The world’s birthrate may already be below replacement level – Washington Examiner

Birthrates are falling in almost every country. Many countries have shrinking populations.

The Total Fertility Rate is the most important measure of the birth rate. It is a modeled number that calculates how many babies each woman is having in her lifetime. Every wealthy country besides Israel has a TFR below 2, as do China and India. That means the adults in all of those countries are not replacing themselves.

A TFR of 2.1 is commonly accepted as the “replacement level.” A population with a TFR of 2.1 will, absent net migration, maintain a steady population. Lower than 2.1, and in the long run you will shrink. Higher than replacement, and your population will grow in the long run.

The world’s TFR was 2.25 in 2023, according to the United Nations — a 12% decline in just 10 years. If that pace of decline continues, the world will be below 2.1 in just a couple of years. The U.N. projects that the current TFR decline will slow, and the birthrate will still be at 2.2 in 2030.

But even if the birthrate stopped falling and stabilized where it is now, we may still be doomed to steady depopulation, according to one economist.

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde argues first that the current TFR is probably lower than the U.N.’s estimate, and second that the real replacement level is higher than 2.10.

Those U.N. numbers are estimates that don’t match up with national census counts, Fernandez writes:

“For many places with reliable records, last year’s birth numbers were between 10 per cent and 20 per cent lower than UN estimates. In Colombia, the UN estimate was 705,000 births. Yet its national statistical agency counted 510,000.”

Fernandez estimates that the actual TFR in 2024 was 2.18.

That’s below replacement, Fernandez argues, because the actual number of births needed to maintain a population is 2.21 rather than 2.10:

“[T]he replacement fertility level of 2.1 is valid for the UK, not universally. We get the 2.1 figure using a calculation: 1.06 boys are born for every girl in Britain. To ensure an average of one girl born, we need 2.06 children overall to be born. We then look at the probability a woman lives to reach her reproductive years, which in Britain is 0.98. To get the reproductive rate, we divide 2.06 by 0.98 – which equals 2.1.”

“However, in many developing countries fewer women survive to a reproductive age. Globally, the figure drops to 0.94. So the replacement fertility level needed worldwide is more than 2.1.”

“Many countries also have a higher male-to-female ratio, often due to selective abortion. In China, it’s around 1.15; in India, 1.1. An estimate for the sex ratio globally is 2.08. To estimate a global replacement fertility rate we divide 2.08 by 0.94, which comes out at 2.21 children per woman.”

A third reason to be skeptical of the U.N.’s forecasts is that the U.N. — like many demographers — assumes that falling birthrates will stabilize. I believe this is based on the teachings of Thomas Malthus, who argued that birthrates were self-correcting: High birthrates cause poverty, which cause low birthrates, which lead to productivity increases, which lead to wealth and thus higher birthrates.

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Recent decades have shown us the opposite: Falling birthrates beget falling birthrates. As I often put it, a culture with fewer children is a culture less welcoming to children,”

Add together all of these corrections to official estimates, and you have a world population declining sometime pretty soon.