The data is lumpy and uneven, and every country is on their own journey. However, the global trend is unmistakeable: downward. The underlying data is here, also the source of the graph https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-the-global-decline-of-fertility-rates/
Author Archives: Rob Skelton
Elon Musk and Population Decline
Mr Musk is of course wrong and over-reacting to peak population predictions. He has it in his head that we will stop making babies altogether and go extinct, which is ludicrous. If his intention was to get the general problem noticed, he actually made things worse. The media reached out to academics who take the …
Japan: Drink More Alcohol
One of the reasons given is that they want more revenue from liquor tax, because in 2020 it declined by 10% ($813M). However, considering that it is a “sin tax”, intended to moderate consumption, that is hard to accept. The real reason is what everyone knows, young people are more likely to hook up if …
Are We Really Having Less Kids?
Here are some very basic statistics, to give you an idea of why we are on a journey towards too few children, below the replacement rate of 2.1 per woman: Globally the fertility rate has dropped from 5 to 2.4 (children per woman) between 1970 and 2016. In high income countries it is already below …
700 Million More Elderlies
Most people are aware of how declining fertility rates, and longer life spans, means that demographics of advanced economies is trending towards more older people. Japan is the common example of where it is currently a problem, but it will be a global issue to content with later this century. A figure from a study …
Japan Down 0.51% in One Year
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but there were 644,000 more deaths than births (assuming an immigration rate of zero). Every prefecture on mainland Japan saw a decline, so even internal migration was not a help anywhere. Elon Musk saw this news and his saying that Japan will disappear was widely spread. He seems to …
Bulgaria is Fading Fast
Nobody wants to be the poster child for population decline. Losing 11% in 10 years is serious. Enough for people to extrapolate that to think they could lose 100% in a century. Bulgaria’s population shrunk more than 11 percent over the past decade, according to its latest census, as the Eastern European country struggles to …
How Much Decline = Permanent Recession?
One of the reasons this website exists is that the detrimental effects of population decline on capitalism haven’t been acknowledged yet. While it has long been known that increasing the population is good for the economy, it is rare for someone to put a value on it. Recently the WSJ reported: Historically, nearly half of …
Desperation in China: Loans Offered
Jilin in northeast China is offering married couples bank loans of up to 200,000 yuan ($31,400) if they have kids, joining other provinces in the roll-out of financial incentives to overcome a declining population. Certain small businesses set up by couples with two or three children will also enjoy exemptions and cuts in value-added taxes, …
China Has Shadow-Banned Vasectomies
China is becoming increasingly desperate to reverse the decline in birth rates, which is now lower than that of Japan. Allowing people to have more than one child hasn’t been enough, because, as we have seen in other lands, once people get used to having fewer kids, it tends to become entrenched. It is quite …