There are currently around 8.2 billion souls on this planet. That’s a lot. By 2037 there might be over 9 billion. That’s even more. The UN who makes projections on this sort of thing expect the number to peak in the 2080s at around 10.4 billion and then slowly come back down to around 9 billion by the end of the century. If I make it to 2080 I’ll be 105 years old and will have lived my entire life in continuous population growth. As pretty much everyone has done for about hundreds of years now. This hardly seems like a crisis. Globally then we don’t have much to worry about.
For one thing the UN keeps getting its projections wrong. It is regularly revising them downwards.
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, a researcher and economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the FT that the overall impact of these misses means the global population is on the UN’s “low fertility” path. That means we could potentially see a peak as soon as 2054, 30 years ahead of schedule, with a global population of about nine billion.
If that projection is correct then the peak is less than 30 years away and the fall could be more rapid. But still 9 billion.
But no one lives their life globally. Everyone lives their lives locally, within nations, and that is a very different story.
South Korea’s population has been shrinking for 5 straight years, Japan is rapidly following down the same path and China’s population has already peaked and may half in the next century. Things in Europe are no better. With the exception of Monaco (hardly likely to nudge the numbers) the entirety of Europe has fertility rates below replacement level. You’ll know the number 2.1 children because that’s what a country needs to avoid population decline. If the figure was 1.6 or below and looking at Europe that’s everywhere, that means in two generations a population will half. HALF!
South Korea is the canary in the coal mine with a fertility rate of 0.7.
This is the lowest rate of any nation in the world. It may be the lowest in recorded history. If that trajectory holds, each successive generation will be a third the size of its predecessor. Every hundred contemporary Koreans of childbearing age will produce, in total, about twelve grandchildren.
And in 2023 Europe had an unprecedented drop in the number of babies. It was half the number of births in 1968. It is facing a continent wide crash over the rest of this century. Someone has even wondered Are Dogs Replacing Babies in Countries With Declining Birth Rates?
But less children is only half of the problem. The other is the greying population. People living longer, much longer, and often for decades in relatively poor health. In 1980, when I was 5, the average age of the world was 26.5. Today it is 33 and by the end of the century it will be 43. Again that’s globally, in some countries it will be much worse. These super-aged societies where over 20% of the population is over 65 (in Japan it’s 30%) face increased burdens on health systems and face troubling social challenges such as endemic loneliness.
There will be child deserts and crowded nursing homes. You’ll see the effects of this already. Villages with not enough children can’t keep their schools open. Villages without schools don’t attract families with children. Over time the child desert grows. At the same time inheritances founded on housing equity are disappearing to pay for nursing care for elderly parents.
This is a planner’s nightmare. Here’s why. A shrinking workforce & an ageing population leads to increased burdens on social security which leads to higher taxes. With less people there is less demand (there are only so many cars that people can buy) leading to a shrinking economy and possibly higher unemployment. Although it’s also likely that a smaller workforce will lead to shortages and therefore higher wages and inflation. Neither is a great option. Alice Evans is a researcher on this global phenomenon and she says this about the societal impact:
Economically, this has catastrophic implications for middle-income countries, because as you have an aging population, then older people typically have lower rates of labor force participation. They’re less economically productive. It’s the young people who are innovative, productive, starting up new companies. But as the entire economy ages, then it becomes more sluggish. And those younger people, either through savings or taxes, need to pay for elderly health care or pension costs or provisions.
That then creates a massive fiscal squeeze because governments or individuals need to spend a higher amount of their money, given those rising dependency rates. And if we are concerned with things like climate change mitigation, the governments just won’t have enough money to spend on extra costs if you’re spending more on old people.
And on top of this, if younger people are saving more, as they are in China, then they’re going to be spending less. So that has a knock-on effect on the entire economy.
But let’s hone in on South Korea where amidst global population rise there is a nation experiencing a population crash. Ross Douthat describes it this way:
Right, and a country like South Korea has a fertility rate of 0.7. That means that over the course of two generations, the population goes from 50 million to 20-odd million, let’s say. Fifteen to 20 million — does that sound right? I’m just trying to give people a sense that, with the numbers we have now, when we talk about the reason you use a term like “population collapse,” we aren’t talking about a gentle slide from above-replacement fertility to slightly below replacement fertility, where you need to adjust the retirement age so that people stay in the work force five years longer. You’re talking about cities being empty, buildings standing empty, economies grinding to a halt and just seeing a country that has gone furthest down this road.
Unless you live in Sub-Saharan Africa (where fertility rates are still high but falling) you and your children (if you have them) will live in a society in population decline. The question of course is why and what to do about it. Some favour technology, some more equal marriages, some are trying to give financial incentives for having children but none of these address the cause.
And one of the causes seems to be a massive and growing disconnection between men and women. There is a growing ideological divide which makes it harder to find a partner and there are more single people in more countries with less children than ever before. People are failing to marry, stay married, have children. There’s a massive global failure to go forth and multiply. Alice Evans blames it on distracted adults who are more easily entertained and more satisfied by this entertainment than they are by the effort it takes to form a satisfying and enjoyable relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Add to that, as Chine MacDonald says, decades of mass cultural ambivalence towards motherhood (in favour of careers) and it seems there are not enough people positive about families, positive about children, willing to work at relationships and remain committed and have (what they consider) sufficient income to grow families.
The fact is in many countries the future looks problematic, especially where the obvious answer (immigration) is widely rejected especially when it comes to immigration from cultures with poor assimilation records. But if they assimilate then over a generation their birthrates will be the same as everyone else.
Communities reimagined
Amidst all the gloom and doom there is always hope. Religious people, especially conservative ones, typically have more children but there is more that churches can do here. Firstly churches can be active communities where men and women mix socially, learn to see & listen to each other, build friendships and in a pro-marriage, pro-family environment – nudge them towards faithful partnership.
Secondly, churches can go further in being a supportive community to families than just running a toddler group. There are ways in which a community can ease the child-care burden, and ease some of the costs of raising children. They can do this by not buying into a consumer vision of family life, and insisting that good families and healthy children need not cost the eye-watering amounts that people often talk about. They can also be active in sharing clothes, toys, days out, prolonging the life of enjoyment of often deeply loved items. At our church there is a very well made green hoodie with a helicopter on it that has been the favourite sweater for over ten kids and about 14 years and counting now. There’s nothing wrong with a hand-me-down.
Thirdly, it takes a village to raise a child and a parent. Creating communities that help marriages, help parents, help families by being a resilient and active faith community that helps shield people from the confusing and often unhelpful messages about how to have a good life.
Fourthly, by taking root and caring for the world around over generations. Cross-generational community life is a healthy one. It insulates against poverty, loneliness, loss of value and purpose. It exposes youth to wisdom and the reminder that what they are you will one day be.
And of course churches are specialists in hope, faith and love. Three necessary ingredients for a flourishing future and a willingness to have a family. Gospel hope in gospel families in gospel communities. Or a city on a hill.
If you have the time read this New Yorker article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus – The End of Children: Birth rates are crashing around the world. Should we be worried?
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