May 19, 2026 04:08 PM
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-the-...ped-having
EXCERPTS: The decline is accelerating faster than almost anybody predicted. As Burn-Murdoch reported, UN demographers predicted that there would be 350,000 births in South Korea in 2023; the real figure came in at 230,000—a whopping 50 percent miss. The total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman in almost every country in North America, South America, Europe, and Southern and Eastern Asia.
It’s falling swiftly in most African countries. And birthrates might be set to crash in China. In the 2026 paper “The Rise of Zero Fertility Desire in China,” a Brown University researcher reported that according to the China General Social Survey, the share of young women with “no desire for children” increased from approximately 5 percent in 2012 to 47 percent in 2023.
The epicenters of the baby bust will surprise many people. Europe has a higher fertility rate than Thailand. Tokyo has a higher fertility than Mexico City, Bogotá, or Santiago. China may already a lower fertility rate than Japan.
[...] Let’s start with replacement, which is the easiest. Imagine you have a population of one million people. How many children need to be born for that population to be constant at one million in the long run? It turns out that for every woman in that population, you need 2.1 kids.
[...] If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s, it was common for public intellectuals to predict the global population would rise and rise until the environment buckled and we suffered ecological disaster and widespread famine that wiped out billions of human souls. That has not happened. Global fertility has declined significantly. It’s falling faster than practically anybody predicted, certainly folks like Paul Ehrlich, author of the infamous book The Population Bomb. Why do you think these so-called experts were both so confident and so wrong?
[...] The wording of your question already tells you a lot about the answer, because you used the word “public intellectual.” You didn’t use the word “demographers.”
[...] Now sometimes not even a college degree is enough for a middle-class life. You need a master’s degree or some postgraduate education. People are staying much longer in school. They are marrying or forming partnerships much later in life. When they are thinking about their kids, they understand they will need to maintain their kids and educate their kids for many, many years. This is particularly true in Asia, in China, Korea, and Japan, where [there is pressure for] your kid to excel in high school and college. Those are the countries with the lowest fertility rates.
The last is housing. In many countries, not in all, housing is at historical heights in relative price. That also limits the ability of families to have more children... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: The decline is accelerating faster than almost anybody predicted. As Burn-Murdoch reported, UN demographers predicted that there would be 350,000 births in South Korea in 2023; the real figure came in at 230,000—a whopping 50 percent miss. The total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman in almost every country in North America, South America, Europe, and Southern and Eastern Asia.
It’s falling swiftly in most African countries. And birthrates might be set to crash in China. In the 2026 paper “The Rise of Zero Fertility Desire in China,” a Brown University researcher reported that according to the China General Social Survey, the share of young women with “no desire for children” increased from approximately 5 percent in 2012 to 47 percent in 2023.
The epicenters of the baby bust will surprise many people. Europe has a higher fertility rate than Thailand. Tokyo has a higher fertility than Mexico City, Bogotá, or Santiago. China may already a lower fertility rate than Japan.
[...] Let’s start with replacement, which is the easiest. Imagine you have a population of one million people. How many children need to be born for that population to be constant at one million in the long run? It turns out that for every woman in that population, you need 2.1 kids.
[...] If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s, it was common for public intellectuals to predict the global population would rise and rise until the environment buckled and we suffered ecological disaster and widespread famine that wiped out billions of human souls. That has not happened. Global fertility has declined significantly. It’s falling faster than practically anybody predicted, certainly folks like Paul Ehrlich, author of the infamous book The Population Bomb. Why do you think these so-called experts were both so confident and so wrong?
[...] The wording of your question already tells you a lot about the answer, because you used the word “public intellectual.” You didn’t use the word “demographers.”
[...] Now sometimes not even a college degree is enough for a middle-class life. You need a master’s degree or some postgraduate education. People are staying much longer in school. They are marrying or forming partnerships much later in life. When they are thinking about their kids, they understand they will need to maintain their kids and educate their kids for many, many years. This is particularly true in Asia, in China, Korea, and Japan, where [there is pressure for] your kid to excel in high school and college. Those are the countries with the lowest fertility rates.
The last is housing. In many countries, not in all, housing is at historical heights in relative price. That also limits the ability of families to have more children... (MORE - missing details)