The Fertility Jackpot

Global fertility is falling below the replacement rate (and soon global populations) driven lower by a jackpot of factors too complex to reverse. Here's what this means.

Human fertility is collapsing. It’s a tangible collapse. You can see its impact in your personal life — on your kids, extended family, neighbors, and coworkers — and if you dig into the news flow, you can see its impact on the world.

Yet, except for an occasional outburst from Musk, nobody is focused on it. I suspect the reason this collapse isn’t the most critical issue of our time is that we wrongly assume it’s;

• a temporary problem.

• only a problem for wealthy countries.

• solvable with the right mix of policies and cultural tweaks.

However, since the collapse isn’t going away and its effects continuously accumulate, we’ll eventually need to face it. So, let’s get started.

John Robb

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The population of humanity has grown continuously over the last 76,000 years since the evolutionary bottleneck caused by the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. Nothing has delayed it for long: not bloody empires (the Mongols killed 5-10% of the world’s population), not plagues (the Black Death caused 10-15%*), and not world wars (WW2 caused 2-3%, including 17m in concentration camps).

This growth has been relentless… until now.

• After nearly a hundred years of decline, the global fertility rate is falling below replacement levels (2.1 children per woman) for the first time in history. This collapse isn’t limited to specific countries or a development level. Due to globalization it’s happening everywhere — from Mexico (~1.6) to Colombia (~1.3) to Turkey (~1.45) to Tunisia (~1.55).

• For decades, increasing global life expectancy has masked fertility declines in population statistics. That’s ending. Most of the easy global gains in life expectancy are behind us. Soon, global populations will rapidly experience rates of decline in the double digits.

• Based on early indicators (South Korea’s current fertility rate of 0.68), decades of reality exceeding expert projections, and the emergence of new pressures on fertility, the global fertility rate will fall much faster and stabilize far lower than anticipated.

Let’s dig into the reasons for this collapse.