The decline in fertility, which began in the 1960s, coincided with societal change including rising divorce rates and legalized abortion.
Fertility rates have plummeted worldwide over the past six decades, leading experts to warn of dire consequences as the downward trend continues.
Continued low fertility rates will cause “a gradual implosion of the world’s economy as the population ages and dies,” Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email. Mosher is an expert on population control, demography, and China.
“This will not occur overnight, of course, but once it is well underway it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse course,” he said.
Fertility rates (the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime) are different from birthrates (the number of live births per 1,000 people in a population over a given period), although the terms are related and often used interchangeably.
Countries with low fertility rates are also likely to have low birthrates.
Macroeconomist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde called low fertility rates “the true economic challenge of our time,” in a February report for the American Enterprise Institute.
In 1960, the average woman bore four or five children in her lifetime. By 2023, that number had halved to 2.2, approaching 2.1, the replacement level—or the level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next.
In July, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that the world’s population will reach 8.1 billion this year. Experts say although the figure has grown from 3 billion in 1960, the number to watch is the pace of population growth.
The bureau stated that “the rate of growth peaked decades ago in the 1960s and has been declining since and is projected to continue declining.”
Fernández-Villaverde warned that while the sagging rate of growth may not have immediate consequences, in less than half a century, declining fertility will impact the world economy. Countries with low or negative birthrates will contend with a shrinking workforce and the ballooning costs associated with an aging population.
By Sylvia Xu
