When I told my mother I was getting married, she smiled and gave me a big hug.
About five seconds later, she asked me when we were going to have kids. I told her I wasn’t sure we were going to have kids.
“What’s the point of getting married if you aren’t going to have children?” she asked, surprised, with a hint of scorn in her voice.
This was more than 40 years ago, by the way. Mom was from a generation before that, when parenthood went with marriage like eggs and bacon. It was expected. Something was wrong with you if babies didn’t start appearing a year or two, three at the most, after the wedding.
I fancied myself a modern dude, so I took mild offense at Mom’s question. We might have kids and we might not, I responded somewhat huffily. My future wife had worked very hard to build her career. I wanted to encourage and support her to pursue her professional aspirations — and not to feel pressure to stay home and raise kids. There was no way I was going to stay home, of course; I wasn’t that modern.
Mom bit her tongue and changed the subject to wedding plans.
Yes, we eventually produced two great kids, who are now great adults. So we did our minimum bit to propagate the species. Grandkids? We’ll see.
(Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation)
Declining birth rates
I share this personal story because the American baby boom of the 1940s and ’50s, of which I was a part, is now a distant memory — along with the secondary boom in children born to the Boomers, which was almost as large.
The U.S. population will grow by 32 million, to a total of 336 million, by the year 2100, according to Census Bureau projections. It will peak at 369 million in 2080 and then decline until the end of the century. But much of that growth projection, the bureau cautions, will depend upon immigrants. Without robust immigration — and immigrant families producing children — U.S. population might fall by 107 million between 2022 and 2100.
“Without immigrant families producing children, U.S. population might fall by 107 million between 2022 and 2100.”
U.S. fertility rates have been declining since the late 1950s, when I came along. Deaths will exceed births by 2038. People older than age 65 — again, me — will outnumber children within a decade. By 2100, almost 30% of the U.S. population will be 65 and older — nearly twice today’s percentage.
If you think that’s a good thing, you better think again.
No, I’m not gearing up for a diatribe lamenting the decline of the traditional family. But we do need to produce enough offspring to prevent America from turning into a vast nursing home, where too few working-age adults support too many elderly parents and grandparents. That trend, if it continues too long, spells economic decline, social stagnation and eventual demographic doom.
And we’re far from alone.
For the sixth year in a row, South Korea recorded the world’s lowest fertility rate, sinking to a new low of 0.81 children per couple in 2023 from 0.84 the previous year. This year, the rate is predicted to fall to 0.68. Twelve other countries from Europe to South Asia join South Korea in the below-one-child club. Women must have 2.1 children, on average, to maintain long-term population stability without significant immigration.
As recently as the 1970s, women in advanced Asian economies such as South Korea and Japan averaged five or more children, No longer. In part, these societies have become victims of their own success. Women have much greater educational and career opportunities, along with ready access to contraception. National economies now depend on women in the workplace for economic growth.
That’s a good thing, right? Women have been waiting for such progress for a long time. But it comes at a social cost if Asian men aren’t willing, or able, to help shoulder the load of rearing children.
Writes Astha Rajvanshi in Time: “In South Korea, falling birth rates are one of the three crucial factors that characterize what’s called the ‘Sampo,’ or ‘three giving-up’ generation: women in their 20s and 30s who have given up dating, marriage and having children, in part because of economic pressures. In 2018, then-Vice Finance Minister Minister Kim Yong-beom declared this trend a ‘death cross.’ In Japan, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently issued a dire warning that the country was ‘on the brink’ of being ‘socially dysfunctional.’ China, which reversed its one-child policy in 2016 to encourage families to have more children, lost its record of being the most populous country to India last year after its population dropped for the first time in six decades.”
China’s new population reality carries a particularly tragic irony: The “one-child policy,” brutally enforced by the government starting in 1980 to counter poverty and then-pervasive fears of a “population explosion,” resulted in unimaginable human suffering — including widespread forced abortions, especially of female fetuses.
The practice distorted the male-to-female birth ratio so drastically that tens of millions of Chinese men can’t find wives today; their potential brides never were born. The policy also caused a national labor shortage that now threatens China’s continued economic development. (Editorial aside: International population control advocates who supported this cruel policy for decades knowing — or ignoring — its human cost will answer to God in eternity, I believe.)
First time since ‘Black Death’
The population bust extends far beyond Asia and America. Here’s the headline I’ve buried until now: By mid-century, global human population will fall for the first time since the “Black Death” (bubonic plague) of the 1300s wiped out 50 million people in Europe and beyond. That’s the prediction of a new study by The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal.
“By 2050, as many as 155 countries will have birth rates too low to maintain population size.”
World population first reached 1 billion in 1804 and doubled by 1927. It ballooned to 8 billion in 2022 and will continue growing for another generation or so. By 2050, however, as many as 155 countries will have birth rates too low to maintain population size, according to The Lancet. By 2100, that number will climb to 198 countries.
Much sooner than that, declining fertility rates “will completely configure the global economy and the international balance of power and will necessitate reorganizing societies,” predicts research scientist Natalia Bhattacharjee, co-author of the Lancet study. “Global recognition of the challenges around migration and global aid neworks are going to be all the more critical when there is fierce competition for migrants to sustain economic growth.”
Historian Stephen Davis puts the change in these terms in a piece for The Telegraph: “By 2100, global population will have peaked and started to decline. This is a major historical turning point. Also, it is not simply a matter of static or declining world population — the nature of that population will also change. It will be much older, with the report estimating there will be twice as many people over 80 as under 5 — nearly 900 million over-80s worldwide.”
Global economic growth will decline as a result. Innovation will decrease. Fewer people will enter or remain in the workforce. Demand for goods and services will decline.
“Is this something we can or should try to resist?” Davis asks. “The evidence suggests that checking or reversing demographic trends is not easy. Pro-natalist policies have been tried in several countries but to little or no effect. … We have known for a long time that economic development and urbanization lead to women having fewer children because of changed incentives, but something additional seems to have happened in the last two or three decades and we do not really understand what that is. We may have to radically change our entire way of life to make it much more family friendly.”
In America, maybe we could start by subsidizing child care for families with two wage earners — in other words, most families. If our economy depends on men and women working full time, why can’t we help them do so without forcing them to sacrifice parenthood — or pay more than they can afford for child care?
And maybe we could start treating immigrants not as threats to be feared and shunned but as a valuable, even essential part of our future — if we are to have a long-term future.
Those are just two changes to consider. There are many more we will need to make in the years ahead to avoid a looming demographic disaster.
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, has covered international stories and trends in many countries. He lives in Richmond, Va.
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