Tesla’s outspoken CEO thinks the biggest threat facing the planet is people not having enough babies. Demographers disagree.
Falling populations might even be a thing to celebrate. That’s according to Vegard Skirbekk at the Norwegian Centre for Fertility and Health. In his new book,, he argues that a world with low birth rates could be a much nicer place to live. When you have fertility that is somewhat below replacement levels, “we can cope quite well with it,” he says. The percentage of thehas steadily dropped over the past century, but productivity per worker has never been higher.
It’s unlikely that pronatalist policies can completely turn the tide of decreasing populations. Since 1996, the Japanese government has enacted ato try to increase family sizes, but the preference for smaller families has stubbornly remained. Samir KC, the IIASA demographer, always starts his course at Shanghai University by asking his students how many children they plan on having in their lifetime.
Rather than simply encouraging people without children to start having babies, societies need to adapt to suit a wider range of lifestyles, says Skirbekk. There’sthat societies with stronger social welfare nets and greater gender equality have higher birth rates, which might explain why Nordic women tend to have more babies on average than people in southern Europe. Expensive housing is another reason people limit their family size, even if they want more children.
Meanwhile, countries like South Korea and Japan that have historically limited immigration are having to rethink their approach by allowing people to settle in areas with a dearth of workers. Immigration is also playing a role at a global level. Between 2000 and 2020, immigration to high-income countries contributed more tothan babies being born within their borders.
Perhaps one of the real drivers behind Musk’s fear of population collapse is an unwillingness to imagine a world that looks very different from the one he grew up in. More than half of all the increase in global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania.
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