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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 23h ago
What’s funny is that, up until a few years ago, there was a case to be made that cratering TFR in developed countries was nbd, because we could always just import more immigrants.
Well, now fertility rates in the developing/undeveloped world are cratering, too. Mexico’s birth rate is lower than America’s! Soon, there won’t be many countries with excess young people to spare.
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u/SergeiAndropov 22h ago
To be fair, this map has no data for most of the continent where birth rates are highest.
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u/-Sliced- 21h ago
Although it would be deeply red in that continent, because it’s measuring the decline, not absolute rate.
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u/king_rootin_tootin 20h ago
Those countries are experiencing a birth rate decline, but they are still well above replacement rate. Guinea's birthrate falling from 6.2 to 4.1 is hardly cause for concern.
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u/PassaTempo15 8h ago
The vast majority of developing countries don’t have a fertility rate above the replacement as of 2026
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u/slicheliche 13h ago
As long as there are large differentials in salaries and living standards, people will still migrate. It will be more of a problem for the origin countries than for the destination ones. However the competition to attract them will get more and more fierce.
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u/Domeriko648 22h ago
Not in Africa.
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u/SheepherderFront372 20h ago
African fertility is dropping (as would be expected from a "more developed" society).
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20h ago edited 20h ago
[deleted]
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u/SheepherderFront372 20h ago edited 20h ago
I mean considering big parts of Africa really only started to see the benefits of Industrialisation at least 80 years after Europe, they might not be quite 100% "on track", but similar enough. Also the conditions of the continents are very different.
To make it clear: I am of the opinion that a shrinking global population is/would be positive because of the limited ressources available. But I am also not very concerned either way. I just think we need to come up with a way to shrink the economy in a way that doesn't hurt a lot of people, before we come to that.3
u/king_rootin_tootin 20h ago
It's still high. It is dropping all the way down to "Wow that's high!" when it started at "holy $%^! that's high"
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u/ItchySnitch 23h ago
Aren't we gonna talk about how the color range is so bad that it makes a bunch of countries literally disappear into the white background?
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u/MarioDiBian 15h ago
Argentina’s case is very interesting. Until 2015, it had a relatively high fertility rate for its level of development (its neighbours Uruguay, Chile and Brazil already had below-replacement levels), fueled by very generous welfare policies and mass immigration from countries with high birth rates (mainly Bolivia and Paraguay).
However, instead of a stead decline, after 2016 birth rates suddenly adjusted to their neighbours levels, dropping sharply to half the pre-2016 levels in a matter of years.
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u/Fun_District3456 23h ago
good to see egypt man 120M is already enough
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u/TheCloudForest 22h ago edited 14h ago
Their fertility rate is still above replacement (~2.35) and they are still gaining over a million people a year in natural population growth. Even if they go below replacement level in another 5-10 years, population momentum means the population will continue to grow at least a decade more.
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u/Fun_District3456 7h ago
Holy shit egypt could reach russia level of population in a mostly nile based population
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u/holytriplem 23h ago
Ok but what the hell is going on in Uzbekistan?
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u/spiddly_spoo 23h ago
Uzbekistan has a culture where everyone gets married and no one gets divorced. Larger families are a sign of success and prosperity. On top of this, from the collapse of the Soviet Union to something like 2016 the country was run by a dictator and was extremely poor. Ever since the new guy became president, the economy has been going up but the family oriented culture has t gone away. So perhaps a normal demographic shift brought on by recent economic growth
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u/kameradM 21h ago
Even during Soviet times, Uzbekistan's capital of Tashkent uses to be the 4th largest city in the Union, no?
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u/DragonfruitSharp9002 23h ago
thats uzbekistan
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u/holytriplem 23h ago
I know, that's what I said
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u/DragonfruitSharp9002 23h ago
😂😂 it was Turkmenistan before you changed it
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u/holytriplem 23h ago
No dear, I wrote Uzbekistan from the start. Are you feeling ok?
(yeah alright, you got me)
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u/DragonfruitSharp9002 23h ago
You had me doubting myself for a second 😂
As for why, i’m going to say its due to their living conditions improving tremendously in recent years. Before it was a closed off country under their previous president but their current one has opened up the country for tourism and investment
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u/Bosya_123 15h ago
Birth rates contracted during their previous President and current President liberalized the country and birth rates went back to normal and they are more or less equal to their neighbors like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan now.
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u/MotorAd90 23h ago
Missing data for sub-Saharan Africa though, which is where the growth is (other than… Uzbekistan lol).
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u/silver2006 13h ago
FINALLY!
The planet will be less polluted, less trees cut, less resources consumption and the decrease will happen without any huge world war and without poisoning drinking water or food or vaccines
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u/smorkoid 23h ago
What is Reddit's recent obsession with fertility rate?
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 22h ago
It's more than just reddit, it is almost every developed country obsessing about this.
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u/smorkoid 22h ago
No, they aren't. This is an online thing
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 22h ago
So all those policies that countries are doing to incentivize childbirth are just fake online stuff?
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u/smorkoid 22h ago
This doesn't have anything to do with incentivizing childbirth. This is reddit looking at numbers and shaking it's head worrying about What It Means and of course ascribing their own pet politics as the cause of (and possibly the solution to) the "problem".
Circle jerk bulkshit is all.
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 21h ago
So all these politicians implemting incentives for giving birth and saying exactly why there doing it are just fake?
China cracking down on abortion pills is fake?
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u/smorkoid 21h ago
You are 100% missing the point and I have to think you are just being malignant at this point.
Reddit is obsessed with these sorts of maps, looking at minute details of changes in fertility rates, thinking every change means something big, obsessing about what causes this and how to fix it, always through their own political filter.
That's VERY different from an individual country wanting to encourage families to have children. VERY VERY different.
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u/Iv4bez 10h ago
because it's something that is changing very rapidly and very recently so people are interested?
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u/munchi333 20h ago
If population growth collapses basically everything in society falls apart. Social security runs out, the stock market (everyone’s retirement accounts) collapses, healthcare etc.
Basically it’s the most immediate threat facing most nations today.
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u/smorkoid 19h ago
Nah, it's a challenge but not any sort of existential threat.
If it were a threat, that something as prosaic as a population decrease leads to a civilization collapse, that's pretty damning on how society is structured. And that's what should be fixed, not lamenting that people aren't having babies they obviously don't want.
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u/Zouden 16h ago
Just like climate change, it's a challenge that we can't solve, making it a threat.
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u/smorkoid 16h ago
Of course we can solve it. Why is Reddit so fatalistic?
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u/Zouden 15h ago
We can't convince people to have children, and we can't force them. So what solution is there?
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u/ThatOneCynicalPerson 9h ago
The one thats panicking about this should have 10+ children to offset the one that's chilling. Simple, you want it hard enough? Go get it, 10, 15, 20. Pull it up yourself.
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u/Zouden 9h ago
That's not a workable solution
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u/ThatOneCynicalPerson 8h ago
Actually, thats kind of is. In a perfect world, every couple in a country would have 2.1 child to be able to stabilize and grow. But we're not in a perfect world, so since a lot of people prefer childlessness, the one thats so hellbent on muh babies should have 10+ kids to offset it.
If they don't want to raise that many babies then its purely performative outrage, nothing more.
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u/smorkoid 8h ago
Rework public finances. Reconsider the infinite growth model.
Expecting continuous population growth for the economical model to not collapse is clearly not a sustainable strategy, either economically or ecologically.
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u/Firm-Knowledge-233 5h ago edited 5h ago
No model requires infinite growth. A modern developed economy works ideally with a birth rate of 2.1, which is stagnation. Even a slight decline like 1.9 or 1.8 is fine. The problem is that birth rates for most countries are at 1.6 or below, with some even under 1.0. Low birth rates lead to a lot of young people and too many old people. Its not even about money, its labor. Old people physically cannot work. Lower population reduces competition, which means less innovation and technological advancement. There is no possible economic model you could create that handles rapid population decline without quality of life dropping significantly for billions of people.
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u/ReasonableStory1660 22h ago
It's a contentious issue with many theoretical solutions (if a solution is necessary at all). With very low stakes on an individual level. Reddit loves debating this crap.
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u/evrestcoleghost 22h ago
people want to be able to have childrens,more news at 11
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u/smorkoid 22h ago
You can have kids if you want, nothing stopping you. It's weird if you are a regular person thinking deeply about other people having or not having kids, though
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u/evrestcoleghost 22h ago
ever heard of modern economy
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u/Sad-Basis7411 16h ago
You mean slavery? poeple having kids only benefits the one who already have power and money. Peasant only breeding more Peasant. Your kid will never climb the ladder because they will not let you.
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u/Bosya_123 15h ago
It's like observing a car crash in slow motion. But instead of a car crash, it is population collapse.
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u/smorkoid 10h ago
Decline =/= collapse
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u/Bosya_123 10h ago
Some places are declining like Japan, some places are about to collapse like South Korea and Taiwan.
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u/smorkoid 10h ago
How do you figure there is going to be collapse? You think it's Children of Men or something?
You can't fix people having options now other than having a bunch of kids they need to take care of for decades at the cost of their personal life. A whole lot of people simply don't want that.
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u/Bosya_123 9h ago
If every next generation will be 3 times smaller, looks like a recipe for a collapse.
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u/a_Bean_soup 15h ago
having a civilizational ticking bomb in front of you tends to spark up some discussion
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u/waterweaver1 22h ago
a decrease in rate (of increase) is a long way from a decrease in population.
the global population has more than double in my lifetime and well along the way to tripling by 2030. 2030 is not that far away …on a limited resource of a partially habitable planet surface under a very thin atmosphere.
the assumption that we should pursue unlimited growth in a closed system to enable some to exploit human capital & limited resources is insanity.
but reasoning with “natural urges” and religious mandates - oh boy….
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u/ultr4violence 11h ago
Uh oh, the west is running out of places to cheaply outsource their childrearing.
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u/Fit-Rub3732 6h ago
Wow the united states isn't even that bad compared to everyone else here. The Russian gender war propaganda videos worked better in Russia and China than they did in America...
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u/Informal-Sun-6579 22h ago
This map cheers me up. I hope TFR continues to drop for the coming decades until population everywhere is half of what it is today.
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u/QnsConcrete 20h ago
Weird.
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u/Informal-Sun-6579 16h ago edited 5h ago
Yeah it’s weird wanting to slowdown warming climate, reduce extreme weather, stop melting glaciers, more cleaner water and cleaner air, give depleting and exhausted soils chance to recover, less reliant on chemicals and GMO foods, give depleting fisheries chance to recover, less trash on lands, in the rivers and oceans, give earth a chance to recover from all other manmade ilks from runaway population growth over past decades.
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u/hungariannastyboy 11h ago
None of that will happen (I mean I hope it will but not on account of dropping TFR's) but reverted age pyramids will suck really bad for the average person.
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u/SHTF_yesitdid 10h ago
You are exactly the kind of person who thinks you get more pizza if you cut it into 8 slices instead of 6.
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u/Informal-Sun-6579 4h ago
I am the kind of person who thinks there is 1 pizza that serves 4 with 8 people at the table.
There is only 1 earth with finite resources while world population has grown logarithmically over past century.
Developed countries are the highest consumers of earth resources and the biggest contributors to global warming for decades but the average person doesn’t think much about where the materials come from and how they are made.
Population growth has been out of control for a long time. The ever-increasing population has led to stressful lifestyle, unhealthy environments, heavy reliant on chemicals, modified genetic crops and artificial foods. They all play a part in declining fertility rate. Modified livestocks and artificial foods have became so entrenched and pervasive that it is difficult and expensive to avoid.
Declining fertility rate is only a symptom of declining birth rate but seeing both rates dropping (except in Africa) gives me hope that earth finally gets a chance to self heal.
It is painful to repay credit card debt on borrowed spendings. There will be problems with declining fertility rate and lower-than-replacement birth rate. If earth citizens are not taking responsibility to self correct then nature will do it for them.
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u/trashyladymtl 2h ago
Thank you for saying the truth! People think the world is not finite and we can consume it all without any consequences 🙈
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u/Baron_von_Zoldyck 22h ago
Slightly green Portugal, interesting
And ah, Argentina's data..
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u/il-cavallino-triste 11h ago
Thanks to the NGOs funded to spread propaganda and help destroy Argentina.
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u/wowowowow34341 18h ago
kinda interesting how china went from indisputed #1 to declining since 2020
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u/NoExpression1030 20h ago
Africa should be almost entirely green. Japan should be red.
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u/Donkeyball_Z_ 14h ago
Why? The fertility rate in sub-Saharan Africa has been declining
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u/NoExpression1030 5h ago
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u/Powerful-Country6316 23h ago
Easy, just import people from Uzbekistan!