> With world fertility rates seemingly all in decline

As much as various folks like to bang on about declining birthrates, the global birthrate is positive (i.e. >2.0 children per woman), and birthrates are only really low in very affluent demographics.

There's nothing particularly sinister going on either - since most children with access to adequate nutrition and healthcare now survive into adulthood, these societies are not losing a ton of population to wars, very little reason for reproducing above replacement rate.

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Qem 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What is worrisome it's not the instant figures. It's the trend.

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cael450 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, it is very weird to me too. It's only a problem in a handful of countries that have really, really low birthrates and can't/won't attract immigrants.

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danielvf 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In 2024, 171 countries had birth rates below replacement rates. That's gotten worse since then. 70% of people live in countries with birth rates below replacement rates.

So not just a handful of countries.

	▲	ballmerpoint 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s a handful of countries that have 1) “really, really low birthrates,” i.e., not just below replacement but very below replacement AND 2) do not have relatively permissive immigration policies. That most countries are 3) below replacement rate by some amount is a separate third thing.

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41353aab 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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flerchin an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The rates are declining everywhere, although still positive.

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ido 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> very little reason for reproducing above replacement rate.

But reproduction is below replacement rate.

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent [-]

And? It's only a few years since folks were deeply worried about overpopulation, and whether the earth could support 10 billion people...

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stavros an hour ago | parent [-]

Yeah, I don't understand how we can be worried about both things at the same time. In my view, it's good that reproduction is below replacement. Yeah, pensions won't be great, but at least we won't spread like a cancer onto a strained planet.

	▲	jacquesm 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's one of the weirdest realizations I had in the Northern Territories of Canada. There are people living everywhere. Of course they must have looked at me the same way, so I can't really complain.

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clarionbell 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are Ireland and India considered affluent now?

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Is Ireland considered affluent now?

Ireland is the richest country in Europe by GDP-per-capita[1] (apart a few uber-rich city states).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...

> India...

India has been struggling to get its population growth control under control for decades. I think we can excuse a brief overcorrection as they stabilise.

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jacquesm 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Ireland's figures are wildly unbalanced compared to other EU countries because so many companies decided to formally register their headquarters there. They don't pay as much tax as they should so the income stats are way up there but the positive effects are not as you might expect from that (if they weren't actually negative).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

This is now mostly a thing of the past but there are still lingering after-effects.

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Supernaut an hour ago | parent [-]

> They don't pay as much tax as they should so the income stats are way up

What do you mean by "the income stats are way up"?

	▲	jacquesm 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That the GDP stats are skewed but the taxes aren't there. So it looks as if Ireland is doing much better on paper than what is happening in reality. Normally with that kind of GDP you'd also have a solid tax base to go with it, here it is the opposite, Ireland has that GDP because their corporate taxes were super low.