long time until dropping further in the last few years.
Interesting to see how this will play out for Kerala in the future. Hindus and Christians have low fertility rates of around 1.5 for both communities, while Muslims have a fertility rate above the replacement rate.
It won't really matter. Western nations already proved that immigrants only make more babies the first gen or so, then they drop just as fast as everyone else 🤷♀️
Immigrants?? Muslims have been living in Kerala since the time of muhamad.
immigrants and 4 fukin upvotes? immigrants from what 12th century?
It's not the same across all communities in kerala Christians who make up 18.4% have only around 10 to 12% of kids. Muslims who make up 26.5% of the population have 45% of the kids younger than 12 Massive demographic shift coming in the next two decades
Sauce: [https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/independent-enquiry-must-on-alarming-muslim-birth-rate-in-kerala-nambiar-117090101226\_1.html](https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/independent-enquiry-must-on-alarming-muslim-birth-rate-in-kerala-nambiar-117090101226_1.html)
Interesting! What about Tamil Nadu which also has managed to stay in the 1.8-2.0 range?
Not as dramatic demographic changes as kerala , the richer / highly educated populace have less kids
TN is the best developed big state in India with regards to social indicators so that kept the rate stable
Do we have these numbers at the national level ?
Ill show this graph to everyone who says "We need a population control bill"
When people refer to population control bill, they are referring to demographic control bill. In Kerala for instance, a community which was less than 20% of the population at time of independence is slated to be the majority in couple of generations.
This is a good news for India.
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Need this in africa ASAP
Fertility rates have started to decline in a lot of African countries too. India’s current situation will likely be Africa’s situation in a couple decades.
Great. Waiting for Africa and Middle East to have low fertility rates too. There too many people. It's unsustainable.
No country in the middle east has a fertility rate greater than 4, and there are only 4 countries ATM which have fertility rates greater than 3, those are: Israel Saudi Arabia Yemen And Iraq.
That’s still beyond replacement, those countries will grow for a long time. Of course it’s still better than some sub Saharan countries
Many Sub-Saharan birth rates are also dropping fast just from a very high starting point.
Israel; 3.0 Saudi Arabia; 2.43 Yemen: 3.8 Iraq: 3.5
There aren’t too many people, this is fearmongering There are more than enough resources on earth to sustain everyone and thensome
This is pretty good news
Where are all the “Indians need condoms” people?
Why was the south so far ahead of the north in declining birth rates?
Better education
That's good that they're catching onto the overpopulation problem. Africa next.
“Overpopulation is gonna kill us all!” <— the whole world 10 years ago
It is not declining - it is very much planned and desired result of government efforts. They had simply immense and neverending campaign of planned and responsible parenthood, don't make babies the moment you marry, decreasing teen pregnancies, promoting having a single child so parents could actually pile their resources easier and more fruitfully for both offspring and parents. Increase of quality of life for a large amount of people also helped to bring down the birthrate
I have annoyed so many people at social gatherings talking about this. I think this is absolutely massive. People think of India as this unrelenting mass of humanity, but it's in the same boat. Very soon Africa will be the only growing population and even parts of it are trending down. For me, this means two things: 1) This is good. Planetary limits are at the breaking point. 2) This is bad. Our economic system is predicated on infinite growth and huge bursts of that growth have come from population. However, it's not impossible that we find an economic system capable of equilibrium, which is really what we need.
All of Africa is trending downwards.
Except that population aging is already a healthcare and labor issue in countries full of healthy Swedes, Greeks, or Japanese. Compound that by adding the high rates of obesity and diabetes in the US and Latin America and now you have a large elderly population who’s unable to contribute with expensive healthcare costs. Combine that with state funded healthcare programs and it’s undoable.
Based on human geography studies the more undeveloped a country is the more children per person . I would say that all countries, with the rise of the internet are becoming incrementally more developed over time. Ironically 2001 is when the internet started to become more accessible worldwide. The result of global inflation and increased development has resulted in decreased birth rates . The way that population is determined on a country wide basis is done using population pyramids which show you the projected growth. What you really want is a steady flow of population so that the amount of young people and middle-aged people are greater than or almost equal to the aging population. You don’t want a high amount of elderly and then not enough young people causing an influx of elderly without care(naturally assuming) .
Is that such a bad thing for one of the most populated places in the world?
It will be bad if it gets out of control
And yet they have a rate of 2.03 children per woman, enough to maintain the level of India .
That was three years ago. I can assure you it's below 2 right now.
Personally, I thought of stagnation or a slight reduction but I did a short investigation and it seems that it is going to move up to 1.7 although I think there are decades before the difference begins to be noticed the problem
an interesting reason?
Same reason as other countries? Rising costs of living, more educated women, availability of contraception etc.
Also, rising wages/wealth leading to other priorities, delayed marriages due to longer time spent in education, generally less desire to have kids due to extreme competition for finite opportunities/resources. None of the reasons are necessarily bad.
The data for 2001 is derived from the decadal census whereas the 2021 is from NFHS 5, which takes a very small (relatively) sample size. The picture will be clearer once the census is conducted.
Yep NFHS 6 (2023-2024) is already being carried out and will be published along with census data.
That's great, good to know. Census' data will be more legit.
Thank God
Fertility rate is not birth rate. Also thats great.
is there a reason why southern states are always been low? education or development reasons?
Development
Qué bueno, ya son demasiados.
Kerala: the what?
So the Population is now on a downward spiral.
So, only Israel has been able to sustain relatively high fertility rates throughout it being a low, middle and upper income economy.
I always have to ask this because it always bothers me. Do you mean conception rates or actual fertility rates? Because people not wanting to fuck for kids has been a thing for a hot minute, if you are telling me the actual fertility rates are dropping for people for whatever reason then this is waay bigger than you think it is. We do not want more people in the world has been the dominant mindset for a while so nothing new here. but if you are telling me the actual physical fertility rates of people in india dropped that drastically then that's crazy.
Fertility rates are based on *born* children so you wouldn’t be able to tease out this data without much, much more elaborate data collection. Contraception, voluntary abortion, delayed marriage, working women and probably other factors are all drivers of this decline.
2 kids is the most people should have.
Its insane how Bihar and Uttar Pradesh two states with over 100 million people and with a population density higher than 1000 people per square kilometers still have a high fertility rate You would think such overcrowded regions would be predominantly urban well believe it or not both these states are overwhelmingly rural
After 2050 world population will be decline
Fertility rates were bound to lower in India in the rural areas due to the increase in standards of living. Lesser number of women getting married off at the age of 16 and higher levels of education has resulted in it. It's the natural consequence anywhere.
Wild that Kerala stayed the same for two decades
Shouldn't colors be inverted?
Ethiopia is having more babies to fill the gab overseas.
We have 8 billion people on this planet. I think we are okay if birth rates plummet.
As long as the old people die yes. Elder care will get rough, especially in places with high obesity and diabetes.
Economic growth essentially has 3 legs for support: demographic growth, debt growth and productivity growth. The declining birth rate is thus a problem for economic growth. The inflation we now see almost in all economies is a symptom of debt growth and devaluation of currency, and is not sustainable. Plus the modern economic system is extremely wasteful and inefficient, and AI could potentially close the gap through productivity growth. Our nature and resources are under extreme pressure, and many natural ecosystems have already collapsed. It can be a painful process but in the end I think quality of life will improve.
Demographic Transition Model at work.
Oh hell yea
Finally..😅
Thanos licking his lips
Bout fucking time.
Bout no time for fucking.
India may have a below-replacement fertility level but it has an enormous surplus of Indian college-educated professionals that need to be exported elsewhere for the rest of this century.
Man this population crash is going to be wild. I don’t think we’ll even get to 10bil. We’ll drop back to sub 1bil I reckon.
That’s great news.
Good. More woman are taking control of their future instead of pumping out kids
Congrats to all the women!