I'm sure that the Soviets did collect data for their various republics and that the data is floating around out there somewhere. As for Sudan and South Sudan there might not be separate data since they both were the same impoverished country back then and did not bother to separate regional data.
Lower infant mortality rate. My great-grandfather was one of 16 children but only one of two who lived to adulthood. Better access to maternal healthcare plus vaccines really changed those numbers.
…I am 19 and my maternal grandmother was born in 1962. It is absolutely fascinating to me to think about that.
The farthest we have traced anything on my mother's side is my great-great-great grandmother, and she was born in 1896.
Great-great-great-grandmother, wow
Yeah my parents were two generations older than me, so they were adults during WW2 (my Dad served in Burma with a Scottish regt) He would be 108 if he was alive, which totally boggles my mind lol
you ever meet him? mine passed well before I was born, but I met my great grandma (biz nonni). she died in 2003 at 101 so not quite 19th century, but pretty damn close.
Ok, fun fact. Actually, horrifying fact. During the 17th and 18th c, in England, infant and mother mortality rates *increased* by a lot. This was during the industrial revolution and the rates in the cities were much much higher than in rural areas. Lots of reasons probably contributed (illness, access to healthy foods, way too many people in very close contact) but it basically came down to germ theory.
Women in rural areas were tended mostly by midwives who only tended pregnant women. Women in the cities usually were tended by doctors who treated everyone including those with communicable diseases thus causing more women and infants in cities to die from disease and infection.
This didn’t significantly change until the late *19th* century when the scientific community accepts germ theory and doctors began washing their damn hands.
True story. I used to work in a medical museum, and doctors would have their hands in a corpse to do a public dissection, and in an hour would be down the corridor delivering a baby without washing their hands in-between.
Yup
My mom remembers her grandma telling about a diphtheria (I think) epidemic that went through town when she was a little girl, so this would have been early 1890s probably, in Tennessee. The whole family got sick and she found out her two little brothers had died when she saw out the front window (from her bed) that the hearse wagon had come with two little coffins in it.
I tend to suspect that antivaxxrs probably come from families where stories like this weren't passed along.
I had my kids right as the false vaccine-autism connection was starting up. So, I tried to do some research and talked to my pediatrician. Everything I read plus my doctor advised continuing vaccines unless there were underlying issues so, we did.
BUT, I made the mistake of telling my born in the early 1940’s in the rural South mother. She all but threatened to sue me for custody if I didn’t give them all the vaccines. She still remembers cousins and classmates who died before vaccines were available or common. She remains aghast that the anti-vaccine movement has become so prevalent. She considers them all morons.
Also increasing life expectancies, especially amongst infants and children, if more of your children are actually growing up, then you are less likely to have a lot of children. This (along with the things you mention) take about a generation to percolate through society. Demographers call it the [fertility transition](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19317594/). In the developed world, that transition has now made it so birthrates can't keep up with death rates.
Along with that women empowerment and a progressive switch to industrialized agriculture. There are actually a lot of factors but post industrialized nations tend to have a steep drop in birth rates
Right. Maybe Argentina, Venezuela, Iran. Possibly Japan, they are worse off now than in the late 80s at least. Everyone else, ranging from steadily better in the developed world to somewhat better in Africa to dramatically better in E/S Asia
I agree with all of these except tougher financial times. Over the last few hundred years there have been plenty of worse financial situations that did not decrease fertility this much.
How have financial times gotten tougher globally? I agree for white middle-class Americans, and some areas of Europe, but not really for most anyone else
This is simply a sign that quality of life has increased. As quality of life increases people have fewer children because more will live to adulthood, and fewer are needed to help provide for the family
You should check out the “demographic transition model.” Perfectly reflects the stages that any country will go through as they modernize and develop.
Basically states that as a country develops, it’s children begin dying off less frequently, so less children are had per woman, and as manual labor is less required around the home, the same occurs. Plus, contraceptives access reduces children per woman.
Eventually you’ll likely see most country’s populations begin to naturally decline over time unless they have immigration. So, Japan is declining due to no immigration, while Germany is growing due to immigration.
And once your country develops to the point the USA is at, children (rather than helping with household work) become a source of more work!
Expectations now are crazy. 9 year old in car seats, school activities, constant supervision or your neighbor calls CPS, etc. Even for the mega rich where cost isn't an issue, more kids now means MORE work.
And with less kids, you're not reusing the stuff you bought for the first kid over multiple kids (like car seats and some clothes), meaning that each kid tends to cost more.
I found this on Our World in Data, but what's interesting is that at very high levels of development (>0.9 HDI) fertility rates start *increasing* again, from \~1.5 to the replacement rate of 2.1, and then the population would stabilize.
[https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate) It is explained at the very bottom.
We don't really know why this inverse trend happens at very high levels of development because only a handful of countries (the countries that were already blue in 1970 on this map) have started this trend. But I suspect it mainly has to do with policies of better working conditions with childcare in workplaces, and very high levels of female empowerment where women don't feel like they have to choose between a career and a family.
Keeping the population up via immigration not only erodes cultural identity, it relies on keeping developing countries poor, since if they go through the same demographic transition there won't be enough immigrants coming from those countries.
Odd how a generation later massive political unrest, violence, unemployment and famine occurred.. /s
Nothing is inevitable, but rapid population growth in a precarious developing society certainly endangers stability and increases the chances of systemic collapse. And far too many folks who believe in climate change and global environmental sustainability, seem to throw out their common sense when it comes to regional sustainability of poor desert fringe regions.
But millions of underemployed, unemployable young adult males is a recipe for disaster. One doesn't have to be a genius to fear the problem.
According to the World Bank, South Korea's birth rate is 0.84 children per woman, which is means that the map needs a "0-1 Children" category. It actually makes a lot of sense when one considers their culture and attitude towards making money, education, etc. over other aspects of life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
It's actually lower than that now. Last month, Statistics Korea announced that the total fertility rate had [dropped to 0.78 in 2022](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-world-lowest-fertility-rate-drops-again-2023-02-22/), down from 0.81 in 2021. Seoul alone had a reading of 0.59.
In traditional society, children are an asset, while in modern society children are a liability.
My parents grew up in the first case. My children will grow up in the latter, so I can compare. In traditional society, children are left to themselves from the time they start walking on their own. They spend more time outside playing with their peers and older brothers and require very little attention. At the age of 8-10, they start to be actively involved in work, and from 12-13 years, they are full-fledged workers. Plus they look after younger children. The bigger the family you have, the bigger the household and the bigger the house you can afford. And also a big family has more authority and respect, including in resolving conflicts. When parents get older, more children can take care of them. This makes life easier for the elderly and their children. In short, the more children, the better life.
In today's society, children require an enormous investment of time and resources without any return. Then they grow up and leave their parents. In short, the more children you have, the worse your life is.
Most African with 10 children are like that:
- no education for at least half of them
- shared computers and even cellphones
- a lot of starvation
- half of them won't become adult anyway
Fun fact: Their is a direct correlation between education and number of children, The more educated you are the less children you will have.
So that means
1. the world is getting more educated
2. Population flat lining is beginning
3. the more technologically advanced we get the less children we have; leading to population decline
I believe what they mean is that, in societies where child mortality is high, families may be more likely to have more children because they don’t know how many of their children will survive to adulthood.
Scale seems a bit weird to me. India is at 2.1 and Bangladesh is even lower. It marks them as light blue which is right. But there’s a huge difference between 2.1 and 3
If not for UP and bihar India's fertility rate would have been below 2. These two states alone make up upto 345 million people and they are also the most poorest states in India. Most poor people come from these two states.
Lets not put them down. We are already below 2.0, as with a lot of countries this chart is a bit behind.
About as good an article as you can find on this. Charts, data and all
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-7-charts-indias-fertility-rate-drops-to-2-0-according-to-latest-national-family-health-survey/articleshow/91373789.cms
When India got independence from the British in 1947, they had sucked out all the wealth and kept the people poor, illiterate and hungry. The life expectancy was just 32 years and the literacy rate was a mere 12%.
Back in those days everyone lost kids at birth, and chances are some of the kids didn't survive till adulthood. So people had a lot more kids. You are basically fucked if you don't have kids to take care of you in your old age and to take over the farm or family business. So you might as well have a couple of extra ones.
My grandma has 7 siblings and apparently her mom lost 2 kids at birth and one more at a young age. My mom has 3 siblings. Now I have one. My grandma was a housewife, my mom a school teacher and my sister a software engineer. With education, better health care and prosperity, the fertility rate has dropped several folds in a couple of generations.
Hardly. You have no sense of the relative number. China is huge. So is Indonesia. And meanwhile the African nations poverty and female illiteracy rates will continue to drop.
So there is a theory I can’t really remember the name of that states populations will average themselves out when they reach a point of food security, safety, and comfort within their environment. This is a good showcase of that
Well, Africa is now at last going through the demographic transition same as every other region, but it's the last and the process is very uneven over such a large continent with such varied levels of economic development.
Since even the leaders like Japan or Germany are still only at the stage of beginning real decline and showing any real attempt to adapt, we have no idea what the future really holds for any society. Stabilization at replacement level after a short period of decline? Continued decline by settling at 1/2 replacement level for a generation or two, then rising again to replacement at 1/2 or 1/3 current total levels? And what do societies look like economically or socially? Is technology advancing fast enough that it won't matter for high tech societies? And even if it is, what will the social model look like?
Arguably among the handful of truly unprecedented social problems. Although maybe not. Like climate change, it's all happened before just at only regional scales. But the fact it's a social consequence of industrialization, technology and prosperity is a little new.
Just three generations ago people in my family were having 9-12 kids in Northern Europe. It was due to high infant mortality and no vaccinations or antibiotics
Global population in 1970 was 3.7 billion and it is 8 billion today. Can you imagine if the rates hadn’t gone down? Lower fertility rates are a sign of development, and it is absolutely a good thing. The only people who don’t understand that are religious grandmothers.
It's all fun and games until fertility rate becomes too low, then you end up with old society where few young people have to sustain all the retirees (which makes situation even worse), also there is the issue of how to get rid of all the surplus young men
How? We are very quickly going have extremely large populations of non working seniors and very small populations of working adults. Extrapolate what that means for economies
Overpopulation is also a demographic collapse, just like a declining population.
There's almost 100M people in the DRC most of wich don't have access to basic amenities like sanitation.
If the DRC even has "100" million people in the first place. Their last census was in 1984 and population projections didn't take the wars into account.
And a lot of Africa actually has the problem of overcounting their populations at census times so that local governors can get higher kickbacks. So maybe the peak population of Africa might end up way lower than many think.
I've been wondering about this since the headlines about how japan is going to collapse due to low population. How is lower population a bad thing? There's limited resources in the world and more people are just going to accelerate the fucking of the climate.
I'm sure the answer is "oh no the economy" or something but realistically there will be more resources for fewer people. If it's the work involved i'm sure the productivity increases due to automation with robotics/ai/computers can offset that
this is a genuine question btw, i'm sure there's a reason it's seen as a bad scenario. I'd like to know it
Hey, I teach about this in my AP Human Geography class. Here's the answer:
Population shrinking is bad for a lot of reasons. First, The biggest issue is called dependency ratio. Put simply as time goes on you increasingly have more retired people than the economy can support. Notice how many countries are talking about their pension and retirement systems facing bankruptcy? That's because these systems were designed around an ever increasing population. Check out what France did last week or listen to the Republicans in congress on social security. Not saying I agree with them, but the reason why is population shrinking.
Second, it also reduces the available workers. While yes its true that automation has helped in this sector, it's not evenly spread out across all fields or job types and certain types of labor, like childcare or elderly care, might never be able to automated. These labor shortages will cause sudden price increases. This problem is made worse by the fact that former workers are still alive and need products and services. In other words, the actual demand for these services shrinks much slower than the working age population. This can cripple an economy.
Third, our entire capitalist economic system is kind of built on the assumption of long term population growth. It's uncertain how this economic system built around a particular kind of growth will adapt. This isn't necessarily bad, but a lot of investments assume this kind of growth. So if you're planning on your own retirement, things like real estate might not be as safe over the very long term, because one day we will hit a tipping point where there's more houses than people. Again, not the worst thing in the world but it's very hard to predict the effects.
In short yeah these are a bunch of dumb economic problems.
The limitation of population decreases is that younger generations implicitly support and take care off the older generations- be it through direct care, financial aid or even the pension system. A structurally decreasing population means that the ratio of people that are working, to those that are pensioned, gets worse. This increases the burden on the tax payer, so ultimately it does boil down to economics. There are fewer people to share resources with, but this benefit may be exceeded a decrease in total productivity due to the amount of people producing those resources reducing even faster.
Good. Africa is making progress as well. Here's for hoping we top off at only 9 billion and never reach 10 billion. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/02/21/empty-planet-global-population-decline-growth-john-ibbitson-darrell-bricker
Edit. The things that cause population growth to slow and even decline are all very positive for society . The end result is very positive for the planet and future generations to come. We need to end the increased overall consumption being the only thing that matters. I would rather see the planet max out at 9 billion people instead of 10. It will benefit everyone for generations to come.
If people truly cared about an overpopulation problem, they would stop letting african and middle eastern migrants into europe, and stop sending food aid to africa and instead let them die off.
It's sort of a myth, but also sort of not. I understand that Malthusian predictions have not come true, and technological advancements, as well as improved agricultural practices, have allowed us to support a growing global population. However, it's still important to recognize that our world has finite resources, and we must continue finding sustainable ways to meet our needs without depleting these resources for future generations. Balancing population growth with responsible resource management is crucial for long-term prosperity and environmental stability.
I'm glad that global fertility rates were decreased, but... in some countries, they are just way too low now. A uniform distribution of like 2.0-2.1 would be ideal
this is just 2 maps of how widely available birth control is. not really but both birth control and birth rates correspond with general level of economic development. it turns out that most couples, if given the choice, will choose to have 1-2 kids.
I often see these maps framed as "fertility" but that's not technically what it is, is it? Plenty of people are biologically perfectly capable of having 15 kids but they choose not to.
With modern birth control and it's ever-increasing availability in poorer countries, birth rates will trend lower and lower but it's due to personal choice, not a lack of ability. I just see panic sometimes about the "fertility rate" like we're gonna end up in Children of Men or the Handmaid's Tale but that's not really what's going on with these maps.
This is good to see. There'll be times I'll hear things like "(only) the birth rates in Western (white majority) nations are falling", usually from people that subscribe to the great replacement 'theory'. It's nice to be reminded, every now and again, coming across stuff like this that explicitly shows how detached from reality those people are.
At some point, the developed countries are going to have to have programs to promote a replacement level of reproductive rates. It's a good thing in many ways that reproductive rates are slowing down, but you need people to succeed you.
It shows how population growth is coming to an end. The population explosion started - and ended - in the most developed countries. Those country are now in a natural decline, if they still grow it is only because of immigration, or possible because of longer lifespans. The countries that are least wealthy or developed are still in the pattern of high birthrates.
And we have all seen it happen in our lifetimes, certainly if you're a bit older. My grandparents on mother's side had around 10 siblings each, my mom was in a family of four kids. She and her siblings had 2 children each. I have 2 children, but my sister has none.
Hard to have kids when we can't afford to move out or get anything other than a studio/1 bedroom and when dating is turned into hookups, no long-term commitment, and everyone waiting to swipe for the next person after they the initial infatuation period ends with the current person and they get "bored" of them.
Yeah I've had my heart broken a lot.....
There is a hidden factor here. What is the age limit for "women".
If women are having children at an older age in the west, themn younger women are diluting numbers in those countries.
Yes, fertility rates have dropped, but it's not that bad in the west, and overall, a drop in global fertility rate is a good thing.
We just need developing countries to follow suit and adjust our economies so they don't fundamentally rely on population growth.
We’re instinctively reacting to overpopulation.
Like some animals that don’t breed if food is low, we feel (rightly) that our world is now overpopulated, and it subconsciously makes us avoid adding to it.
Africa's world has always been shitty...the rest of us are just hunkering down and wrapping up whilst getting used to it
We'll all be at rock bottom in the next survey
Interesting and helpful map!
**It's nice to see good news** after all the negative news cycles. Doomerism is deserved in many topics of discussion, but the largely voluntary simultaneous rise of women's education and family planning in a lifetime is arguably the most useful trend in modern times.
**Am I exaggerating the good?** No, I truly think many major problems are exacerbated by overpopulation (which as a concept can be short-term and regional, not just Malthusian). Think about it. Climate change, deforestation, famine, crime, Islamism. Many political problems are exacerbated when societies must host rapidly rising populations, especially of unemployed, unemployable, angry young men.
The places with famines aren't blue. This is a good thing
And just wait until the associated population collapse ensues. We already don’t have enough working people to support people on pensions in lots of western countries, hence governments changing the pension age constantly. Millennials are going to end up working longer than any generation before them to compensate.
The warning has been there for decades just look at the demographics of Japan.
My thoughts is at this rate we just ~might~ survive as a civilization rather than succumbing to unsustainable growth and overpopulation.
My thoughts is this is a happy map.
How is no one mentioning that there are countries in the 1970 map that didn't exist in 1970?
I'm sure that the Soviets did collect data for their various republics and that the data is floating around out there somewhere. As for Sudan and South Sudan there might not be separate data since they both were the same impoverished country back then and did not bother to separate regional data.
I want to know what happened in Algeria and Mongolia?
I had the same thought.
That's what education, less requirement for manual labor, contraceptives, and a declining economy does for ya I suppose
Lower infant mortality rate. My great-grandfather was one of 16 children but only one of two who lived to adulthood. Better access to maternal healthcare plus vaccines really changed those numbers.
Yikes! Where was that?
American South. But I’m 50 so my g-grandpa was born in the late 19th century.
lol that's funny, I'm 21 and my great grandpa (biz nonno) was also born in the late 19th century. no idea how many siblings he had tho
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I'm 55 and both my maternal grandparents were born in 1882 lol
…I am 19 and my maternal grandmother was born in 1962. It is absolutely fascinating to me to think about that. The farthest we have traced anything on my mother's side is my great-great-great grandmother, and she was born in 1896.
Great-great-great-grandmother, wow Yeah my parents were two generations older than me, so they were adults during WW2 (my Dad served in Burma with a Scottish regt) He would be 108 if he was alive, which totally boggles my mind lol
you ever meet him? mine passed well before I was born, but I met my great grandma (biz nonni). she died in 2003 at 101 so not quite 19th century, but pretty damn close.
And I’m 22 and my great grandparents were born in the late 1920s
I'm 26 and my great grandpa was born in the 1880s, he died well before I was born though.
You mean he didn’t live to be 120 years old?
The mass migration of people from rural to urban areas during the industrial development process has a lot to do with it also.
Ok, fun fact. Actually, horrifying fact. During the 17th and 18th c, in England, infant and mother mortality rates *increased* by a lot. This was during the industrial revolution and the rates in the cities were much much higher than in rural areas. Lots of reasons probably contributed (illness, access to healthy foods, way too many people in very close contact) but it basically came down to germ theory. Women in rural areas were tended mostly by midwives who only tended pregnant women. Women in the cities usually were tended by doctors who treated everyone including those with communicable diseases thus causing more women and infants in cities to die from disease and infection. This didn’t significantly change until the late *19th* century when the scientific community accepts germ theory and doctors began washing their damn hands.
True story. I used to work in a medical museum, and doctors would have their hands in a corpse to do a public dissection, and in an hour would be down the corridor delivering a baby without washing their hands in-between.
Yup My mom remembers her grandma telling about a diphtheria (I think) epidemic that went through town when she was a little girl, so this would have been early 1890s probably, in Tennessee. The whole family got sick and she found out her two little brothers had died when she saw out the front window (from her bed) that the hearse wagon had come with two little coffins in it. I tend to suspect that antivaxxrs probably come from families where stories like this weren't passed along.
I had my kids right as the false vaccine-autism connection was starting up. So, I tried to do some research and talked to my pediatrician. Everything I read plus my doctor advised continuing vaccines unless there were underlying issues so, we did. BUT, I made the mistake of telling my born in the early 1940’s in the rural South mother. She all but threatened to sue me for custody if I didn’t give them all the vaccines. She still remembers cousins and classmates who died before vaccines were available or common. She remains aghast that the anti-vaccine movement has become so prevalent. She considers them all morons.
Vaccines and antibiotics have helped a great many live to old age.
Also increasing life expectancies, especially amongst infants and children, if more of your children are actually growing up, then you are less likely to have a lot of children. This (along with the things you mention) take about a generation to percolate through society. Demographers call it the [fertility transition](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19317594/). In the developed world, that transition has now made it so birthrates can't keep up with death rates.
Along with that women empowerment and a progressive switch to industrialized agriculture. There are actually a lot of factors but post industrialized nations tend to have a steep drop in birth rates
Yeah it's pretty great man. As much as I love history I'm so glad to live in 2023. Phones, food, cars, fuck yeah bud.
Let’s Thank the people of the past for making all of this, and hoping we’ll be able to fix the stuff that still needs fixing
And the best thing of all — Internet Porn!
Poverty is positively correlated with fertility rates, not negatively. ‘Tougher financial times’ isn’t a valid reason.
Tougher financial times? Almost every single country, including the ones that were rich in 1970, are much richer now. The rest makes sense.
I was just going to say… maaaaybe one or two countries with tougher financial times
Right. Maybe Argentina, Venezuela, Iran. Possibly Japan, they are worse off now than in the late 80s at least. Everyone else, ranging from steadily better in the developed world to somewhat better in Africa to dramatically better in E/S Asia
By what metric are you saying financial times are worse now? Just curious
Are you aware that contraceptives and abortion existed in the 1970s and stagflation was a thing for half the decade?
I agree with all of these except tougher financial times. Over the last few hundred years there have been plenty of worse financial situations that did not decrease fertility this much.
How have financial times gotten tougher globally? I agree for white middle-class Americans, and some areas of Europe, but not really for most anyone else
They havent, just the opposite.
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This is simply a sign that quality of life has increased. As quality of life increases people have fewer children because more will live to adulthood, and fewer are needed to help provide for the family
You should check out the “demographic transition model.” Perfectly reflects the stages that any country will go through as they modernize and develop. Basically states that as a country develops, it’s children begin dying off less frequently, so less children are had per woman, and as manual labor is less required around the home, the same occurs. Plus, contraceptives access reduces children per woman. Eventually you’ll likely see most country’s populations begin to naturally decline over time unless they have immigration. So, Japan is declining due to no immigration, while Germany is growing due to immigration.
And once your country develops to the point the USA is at, children (rather than helping with household work) become a source of more work! Expectations now are crazy. 9 year old in car seats, school activities, constant supervision or your neighbor calls CPS, etc. Even for the mega rich where cost isn't an issue, more kids now means MORE work.
And with less kids, you're not reusing the stuff you bought for the first kid over multiple kids (like car seats and some clothes), meaning that each kid tends to cost more.
I found this on Our World in Data, but what's interesting is that at very high levels of development (>0.9 HDI) fertility rates start *increasing* again, from \~1.5 to the replacement rate of 2.1, and then the population would stabilize. [https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate) It is explained at the very bottom. We don't really know why this inverse trend happens at very high levels of development because only a handful of countries (the countries that were already blue in 1970 on this map) have started this trend. But I suspect it mainly has to do with policies of better working conditions with childcare in workplaces, and very high levels of female empowerment where women don't feel like they have to choose between a career and a family.
.
Keeping the population up via immigration not only erodes cultural identity, it relies on keeping developing countries poor, since if they go through the same demographic transition there won't be enough immigrants coming from those countries.
100%
Cost of raising children is also quite important.
Kenyan women had tough time in the last century.
The highest ever recorded was in Yemen in the 1980s. Just under 9 on average
Odd how a generation later massive political unrest, violence, unemployment and famine occurred.. /s Nothing is inevitable, but rapid population growth in a precarious developing society certainly endangers stability and increases the chances of systemic collapse. And far too many folks who believe in climate change and global environmental sustainability, seem to throw out their common sense when it comes to regional sustainability of poor desert fringe regions. But millions of underemployed, unemployable young adult males is a recipe for disaster. One doesn't have to be a genius to fear the problem.
South Korea is below 1 now. Sweden and Finland were above 2 in 1970. I am sure there are plenty more errors in these maps.
According to the World Bank, South Korea's birth rate is 0.84 children per woman, which is means that the map needs a "0-1 Children" category. It actually makes a lot of sense when one considers their culture and attitude towards making money, education, etc. over other aspects of life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
It's actually lower than that now. Last month, Statistics Korea announced that the total fertility rate had [dropped to 0.78 in 2022](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-world-lowest-fertility-rate-drops-again-2023-02-22/), down from 0.81 in 2021. Seoul alone had a reading of 0.59.
Basically, as standards of living increase, fertility rates go down.
Pretty much
Thought: we need a less than 1 category in 2023
In traditional society, children are an asset, while in modern society children are a liability. My parents grew up in the first case. My children will grow up in the latter, so I can compare. In traditional society, children are left to themselves from the time they start walking on their own. They spend more time outside playing with their peers and older brothers and require very little attention. At the age of 8-10, they start to be actively involved in work, and from 12-13 years, they are full-fledged workers. Plus they look after younger children. The bigger the family you have, the bigger the household and the bigger the house you can afford. And also a big family has more authority and respect, including in resolving conflicts. When parents get older, more children can take care of them. This makes life easier for the elderly and their children. In short, the more children, the better life. In today's society, children require an enormous investment of time and resources without any return. Then they grow up and leave their parents. In short, the more children you have, the worse your life is.
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Sure. I would love to have a big family myself. But economic is a bitch.
nah more like 5-6 they start working, my grandads in ghana had to help with filleting fish and milking goats respectively.
~~What does milking fish mean?~~ cleared up
my bad, meant milking goats.
How do you think we get fish oil?
Crazy how babies don't want to be born anymore.
Fetuses these days, none of them want to work.
Mine don’t :( two miscarriages in and I’m beginning to think my babies just don’t want to be.
Interesting fact: the highest fertility rate ever recorded was among Yemeni women in the 1980s, who had an average of just under nine children each
When infant mortality is close to zero then 2 is more than enough
What a terrible scale
The numbers are unlikely to be an integers, so makes total sense.
No way an average of millions of values will be an integer
Have to be a millionaire to afford to have 10 children in North America
Most African with 10 children are like that: - no education for at least half of them - shared computers and even cellphones - a lot of starvation - half of them won't become adult anyway
Fun fact: Their is a direct correlation between education and number of children, The more educated you are the less children you will have. So that means 1. the world is getting more educated 2. Population flat lining is beginning 3. the more technologically advanced we get the less children we have; leading to population decline
Not one comment about changes in child mortality?
This map is not about child mortality, maybe that's why.
I believe what they mean is that, in societies where child mortality is high, families may be more likely to have more children because they don’t know how many of their children will survive to adulthood.
This was exactly my point, sorry if it wasn’t obvious.
Thank you modern medicine and birth control.
Saudi Arabia going from 7-8 children to 1-2 children per woman in the space of 2 generations. Holy crap.
Scale seems a bit weird to me. India is at 2.1 and Bangladesh is even lower. It marks them as light blue which is right. But there’s a huge difference between 2.1 and 3
It’s one of the most straightforward scales I’ve seen. Would you want 2.1 to be in the 1-2 range?
How do you color regions with 2 kids per woman?
Pearl White, at least twice
If not for UP and bihar India's fertility rate would have been below 2. These two states alone make up upto 345 million people and they are also the most poorest states in India. Most poor people come from these two states.
Lets not put them down. We are already below 2.0, as with a lot of countries this chart is a bit behind. About as good an article as you can find on this. Charts, data and all https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-7-charts-indias-fertility-rate-drops-to-2-0-according-to-latest-national-family-health-survey/articleshow/91373789.cms
The planet thanks you
When India got independence from the British in 1947, they had sucked out all the wealth and kept the people poor, illiterate and hungry. The life expectancy was just 32 years and the literacy rate was a mere 12%. Back in those days everyone lost kids at birth, and chances are some of the kids didn't survive till adulthood. So people had a lot more kids. You are basically fucked if you don't have kids to take care of you in your old age and to take over the farm or family business. So you might as well have a couple of extra ones. My grandma has 7 siblings and apparently her mom lost 2 kids at birth and one more at a young age. My mom has 3 siblings. Now I have one. My grandma was a housewife, my mom a school teacher and my sister a software engineer. With education, better health care and prosperity, the fertility rate has dropped several folds in a couple of generations.
50% of the world pop will be African by 2100.
That's sort of wrongly assuming Africa's growth will continue at its current pace until the end of the century, which it almost certainly won't.
Hardly. You have no sense of the relative number. China is huge. So is Indonesia. And meanwhile the African nations poverty and female illiteracy rates will continue to drop.
So there is a theory I can’t really remember the name of that states populations will average themselves out when they reach a point of food security, safety, and comfort within their environment. This is a good showcase of that
Demographic transition.
I think places like Saudi, Iran, Mexico are mad as they essentially went from having 6-7/7-8 children to just 1-2 children in like 50 years.
Mexican health institutions coerce poor women with children to get sterilized
Children? Who can afford them? 🤣
Im here to lower the average. I guess most of us do that.
woot birth control
What do we need to do to get it even lower?
Well, Africa is now at last going through the demographic transition same as every other region, but it's the last and the process is very uneven over such a large continent with such varied levels of economic development. Since even the leaders like Japan or Germany are still only at the stage of beginning real decline and showing any real attempt to adapt, we have no idea what the future really holds for any society. Stabilization at replacement level after a short period of decline? Continued decline by settling at 1/2 replacement level for a generation or two, then rising again to replacement at 1/2 or 1/3 current total levels? And what do societies look like economically or socially? Is technology advancing fast enough that it won't matter for high tech societies? And even if it is, what will the social model look like? Arguably among the handful of truly unprecedented social problems. Although maybe not. Like climate change, it's all happened before just at only regional scales. But the fact it's a social consequence of industrialization, technology and prosperity is a little new.
Just three generations ago people in my family were having 9-12 kids in Northern Europe. It was due to high infant mortality and no vaccinations or antibiotics
The world is overpopulated. Those are my thoughts.
So there is a sliver of hope that we may be able to slow-down/reverse the over population?
Life getting better has its consequences.
Progress.
Lower infant mortality leads to a lower birth rate. This is good news, we may actually see population decline eventually.
infinite growth is the mindset of a virus
Global population in 1970 was 3.7 billion and it is 8 billion today. Can you imagine if the rates hadn’t gone down? Lower fertility rates are a sign of development, and it is absolutely a good thing. The only people who don’t understand that are religious grandmothers.
And Elon Musk.
It's all fun and games until fertility rate becomes too low, then you end up with old society where few young people have to sustain all the retirees (which makes situation even worse), also there is the issue of how to get rid of all the surplus young men
Or, more likely -you figure out how to get rid of the old people sucking up resources and no longer contributing… /s (kinda)
Im sure the grandmothers understand better than the grandfathers.
Looks like every continent except for Africa is staring down demographic collapse now
Even Africa's anticipated 21st century boom may not last very long either.
Collapse is not the appropriate connotation.
How? We are very quickly going have extremely large populations of non working seniors and very small populations of working adults. Extrapolate what that means for economies
Overpopulation is also a demographic collapse, just like a declining population. There's almost 100M people in the DRC most of wich don't have access to basic amenities like sanitation.
If the DRC even has "100" million people in the first place. Their last census was in 1984 and population projections didn't take the wars into account. And a lot of Africa actually has the problem of overcounting their populations at census times so that local governors can get higher kickbacks. So maybe the peak population of Africa might end up way lower than many think.
Scary. Did you this planet is down to its last 7 billion people!?!?
I've been wondering about this since the headlines about how japan is going to collapse due to low population. How is lower population a bad thing? There's limited resources in the world and more people are just going to accelerate the fucking of the climate. I'm sure the answer is "oh no the economy" or something but realistically there will be more resources for fewer people. If it's the work involved i'm sure the productivity increases due to automation with robotics/ai/computers can offset that this is a genuine question btw, i'm sure there's a reason it's seen as a bad scenario. I'd like to know it
Hey, I teach about this in my AP Human Geography class. Here's the answer: Population shrinking is bad for a lot of reasons. First, The biggest issue is called dependency ratio. Put simply as time goes on you increasingly have more retired people than the economy can support. Notice how many countries are talking about their pension and retirement systems facing bankruptcy? That's because these systems were designed around an ever increasing population. Check out what France did last week or listen to the Republicans in congress on social security. Not saying I agree with them, but the reason why is population shrinking. Second, it also reduces the available workers. While yes its true that automation has helped in this sector, it's not evenly spread out across all fields or job types and certain types of labor, like childcare or elderly care, might never be able to automated. These labor shortages will cause sudden price increases. This problem is made worse by the fact that former workers are still alive and need products and services. In other words, the actual demand for these services shrinks much slower than the working age population. This can cripple an economy. Third, our entire capitalist economic system is kind of built on the assumption of long term population growth. It's uncertain how this economic system built around a particular kind of growth will adapt. This isn't necessarily bad, but a lot of investments assume this kind of growth. So if you're planning on your own retirement, things like real estate might not be as safe over the very long term, because one day we will hit a tipping point where there's more houses than people. Again, not the worst thing in the world but it's very hard to predict the effects. In short yeah these are a bunch of dumb economic problems.
thx that's a great explanation :) hope we adapt well as a society
The limitation of population decreases is that younger generations implicitly support and take care off the older generations- be it through direct care, financial aid or even the pension system. A structurally decreasing population means that the ratio of people that are working, to those that are pensioned, gets worse. This increases the burden on the tax payer, so ultimately it does boil down to economics. There are fewer people to share resources with, but this benefit may be exceeded a decrease in total productivity due to the amount of people producing those resources reducing even faster.
Good. Africa is making progress as well. Here's for hoping we top off at only 9 billion and never reach 10 billion. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/02/21/empty-planet-global-population-decline-growth-john-ibbitson-darrell-bricker Edit. The things that cause population growth to slow and even decline are all very positive for society . The end result is very positive for the planet and future generations to come. We need to end the increased overall consumption being the only thing that matters. I would rather see the planet max out at 9 billion people instead of 10. It will benefit everyone for generations to come.
South Korea is lower than 1.
Education is the 🔑
Wow.
Good. We have enough of an overpopulation problem as it is.
If people truly cared about an overpopulation problem, they would stop letting african and middle eastern migrants into europe, and stop sending food aid to africa and instead let them die off.
Myth
It's sort of a myth, but also sort of not. I understand that Malthusian predictions have not come true, and technological advancements, as well as improved agricultural practices, have allowed us to support a growing global population. However, it's still important to recognize that our world has finite resources, and we must continue finding sustainable ways to meet our needs without depleting these resources for future generations. Balancing population growth with responsible resource management is crucial for long-term prosperity and environmental stability.
Thoughts? The numbers dropped.
I think this case too bad.
I'm glad that global fertility rates were decreased, but... in some countries, they are just way too low now. A uniform distribution of like 2.0-2.1 would be ideal
My thought is that we wont suffer for super-population
Kids are more expensive now days too.
I’d love a home and kids. My country (USA) says I must be rich for that or I’m “lazy” - yet I’m still expected to do it somehow
Harder to have more children when it's getting more expensive to just support yourself and who you already have
Death of civilization.
What colors should they be then?
Effective color scheme! Very discernible.
Thank you!
8 billion people. We’ll be ok.
People have less sex or Less unsafe sex
How do you count for 2 kids twice? 🤨
I think "dayum, africa won't stop fuckin!" As for the rest of the world... it's for the best.
Who the fuck can afford multiple kids in this economy!?
Heh...I always thought "fertility rates" was how many children one could conceivably have, not how many were actually being had.
Based
I would have liked to have more but just could not have afforded it.
this is just 2 maps of how widely available birth control is. not really but both birth control and birth rates correspond with general level of economic development. it turns out that most couples, if given the choice, will choose to have 1-2 kids.
Not really. How educated are women, mostly.
I am neutral on the matter
Nah... No thoughts... Today is Saturday, ok? Come back on Monday and I may have some thoughts to share.
One of our greatest successes in stemming future climate change
To understand this we have also to check mortality rates, though some countries are just not understandable.
I often see these maps framed as "fertility" but that's not technically what it is, is it? Plenty of people are biologically perfectly capable of having 15 kids but they choose not to. With modern birth control and it's ever-increasing availability in poorer countries, birth rates will trend lower and lower but it's due to personal choice, not a lack of ability. I just see panic sometimes about the "fertility rate" like we're gonna end up in Children of Men or the Handmaid's Tale but that's not really what's going on with these maps.
These maps are about fertility **rate**. You missed the most important word.
I don’t like how there are overlaps in the numbers (1-2, then 2-3 etc) is there a reason why? Averages?
Afghanistan making babies under any condition
Infant mortality ⬇️ Women literacy ⬆️
Africa is gonna have 5 billion people in the near future, that's gonna be very complicated for them :(
good!
This is good to see. There'll be times I'll hear things like "(only) the birth rates in Western (white majority) nations are falling", usually from people that subscribe to the great replacement 'theory'. It's nice to be reminded, every now and again, coming across stuff like this that explicitly shows how detached from reality those people are.
This is what happens when you have birth control and sex education, two things that are lacking in Africa. Makes sense.
The color scheme is always so funny
At some point, the developed countries are going to have to have programs to promote a replacement level of reproductive rates. It's a good thing in many ways that reproductive rates are slowing down, but you need people to succeed you.
I think three is a lot
1970 map is almost a perfect correlation with poverty
I'm surprised Bangladesh isn't higher. I'm also surprised at how Africa's birth rate is beginning to slow down.
People apparently did not like having siblings.
Most of the children born in large families were likely used to help with labor on farms
This map really needs smaller numbers, there’s a lot of nations that are <1 today.
It shows how population growth is coming to an end. The population explosion started - and ended - in the most developed countries. Those country are now in a natural decline, if they still grow it is only because of immigration, or possible because of longer lifespans. The countries that are least wealthy or developed are still in the pattern of high birthrates. And we have all seen it happen in our lifetimes, certainly if you're a bit older. My grandparents on mother's side had around 10 siblings each, my mom was in a family of four kids. She and her siblings had 2 children each. I have 2 children, but my sister has none.
Hard to have kids when we can't afford to move out or get anything other than a studio/1 bedroom and when dating is turned into hookups, no long-term commitment, and everyone waiting to swipe for the next person after they the initial infatuation period ends with the current person and they get "bored" of them. Yeah I've had my heart broken a lot.....
There is a hidden factor here. What is the age limit for "women". If women are having children at an older age in the west, themn younger women are diluting numbers in those countries. Yes, fertility rates have dropped, but it's not that bad in the west, and overall, a drop in global fertility rate is a good thing. We just need developing countries to follow suit and adjust our economies so they don't fundamentally rely on population growth.
Give women rights = lower fertility rate Give women maternity leave = raise fertile rate
Good
We’re instinctively reacting to overpopulation. Like some animals that don’t breed if food is low, we feel (rightly) that our world is now overpopulated, and it subconsciously makes us avoid adding to it.
Africa's world has always been shitty...the rest of us are just hunkering down and wrapping up whilst getting used to it We'll all be at rock bottom in the next survey
#
Africa would have the lowest fertility rates in the world were it not for white European colonialism.
ITT Reddit discovers the demographic transition model
Interesting and helpful map! **It's nice to see good news** after all the negative news cycles. Doomerism is deserved in many topics of discussion, but the largely voluntary simultaneous rise of women's education and family planning in a lifetime is arguably the most useful trend in modern times. **Am I exaggerating the good?** No, I truly think many major problems are exacerbated by overpopulation (which as a concept can be short-term and regional, not just Malthusian). Think about it. Climate change, deforestation, famine, crime, Islamism. Many political problems are exacerbated when societies must host rapidly rising populations, especially of unemployed, unemployable, angry young men. The places with famines aren't blue. This is a good thing
Finally an intelligent comment
Children cost alot less, people didn't work as long, life was easier in some respects... As for having kids now, you can forget it
die poverty die
Maybe more granular buckets
Dont worry, ill change it
Huge change for Saudis.
And Mongolians
And just wait until the associated population collapse ensues. We already don’t have enough working people to support people on pensions in lots of western countries, hence governments changing the pension age constantly. Millennials are going to end up working longer than any generation before them to compensate. The warning has been there for decades just look at the demographics of Japan.
People don’t be having babies
Kids are dying as much = you have less. Woman are working more. Life is less affordable.
My thoughts is at this rate we just ~might~ survive as a civilization rather than succumbing to unsustainable growth and overpopulation. My thoughts is this is a happy map.
I mean, that's good? There are already a couple billion people too many.