From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?   
   By Dean Spears, Sept. 18, 2023, NY Times   
      
   Most people now live in countries where two or fewer children are born for   
   every two adults. If all people in the United States today lived through their   
   reproductive years and had babies at an average pace, then it would add up to   
   about 1.66 births per    
   woman. In Europe, that number is 1.5; in East Asia, 1.2; in Latin America,   
   1.9. Any worldwide average of fewer than two children per two adults means our   
   population shrinks and in the long run each new generation is smaller than the   
   one before. If the    
   world’s fertility rate were the same as in the United States today, then the   
   global population would fall from a peak of around 10 billion to less than two   
   billion about 300 years later, over perhaps 10 generations. And if family   
   sizes remained small,    
   we would continue declining.   
      
   What would happen as a consequence? Over the past 200 years, humanity’s   
   population growth has gone hand in hand with profound advances in living   
   standards and health: longer lives, healthier children, better education,   
   shorter workweeks and many more    
   improvements. Our period of progress began recently, bringing the discovery of   
   antibiotics, the invention of electric lightbulbs, video calls with Grandma   
   and the possibility of eradicating Guinea worm disease. In this short period,   
   humanity has been    
   large and growing. Economists who study growth and progress don’t think this   
   is a coincidence. Innovations and discoveries are made by people. In a world   
   with fewer people in it, the loss of so much human potential may threaten   
   humanity’s continued    
   path toward better lives.   
      
   Whenever low birthrates get public attention, chances are somebody is   
   concerned about what it means for international competition, immigration or a   
   government’s fiscal challenges over the coming decades as the population   
   ages. But that’s thinking too    
   small. A depopulating world is a big change that we all face together. It’s   
   bigger than geopolitical advantage or government budgets. It’s much bigger   
   than nationalistic worries over which country or culture might manage to eke   
   out a population    
   decline that’s a little bit slower than its neighbors’.   
      
   Sustained below-replacement fertility will mean tens of billions of lives not   
   lived over the next few centuries — many lives that could have been   
   wonderful for the people who would have lived them and by your standards, too.   
      
   Perhaps that loss doesn’t trouble you. It would be tempting to welcome   
   depopulation as a boon to the environment. But the pace of depopulation will   
   be too slow for our most pressing problems. It will not replace the need for   
   urgent action on climate,    
   land use, biodiversity, pollution and other environmental challenges. If the   
   population hits around 10 billion people in the 2080s and then begins to   
   decline, it might still exceed today’s eight billion after 2100. Population   
   decline would come quickly,   
    measured in generations, and yet arrive far too slowly to be more than a   
   sideshow in the effort to save the planet. Work to decarbonize our economies   
   and reform our land use and food systems must accelerate in this decade and   
   the next, not start in the    
   next century.   
      
   This isn’t a call to immediately remake our societies and economies in the   
   service of birthrates. It’s a call to start conversations now, so that our   
   response to low birthrates is a decision that is made with the best ideas from   
   all of us. Kicking    
   the can down the road will make choices more difficult for future generations.   
   The economics and politics of a society in which the old outnumber the young   
   will make it even harder to choose policies that support children.   
      
   If we wait, the less inclusive, less compassionate, less calm elements within   
   our society and many societies worldwide may someday call depopulation a   
   crisis and exploit it to suit their agendas — of inequality, nationalism,   
   exclusion or control.    
   Paying attention now would create an opportunity to lay out a path that would   
   preserve freedom, share burdens, advance gender equity, value care work and   
   avoid the disasters that happen when governments try to impose their will on   
   reproduction.   
      
   Or perhaps we don’t need to concern ourselves at all if fertility rates   
   self-correct to two. But the data shows that they don’t. Births won’t   
   automatically rebound just because it would be convenient for advancing living   
   standards or sharing the    
   burden of care work or financing social insurance programs. We know that   
   fertility rates can stay below replacement because they have. They’ve been   
   below that level in Brazil and Chile for about 20 years; in Thailand for about   
   30 years; and in Canada,    
   Germany and Japan for about 50.   
      
   In fact, in none of the countries where lifelong fertility rates have fallen   
   well below two have they ever returned above it. Depopulation could continue,   
   generation after generation, as long as people look around and decide that   
   small families work best    
   for them, some having no children, some having three or four and many having   
   one or two.   
      
   Nor can humanity count on any one region or subgroup to buoy us all over the   
   long run. Birthrates are falling in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the   
   current highest average rates, as education and economic opportunities   
   continue to improve. Israel is    
   an example of a rich country that, as of today, has above-replacement   
   fertility rates. But there, too, fertility rates have been falling over the   
   decades, from 4.5 in 1950 to 3.0 today. Israel may not be above 2.1 for many   
   more generations.   
      
   The main reason that birthrates are low is simple: People today want smaller   
   families than people did in the past. That’s true in different cultures and   
   economies around the world. It’s what both women and men report in surveys.   
      
      
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