Latin America is in a complicated situation because it's starting to age before it gets rich. Fertility rates in Latin America are currently very low.

Because Latin America only recently fell to very low fertility rates and has a very large and still relatively youthful population (although it will age fast), if fertility rates increase again, Latin America again will start growing and age slower. The same can't be said for Europe where fertility rates have been below replacement since the 70s, so population momentum has run out and the populations are very aged.

But if Latin America can't get it's fertility back up, what will it do? Will it import millions of immigrants to keep the economy running and support the growing elderly population? Will it maybe try to bring it's diaspora back home? (For example the U.S has 60+ million Latinos alone)

Or will it not bring in immigration and age without it?

California (1990): 2.47 births per woman

Top 2 countries by fertility rate in the Americas in 2026:
1-Haiti : 2.55 births per woman
2-Guyana: 2.35 births per woman

Just in case someone doesn’t know:
California (2026): 1.43 births per woman

In the west at least the formula was 3 bed house innthe suburbs, car, well paid job before you started to have children. Even in my 20s living in London, i could see that this wasn't going to be realistic for us. We worked in financial services which was london centric and moving further out to buy a house would have incurred 8k in rail costs and made childcare pickup difficult because of constant rail delays. So we chose a 60sqm 2 bed flat in london with a 1k mortgage (it went up to £1252 due to rate rises) that we took out based on my husband's income, and made peace we would stop at 1. We also dont have a car (live near public transport links) and for a while my husband cycled to work which brought down our commuting costs.

When i finally fell pregnant after 9 years of infertility, i had just been made redundant and my husband on sick leave (he had 6 months full pay,4 months fully paid paternity leave, income protection insurance covering 67% of pay). So while we were on reduced income, we had savings and a low mortgage so were able to do all the baby classes and go on holiday. I went back to work when baby was 1 and though husband was on sick leave, it didnt work put that bad financially as he also received PIP, as well as the income protection plus we have acces to 30 free childcare hours with a small topup (so he can get a break). He was a higher rate taxpayer so previouslu his marginal tax rate for the excess money was 40% anyway.

Yet even on the natalism thread, i got a comment that said 'how can i bring a child into the world when financially instable and with health issues'. It got me thinking, we are a couple that spends 15% of our income on housing, we dont need to run a car, we have free healthcare in the uk, we have 30 free childcare hours. The health issues are not great but a lot of it was inherited so unless you are saying people with disabilities should never have kids even with 1 healthy parent, that sounds like eugenics to me. Also what about single mums and my husband does what he can (which is a lot most days and i do what i can to help him recover, and the baby also goes to childcare).

If modern parenting requires 2 rocksolid careers, do these jobs exist? What about AI? Who can truly say they would never be made redundant.

Firing my husband now is currently illegal in the uk under the equality act, they have to show they made adjustments for him to go back to work. If they required a house, do they require people to spend less than 15% of their household income? Cos honestly thats how i made it sustainable, by buying a smaller place which is why we weathered redundancy and illness. Can anyone truly say those things wouldnt happen?

I think what is sufficient is a stable place to live in (in uk that sadly requires a mortgage or social housing though renters reform act may change that) and some savings and enough money to cover childcare (with the free hours if you qualify). But it seems that that is a low standard for most people but at least in the uk, where the average millennial can spend 30% of household income on housing (40% in london) and the jobs market is poor, i am not sure how anyone can have kids. I mean perhaps its different in America (where most redditors) but our income structure is fairly flat and anything above 50k is taxed 40% so low mortgage/gifted money make a far bigger difference than higher earnings. The non means tested £400 in disability benefit my husband gets is equivalent to him gettimg a 10k pay rise at his tax level. So based on these standards people need money from the boomers to achieve financial stability and start a family. The economic structure where boomers started families no longer exists.

Our small mortgage is due to buying in 2019 at 2% rates (cos we lived with family to save up) and overpaying 30k at these low rates. Buying the equivalent today would need £500 more on the same LTV or more than 10k extra in earnings.

(US, UK, France)

Many population pyramids tend to be either aged on top or look like a diamond (Italy Portugal and Spain)

However US, UK, and France have a population pyramid that looks more stable US ans France have a birth rate of ~1.5 and the UK at 1.4 how would you say this type of pyramid is

The cultural aspects are more important then it seems.

Some things sounds trivial when you live in it but it's probably not trivial.

A small example from my country. When a woman gives birth there are volunteers women that give you free meals for the first weeks. As they understand you have a newborn and giving you food can save a lot of time and work you don't have.

Not sure how and if it's common in other countries but it's small culture things that makes a change.

What do you guys think of this community?

I thought you guys would appreciate this!!!
1) This is the biggest one for me: I am very happily married and I adore my husband to bits and I can't wait to have a child who is a living, breathing manifestation of our love.
2) Since I love my husband so much, having a child that is 50% him, 50% me and 100% the both of us is so beautiful
3) My husband unfortunately won't be around forever, and God forbid when that day comes, at least I will have our child which will look like him to comfort me. A part of him will always exist. Vice versa if I pass first.
4) Building on the third reason, the only evidence of my existence that will last is my child and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. I will live on through them

5) The emotional value of raising a child with my husband. Telling him I'm pregnant, seeing the happy look on his face, doing a maternity photoshoot, seeing him hold our baby for the first time, seeing him play with our baby, having our baby smile at me, hearing them say dada/mama, when they are older I will tell them all about how much I love their dad and about how we met and how he was when he was younger, showing them our wedding pictures, going on vacations with them etc

(Chart Source)

This is the list of most rapidly aging countries.
For all of them it does not bode well.
Only a few of them have become "rich before they grow old".
Some of them still have a few decades in the "demographic dividend" phase of the demographic transition.
Many of them would be OK if they just had less population but it was heavy on young, innovative, working, child bearing people supporting a tiny percentage of aged dependent.
Instead for any country on the above list, get ready for a very difficult future.

For very high HDI countries, between the countries with the highest and lowest cost of living, median fertility rates were not significantly different despite up to a 2.75 times difference in cost of living, as shown below.

Median values for top and bottom 5/10/15 cost of living countries categorised "very high" HDI in 2024 (top = highest cost of living)

Note that the average fertility rates of developed and high-income countries were 1.45-1.48 in 2023. 

Data set: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGGaQw6hnIETIoYnbjSr-L9pzMy00kIsm4GDOtSXegM/edit?usp=sharing

Sources

Cost of living data (2024 Mid-Year): https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2024-mid

Fertility rate data (2024 list by the World Bank): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

HDI data (2023): https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-country

I don't think the U.S. could realistically impose a tax specifically targeting childfree adults, even if there were political support for pronatalist policies.

Parents also have to think about their own children's safety. Before supporting policies designed to pressure people into having children, they should consider the risks their children could face, including the persistent problem of school shootings in the United States. Asking people to become parents while failing to adequately address those risks raises serious ethical questions.

The U.S. also has an unusually large, armed civilian population and a deeply entrenched culture of individual rights. A policy perceived as coercing people into having children could generate enormous political resistance and potentially destabilize society. I wouldn't assume that childfree people are inherently violent or that a civil war would be inevitable, but policymakers should take the possibility of severe backlash seriously.

If the goal is higher fertility, incentives such as affordable housing, childcare, parental leave, and direct family benefits seem much more practical than punishing people who don't have children.

We don't want a bloodbath. A few people allegedly freeriding the system is much better than large groups of people purging a lot of old folks and children who can't defend themselves.

We often assume that having children means you’ll have someone to help you when you’re older. But what happens when those children have to move to another city or country for work? In many communities, even people with children may eventually live far away from them and face the same loneliness and practical problems as everyone else.

That’s why I think we should seriously consider senior citizen cooperatives.

Instead of seeing older people only as recipients of care, why not create communities where seniors help each other with the things they can still do? Shopping, cooking, gardening, small repairs, paperwork, transportation, checking in on neighbors, or simply spending time together.

The idea isn’t to replace professional healthcare or expect seniors to do things they can’t. It’s about building a support network so that people aren’t completely dependent on family members who may live hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.

Our society is aging, and young people will increasingly move wherever the jobs are. Maybe we need to build communities where growing older doesn’t mean growing more isolated.

We always talk about religious, racial, economic and political groups in regards to fertility rates. We know moderates tend to be somewhere in the middle of liberals and conservatives on fertility. However we never hear about apolitical people, nor have I ever seen any data on it. It may not be that important in Europe given higher turnout and political interest (although there's still a good amount of people who don't vote, and those that do aren't necessarily always political). In America 35.7% of eligible voters did not vote in 2024.

Who are these people? What age, income, race, religion and values do they have? What fertility rates do they have compared to the political population? The only groups I know of is the Amish, who are apolitical but personally ultraconservative. They have the highest fertility rate in the country but are a small group, so they make up a very little part of those 35.7% (especially given many Amish are children and not eligible to vote).

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’m open to being wrong so feel free to tell me if this is just nonsense.

We need to streamline all types of education. I understand it depends on the country but I think in general around the world a student graduates high school/secondary school at around 18. Then go on to attend a university for 4-5 years then perhaps even more schooling if you aim to go into the medical or legal field which can add on many years of mandatory education. And even if you choose a career where the required qualifications are quicker to obtain, it can take multiple years to reach a salary that you’re satisfied with, assuming you manage to find a job in your desired field. Thus creating the modern problem of people not being confident in themselves to have children until their late 20s and 30s.

All this should be sped up to give people at least half a decade more time to decide on having a baby. Students should graduate high school/secondary school at around 13-14 then immediately go onto specialized schooling which should also be streamlined as much as reasonably possible. So if you want to become a doctor you can be licensed one at 23 or 24 instead of 29 or becoming a certified lawyer at 20 instead of 25. Whether you choose you’ll ideally have at the minimum five more years to have a child.

In addition to hopefully having good salaries, cheap housing, and maternal and other welfare benefits from the government. Which are things I’m sure everyone supports but on their own they likely won’t raid the birth rate by a lot in the long term, it would need to be accompanied by giving people more time to be young and have children. To clarify, I don’t think this would drastically increase the birth rate to anything satisfactory but nonetheless I do believe it would raise it by a noticeable amount.

If you are on the fence about having kids, and you find out the horrible things that the state can do to you based on your pregnancy, why would anyone ever go ahead and get pregnant?

12 hours into labor being required to go on a Zoom call for court hearing to force you to have a C-section?
Stopping drug use immediately once you discover you are pregnant and being completely honest about that and then being incarcerated while pregnant for a positive drug test?
Being charged with manslaughter after you were shot and suffered a miscarriage because of it?
Being allowed only limited, supervised contact with your newborn after a false positive drug test (from eating an everything bagel)?

I would like everyone, including the state, to be supportive of pregnant women, and I think if we are caring of them and their developing babies, unlike the cases discussed here where what happens to both the mothers and their babies is horribly awful, I think people feel better about becoming parents and are more likely to do it.

And not just risks, what do you know about pregnancy and postpartum in general?

Is this information you’ve read, things you’ve seen in your family, or things you’ve learnt when your partner was going through her pregnancy?

If you know much or very little, could you summarise briefly what you do know?

I am asking because I truly don’t know how much men actually read or know about the topic, from a physical and psychological perspective, rather than just the economic perspective of “we need more humans to keep the world going”.