Previous Fertility Roundups: #1, #2.

The pace seems to be doing this about twice a year. The actual situation changes slowly, so presumably the pace of interesting new things should slow down over time from here.

Demographics

This time around, a visualization. Where will the next 1,000 babies be born?

Population Trends

Scott Lincicome notes American population now expected to peak in 2080 at 369 million.

South Korea now down to 0.7 births per woman. The story of South Korea is told as a resounding success, of a country that made itself rich and prosperous. But what does it profit us, if we become nominally rich and prosperous, but with conditions so hostile that we cannot or will not bring children into them? If the rule you followed led you here, of what use was the rule? Why should others follow it?

More Births reminds us that we have indeed seen countries fall below replacement level and come roaring back, most famously in the Baby Boom. Cultural trends can go any number of ways.

Basil: The fertility rate drops from 2015 -> 2023 are insane in just EIGHT YEARS:
France: 1.96 -> 1.68
Sweden: 1.85 -> 1.42
America: 1.84 -> 1.64
UK: 1.78 -> 1.45
Russia: 1.78 -> 1.41
China: 1.75 -> 1.05 (wtf)
Germany: 1.50 -> 1.42
South Korea: 1.24 -> .73 (jesus christ)
Netherlands: 1.55 -> 1.45
Canada: 1.60 -> 1.25
Japan: 1.45 -> 1.21
Poland: 1.44 -> 1.28
Taiwan: 1.18 -> 0.86

Those are LFR numbers, so the actual changes are presumably bigger.

Singapore falls to historic low of 0.97. New figures have South Korea at 0.72.

I continue to say that if the numbers can decline this fast, they can also bounce back. Indeed do many things come to pass, and we can expect transformational technological change. Things have looked bleak or inevitable before. Don’t lose hope.

After that, China’s numbers came in for 2023 and they are even worse. The population already shrunk by 2 million in 2023, a trend that will rapidly accelerate by default.

That WSJ article ends with a Harvard professor saying China should not pursue ‘higher’ birthrates, allowing itself to quickly cease to exist, in order to instead address nominal measures of well being.

Martin Whyte, a sociology professor emeritus at Harvard University, said in an essay in China-US Focus, run by the independent China-United States Exchange Foundation, last year that instead of

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Family planning