It is no secret that global human population is declining sharply. The total world fertility rate has more than halved since 1950. Few countries, including the United States and nearly every other developed nation, are having enough babies to simply replace their current population. Experts at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), a global economics think tank, have just released a major paper explaining the significant economic downsides of declining populations.
Two-thirds of humanity live in a country that has a fertility rate below 2.1, the basic requirement for replacement. They explain, “By 2100, populations in some major economies will fall by 20 to 50 percent, based on UN projections.”
Most troubling, MGI reports the “world reached its maximum number of annual births in 2012, when 146 million babies were born, and the global number of births will continue to slowly decline.” Demographers have called this ominous milestone Peak Child, the point at which we will likely never have this many children born in a year, ever again.
Scholars from Our World in Data, the superb global trends tracking effort of the Global Change Data Lab operating from the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, recently announced the same thing: “The world has passed ‘peak child.’” They explain, “‘Peak child’ is a sign that the world is on course for ‘peak population.’” These Oxford scholars demonstrate this development this way:
Our World in Data shows us the future of births across the world through this century. The trendline is not positive.
This is an extremely somber data milestone. And demographers state strongly that once birth rates start to decline, as they have now, they will likely never rise again.
In the very important book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, social researcher Darrell Bricker and journalist John Ibbitson write,
They state this will result in “a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human heard.”
Reaching Peak Child is the start of that relentless never-ending culling. It is the nose of the plane of a human future diving downward. We will not likely pull out of that nosedive. Not good. Not good at all.
But we have the power to change this trajectory. The answer is, in the larger scope of things, relatively simple. It is one of the most natural things in the world. We must just find the will to marry in greater numbers, see fertility as an essential blessing, and more of us build families of at least three children. This must happen in all countries across the globe.
The future of humanity depends on this happening. Literally.
Related articles and resources:
Red States are More Fertile than Blue. Here’s Why it Matters.
Mapping US Fertility and Married Parenting Rates
Why Americans Over and Under 50 Say They Don’t Have Kids
Pro-Life and Pro-Family Policies are Essential for Conservatives
Brad Wilcox Exhorts Young People to ‘Get Married’
China’s Population Drops by 2 Million in 2023 Due to Record Low Birth Rate
Evangelicals Can Heed This One Trend from Mormons and Muslims
Discarding Genesis 1, U.S. Population Set to Decline This Century Amid World Population Collapse
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