Biologist Paul Ehrlich, 91, and other de-populationists have long concern-mongered about the planet having far too many human beings living on it. Their alarmist claims have proven as consequential as they have been wrong, inspiring the kind of disastrous policies taken up by the communist Chinese regime, which massacred hundreds of millions of babies as a result of its one-child policy.

It turns out the problem the species actually faces is not a population boom but rather a world-changing population crunch.

A graying world

A new peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet recently revealed that fertility rates have declined in all countries and territories since 1950 and that "human civilization is rapidly converging on a sustained low-fertility reality."

The fertility rate references the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. In 1950, the global fertility rate was 4.84. In 2021, it was 2.23. By the end of this century, it is expected to drop to 1.59 globally.

For a population to maintain stability and replenish itself without need for an influx of foreign nationals, a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed.

The fertility rate in the U.S. last year was 1.784. By way of contrast, in 1960, the U.S. fertility rate was 3.7. The American fertility rate predicted for 2100 is 1.45, according to the study.

"Only six of 204 countries and territories (Samoa, Somalia, Tonga, Niger, Chad, and Tajikistan) are projected to have above-replacement levels of fertility by 2100, and only 26 will still have a positive rate of natural increase (i.e., the number of births will exceed the numbers of deaths)," wrote the researchers.

The researchers drew these conclusions on the basis of up-to-date assessments of key fertility indicators from 1950 to 2021 along with the forecast fertility metrics to 2100 produced in the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2021, executed at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The impact of this demographic trend outlined in the study has already shaken up countries such as China and Japan. The consequences will continue to magnify across the world in the coming decades, lest there be some grand about-face.

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The fallout

According to the study, the world will become increasingly divided in terms of age demographics. The West and Asia are poised to thin out and turn increasingly gray, while parts of sub-Saharan Africa will remain relatively youthful.

The greater ratio of old people to young people in low-fertility countries is "likely to present considerable economic challenges caused by a growing dependency ratio of older to working-age population and a shrinking labor force," reported the study.

The researchers indicated that barring new funding sources or "unforeseen innovations," national health insurance and social security programs along with health-care infrastructure will be overwhelmed.

In addition to straining health and welfare systems, increasingly childless societies are likely to also suffer economically.

"If productivity per working-aged adult does not increase in accordance with declines in the working-age population, growth in gross domestic product will slow," said the study. "Reliance on immigrants will become increasingly necessary to sustain economic growth in low-fertility countries."

The study suggested that reliance on immigrants from those lower-income countries that still bother to have kids will increase as post-industrialized nations attempt to address labor shortages. However, this reliance may adversely impact the migrants' native countries, which lose out on the skilled labor and talent pursuing better pay abroad.

Despite the civilizational collapse underway, the researchers behind this Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded study highlighted what climate alarmists and other de-populationists might regard as a silver lining, stating, "Although sustained below-replacement fertility will pose serious potential challenges for much of the world over the course of the century, it also presents opportunities for environmental progress."

An increasingly old and childless world "could alleviate some strain on global food systems, fragile environments, and other finite resources, and also reduce carbon emissions," wrote the researchers.

Remedies

The study suggested that pro-natal policies such as child-related cash transfers, tax incentives, childcare subsidies, extended parental leave, and other supports for family — such as those rolled out in Viktor Orbán's Hungary and now being considered in South Korea — might help arrest or slow the fertility decline. However, "There are few data to show that such polices have led to strong, sustained rebounds in fertility."

The Atlantic noted that pro-natal policies have proven successful in certain cases. For instance, the Czech Republic saw its birth rate bottom out in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the mid-2000s, the government began doling out $10,000 to parents for every child, the equivalent of what many citizens were making yearly after taxes.

Tomáš Sobotka, a researcher at Austria’s Vienna Institute of Demography, told the Atlantic that the Czech Republic's pro-natal policy apparently worked as there was a corresponding increase in births over time, and more families were having second and third children.

"Even under optimistic assumptions on the impact of pro-natal policies based on current data, global [total fertility rate] will remain low — and well below replacement level — up to 2100," said the study. "Nevertheless, our pro-natal scenario forecasts also suggest that pro-natal policies might prevent some countries from dropping below very-low (<1·6 TFR) or the lowest-low (<1·3 TFR) fertility in the future."

The researchers did not mention possible cultural or spiritual remedies but did recommend against restricting access to abortion, which kills more than 70 million babies a year worldwide.

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