Fears of falling global fertility are to many on the right what climate change is to the left: the master problem of the age, the slow-moving crisis that is even now destabilizing societies. “Population collapse due to low birthrates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” Elon Musk wrote. JD Vance has written that “our country’s low birthrates have made many elites sociopaths.”
I wish that worry over falling global fertility was not quite so right-wing-coded. I agree there is something troubling about countries that have ceased to reproduce themselves. There is tragedy in how many people don’t end up having the families they desire. The number of children American women say they want has barely budged over the decades, but as marriage rates decline and childbearing is pushed into later years, the number of children women actually have has fallen. This is not just some quirk of American culture. We are seeing it all over the world.
In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the U.S. fertility rate had fallen to a new low of around 1.6 births per woman — well below the 2.1 that is broadly considered an adequate replacement rate. The European Union average is closer to 1.5, with Germany recently falling below the U.N.’s “ultralow fertility” line of 1.4. South Korea is down to 0.78 births per woman, a rate at which the country will sharply contract over a few generations. The only wealthy country with a fertility rate above the replacement rate is Israel.
It is harder for societies to remain stable as they shrink; South Korea’s demographic crisis has contributed to its recent political turmoil. Growth becomes elusive when populations decline. Fewer adults supporting more retirees is a recipe for discontent. It would be nice if scarcity concentrated the political mind, focusing countries on what growth is available: immigration, technological advances and more natalist cultures.
In practice, we see none of these things. Anti-immigrant sentiment rises, as it has both here and in Europe, and gender relations worsen, as they have in South Korea. People are a source of power, growth is a source of optimism and shrinking societies fear long-term decline. Russia’s falling birthrates seem to have played some role in President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. As countries across the world see their populations fall — some of them quickly — we are entering a new demographic era, and I am skeptical that it will be a stable one.
Any one of these challenges would be plenty on its own. Together they augur a new and frightening era. I find myself returning to a famous translation of a line from Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.”
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