The Great Depopulation

Births have declined across countries at the same time, with explanations ranging from technology and social media to widespread anxiety about the future. Birth rates had already been falling in developed countries for decades as child mortality dropped, women’s education rose, women’s labor-force participation increased, contraception became more common, and feminist ideas expanded women’s control over bodies and economic futures. The decline has continued and accelerated as smartphone use surged, housing prices increased, more time is spent at home online, and socialization and coupling declined. United Nations projections have underestimated the speed of the drop, such as in South Korea. Total fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels in most countries across multiple regions.

"Some blame technology, particularly smartphones and social media. Others blame a kind of 21st-century weltschmerza sadness about the state of the world and our uncertain future in it. A long essay in The New York Times by Anna Louie Sussman, titled Why So Few Babies? We Might Have Overlooked the Biggest Reason of All, argues that today's generation is too anxious about the future to make the irreversible commitment of having a child."

"Birth rates have been declining in developed countries for a long time, as child mortality has declined, as women's education has increased, as female labor-force participation has soared, as contraception use has proliferated, and as modern notions of feminism have empowered women to take more control over their bodies and their economic futures. And birth rates have continued to decline as smartphone usage has surged, as housing prices have increased, as time spent at home on the internet has grown, and as socialization and coupling have declined."

"The decline is accelerating faster than almost anybody predicted. As John Burn-Murdoch recently observed in the Financial Times, United Nations demographers predicted that there would be 350,000 births in South Korea in 2023; the real figure came in at 230,000. The total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman in almost every country in North America, South America, Europe, and southern and eastern Asia."

Read at www.theatlantic.com