Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Sources – Population Crash
Thanks to our experts:
Dr. Max Roser
Our World In Data
Dr. Jennifer D. Sciubba
Population Reference Bureau
A general note on the population projections we are using: The UN has been almost the sole provider of population projections since the 1950s. In 2022, the twenty-seventh edition of World Population Prospects was published, which is currently the most recent projection available. It includes population estimates from 1950 to the present based on the analyses of historical demographic trends and national population censuses conducted between 1950 and 2022. It also includes population projections to 2100, starting from 2022. The next edition is due 2024.
#The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. 2022.
https://population.un.org/wpp/
The UN provides projections based on different scenarios. The most commonly cited ones are Low, Medium and High, which reflect the different fertility rates, with the same assumptions for sex ratio at birth, life expectancy and international migration. Details of the methodology regarding the projections can be found in the following document.
#Methodology of the United Nations population estimates and projections, 2022
https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2022_Methodology.pdf
Quote: “As part of its work on probabilistic projections, the Population Division has also published the 80 and 95 percent prediction intervals of future fertility levels, along with the median trajectory. The median trajectory constitutes the medium-fertility assumption.
The 2022 Revision of the World Population Prospects also includes several scenarios with different fertility assumptions:
(1) medium-fertility assumption;
(2) high-fertility assumption;
(3) low-fertility assumption;
(4) constant-fertility assumption;
(5) instant-replacement assumption;
(6) an instant replacement zero migration scenario, which additionally assumes zero net international migration; and
(7) a momentum scenario which has a different treatment of the mortality assumptions as compared to the instant-replacement zero migration scenario. In preparing the different scenarios, making the medium fertility assumption is the most significant first step.”
However, there have been other studies using different methods. Two other major studies have been frequently compared to the previous version of UN projections, 2019 edition.
Researchers from The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine published their results in a 2020 paper.
#Vollset et al. Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. 2020
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext
The results of this study can be viewed in the following website:
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)
https://vizhub.healthdata.org/population-forecast/
The Reference scenario in this study predicted that the global population would peak at around 9.7 billion in 2064, and then decline to about 8.8 billion by 2100.
Centre of Expertise on Population and Migration (CEPAM) Project (collaboration between JRC and IIASA)
#Lutz et al. Demographic and Human Capital Scenarios for the 21st Century: 2018 assessment for 201 countries, EUR 29113 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2018.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC111148
The medium scenario (SS2) in this study projected a peak of about 9.8 billion around 2080 and would decrease to around 9.5 billion at the end of the century. There are two other scenarios with higher and lower projections based on different assumptions on development.
A subsequent update predicted the population being a little under 9.7 billion around 2070:
#Wittgenstein Centre Human Capital Data Explorer
http://dataexplorer.wittgensteincentre.org/wcde-v2/
A comparison of these three studies can be found in the following articles:
#D. Adam. How far will global population rise? Researchers can’t agree, 2021, Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02522-6
# Kaneda, Falk and Patierno. Understanding and Comparing Population Projections in Sub-Saharan Africa. 2021.
Quote: “IHME’s projections join an established field, with other leading demographic projections produced regularly by the United Nations Population Division (UN), one of the most longstanding and widely used sources; and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). The three sets of projections apply different assumptions about future trends in fertility. The UN assumptions are largely based on historical observations from other countries, as well as countries’ own trends. In contrast, the models of fertility developed by IHME and IIASA incorporate women’s educational attainment, and in the case of IHME, also consider met need for family planning—the percentage of women of reproductive age who wish to stop or delay childbearing and are using a modern contraceptive method. The assumptions and methods used to generate each set of projections are summarized in the webinar, “What to Expect When You’re Projecting? Interrogating Population Projections and Their Fertility Assumptions,” organized by the Health Policy Plus Project.1”
In a nutshell, population projections are not straightforward calculations but based on many assumptions, and the few people who attempt them do not arrive at the same results. So there is no definitive answer but a range of solutions.
– Every two years one million Japanese disappear, China’s population will halve by the end of the century, the median age in Italy has reached 48.
Japan’s population shows a negative annual population change since 2010 and UN projections are pointing to decreases of over half a million every year in the next decades.
# United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects: The 2022 Revision
#Statistical Handbook of Japan 2022
https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook/c0117.html
Quote: “The Population Census in 2015 marked the first decline in Japan's total population since the initiation of the Census in 1920. The decline continued in the Population Census in 2020, with a decrease of 948,646 people compared to the previous Census (2015). In 2021, it was 125.50 million, down by 0.64 million from the year before.”
UN projections estimated that China’s population will drop to 770 million from 1.43 billion in 2023.
Values for the median age in Italy is 47.3 (projected to be 47.7 in 2023) according to the latest UN data, 48 according to EuroStat. We opted to use 48.
#UN Data Portal: Population Division (2023)
#Eurostat, Half of EU’s population older than 44.4 years in 2022, 2023
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/DDN-20230222-1
Quote: “Across the EU countries, the median age ranged from 38.3 years in Cyprus, 38.8 in Ireland and 39.7 in Luxembourg to 48.0 years in Italy, 46.8 in Portugal and 46.1 in Greece. In total, 18 EU countries were below the EU’s median age.”
– All around the world birth rates are crashing – Is humanity dying out? What is going on and how bad is it?
The declining population is not an isolated problem in a few countries.
#World Population Prospects 2022: Summary of Results
Quote: “7. More and more countries have begun to experience population decline.
Fertility has fallen markedly in recent decades for many countries. Today, two-thirds of the global population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman, roughly the level required for zero growth in the long run for a population with low mortality. The populations of 61 countries or areas are projected to decrease by 1 per cent or more between 2022 and 2050, owing to sustained low levels of fertility and, in some cases, elevated rates of emigration.”
OWID maps the data from the 2022 Revision World Population Prospects. In the following interactive visualisation, change of birth rate can be seen for all countries.
The plot we show on screen is based on the chart below:
– For hundreds of thousands of years the human population barely grew at all, haunted by disease, famine and war until the industrial revolution – exponential progress led to exponential growth, pushing our numbers to 6 billion in the year 1999 and 8 billion just 24 years later.
The world’s population was stuck at a small number for a very long time. People had many children, but most of them died, so only a low number of adults were added to the population. Then technologies arrived to prevent these deaths while providing more food for everyone to share. People kept having many children, but much less of them died, so a huge number of adults were added to the population, who then had many children in turn.
#OWID, Population, 10,000 BCE to 2021, 2022
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=-10000..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL
The UN has marked the 15th of November 2022 as the “Day of Eight Billion”.
#UNFPA, World set to reach 8 billion people on 15 November 2022, 2022
https://www.unfpa.org/press/world-set-reach-8-billion-people-15-november-2022
Quote: “The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, according to the World Population Prospects 2022, released today by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Reaching this milestone is both a cause for celebration and a clarion call for humanity to find solutions to the challenges we face.”
– And our numbers will continue to rise for at least another 60 years – but this growth obscures something: People kinda stopped having babies.
#World Population Prospects 2022: Summary of Results
Quote: “1. The world’s population continues to grow, but the pace of growth is slowing down.
In 2020, the growth rate of the global population fell under 1 per cent per year for the first time since 1950. The latest projections by the United Nations suggest that the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050; it is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100. The world’s population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023.”
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
If we look at the number of births, we see that it is declining and certainly not keeping up with the rapidly rising number of deaths.
#OWID, Births and deaths per year, World, 2022
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-and-deaths-projected-to-2100
Here is the annual change in population:
#OWID, Annual change in population, 1951 to 2100, 2022 https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Annual+population+change&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium
By some other estimates, it will peak earlier in 2064 at 9.73 billion, due to revised assumptions on female educational attainment and access to contraception (especially in sub-Saharan countries) contributing to declining fertility rates.
#Vollset et al. Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. 2020
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#
Quote: “The global TFR in the reference scenario was forecasted to be 1·66 (95% UI 1·33–2·08) in 2100. In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100.
[...]
Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. A sustained TFR lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. Policy options to adapt to continued low fertility, while sustaining and enhancing female reproductive health, will be crucial in the years to come.”
Quote: Figure Caption: “The reference scenario is presented with 95% UIs, which are represented by the shaded area. Past estimates are from GBD 2017, and values are in billions. GBD=Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study. SDG=Sustainable Development Goal. UI=uncertainty interval.”
– For a stable population, every couple needs to have two children on average. If the number is higher it grows, if lower, it shrinks. If it is well below, it shrinks a lot, and quickly.
This concept is known as Replacement Rate, which is the average number of children per woman for a population to exactly replace itself in the next generation. The number 2.1 which is used in the definition of the replacement rate, is the value for the most simple scenario. Countries with higher child mortality have higher replacement rates. Parameters like life expectancy of a woman, death rate, migration, ratio of boys and girls in the next generation can all affect replacement rate.
#Craig J. Replacement level fertility and future population growth. Popul Trends. 1994 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7834459/
Quote: “Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman. In countries with high infant and child mortality rates, however, the average number of births may need to be much higher. Replacement level fertility is not associated with an unique set of age-specific birth rates. When a country reaches replacement level fertility, other conditions must be met for zero population growth to also be attained. Replacement level fertility will lead to zero population growth only if mortality rates remain constant and migration has no effect. “
These rates take time to come into effect though, so for the changes to happen, the rates need to hold for a certain period of time. The changes can happen quickly but obviously bby “quickly” we don’t mean in the next five years. A fertility rate below 2 today can still lead to a population increase in the coming years. One clear example of this is India. Even though the fertility rate is at about 2 today and projected to stay under 2 until the end of the century, the population is still projected to increase in the next four decades. The projection visualisations below are based on the UN data from the 2022 Revision of World Population Prospects.
#OWID, Fertility Rate (Retrieved June, 2023)
#OECD (2016), OECD Factbook 2015-2016: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics, OECD Publishing, Paris
Quote: “The total fertility rate is generally computed by summing up the age-specific fertility rates defined over a five-year interval. Assuming there are no migration flows and that mortality rates remain unchanged, a total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman generates broad stability of population: it is also referred to as the “replacement fertility rate”, as it ensures replacement of the woman and her partner with another 0.1 children per woman to counteract infant mortality.”
– Like in South Korea, one of the hottest exporters of pop culture. Its fertility rate lies at 0.8 children per woman in 2022, the lowest in the world.
Preliminary data published by the Korean Statistical Information Service announced the total fertility rate for 2022 as 0.78.
#Korean Statistical Information Service, 2023
https://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=101&tblId=DT_1B8000F&language=en
#Reuters, South Korea's world lowest fertility rate drops again, February 22, 2023
Quote: “The average number of expected babies per South Korean woman over her reproductive life fell to 0.78 in 2022 down from 0.81 a year earlier, the official annual reading from the Statistics Korea showed.”
Data for other countries that we show in the video is coming from preliminary data from corresponding statistical bureaus when available, and from the UN otherwise :
#Philippine Statistics Authority, 2022
https://psa.gov.ph/content/total-fertility-rate-declined-27-2017-19-2022
Quote: “Based on the preliminary results of the 2022 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), the total fertility rate1 (TFR) of Filipino women aged 15 to 49 years declined from 2.7 children per woman in 2017 to 1.9 children per woman in 2022. Hence, the Philippines is already below the replacement fertility level of 2.1 children per woman.”
#Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) 2022
https://www.knbs.or.ke/kenya-demographic-and-health-survey-kdhs-2022/
Quote: “Generally, the 2022 KDHS shows an improvement in many of the health indicators. The total fertility rate (TFR) was 3.4 children per woman, having declined from 3.9 as reported in 2014 KDHS. The TFR has been on a declining trend from a high of 8.1 recorded in 1977–78 Kenya Fertility Survey (KFS). ”
OWID mapped out the fertility rates around the globe based on the UN 2022 projection. Even though the medium scenario predicted a fertility rate of 0.88 (which is higher than the announced value of 0.78 by the Korean Statistical Information Service, though still within the 80% lower bound of UN projection), South Korea was still the lowest compared to other countries. In the following map, if one hovers over the 0-1 segment on the legend, South Korea turns out to be the only country having a fertility rate of less than 1.
Fertility rates of India and Brazil shown in this scene are taken from the same chart
#OWID, Fertility Rate, 2022
– This means 100 South Koreans of childbearing age today will have 40 kids. Who then will have 16 kids, who then will have 6. If nothing changes then within 100 years there will be 94% fewer young people and South Korea will see a population implosion. That is if things stay the same – we have yet to see if there is a bottom to fertility rates.
In the most simple scenario, if we assume 100 people within the time window of having kids, total fertility rate of 0.8 would mean 50 x 0.8 = 40 children, since total fertility rate is the number of children per woman. If we calculate similarly for the following generations, out of those 40 children, we get 20 adults able to bear children, who then have 20x0.8 = 16 children of their own. The third generation will have 8x0.8=6.4 or about 6 children. In 100 years, we would reach this third generation in South Korea (average age of parenthood is 33.5). Starting with 100 young people and ending with 6 is a 94% decline. However, projections are calculated in a bit more complicated way than this. Here we assume a simple scenario where the parameters stay the same. UN and IHME projections however predict that the fertility rates will not stay constant at 0.8 and eventually increase until the end of the century. This is basically the reason the age structure predictions give much less of a reduction than what we calculated here.
#Fertility rate projection from the UN for South Korea
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/410
#Fertility rate projection from IHME
The reasoning behind the rebound effect is explained in the summary report of the World Population Prospects 2022.
#World Population Prospects 2022, Summary of Results.
Quote: “A slight increase in the level of fertility is assumed for countries where women are having, on average, fewer than two births over a lifetime. Such future changes were informed by data from 48 countries that have experienced declines of total fertility below two children per woman followed by a subsequent rebound over at least two consecutive periods of five years. The ‘rebound’ in future fertility that is assumed for low-fertility countries is consistent with an expectation of continued progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. In several low fertility countries, recent surveys have indicated that many women are having fewer children than they would like. Women face multiple obstacles to achieving their desired family size – demands of higher education, high costs of childcare, challenges to work-family balance, unequal division of household tasks between partners, care responsibilities for ageing parents and biological limits to the reproductive life span. Addressing these constraints will help to ensure that all individuals will have the opportunity
and means to achieve family sizes that they desire.”
The number for average age of parenthood is taken from the following source:
#Korean Statistical Information Service, 2023
The projected age structure of South Korea by IHME:
#IHME, Population Forecasting, Retrieved 08-2023
UN data visualized by OWID shows the percentages of the age groups from today to 2100.
#OWID, Population & Demography Data Explorer, 2022
The number of below 5 year olds was predicted to decrease by 51%.
#OWID, Population & Demography Data Explorer, 2022
– Although looking at the bigger picture and absolute numbers, this population will not shrink that much – it simply returns to the level it once was. In 1950 there were 20 million South Koreans, in 2023 there are 52 million. And by 2100 there will be 24 million again. But the issue is not that there will be fewer South Koreans, the issue is the composition of the population. In 1950 the median age was 18. In 2023 it is 45. In 2100 it will be 59. A country of seniors.
South Korea’s population for 2023 is projected to be 51,560,000.
#Korean Statistical Information Service, 2023
In 1950 the population was around 20 million.
#UN Data Portal: Population Division (2023)
But the median age was 17.6 in 1950 whereas it is projected to increase to 59.3 in 2100:
#UN Data Portal: Population Division (2023)
– And South Korea is far from alone. China may be seeing the steepest population reversal in history, unstoppable at this point. Rapid industrialization, urbanisation and rising incomes meant that the Chinese started to prefer smaller families. That, plus the introduction of the One Child Policy, which aimed to slow population growth, means that China has had a low fertility rate for decades.
China’s One Child Policy ran from 1980 to 2016. It aimed primarily to reduce population growth. However, it dealt lasting damage to Chinese society:
#One-child policy, Britannica (Retrieved 08-2023)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/one-child-policy
Quote: “[...] official program initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China, the purpose of which was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to one child each. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population. It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016.”
The country’s fertility rate had already dropped from over 7 to less than 3 when the policy was implemented. It had the effect of bringing the country below the replacement fertility rate within a few years, but the fertility rate has continued to decline until its lowest point of 1.164 in 2021.
#Silver and Huang. Key facts about China’s declining population. 2022.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts-about-chinas-declining-population/
#Yvaine Ye , When will China’s population peak? It depends who you ask, 2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02304-8
Quote: “In the 1960s, China saw a major baby boom after the Great Chinese Famine. In a bid to limit rapid population growth, the government launched a one-child policy in 1980 that restricted most families to having only a single child. The strategy brought down the country’s population growth rate, which dropped from 2.5% in 1970 to 0.7% in 2000. But the policy did not end until 2016 (see ‘China’s growth rate’). Many demographers, including Jianxin Li at Peking University in Beijing, think the policy ending came too late to reverse the country’s crashing fertility rate. Li projected as early as 1997 that China’s population could peak in 2024 if the population-control policy remained in place.
Researchers say China’s falling birth rate has continued even after the one-child policy ended because of shifting attitudes towards marriage and childbearing and young people delaying these events. With more women pursuing higher education and taking on paid jobs, they are starting families later in life than previous generations, says Jian Song, a demographer at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.”
– With a fertility rate of 1.16 births per woman, within four generations 100 young Chinese will turn into 20.
The fertility rate for China in 2021 was reported as 1.16 by the UN, which predicts (medium scenario) a slow increase to 1.48 until the end of the century.
#UN Data Portal, Population Division (2023)
As an alternative, IHME projection predicted the fertility rate to be 1.47 (within an error margin of 0.96-2.55) by the end of the century.
#IHME, Population Forecasting, Retrieved 08-2023
– China's fertility rates are now one of the lowest in East Asia, lower than even Japan's.
Based on the Medium scenario of the UN projections, fertility rates of South Korea, China and Japan for 2023 were predicted to be 1.31, 1.19 and 0.88, respectively.
#OWID, Population & Demography Data Explorer (Retrieved 08-2023)
The fertility rate 0.8 for South Korea that is reported earlier in the script was taken from the most recent data published by the Korean Statistical Service. However, not all countries have published the most recent demographic data, therefore we refer to the UN dataset for comparing the countries here, which predicted the fertility rate of South Korea as 0.88, slightly higher than the reported preliminary data.
We are comparing the fertility rates of China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam here. Though one can get different comparisons within East Asia depending on the included countries by the institutions publishing the projections. Nevertheless, among the countries that the UN includes within the East Asia group, China is projected to have one of the lowest fertility rates until the end of the century.
#UN Data Portal, Population Division, 2023.
#OWID, Population & Demography Data Explorer, 2022 https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?time=2020..latest&facet=none&country=CHN~JPN~MYS~VNM~KOR&Metric=Fertility+rate&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium
– In comparison Europe’s depopulation is much slower despite low fertility, since unlike Asia most states have had a steady flow of immigrants.
If we look at population change by component in the EU, we see that net migration has a larger effect, often twice as large, as the natural population changes.
#Population and population change statistics, Eurostat. 2023 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Population_and_population_change_statistics#EU_population_shows_a_strong_increase_in_2022
Quote: “After a first interruption of population growth in 2020 and 2021 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the population of the European Union at 27 countries increased again in 2022, from 446.7 million on 1 January 2022 to 448.4 million on 1 January 2023. The negative natural change (more deaths than births) was outnumbered by the positive net migration. The observed population growth can be largely attributed to the increased migratory movements post-COVID-19 and to the mass influx of displaced persons from Ukraine who received temporary protection status in EU Member States, as a consequence of the Russian invasion in February 2022."
Given that all European countries now have fertility rates below replacement level, immigration is the main driver of the positive population growth.
#Total Fertility Rate, Eurostat data browser, 2021 (Retrieved 08-2023)
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/TPS00199/default/map?lang=en
Comparing the recent and projected population growth rates of Europe and China clearly shows the stark difference in the rate of depopulation.
#OWID, Population Growth Rate, 2021
Contrary to Europe, Asia has a negative net migration rate and is projected to stay negative.
#OWID, Net Migration Rate, 2021. 2022. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=OWID_WRL~Europe+%28UN%29~Asia+%28UN%29&Metric=Net+migration+rate&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=None
A break-down of net migration per country level is represented in the map below.
#OWID, Net Migration Rate, 2021. 2022.
– The impact is complex, as a good chunk of immigrants come from other low fertility rate areas, the number of immigrant women who do have a lot of children is not yet high enough to make a big dent and, fertility rates of immigrants tend to adjust to the native population within 2-3 generations.
#Hill Kulu et al., Fertility by Birth Order among the Descendants of Immigrants in Selected European Countries. 2017
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12037
Quote: “This study investigated fertility among the descendants of immigrants in six European countries, with a focus on ethnic minority women whose parents arrived in Europe from high-fertility countries. We can summarize the results as follows. First, many of the descendants of immigrants had levels that were similar to those of the native population in their respective countries; however, first birth levels were slightly higher among women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin in the UK and for those of Turkish descent in France and Belgium, which mostly suggests earlier childbearing among these ethnic groups.”
The effect is however complex and variable from country to country.
#Volant, Pison and Héran. French fertility is the highest in Europe. Because of its immigrants? 2019
https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPSOC_568_0001--french-fertility-is-the-highest-in.htm
Quote: “How does France compare with the other European countries? In half of them, as in France, the presence of immigrant women raises fertility rates (Figure 4). But in a quarter of European countries, their numbers are too small to influence these rates, as is the case in most of the former communist countries of Central or Eastern Europe (Baltic countries, Poland, Czechia, Romania, Bulgaria). The Netherlands is in a category of its own: although the proportion of immigrant women is high, they do not raise the country’s fertility rate because their fertility is very similar to that of natives. There are even countries, such as Iceland and Denmark, where immigrant women tend to lower national rates rather than increase them.”
– In Eastern Europe, the decline has sped up even more because many young people have emigrated to stronger economies, like Germany – whose median age is one of the highest in the world at 46.
#Population Europe, Depopulation trends in Europe: what do we know about it?. 2021
Quote: ”Low fertility and emigration are two principal demographic forces shaping the onset and the pace of population decline. There is considerable confusion in the public debate on the role played by these two elements.
In South-Eastern, Central and Eastern Europe, outmigration has been the main driver of depopulation. In Latvia, for instance, which has lost almost one-third of its population in the last 30 years, only one-fifth of the decline is accounted for by the negative balance of births and deaths; the remaining four-fifths is due to emigration. Conversely, countries with highly positive net migration can enjoy a stable or even increasing population despite fertility rates far below the replacement level of 2.1. For instance, in a country with high net migration like Sweden, the total fertility rate (TFR) that would ensure generation replacement is estimated at below 1.2 children per woman when adjusting for migration. Thus, the actual TFR of 1.8 (2018) will lead to a substantial increase of the Swedish population under the current migration regime. By contrast, replacement level fertility needed to offset outmigration stands at much higher values for emigration countries: in Romania or Bulgaria, for instance, replacement fertility would need to be about 3 children per woman once accounting for outmigration. Investments into family-friendly policies cannot be expected to raise fertility to such high levels as they exceed fertility ideals in countries facing population decline. Thus, policymakers should not turn a blind eye to understanding the reasons for outmigration and to policies aimed at attracting return migrants.”
#Alanna Armitage. What to do about Eastern Europe’s population crisis? 2019.
https://eeca.unfpa.org/en/news/what-do-about-eastern-europes-population-crisis
Quote: “In more and more countries around the world, population numbers are starting to fall, but no region is more affected by this change than Eastern Europe. The latest population projections from the United Nations show this trend clearly: Nine of the world’s ten fastest-shrinking countries are in Eastern Europe. This ranking is led by Bulgaria and Latvia, both of which are expected to lose almost one quarter of their population by 2050. Others are not far behind. If these projections hold true, virtually every country in the region will see its population shrink over the coming decades.
[...]
Low birth rates are only one part of the equation. Much attention is being paid to how to increase birth rates, which are low across Eastern Europe and much of the rest of the continent (Europe’s total fertility rate is 1.6 children per woman). But addressing outmigration is equally important – and in some Eastern European countries arguably even more so. If people continue to go abroad because they can’t find opportunities at home, any potential increase in birth rates will just lead to more emigration, rather than population growth.”
#Maria Petrakis. Eastern Europe’s Exodus. 2020.
Quote: “It is no surprise, then, that many from eastern European countries are seeking opportunities elsewhere. Membership in the European Union has made it easier to boost trade and foreign investment and has brought with it an exceptional pace of per capita income convergence to western European levels. But it has also kept up the pressure on the exodus of young, skilled professionals that began with the fall of communism in 1989.
Between 1995 and 2017, central, eastern, and southeastern European (CESEE) countries lost about 7 percent of their workforce, mostly young and educated workers, like Topalov’s parents. The United Nations expects that the population of the region will decline by 12 percent by 2050 as a result of aging and migration. The workforce will fall by a quarter in the same period.”
Recent data from Eurostat reported Germany’s median age as 45.8.
#Eurostat, Demography 2023 Edition.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/demography-2023
– Latin America fell below replacement in 2015.
The fertility rate for Latin America and the Caribbean area fell below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 in 2015.
#UN Data Portal, Population Division (2023)
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/904
– In the US, immigration is the only thing keeping the population growing substantially.
#The United States Census Bureau, 2021
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2021-population-estimates.html
Quote: “Between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021, the nation’s growth was due to natural increase (148,043), which is the number of excess births over deaths, and net international migration (244,622). This is the first time that net international migration (the difference between the number of people moving into the country and out of the country) has exceeded natural increase for a given year.”
#Miriam Jordan and Robert Gebeloff. Amid Slowdown, Immigration Is Driving U.S. Population Growth, 2022, The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/us/immigration-census-population.html
– There are still places where fertility rates have not fallen below replacement yet: In much of the Middle East, North and Sub Saharan Africa fertility is still high, which creates the same concerns about overpopulation as when Asia grew very quickly in the 1950s, but that turned out to be unfounded.
Population growth rates in China were higher than 6 in the 1950s. They approached 7 in Africa. This led to fears of a ‘population bomb’ and alarmist literature, most notably Ehrlich’s “The population Bomb”.
#Fertility rate in each continent and worldwide, from 1950 to 2020, Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034075/fertility-rate-world-continents-1950-2020/
#Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1968)
http://dspace.ashoka.edu.in/bitstream/123456789/3161/1/2%20%20Ehrlich%20The_Population_Bomb.pdf
In the 1960s there were concerns about the rapid increase in the world population with the addition of a billion people in 35 years and hitting 3 billion people. The following paper summarises the main issues that those concerns were deriving from, mainly food production, resource depletion and poverty.
#David Lam. How the World Survived the Population Bomb: Lessons From 50 Years of Extraordinary Demographic History. 2011.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777609/
Quote: “Concern about population growth was widespread in academic circles and the media in the 1960s. The University of Michigan's Population Studies Center was founded in 1961. Many other U.S. population centers were also founded in the 1960s, a reflection of the interest in population among the foundations that funded the centers and among the researchers that created them (Caldwell and Caldwell 1986; Donaldson 1990). Numerous books and articles expressed concern about the dangers posed by rapid population growth. These concerns are typified by Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book The Population Bomb. The words on the cover of the paperback edition, “Population control or race to oblivion” (Ehrlich 1968), give a sense of the book's alarmist tone. Many other books and articles sounded the alarm about population growth, although The Population Bomb continues to be the best-known book on population from the period.4”
The 2019 IHME study projected the populations of seven super-regions:
South Asia
Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania
Latin America and the Caribbean
Sub-Saharan Africa
North Africa and the Middle East
Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia
Among these seven regions, only two, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa and the Middle East, were projected to have larger populations by 2100 compared to 2017.
#Vollset et al. Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. 2020
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext
Quote: “Other than the central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia super-region, where the population peaked in 1992, population size in the remaining super-regions was forecasted to peak in the future before 2100, except sub-Saharan Africa, which was not forecasted to peak until 2100 or later in the reference scenario (appendix 2,
section 2). In the reference scenario, sub-Saharan Africa and north Africa and the Middle East were the only super-regions forecasted to have higher populations in 2100 than in 2017 (3·07 billion [95% UI 2·48–3·84] people in sub-Saharan Africa and 978 million [715–1404]
in north Africa and the Middle East; table). All superregions except sub-Saharan Africa were forecasted to have substantial population declines in the coming eight decades. The declines were forecasted to be most severe in south Asia; southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania; and central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia.”
The following map from the same study shows the year in which the net reproduction rate was expected to fall below the replacement level.
For comparison, the fertility rates from the UN projection also show a similar geographical trend, which could be visualised through the following OWID map.
#OWID, Fertility Rate, 2022
Most of the countries that were included in the North Africa and Middle East super region still have fertility rates higher than 2.1 today based on the UN projection.
#OWID, Fertility Rate, 2022
That sub-Saharan population increase would demand resources which would make it very difficult to maintain the living standards of the people.
#Alex Ezeh, Frances Kissling, Peter Singer. Why sub-Saharan Africa might exceed its projected population size by 2100. 2020
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2931522-1
Quote: “A tripling of the population in sub-Saharan Africa over the next 80 years indicates a need to triple all existing resources and infrastructure (health, education, housing, energy, and so on) over that period just to maintain existing inadequate levels of basic services and amenities. Combined with an annual shortfall of 52–64% in financing for infrastructure needs in Africa (estimated at US$130 billion to 170 billion),2 the challenge of this most optimistic demographic trajectory for sub-Saharan Africa is daunting.”
– But recently the UN reduced its forecast for Africa’s future population drastically.
The current UN projection (medium variant) estimates 3.9 billion people in Africa by 2100.
#UN World Population Prospects 2022
However, the 2017 and 2019 revisions were estimating 4.5 billion and 4.3 billion people by 2100.
#UN World Population Prospects 2017
https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_Volume-I_Comprehensive-Tables.pdf
#UN World Population Prospects 2019
https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Volume-I_Comprehensive-Tables.pdf
– For Nigeria estimates were lowered from 733 million to 546 million by 2100. Similar trends are being noted across the continent.
The current UN projection estimates a population of 549 million people in Nigeria by 2100.
#UN World Population Prospects 2022
Previous UN estimates in 2019 and 2017 however were higher, around 800 million.
https://population.un.org/wpp/publications/files/wpp2017_keyfindings.pdf
#UN World Population Prospects 2019
https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Volume-I_Comprehensive-Tables.pdf
Alternative projections in 2019 were also estimating a number around 800 million by 2100
– As Africa develops, fertility rates are shrinking much faster than anticipated. It is becoming more likely that East Asia’s story will repeat itself – by the end of the century most places in Africa may be below replacement too.
#OWID, Fertility Rate, 2022
– But the majority of healthcare costs are generated by seniors.
#Berhanu Alemayehu and Kenneth E Warner, The Lifetime Distribution of Health Care Costs, Health Serv Res. Jun; 39(3): 627–642. (2004)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/
Quote: “After the first year of life, health care costs are lowest for children, rise slowly throughout adult life, and increase exponentially after age 50 (Meerding et al. 1998). Bradford and Max (1996) determined that annual costs for the elderly are approximately four to five times those of people in their early teens.”
On Healthcare expenditure in China:
#Lele Li et al., The Effect of Population Aging on Healthcare Expenditure from a Healthcare Demand Perspective Among Different Age Groups: Evidence from Beijing City in the People's Republic of China, Risk Manag Healthc Policy; 13: 1403–1412. (2020)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7473975/
Quote: “The age effect of HE for the population aged 65 or over was the most significant among the different age groups. Based on PA and HE data, HE per capita of the age group 65 years or over is 7.25 times as much as the population aged < 25 years, 1.61 times as much as the population aged 25~59 years, and 3.47 times as much as the population aged 60~64 years.”
#OECD, Expenditure by disease, age and gender, 2016.
https://www.oecd.org/health/Expenditure-by-disease-age-and-gender-FOCUS-April2016.pdf
#De Nardi M, French E, Jones JB, McCauley J. Medical Spending of the US Elderly. 2016
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680320/
Quote: “We use data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) to document the medical spending of Americans aged 65 and older. We find that medical expenses more than double between ages 70 and 90 and that they are very concentrated: the top 10 per cent of all spenders are responsible for 52 per cent of medical spending in a given year. In addition, those currently experiencing either very low or very high medical expenses are likely to find themselves in the same position in the future. We also find that the poor consume more medical goods and services than the rich and have a much larger share of their expenses covered by the government. Overall, the government pays for over 65 per cent of the elderly's medical expenses. Despite this, the expenses that remain after government transfers are even more concentrated among a small group of people. Thus, government health insurance, while potentially very valuable, is far from complete. Finally, while medical expenses before death can be large, on average they constitute only a small fraction of total spending, both in the aggregate and over the life cycle. Hence, medical expenses before death do not appear to be an important driver of the high and increasing medical spending found in the US.”
#EU Commission Staff Working Document. The impact of demographic change – in a changing environment. 2023.
Quote: “A decreasing and ageing population brings new challenges. The shrinking working-age population puts pressure on labour markets and welfare states; increases the old-age dependency ratio; and raises the per-capita burden of public debt. To sustain economic growth, the working-age population must increase, labour-force participation rates must go up and/or productivity has to increase through technological advances and/or skills
development. Population ageing also entails additional needs, including the need to adapt our workplaces, welfare and public health systems to accommodate the increased demand for accessible and affordable quality health care and long-term care.
[...]
An ageing population exacerbates fiscal sustainability challenges. An older population has greater needs for health care and long-term care and will require additional infrastructure investments and adaptations to ensure accessibility to all. (27) It makes it also more challenging to sustain adequate pensions. This is particularly relevant for women which, due to their longer life expectancy, often need more long-term care, while their pensions were on average 26.9% lower than men’s in 2021. In the baseline scenario underpinning the 2021 Ageing Report, the total cost of ageing which stood at 24% of GDP in 2019, is projected to rise by 1.9 pps of GDP by 2070. (28)”
– We can see this happening already – 11 out of 31 provinces in China are running deficits for their pension funds. They got old before they got rich and now they can’t really catch up anymore.
#Reuters, Insight: Rust belt province got old before it got rich, as much of China will (2023)
Quote: “Eleven of China's 31 provincial-level jurisdictions are running pension budget deficits, with Heilongjiang's the biggest, at -2.4% of its GDP, finance ministry data show. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035.”
#Caixin Global, Charts of the Day: China’s Pension System Is Out of Pocket (2019)
– China's working age population is predicted to fall by 20%, or 200 million people by 2050 – as much as today’s entire working age population of the US.
China’s working age population will decrease from 982.9 million in 2023 to 767.4 million by 2050. That’s a decrease of 21.9% or 215.5 million.
#Estimated size of the population aged 15 to 64 years in China from 1980 to 2050, Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1219212/china-number-of-working-age-persons/
For comparison, the working age population in the US in 2023 is 208.6 million.
# Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States, FRED Economic Data. 2023
– You can see it in many depopulated towns and cities in East Germany that suffered sharp population decline after German reunification. Or look at Japan. You can tour the countryside to see dying towns.
#Christian Bangel, Paul Blickle, Elena Erdmann, Philip Faigle, Andreas Loos, Julian Stahnke, Julius Tröger und Sascha Venohr. The Millions Who Left. 2019
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2019-05/east-west-exodus-migration-east-germany-demography
Quote: “The severity of emigration's impact on the East is most apparent when one takes a closer look at the administrative districts and cities in the region. Nearly every district lost people to the West between 1991 and 2017. Not only did states in eastern Germany lose tax revenues as a result, but in many places the "social infrastructure" also collapsed; schools, hospitals, sports and leisure facilities and cultural institutions all had to close.”
How declining populations leads to increased infrastructure maintenance costs per person:
#John D. McCollough et al., The impact of declining birth rates on future infrastructure maintenance costs per capita, Journal of Economic Studies (2022)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JES-05-2022-0299/full/html
Quote: “A declining population will result in labor shortages. Wages should then rise, followed by inflation. Also, as populations decline, infrastructure maintenance costs on a per capita basis will increase, even if labor costs were to somehow remain stagnant, due to a shrinking population and tax base.
Infrastructure is important to an economy in that it makes the economy more productive
and competitive. As a result, network-type infrastructure (i.e. roads, rail lines, bridges, etc.)
will need to be maintained. If network-type infrastructure is not maintained, then it could
deteriorate and become hazardous to those who continue to use the infrastructure. On the
other hand, if it is removed, then those being served by network-type infrastructures will be
cut off from other cities or towns”
Effect on Europe’s economy:
#IMF, Can Europe Afford to Grow Old? (2006)
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2006/09/carone.htm
Quote: “Although most of the debate on aging concerns the budgetary cost, the most immediate impact will be felt in the labor market. EU projections, however, point to a mixed picture, with improvements in employment delaying somewhat the onset of the economic repercussions of aging.
[..] Coupled with the decline in the potential rate of GDP growth, the aging of the EU population is projected, on the basis of current policies, to lead to increases in public spending in most member states by 2050”
#OECD. Shrinking Smartly in Estonia: Preparing Regions for Demographic Change. 2022. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/77cfe25e-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/77cfe25e-en
Quote: “Depopulation widens and reinforces regional disparities. Estonia’s population is concentrating near urban centres, leading to regional disparities in tax revenues, income, house prices and the quality of built environments. Shrinking regions often do not have functioning real estate markets, which makes it difficult for people to move between regions, reinforcing regional disparities and chronic labour shortages.
Providing quality education in shrinking areas is challenging. Shrinkage has resulted in 50 000 fewer students over the last 20 years. Student numbers will continue to decline in sparsely populated rural areas while numbers in other areas will remain steady or increase. While shrinking municipalities are consolidating schools, they still face 30% greater, unavoidable per capita costs compared to cities. Attracting high-quality teachers is also challenging in these areas.”
#Peter Matanle. Ageing and Depopulation in Japan: Understanding the Consequences for East and Southeast Asia in the 21st Century. 2014.
Quote: “Overcapacity in buildings and infrastructure increases per unit running costs, as buildings still require heating, maintenance and security, for example. Local tax revenues
decline and contribute to further service consolidation. Moreover, evidence shows that, despite the expectation that depopulation would reduce resource consumption, for example, per capita energy use in depopulating prefectures is increasing more rapidly than in
growing prefectures (Figure 7) due in part to processes outlined above. Deteriorating and underused buildings are inefficiently heated in winter, or residents are forced into cars and
drive longer distances. Similarly, local services such as post, community nursing, food and heating oil deliveries, and emergency services travel longer distances per client. Such a phenomenon, if generalized out across China and the rest of Asia, may have important consequences for world energy demand and carbon output forecasts.”
– Wait – if there are fewer people, wouldn’t life get cheaper and better with more resources to go around? Well no – population decline does not lead to prosperity. It’s people’s ideas and work that create our prosperity, not the mere availability of resources.
#Dave Gilson. Baby Bust: Could Population Decline Spell the End of Economic Growth? 2022
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/baby-bust-could-population-decline-spell-end-economic-growth
Quote: “The idea that a future with fewer people would be less prosperous may seem counterintuitive. Wouldn’t a smaller world mean more resources to go around? Jones explains that people are the most important resource in this equation: People generate ideas, and ideas drive economic growth. Therefore, fewer new people means fewer new ideas, which means less growth and lower living standards.
“People are the key input into producing ideas,” Jones says. “Suppose each person can make one idea a year. If the population’s constant, you always get more ideas and things always get better and better; we get richer and richer. If population growth is negative, the inputs to creating new ideas are shrinking, and that naturally leads the stock of knowledge to stagnate.””
There are obviously also opposing ideas.
#Stephanie Feldstein. Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better. 2023
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/population-decline-will-change-the-world-for-the-better/
Quote: “Where our current model of endless growth and short-term profits sacrifices vulnerable people and the planet’s future, population decline could help create a future with more opportunity and a healthy, biologically rich world. We’re at a crossroads—and we decide what happens next. We can maintain the economic status quo and continue to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet. Or we can heed the warning signs of a planet pushed to its limits, put the brakes on environmental catastrophe, and choose a different way to define prosperity that’s grounded in equity and a thriving natural world.”
So Just Like, Import People?
– The easiest solution seems to be immigration, but the fertility of immigrants adjusts to local levels within three generations. You need a constant influx of migrants – which is not sustainable long term as birth rates are dropping everywhere.
#Hill Kulu et al, A comparative study on fertility among the descendants of immigrants in Europe, Families And Societies Working Paper Series 40 (2015)
http://www.familiesandsocieties.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/WP40KuluEtAl2015.pdf
#The Office for National Statistics. Births by parents’ country of birth, England and Wales: 2022. 2023.
Quote: “The number of live births to non-UK-born women increased from 179,726 in 2021 to 183,309 in 2022. Before 2016, there was a trend of live births to non-UK-born mothers generally increasing, but in 2017 the number of live births to non-UK-born mothers started to decrease (Figure 1). The 2.0% increase of live births to non-UK-born mothers between 2021 and 2022 is the first increase in five years.”
– By the end of the century Africa will have the highest number of young people in the world
#OWID, Population by Broad Age Group, 2023
- Economically, immigration is largely beneficial for societies, even if this seems counterintuitive to many people.
As diverse as people, societies, countries, and the specifics or contexts of immigration are, there is evidence that the long-term effect in particular has a positive impact on societies. In summary, for example, migrants form a significant part of (growing) labor markets, they contribute more to the public purse than they receive from it, and they contribute to technological progress.
Moreover, migrants can also contribute to the development of their regions of origin.
#OECD (2014): Is migration good for the economy?
https://www.oecd.org/migration/OECD%20Migration%20Policy%20Debates%20Numero%202.pdf
Quote: “Our simulation results suggest that, although the refugee integration (e.g. by the providing language and professional training) is costly for the public budget, in the medium- to long-run, the social, economic and fiscal benefits may significantly outweigh the short-run refugee integration costs. Depending on the integration policy scenario and policy financing method, the annual long-run GDP effect would be 0.2% to 1.4% above the baseline growth, and the full repayment of the integration policy investment (positive net present value) would be achieved after 9 to 19 years.”
D’Artis Kancs, Patrizio Lecca: Long-term Social, Economic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration into the EU: The Role of the Integration Policy. JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance. 2017
https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/sites/futurium/files/jrc107441_wp_kancs_and_lecca_2017_4.pdf
Moreover, migrants can also contribute to the development of their regions of origin, as the UN illustrates with the example of remittance inflows, for example when migrants send money to their families in their home countries. At the same time, however, the source also addresses possible negative effects: The people leaving their origin county are actually often valued and skilled workers like medical professionals whos departure can have negative effects on their origin countries.
#United Nations: Why safe, orderly and regular migration matters for sustainable development. UN DESA Policy Brief No. 146, 2022
https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/publication/PB_146.pdf
Quote: “In 2021, migrants sent home $773 billion in remittances, of which $605 billion to families in low-income or middle-income countries. Remittances boost household incomes and reduce poverty in countries and communities of origin. They can also help to increase school enrollments, improve access to health care, boost agricultural productivity, facilitate financial inclusion and support business creation (Zlotnik, 2019; figure 1).”
(...)
International migration, however, can also have negative impacts on achieving the Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda in countries of origin. The emigration of large numbers of medical personnel, for instance, can adversely affect the attainment of health-related targets in countries where access to health care is limited and the number of trained health-care professionals is insufficient (target 3.c).
(...)
However, a large influx of migrants, especially when it occurs in an irregular manner, can have adverse effects on host societies, straining resources and raising concerns about security and social cohesion. Local communities can be negatively affected by such inflows, which place an additional strain on the provision of services, housing and infrastructure.
– One way to look at falling birthrates is as a side effect of the world being less bad than it was. Especially women are more free, educated and wealthy than in the past.
But it turns out that if societies are better off, individuals often decide to have fewer kids.
There are multiple correlates of lower fertility that are associated with a better life standard. Although it is difficult to measure the economic and social well being of a society with a single parameter and each country has its own special case, there have been general historical trends. One of the strongest determinants is the education of women.
#Myrskylä, Kohler and Billari. Advances in development reverse fertility declines. 2009
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08230
Quote: “During the twentieth century, the global population has gone through unprecedented increases in economic and social development that coincided with substantial declines in human fertility and population growth rates 1,2. The negative association of fertility with economic and social development has therefore become one of the most solidly established and generally accepted empirical regularities in the social sciences 1–3. As a result of this close connection between development and fertility decline, more than half of the global population now lives in regions with below replacement fertility (less than 2.1 children per woman)4. In many highly developed countries, the trend towards low fertility has also been deemed irreversible5–9. Rapid population ageing, and in some cases the prospect of significant population decline, have therefore become a central socioeconomic concern and policy challenge10.”
GDP has been historically negatively correlated with fertility rates. Although some researchers suggest there has been a slight reversal in the developed countries in this trend.
#Doepke, Hannusch, Kindermann and Tertilt. The New Economics Of Fertility. 2022.
Quote: “Substantial economic research on individual fertility decisions has naturally focused on the pervasive trends associated with this demographic transition—primarily negative relationships between fertility and income and between female labor force participation and income. Economists have proposed two main explanations.
The first is known as the quantity-quality trade-off. It suggests that as parents get richer, they invest more in the “quality” (for example, education) of their children. This investment is costly, so parents choose to have fewer children as incomes rise. Historically fertility and GDP per capita are strongly negatively related, both across countries and over time.
The second explanation acknowledges how time-consuming it is to raise children. As wages increase, devoting time to childcare—time that could otherwise be spent working—becomes more costly for parents, and especially for mothers. The result is a decline in fertility and greater female labor force participation. There is in fact historically a strong negative association between female labor force participation and fertility over time and across countries.”
#Götmark and Andersson. Human fertility in relation to education, economy, religion, contraception, and family planning programs. 2020.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-8331-7#Fig1
Quote: “In decreasing order of strength, fertility (TFR) correlates negatively with education, CPR, and GDP per capita, and positively with religiosity. Europe deviates from other regions in several ways, e.g. TFR increases with education and decreases with religiosity in W Europe. TFR decreases with increasing strength of family planning programs in three regions, but only weakly so in a fourth, Sub-Saharan Africa (the two European regions lacked such programs).
Most factors correlated with TFR are also correlated with each other. In particular, education correlates positively with GDP per capita but negatively with religiosity, which is also negatively related to contraception and GDP per capita.”
#European Parliamentary Research Center. Fertility versus GDP per capita. Retrieved 08-2023.
Quote: “While there is a clear correlation between poverty and fertility rates at both country and household level, it is more difficult to distinguish the causality at work between the two variables: does poverty cause families to have more children, or, conversely, is high fertility responsible for perpetuating poverty and economic underdevelopment? Alternatively, are poverty and fertility levels the effects of different causal chains? Scientists are not of the same mind when providing answers to these questions. In the academic literature, there have been relatively few attempts to take into consideration demographic factors when carrying out economic analyses of the causes of poverty.
However, correlations are easy to see, as illustrated in Figure 6 below. The vast majority of high-income societies have average fertility rates below or at the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, with few exceptions. In higher-middle-income countries, fertility rates cluster between one and three children, with some exceptions above three. Several of the outliers in these two groups are oil-rich countries. On the other hand, lower-middle-income countries have most widely distributed fertility rates, while those at low-income levels are the big majority of cases, at over four children per woman.”
#OWID, Increasing prosperity and structural transformation of the economy, Retrieved 08-2023
Quote: “The reflex of many economists when thinking about the fertility rate is to point to income as the likely determinant. And sure enough, between countries and over time we see that higher incomes are associated with lower fertility. But good things come together – richer countries are also healthier and better educated – and so this correlation between high incomes and low fertility alone is surely not evidence that it is increasing income that is responsible for the decrease in fertility.
In fact we have already explored several third factors. Most obviously, a higher level of education of a population is a factor that contributes to higher prosperity and a lower number of children. And a second set of changes – technological change, lower child labour, and the structural change of the economy – comes along with economic growth and lowers the demand of parents for children, as we have seen.
But still there might also be a direct effect of increasing prosperity on the declining demand for children. Higher incomes make different, more varied lifestyles possible, which might convince prospective parents to have fewer or no children. With respect to the increasing prosperity in Europe over the last century the historians George Alter and Gregory Clark write:36 “New products and new lifestyles in the growing metropolitan societies created by the Industrial Revolution expanded choices. Wealthy families responded by consuming more of these new products and services instead of producing children.”"
#Cheng et al., Global trends in total fertility rate and its relation to national wealth, life expectancy and female education. 2022.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-13656-1
Quote: “The cumulative exposure-TFR curves were inverted U-shaped for log gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and life expectancy at birth, while the cumulative exposure-response curves were approximately linear for female expected years of schooling and human development index (HDI). However, it is worth noting that in the developed regions, TFR increased slightly with the high level of GDP per capita, female expected years of schooling and HDI.
[...]
In addition to the differences in the above results, the analysis method is also worth noting. For example, a long-term stable GDP per capita level absolutely has a greater influence on TFR than only one year’s GDP per capita level. Meanwhile, previous studies only estimated the association between the influencing factors and TFR at the same time point, without considering the time lag and cumulative effect in the association [4, 12, 15]. In addition, previous studies assumed that the associations of the influencing factors with TFR were linear relationships, but it is obvious that there were non-linear associations between many influencing factors and TFR. ”
The estimated overall cumulative effects of mean log GDP per capita over 5 years on TFR
#OWID, Children per woman vs. Human Development Index, World, 1990 to 2021. Retrieved 08-2023.
#OWID, Children per woman vs. GDP per capita, 2019. Retrieved 08-2023.
Obviously, this is not to say that we are locked in the lower fertility rates as we continue to progress or should favor lower progress to increase fertility rates. Some researchers suggest that fertility rates can actually increase with increasing GDP or HDI, although these findings are still under debate.
#Myrskylä, Kohler and Billari. Advances in development reverse fertility declines. 2009
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08230
Quote: “Here we show, using new cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of the total fertility rate and the human development index (HDI), a fundamental change in the well-established negative relationship between fertility and development as the global population entered the twenty-first century. Although development continues to promote fertility decline at low and medium HDI levels, our analyses show that at advanced HDI levels, further development can reverse the declining trend in fertility. The previously negative development–fertility relationship has become J-shaped, with the HDI being positively associated with fertility among highly developed countries. This reversal of fertility decline as a result of continued economic and social development has the potential to slow the rates of population ageing, thereby ameliorating the social and economic problems that have been associated with the emergence and persistence of very low fertility."
#Doepke, Hannusch, Kindermann and Tertilt. The New Economics Of Fertility. 2022.
Quote: “The data show that these relationships are no longer universally true. Despite a continued negative income-fertility relationship in low-income countries (in particular in sub-Saharan Africa), it has largely disappeared both within and across high-income countries. The same is true for the relationship between fertility and female labor force participation. In a recent survey (Doepke and others 2022) and a VoxEU column (June 11, 2022), we outline these new empirical regularities and discuss the key factors that explain fertility outcomes in recent decades.
For a long time, high per capita income in a country reliably indicated low fertility. In 1980, fertility was still well above two children per woman in poorer countries, such as Portugal and Spain, but just 20 years later, fertility in the same set of countries had changed substantially (Chart 1). In fact, in 2000 the United States, the second-richest country in the sample, exhibited the highest fertility rate.”
#Harttgen and Vollmer. A Reversal in the Relationship of Human Development with Fertility? 2012
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24197749/
Quote: “Myrskyl¨a et al. (2009) found that the relationship of the human development index (HDI) with the total fertility rate (TFR) reverses from negative (increases in HDI are associated with decreases in TFR) to positive (increases in HDI are associated with increases in TFR) at a HDI level of 0.86. In this paper we show that the reversal in the HDI-TFR relationship is neither robust to UNDP’s recent revision in the HDI calculation method nor the decomposition of the HDI into its education, standard of living and health sub-indices.”
– Interestingly, there is a gap between how many kids people want and how many they are having: The mean number of kids women in Europe want is around 2.3, much more than they are actually having.
The number 2.3 here refers to the ideal personal number of children asked in the Eurobaromater study in 2011, which involved 1000 people from each of the 27 countries in the EU. We are aware that there might have been changes in the last years to these figures, however we have not come across a more recent dataset with the same scope that we could have used here instead.
#Maria Rita Testa. Family Sizes in Europe:Evidence from the 2011 Eurobarometer Survey. 2012.
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/Institute/VID/PDF/Publications/EDRP/edrp_2012_02.pdf
Quote: “A major concern among many European policy makers in recent years has been the perception that a sizeable proportion of couples in low-fertility countries fail to realise their desired fertility. In this study, based on data from the 2011 Eurobarometer on Fertility and Social Climate, I examine different family size preferences and their link with actual fertility with the aim to see whether there is a correspondence between the number of children Europeans would like to have and the number they are actually having. The data reveal that around 30% of women and men end their reproductive career with fewer children than they previously considered ideal and that the difference between their mean ideal and actual family size is around 0.3 children. This measure can be higher in some countries, like Italy, and in some social groups, like highly educated persons. The preference for a two-child family is still pervasive in Europe and it has even been growing in the EU-15 countries over the decade 2001-2011.”
The numbers we show in this scene are coming from the tables above and listed as follows:
Mean personal ideal number of children:
France: 2.47
Sweden: 2.41
Greece: 2.34
Netherlands: 2.49
Italy: 2.02
EU-27: 2.28
Mean actual number of children:
France: 1.72
Sweden: 1.43
Greece: 1.36
Netherlands: 1.46
Italy: 1.30
EU-27: 1.6
The difference between the number of children women would like to have and the actual number of children they are having is called the fertility gap. Studying fertility gap is important since fertility intentions and actual fertility is influenced by different parameters and the difference between the two can point to the lack of necessary conditions to realise the intended fertility levels.
#Beaujouan, E., Berghammer, C. The Gap Between Lifetime Fertility Intentions and Completed Fertility in Europe and the United States: A Cohort Approach. 2019.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-019-09516-3
Quote: “While fertility rates are generally low in Europe, fertility intentions remain close to replacement level. In 2011, across the 27 countries of the European Union, women in young adulthood (age 15 to 24) intended to have, on average, 2.1 children (Testa 2012). This suggests that couples frequently have fewer children than they intended to have, resulting in an aggregate gap between intentions and behavior (see e.g., Harknett and Hartnett 2014). This notion of a “fertility gap” has been picked up by policy makers who have, as a consequence, formulated the aim to enable couples to have the number of children they intend to have (Philipov 2009). It entered policy debates and ofcial policy documents of the European Commission in the 1990s and 2000s, and became one of the main justifcations for family policies. In the scholarly literature, the “fertility gap” is typically measured by comparing stated lifetime family size ideals or intentions with period indicators of fertility in the recent past, such as the total fertility rate (Adserà 2006; Bongaarts 2008; Lutz 2007; Sobotka and Lutz 2010; Testa 2012). These comparisons do not, however, refect early lifetime intentions and total family size of one and the same birth cohort of women and, as a result, the messages arising from them can be misleading (Sobotka and Lutz 2010).”
#Kageyama, J., Matsuura, T. The Financial Burden of Having Children and Fertility Differentials Across Development and Life Stages: Evidence from Satisfaction Data. 2018.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9799-9
Quote: “As for the actual and ideal numbers of children, the average values in each county in each wave respectively range from 1.04 to 3.44 and from 1.97 to 4.67 (Table 6). The ideal number is greater than the actual number in most countries, consistent with the view that people cannot attain ideal family sizes due to various types of constraints.11 However, no systematic relationship appears at the cross-country level (Fig. 1f).”
#Anna Brown. Growing share of childless adults in U.S. don’t expect to ever have children. 2021.
Quote: “About a quarter of parents younger than 40 who don’t expect to have more children in the future cite financial reasons (26%), compared with 8% of those 40 to 49. The younger group is also more likely to mention not having a partner (6% vs. 1%), while older parents are more likely to say age is a reason why they don’t expect to have more kids (41% of those 40 to 49 vs. 5% of those younger than 40).”
– In many developed countries the gender pay gap is chiefly a pay gap between mothers and everyone else.
It is difficult to cover all mechanisms contributing to the gender pay gap and isolate how much of it is deriving from motherhood. Besides, the mechanisms can play out differently between countries, making it impossible to come up with a global number.
The term “Motherhood Penalty” was coined by Budig and England in their 2001 paper in which they analysed data spanning 1982-1993 the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Since then more studies from different countries and with different methodologies came out and has proven that it is a universal phenomena, though the magnitude and persistence differ from country to country.
#Budig and England. The Wage Penalty for Motherhood. 2001.
Quote: “We find a wage penalty for motherhood of approximately 7 percent per child among
young American women. Roughly one-third of the penalty is explained by years of past job experience and seniority, including whether past work was part-time. That is, for some women, motherhood leads to employment breaks, part-time employment, and the accumulation of fewer years of experience and seniority, all of which diminish future earnings. However, it is striking that about two-thirds of the child penalty remains after controlling for elaborate measures of work experience.”
#Cukrowska-Torzewska and Matysiak. The motherhood wage penalty: A meta-analysis. 2020.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X20300144
Quote: “This paper summarizes existing empirical research on motherhood wage penalty by performing a meta-analysis of the estimates of mothers’-non-mothers’ gaps in wages. Previous research distinguished several mechanisms to explain the persistence of the wage gap between mothers and childless women. These mechanisms include: (1) depreciation of human capital and its lower accumulation during career breaks following childbirth, (2) mothers' tendency to choose flexible jobs that give them better opportunities to combine childcare with paid work, (3) productivity differences between mothers and childless women, (4) women's selection into paid work and motherhood, and (5) employers' discrimination against mothers. Based on the previous empirical work it is, however, difficult to conclude how large the gap is and which factors drive it, because the studies differ in terms of the data sources, time coverage, and estimation methods used. For the same reasons, it is also not easy to judge how the size of the motherhood penalty is affected by country context, such as culture and family policies.”
#Grimshaw and Rubery. The motherhood pay gap: A review of the issues, theory and international evidence. 2015
https://eige.europa.eu/resources/wcms_371804.pdf
Quote: “Comparison of wages experienced by mothers and non-mothers in different
countries and regions of the world reveals evidence of significant wage penalties. Table
2.1 presents headline results of unadjusted penalties from a selection of international
studies. A relatively high raw wage penalty is estimated for the 21 less developed
countries in Agüero et al’s (2011) study – an average country negative penalty of 42 per
cent − followed by Zhang et al.’s (2008) research on China, a wage penalty of 37 per
cent. Among high-income countries, unadjusted wage penalties appear to be significantly
lower although still significant in many cases – a 12 per cent wage penalty among never
married mothers in the United States (Budig and England, 2001), a 13 per cent penalty in
Germany and 21 per cent in the United Kingdom (Davies and Pierre, 2005). Notably, the
raw wage penalty is zero or small in France and Denmark, as well as among married
mothers in the United States.”
#Claudio Lucifora, Dominique Meurs, Elena Villar. The “mommy track” in the workplace. Evidence from a large French firm. 2021.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537121000701
Quote: “We study the earnings and career profiles of employees who experience the birth of the first child, as compared to their childless co-workers. Using a difference-in-differences approach and a unique 12-year panel of personnel records from a large French company, we find that the arrival of a child creates a persistent penalty in earnings for mothers. The gap in internal promotions, both at the extensive and intensive margin, accounts for the vast majority of the motherhood penalty within the firm. We believe that firm-level policies on child-related leaves, if not gender-neutral, can exacerbate the motherhood penalty.”
#Julie A. Kmec. Are motherhood penalties and fatherhood bonuses warranted? Comparing pro-work behaviors and conditions of mothers, fathers, and non-parents. 2011.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X10002772#preview-section-references
Quote: “Research has confirmed a motherhood penalty and fatherhood bonus at work. Employers, it appears, regard mothers and fathers differently from one another and differently from non-parents. We have yet to systematically explore whether mothers exhibit fewer pro-work behaviors than fathers and non-parents or whether fathers engage in more of them than mothers and non-parents. This article draws on nationally representative data from full-time employed adults to investigate mother, father, and non-parent differences in work effort, work intensity, job engagement, and four measures of work enhancement from home. Mothers and fathers are similar on five out of seven outcomes tapping pro-work dimensions. When they differ, mothers report greater job engagement and work intensity than fathers. Mothers are no different from non-parents on all outcomes. All findings hold net of individual, job, and family controls. I conclude that reducing workplace gender inequality will require organizational changes that pay explicit attention to workers’ care-giving responsibilities.”
#European Commission. The gender pay gap situation in the EU. 2020.
Quote: “The gender pay gap measures a broader concept than pay discrimination and comprehends a large number of inequalities women face in access to work, progression and rewards. They are:
Sectoral segregation: Around 24% of the gender pay gap is related to the overrepresentation of women in relatively low-paying sectors, such as care, health and education. Highly feminised jobs tend to be systematically undervalued.
Unequal share of paid and unpaid work: Women have more work hours per week than men but they spend more hours on unpaid work, a fact that might also affect their career choices. This is why the EU promotes equal sharing of parental leaves, an adequate public provision of childcare services and adequate company policies on flexible working time arrangements.
The glass ceiling: The position in the hierarchy influences the level of pay: less than 8% of top companies’ CEOs are women. Nevertheless, the profession with the largest differences in hourly earnings in the EU were managers: 23 % lower earnings for women than for men.
Pay discrimination: In some cases, women earn less than men for doing equal work or work of equal value even if the principle of equal pay is enshrined in the European Treaties (article 157 TFEU) since 1957.”
– So people commit to partners later in life and often decide against big families or any at all.
#Eurostat. Demography of Europe, 2023.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/demography-2023#marital-status
Quote: “Just as the age of mothers when giving birth to their first child is increasing (see the part ‘Older mothers’ above), people in the EU are becoming older at their first marriage. In all EU Member States the mean age at first marriage increased in the last two available decades. The biggest increases – around six to seven years – were observed in Portugal (from 25.5 years for women and 27.7 years for men in 2001 to 32.0 and 33.6, respectively, in 2021) and Spain (from 28.1 and 30.2 in 2000 to 34.7 and 36.9 in 2021). On the other hand, the smallest increases – around three years – were observed in Denmark for women and in Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia and Denmark for men.”
#OWID, Marriages and Divorces. Retrieved August 2023.
https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces#average-age-at-marriage
#OWID. The share of children born outside of marriage has increased substantially in almost all OECD countries. Retrieved August 2023.
https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces#average-age-at-marriageiage
#Eurostat. Demography of Europe, 2023.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/demography-2023#marital-status
Quote: “The age of first-time mothers in the EU has increased: in 2013 the mean age of women at birth of their first child was 28.8 years. This increased every year to reach 29.7 in 2021. There was an increase in this mean age in all Member States during the period 2001-2021: the highest increases of more than 4 years were in Estonia and Lithuania, while the lowest increase of around 1 year was in France. In 2021, the oldest first-time mothers were found in Italy and Spain (31.6 years) and the youngest in Bulgaria (26.5) and Romania (27.1).”
#Daniel Halim and Sergio Rivera. Love, marriage, and development: 4 observations. 2020
https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/love-marriage-and-development-4-observations
Quote: “In 2015, on average, women first marry at the age of 24 and men at 27. It varies across regions. South Asia has the lowest age of first marriage for both women and men: 20 and 25, respectively. Europe and Central Asia has the highest: 27 for women and 30 for men.
The average age of first marriage increased worldwide by one year for both men and women since 1995. The most substantial increase occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean. For men, it increased from 26 in 1995 to 28 in 2015 and, for women, from 23 in 1995 to 26 in 2015.”
#Savelieva et al., Birth cohort changes in fertility ideals: Evidence from repeated cross sectional surveys in Finland. 2021
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2021-010.pdf
Quote: “Declining fertility ideals may thus be among the underlying factors contributing to the recent fertility decline in developed countries. According to the secod demographic transition theory (SDT), ideational factors and value changes play a crucial role in family formation in contemporary developed societies, since strict marital and social norms as determinants of childbearing have been replaced by individual choices (Lesthaeghe 2010, 2014). Currently, the spread of post-materialist or postmodern values, such as the need for self-actualization, self-development, and consumption/leisure aspirations, are related to a decreased importance of having children compared to other life goals (Lesthaeghe 2014). At the same time, the cost of childbearing in terms of financial resources and time investments has increased (Craig et al. 2014; Kornrich and Furstenberg 2013). Due to the high expectations of good parenting (the so-called intensive parenting), younger people might perceive childbearing as more demanding than their parents’ generation (Craig et al. 2014). This may, in turn, be related to the increase in childfree preferences among younger people (Rybińska 2020), and to the increased ideal age at first birth (Melnikas and Romero 2020).”
– But here are a few options to at least make the lives of parents much easier: free and abundant access to childcare, financial benefits for parents, more and cheaper housing. Parenthood has to stop being a career obstacle.
#Jesús García-Gómez, Silvia Loi, Natalie Nitsche. Want but won’t: a research note on the gap between fertility desires and intentions in Spain. 2022
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2022-033.pdf
Quote: “Finally, we show that among childless women aged 34+, favorable financial and housing conditions, along with having a non-residential partner and specific fertility desires and values, are associated with intending to pursue their desired number of children. This is in line with prior research (Bueno & García-Román, 2020). Interestingly, as predicted by the gender equity theory (McDonald, 2000; see Brinton et al., 2018 for further discussion), a highly unequal distribution of housework reduces the probability that women intend to have their desired number of children. The predictors for intending to transition to parity 2 among mothers are, however, different. Here, only age and partnership status emerge as important. Moreover, as Rutigliano and Lozano (2022) showed, receiving intensive help from grandparents with the first child increases the likelihood of intending to have more children.”
#Nishikido, M., Cui, Q. & Esteve, A. Partnership dynamics and the fertility gap between Sweden and Spain. 2022 https://genus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41118-022-00170-w
Quote: “Differences in welfare regimes may also influence the consequences of economic uncertainty on societies (Blossfeld et al., 2005). Young adults in Spain, for instance, experienced more negative economic consequences due to the 2008/2009 financial crisis relative to Sweden (Puig-Barrachina et al., 2020). The rise in both subjective and objective economic uncertainty has also been found to deter childbearing, perhaps more so in Southern European contexts (Vignoli et al., 2016, 2020).
Such existing theories emphasize different aspects and confront the challenge of explaining why fertility is declining and why there are relatively large differences across European societies.“
#William A.V. Clark. Do women delay family formation in expensive housing markets? 2015
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685765/
Quote: “The effect of being in an expensive housing market is a delay of first births by three to four years, after controlling for education, ethnicity and labor market participation. However, the relatively modest fit of individual models suggest that while the housing market may play a role it is also clear that there is a complex structure to the decision- making around fertility, labor force participation and housing market entry. Overall completed fertility does not appear to be changed.”
#Kalwij A. The impact of family policy expenditure on fertility in western Europe. Demography. 2010.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000017/
Quote: “This article analyzes the impact on fertility of changes in national expenditure for family allowances, maternity- and parental-leave benefits, and childcare subsidies. To do so, I estimate a model for the timing of births using individual-level data from 16 western European countries, supplemented with data on national social expenditure for different family policy programs. The latter allow approximation of the subsidies that households with children receive from such programs. The results show that increased expenditure on family policy programs that help women to combine family and employment— and thus reduce the opportunity cost of children—generates positive fertility responses.”
#Gatta A, Mattioli F, Mencarini L, Vignoli D. Employment uncertainty and fertility intentions: Stability or resilience? 2022
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34468282/
Quote: “The present study relies on the 2017 Italian Trustlab survey and its employment uncertainty module. We find that perception of resilience to job loss is a powerful predictor of fertility intentions, whereas perception of employment stability has only a limited impact. The observed relationship between resilience and fertility intentions is robust to the inclusion of person-specific risk attitude and does not depend on the unemployment rate or the share of fixed-term contracts in the area of residence. We conclude that the notion of employment uncertainty includes distinct expectations towards the future, which should be considered separately to understand fertility decision-making.”
#UNICEF. Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Portugal rank highest for family-friendly policies in OECD and EU countries. 2019
Quote: “The report offers guidance on how countries can improve their family-friendly policies:
Provide statutory, nationwide paid parental leave of at least six months for parents.
Enable all children to access high-quality, age-appropriate, affordable and accessible childcare centres irrespective of family circumstances.
Ensure there is no gap between the end of parental leave and the start of affordable childcare so that children can continue their development without interruption.
Ensure that mothers can breastfeed both before and after they return to work by providing lengthy-enough paid parental leave, guaranteed breaks at work and safe and appropriate locations to breastfeed and pump.
Collect more and better data on all aspects of family-friendly policies so that programmes and policies can be monitored, and countries compared.”
#Stefan Bauernschuster, Timo Hener, Helmut Rainer. Does the Expansion of Public Child Care Increase Birth Rates? Evidence from a Low-Fertility Country. 2013
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/IfoWorkingPaper-158.pdf
Quote: “Germany has the lowest birth rate among all OECD countries. To encourage fertility, the federal government has recently introduced a set of reforms that led to a substantial expansion of public child care for under three year old children. Using administrative county-level data, we exploit within-county variation in this expansion and find evidence that the provision of public child care causes an increase in birth rates. Extended empirical specifications suggest that our results are neither confounded by selective migration nor driven by tempo effects. Our analysis therefore provides some first evidence that low fertility may be reversed through changes in public policy that allow women to combine employment and motherhood.”