Posts tagged low fertility
Delayed Gratification - Why are global birth rates falling, and does it matter?

This is the final chapter in the first part of my long-running demographics project. In the previous chapter I described the quantum effect of fertility, which hypothesises a negative relationship between fertility and rising incomes as parents substitute quantity for quality in their reproductive decisions and child-rearing. But can the quantum effect explain why birth rates in one country after the other appears to be stuck below the replacement level, and why global fertility will soon drop below that same level? The answer is no.

To understand current and more recent post WWII global fertility trends—broadly since the 1970s—we need to introduce tempo effects to the analysis. Tempo effects describe the tendency of women to postpone the timing of their first child. By mathematical logic, prolonged tempo effects can drive significant population ageing, but a more fundamental question is whether birth postponement also has a lagged effect on quantum, or more precisely, cohort fertility. This chapter discusses these question in the context of the hypothesis of a Second Demographic Transition, SDT, and presents a number of case studies to explore the specifics of recent fertility trends in key countries and regions. The chapter finishes by discussing the idea of a fertility trap, and whether the increasingly accelerating decline in global birth rates are a problem, drawing on the recent polarisation in the debate on this issue.

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Demographics, Economic Theory and Acadmicsclaus vistesendemographics, birth rates, fertility, tempo effects, birth postponement, Malthus, Neo-Malthusianism, fertility trap, low fertility, total fertility rate, cohort fertility
Global fertility will soon fall below the replacement level

I am currently writing the third chapter on fertility for my book on demographics—see here— which focuses on on the onset of sub-replacement fertility in one country after the other since the 1970s, what's driving this shift, and whether the decline—to a large extent driven by birth postponement or so-called tempo effects—is reversing or accelerating. It is a treatise on the notion of a second demographic transition, including empirical case studies, and a discussion about whether sub-replacement fertility is something to worry about,  cherish, or perhaps to approach with indifference.  This is an enquiry that is defined just as much by what it excludes as what it includes. Once we dip into the multidisciplinary academic work on demographics which has emerged in the last two-to-three decades, we go from a large literature to an almost unmanageable one. I will hopefully be able to present a first draft on the chapter soon. In the mean time, however, one thing that as struck me during my recent work is that global fertility will soon fall below the replacement level, defined as just over two children per women, despite what the latest UN projections would have you believe.

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Demographicsclaus vistesenFertility, birth rates, global population, low fertility