The end of babies: a birth rate emergency

“The End of Babies,” declared a striking headline in The New York Times yesterday.

Across the world, fertility rates are tumbling. Since 1950, the average number of children per woman has fallen from 4.7 to just 2.4.

Generally, as countries get wealthier, birth rates fall. Having fewer babies can be extremely beneficial for women, but problems arise when births fall below the rate needed to replace their parents. The UN puts the “replacement rate” at 2.1 children per family.

In November last year, a report warned that almost half of countries — not just rich ones — are facing a “baby bust”.

In Japan, where 25.9% of the population is aged 65 or above, the first seven months of 2019 showed the sharpest drop in births for 30 years. In response, the Japanese government has set a fertility rate target of 1.8. Some families are being paid to have babies.

But government efforts to encourage baby-making have often missed the mark. In 2015, Danes were angered by a Copenhagen billboard reading: “Have you counted your eggs today?”, which many argued equated women with farm animals. In Italy, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, the government’s #FertilityDay campaign was criticised for being “amateurish” and “demeaning”.

Why aren’t we having babies? National circumstances play a role: unemployment in southern Europe; gender inequality in South Korea, or anti-family policy in the USA where women are not entitled to maternity leave.

But there are global trends too. People everywhere are working longer hours for lower wages, leaving them without the time or money to raise a family. The oncoming climate crisis makes us fear that future generations will endure disaster. For the wealthy, children can seem like a burdensome responsibility in a world of almost limitless freedom.

Those who do want children are waiting longer, often until it is too late. In Denmark, IVF and other assisted reproduction methods now account for roughly one in 10 births

Perhaps most worrying of all, scientists now think that chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, which are found in many food and consumer products, could be damaging fertility in both sexes.

Is the world running out of babies?

Boom and bust

Not really, argue some. Each woman in sub-Saharan Africa has, on average, five children. By 2050, there will be 10 billion people on Earth and, thanks to environment devastation driven by the climate crisis, the planet might not have enough food to support them all. We should be more worried about having too many babies.

But John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker, authors of Empty Planet, disagree. These figures don’t “take into account the expansion of education for females”, which is the biggest factor in falling fertility. Many areas of Africa that currently have high birth rates are urbanising twice as fast as the global average. Then there is the financial instability, anxiety and chemical pollution embedded in modern societies. Babies are a scarce resource.