I didn’t believe this fact until I did the calculations myself: At their current fertility rate, for every 100 South Koreans, there will be just 5 great-grandchildren.
How can that be? Here’s the math.
The fertility rate in South Korea has been the world’s lowest for years, and it’s declining. Last year, it stood at 0.72, which means the average South Korean woman will have 0.72 children in her lifetime.
So for 100 South Koreans – comprising 50 men and 50 women – there will be a total of 50 x 0.72 = 36 children.
Those 36 children (18 women x 0.72) will have 13 grandchildren from the original group. Those 13 grandchildren will, in turn, give birth to just under 5 great-grandchildren.
A country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman in order to replace its citizens from one generation to the next. A higher rate means the country is growing. A lower rate means it’s in danger of eventually becoming extinct. It’s like compound interest, except with people.
The South Korean government has been desperate to increase its numbers. The country has spent billions in the past few years to reverse its declining trend. Politicians are promising more public housing and easier loans to encourage families. But if South Koreans don’t start producing kids or living forever, the country will be a shadow of itself in the next three generations. And while South Korea is the country with the lowest fertility rate on record, it’s by no means alone.
Taiwan’s government has spent more than $3 billion trying to convince people to have babies, even going so far as to organize match-making events for singles.
Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida has warned that it’s essential to increase the country’s birth rate of 1.26, and the country recently created an agency to support families with small children.
Africa, and parts of Asia and Eastern Europe are bucking the trend. In the map below, blue means fertility rates lower than replacement, red means higher.
And the U.S.? Its fertility rate in 2022 was 1.7 births per woman. Without immigration, our population would be getting smaller.
Of course, this goes against everything we’ve been told since the ‘70s. Paul Ehrlich made plenty of wild predictions about how we’d all face extinction, thanks to food shortages caused by overpopulation. In fact, early editions of his book “Population Bomb” claimed:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Even now, the media scolds people for having children in the face of climate change. Unsurprisingly, a late 2022 poll shows that 23% of U.S. adults say climate change has made them reconsider having a baby.
But the problem isn’t simply the United States' eventual, albeit distant, risk of extinction as a country. The bigger problem is that we’ve made calculations based on the idea that the population – and especially the working population – would remain the same or increase.
Social Security is an obvious and long-standing concern. So are pensions, loans, and other financial decisions. When your society shifts from mostly younger, working people to older, retired people, you run into some obvious financial shortfalls.
The same happens when you have a smaller pool of young people for the military or for jobs as teachers, mechanics, builders, and, well, pretty much everything else.
Ironically, we could be on the path to becoming extinct … but not for any of the reasons we were warned about.
— Ken
This very good article failed to mention how the "pill" and the feminist movement have compounded the problem by: a) turning sex into a commodity and b) dissuading young women from becoming mothers with the big lie that they can concentrate on their careers while they're young (and fertile) and that once they have achieved economic independence (by their 30s and 40s) then they can go out and seek and find a mate. But, the problem is that by that age for a woman it is very difficult to bear children or find a man that is not: married, or divorced, or willing to re-marry, or as financially successful, or as educated, or tall enough, or handsome enough, or (gasp) interested in women their age. The folks at Cupid.com found out that their female clientele reject 88% of the men in their database. They all feel that they are worth the remaining top 12%! The result is that most "average" men have given up finding a mate and the men that are "tens" don't want to get married because they can get all of the sex that they want with hardly any effort on their part!
In the end, the brutal reality of nature for women that are older than 25 years of age is that in the sexual marketplace they have become the "fours" looking for a "ten." If they are single moms -and with more than one child- that value drops to "zero." Attraction is not a choice.
As countries become wealthier population growth decreases. Availability of energy powers economies and increases productivity. The continent of Africa is young and growing. But they will require enormous amounts of new power generation to work their way out of poverty. And people in India, China, and Indonesia are starving for more power. I don’t think begging people that live in advanced economies to have more babies is going to work. What might work is to make sure you provide all the world with abundant affordable power, and finally establish common sense immigration laws informed by lessons learned. Increasing productivity may be the remedy to a decreasing population. I am not an expert on this issue. Just trying to do a little critical thinking. It would be interesting to see what others think. Interesting subject.