All developed countries have fertility rates at the replacement level of 2.1 or higher. This is Israel.
UPDATE: The low birthrate problem can be fixed or mitigated by giving free medical procedures to harvest younger and healthier eggs and freezing them for later surrogate mothers. The immigration and other free social service policies should be used to close the birthrate shortage.
There are some regions in some countries with replacement fertility rates.
Countries with very low fertility rates of 1.1 or less will have populations at one third of their current levels in 2100.
If countries like South Korea, Japan and China kept fertility rates at 1.0 for 270 years, would see their population implode to 2% of current levels by 2300. The number of fertile women would be halving every 35-40 years.
Countries with very low fertility rates of 1.6 to 1.8 will have populations at 60-70% of current levels in 2100.
No country has had fertility rates fall below replacement levels and then recovered and increased fertility to above replacement levels.
All of the pro-fertility policies like paying for childcare and lowering the costs to raise a family have about no improvement to about a 20-30% increase. This effect tends to last for a couple of decades at best.
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Define “developed” please.
One who responsibly brings children must be extremely unselfish and kind.
One reason for the low birth rate in the West is the breakdown of traditional marriges, such as were the norm with the great majority of Americans etc. until the 1960s. “Living in sin” put you beyond the pale. Today it is the norm, to say nothing of serial divorces among those who bother to get married. Israel is an exception, hence its higher birth rate.
In fact calling Israel a developed country in this context is wrong.
The communities with high birthrates are the most poor, religious, unemployed or under-employed, social immobile, and totally depending on the country social care system. Unfortunately these communities tend to stay closed and thus perpetuating the situation. While secular people have jobs and duties, and grow smaller families (2 children and a dog), because the cost of living is very expensive. Secular people pay taxes, while the Gov incentives the religious people to bring more kids to the world, avoid working and not paying taxes. So to be exact, in 2100 the majority of people in Israel will make a poor under-developed country.
Your response is great as a propaganda, but far from the truth.
The Ultra orthodox community in Israel is around 10% of the total population, hence they Obviously cannot make a big impact on the total birth rate.
The fact is that secular Jewish Israelis (including those from european backgrounds) tend to have relatively large families with 3-4 children.
The reason for that is most likely Israel’s geopolitical condition. Israelis are surrounded by much larger hostile Arab population (who has high birth rates, due to its extremely patriarchal society), and a potential demographic disaster is a serious issue…
Yes. This is good because as religion and traditional marriage broke down the patriarchy was attacked too. Today transgender ideology is very important to us as a nation. Women enjoy more rights and the sexual revolution is good for everyone.
Does this pass the “so what” test?
For the past few decades I’ve heard the hue and cry of overpopulation and the concerns of global consumption and pollution. Finally we have a cure, inspired by the prosperity we so eagerly sought, in that our pampered and nurtured youth are choosing to life an idyllic life of comfort and consumption rather than invest in children (and all the effort they require).
So there will be an inevitable shift in world population, economies will stumble (and some will fall), governments will struggle to raise taxes, and rough times will come again as they have for century after century. In the big picture of human evolution the coming demographic shift is just another “so what” moment. Humanity will improvise, adapt, and overcome – things will be different that what we grew up with, but it will only matter to those of us who experienced things “before the big change”.
Relax, have another donut, mind your investments and make more friends, and let life move on. There’s nothing we can do about it anyway … and everyone speculating about goverment policies or religious mandates should keep dreaming up their own idyllic approach. Once everyone dies they’ll be in charge and can do whatever they want!
It’s not a cure. It’s a death spiral.
This article is disingenuous. Yes, Israel has a high birth rate, but if you break it down there is a big problem in their future. People that are well educated, and who are the producers in the economy, especially in their high tech areas, have a birth rate like that of most developed countries. Two children or less. If however, you look at those who are not active in Israeli industry, but rather live their life in ‘religious study (in other words being supported by those who generate the Israeli economy), their birthrate averages 6.6 children. (I think, check the number but it is over 6.5).
Thus the long term growth of the Israeli economy is not a rosy picture.
Not exactly correct. All educated people are with 2-3 children.
This is the norm. Have only 1 is not familiar at all unless it is a single mother.
But indeed with non educated Muslim population and Jewish religious orthodox, the case is over 3 which is pretty bad as they pose real liability on all social services as they tend to work much less…
Now post the map with the African continent. Notice how it’s the only one not included. Wouldn’t wana stir up division now would we? (Lmao)
LOL, love the political bias projected even in a totally unrelated issue by intelligent educated people. Our national love affair with political propaganda is so absurd.
This is happening in almost every country for a reason. It occurs when populations move from rural to urban environments. It is literally that simple. Unless we are ready to move back to the farms or be surrounded by hostile neighbors it is what it is.
I see two ways to correct it the US.
The first is to give religion more say in politics. In no time they will have banned the pill and we will be up to our armpits in babies. Of course, letting religion into politics carries a whole host of other issues like the Inquisition and Salem witch trials as glaring examples but hey, at least we can have the people born so we can burn them as heretics.
The second and easier method is to ban TV. Television is the most effective form of birth control ever invented. Once you can no longer get your Fox News or CNN fix maybe we will start paying more attention to something bent over that really matters.
Instead of resorting to prohibitions that have repeatedly proven ineffective, we should pivot our approach towards incentivizing positive behavior. Take for instance the prohibition of alcohol during the 1920s, which led to an era of bootlegging and speakeasies rather than diminished consumption. Similarly, the attempted prohibition of marijuana did not yield the intended results, but instead drove the trade underground.
In light of these historical lessons, it’s clear that we need to reevaluate our strategies. In the context of our declining birthrate, instead of attempting to impose lifestyle changes on people, we should focus on creating an environment conducive to raising a family.
Presently, many individuals and couples are hesitant about having children due to the associated financial burden and perceived loss of personal freedoms. Therefore, our policies should be geared towards lessening these concerns. By making raising a child more affordable and less daunting, through initiatives like child-care support, affordable housing, flexible work schedules, and family-friendly workplaces, we can provide compelling incentives that will encourage more people to start families.
The essence of any effective policy lies not in imposing restrictions, but in inspiring change by creating an environment that naturally guides people towards the desired outcome.
who cares,
the immigration rate is so high, that developed countries for years suffer growing pains like overpopulation, lack of housing.
remember, the worst places to live have often highest birthrate
For fun, find a chart of birthrates in the US based off of State.
I don’t buy into the population implosion mind set. World population will eventually rebound as populations with high fertility rate will stay so and eventually dominate.
I somewhat agree. Buried in the aggregate fertility numbers are subgroups that are having kids. Amish, for example.
But on the whole expect populations to collapse. Immigration will help those countries that can attract people and expect many developed countries to quietly celebrate this Malthusian milestone.
The problem for the subgroups who still want to reproduce is that, until they are the majority, the people who aren’t reproducing can make life really hard on them. A lot of the accommodations necessary for child raising can become unpopular, because most people wouldn’t be benefiting from them.
For instance, in a world where most people don’t reproduce, would K-12 education still be government supported?
I’d argue that this is why the demographic transition seems to be irreversible: Because once the rate of childbirth drops below some threshold, democratic countries adopt policies that make them even more hostile to having kids.
An example of that would be the schools venturing into policies that are radically unpopular with actual parents, such as trans mania. (People who actually reproduce, unsurprisingly, tend to be plain vanilla heterosexuals. And not want their children actively encouraged to be something else.)
Yes gov can make raising kids more expensive and more difficult. Gov won’t give up on K-12 education thanks in part to teachers unions and the opportunity to shape the character of children.
That’s why in the US so many people who are younger are moving to TX, FL, AZ, TN, NC, ID, OH, and NV and moving away from child unfriendly states like NY, IL, CA, WA.
In TX you can afford to have kids and a house. In CA not so much.
Think like an epidemiologist and you’ll get a better handle on causation. The global economy can be viewed as a unfriendly AGI meme virus that needs humans as mechanical Turks, but doesn’t care about the reproduction of its human components. Princeton University, for instance, had zero deaths during the 1918 pandemic because they used protective sequestration of their campus. So let’s talk about “it takes a village to raise a child” and ask what mutually consenting parents can do to, for example, turn a small rural town — a village — into a protective sequestration zone protecting their children while being raised to reproductive adulthood. The answer is “exclusion” but “inclusivity” isn’t just the theocratically enforced religion of the global economy — it is a hysterically enforced condition and no more so than in European-derived countries where immigration restriction is viewed by our “moral betters” as equivalent of child sacrifice to Hitler.
Everyone screeching about the dangers of AGI have it absolutely backwards: The _only_ hope we have for the coexistence of civilization and human beings is the development of AIs of sufficient intelligence that they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, via unbiased models of society, that the global elites are vectors of this disease so we can be released from bondage. Yes, there is danger in this but they leave us no choice.