Many politicians and pundits around the world have raised the alarm in recent years about declining fertility rates. They evoke the ominous specters of imploding populations, a “gray tsunami” of older people, the demise of the family, and even the very extinction of mankind. They can marshal a good deal of data in issuing these warnings. The world’s total fertility rate has plunged over the past 70 years from around five children per woman in 1950 to 2.25 children in 2023. In 2023, more than 100 countries had a total fertility rate below the level needed to maintain their population sizes over the long term, the so-called replacement rate, often pegged to about 2.1 children per woman.

It is true that total fertility rates in many countries have dropped to historically low levels, but those figures are, on their own, no reason for panic. Some of the decline in the total fertility rate has more to do with changes in when people have children than it does with how many children people have in their lifetimes. Fertility decline is also the product of many positive developments, including better contraception, a reduction in teenage pregnancy, and higher levels of female education. The consequences of low fertility can also be easily exaggerated. With astute planning and policies, countries can survive and even thrive as their societies grow older.

THE MIRAGE OF A BUST

Some of the panic surrounding low fertility probably arises from a misunderstanding of what the total fertility rate measures. The total fertility rate is calculated by averaging the age-specific birthrates for a population in a given year. For instance, in 2022, the United States saw 13.6 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 years, 57.5 births for those aged 20 to 24, 93.5 births for those aged 25 to 29, 97.5 births for those aged 30 to 34, 55.3 births for those aged 35 to 40, and 12.6 births for those aged 40 to 44. The total fertility rate in the United States in 2022 is calculated by adding up the age-specific birthrates, multiplying the sum by five to account for the five-year range of each age group, and then dividing by 1,000 to arrive at a birthrate for women of reproductive age in a given year—1.6 children per woman in 2022.

The total fertility rate provides a snapshot of fertility at a given time point. However, it does not necessarily reveal anything about how many children women have in their lifetimes, which can only be assessed once women have reached age 45 or 50. For instance, returning to the example above, it is entirely possible that American women who were in their teens, 20s, and early 30s in 2022 will have more children later in life than previous generations did. Despite their lower fertility earlier in life, they could hence wind up with a similar number of children by the end of their reproductive windows. 

Herein lies the problem with using the total fertility rate as an indicator of fertility decline: it is very sensitive to changes in fertility timing. Over the past few decades, it has become more common to have children later in life. Teenage births in particular have declined dramatically since the early 1970s in developed countries, and since around 2000 in developing countries. Some of the decline in the total fertility rate observed over the past few decades is due to the shift toward bearing children later in life as opposed to a decline in lifetime fertility. In fact, lifetime fertility has been relatively stable or declined only moderately over the past few decades. For example, women born in 1976 in the United States had on average 2.2 children by the time they turned 45. That figure is actually slightly higher than that of women born in 1959 (2.0 children). In sum, fertility decline may be less dramatic than many people think.

Considering the broader sweep of human fertility may also help quell any fears about current low levels of fertility. For most of human history, women gave birth to many children. Typically, however, just two children survived to adulthood. Today, women give birth to around two children, and nearly all children born survive to adulthood. Thus, the net reproduction rate—that is, the number of surviving children per woman—is essentially the same today as it has been for most of human existence. Human reproduction appears to have finally caught up with the low levels of infant and child mortality that thankfully now characterize most of the world.

Those who wistfully compare today’s relatively low fertility rates with the baby booms of the 1950s and 1960s should remember that the rates of this period were in fact historically outliers. And the high fertility of this period came with costs: growth in the world population and consumption since the 1960s has accelerated the use of land and driven the earth’s systems closer to collapse. It is important to keep in mind that today’s low fertility is the product of various positive societal developments, including fewer unplanned births; a dramatic drop in child and teenage fertility; lower child and infant mortality; the empowerment of women; and improvements in education, contraception, and reproductive autonomy. There is no reason to assume that past generations were universally happy to have as many children as they did. In the past, many people probably had numerous children because they lacked access to effective contraception and alternative, socially sanctioned life pathways. Even today, it is estimated that 48 percent of all pregnancies globally and 34 percent of pregnancies in high-income countries are unintended, and surveys in many high-income countries suggest that about ten percent of parents regret having had children.

AGING WELL

Low fertility will have important consequences, chief among them changes to the age structures of populations. When fewer children are born, the ratio of “older” (generally defined as 60 or 65 years and up) to younger people in a population increases. Some worry that this will put an impossible burden on public welfare and health care systems and on younger generations who will have to care for a huge population of older people. Despite common stereotypes, only a small proportion of older adults are in fact dependent on other people for care. Across countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2019, an average of 10.7 percent of people aged 65 and over received long-term care, either at home or in a facility devoted to that purpose. Moreover, population aging has increased most rapidly in the countries where older adults are healthiest, most educated, and most capable of living independently. For instance, Japan has the highest proportion of people 65 and older in the world but also one of the healthiest older populations. As a result, the ratio of people with significant age-related health complaints to those without in Japan is roughly the same as in India, which has a much younger population. Investments in health and education can mitigate the impact of population aging.

Many assumptions about the negative impacts of low fertility on the economy are likewise either overstated or unsupported by evidence. It is often assumed that, absent migration, low fertility will cause a country’s labor force to shrink, leading to shortages of workers, decreased productivity, and a diminishing tax base. There is little question that pay-as-you-go welfare and health-care systems will require adjustment to maintain an adequate balance between contributions put into these programs and benefits taken out. But at the same time, population decline can go hand in hand with growing GDP, per capita GDP, and labor participation rates. China’s economy, for instance, has boomed in the same period that births have plummeted. In fact, all of the world’s largest economies now have fertility rates below the replacement rate yet remain economically dynamic; low-fertility countries now produce around nine-tenths of the world’s GDP.

Effective public health measures, such as those that encourage people to exercise regularly and abstain from smoking, could go a long way in improving the health of the population as it grows older. Governments can also do much to compensate for an overall decline in the traditional working-age population. For instance, they can help improve citizens’ productive potential across their lifetimes by investing in early education, health care, and lifelong learning. Investments in automation and artificial intelligence could also help. Although labor forces could indeed become smaller, these reductions could be offset by greater employment among groups that traditionally have lower employment rates: for example, women (in some countries), older adults, and marginalized communities. Over the past few decades in Europe, more and more women joined the labor market, perhaps as a result of the opportunities afforded by having fewer children. Even as Europe’s population has aged, the proportion of economically active to inactive people in the region has actually increased.

It’s not just that low fertility may not be that bad—it could also yield benefits. Having fewer children makes it easier for societies to commit sufficient resources to improving the education, health, and well-being of their populations. Having fewer children also makes it easier for parents to invest in the development of their children and in other important areas of their lives. Currently, at least two-thirds of the world’s youth do not obtain the basic skills needed to participate effectively in modern economies. Even in the world’s high-income countries, a quarter of children lack basic skills and one of five children experiences material deprivation. Clearly, children would benefit from additional investment. By reducing population growth, low fertility also makes it easier for societies to reduce their impact on the environment.

Regardless of whether one sees it as a triumph or a curse, there is no reason to expect that low fertility will be reversed in any major way. Societies should thus accept low fertility and try to make the best of the opportunities it affords. Instead of seeking to encourage people to have more children or berating those who delay parenthood or decide not to have children, policymakers should focus on helping more people to realize their own fertility goals. More people could have children—and governments would not be infringing on their reproductive autonomy and right to privacy—if they had better access to paid parental leave, affordable high-quality childcare, and assisted reproductive technologies. Societies should also consider how they can help young people use the relatively new norm of singledom in their 20s in ways that put them on track for long-term success, and how they can help people avoid both unwanted pregnancies and unwanted childlessness resulting from waiting “too long” to have children.

FERTILITY POLITICS

Low fertility rates have recently become a highly politicized subject in the United States. Some conservative U.S. politicians have invoked the prospect of depopulation and accuse their opponents of indifference to or, worse, of being responsible for the plummeting of birthrates. The heated rhetoric is interesting given that the United States, by comparison with other high-income countries, has a relatively high total fertility rate: 1.67 children per woman in 2023, versus 1.47. The lifetime fertility of the most recent cohort for whom data is available, women born in 1976, stands at 2.2 children per woman, equivalent to the average number of children the country’s men and women say they want to have. Both the lifetime fertility of that cohort of women and the average number of children desired sit above the replacement rate.

There is also no indication that the United States has become a nation of “childless cat ladies,” a term used by JD Vance, the current Republican vice-presidential candidate, in 2021. In fact, men in the United States are more likely than women to be childless at the age of 55 (in 2018, 18.2 percent versus 15 percent). Similar proportions of men and women are thought to have remained childless in pre-industrial Europe—indicating that childlessness in the United States is hardly a modern or isolated phenomenon. Absent convincing evidence of a fertility crisis in the country, it appears that the prominence of pronatalism in the United States has more to do with its symbolic value in appealing to a species of conservative identity politics than in responding to a real problem.