Birth Rates Will Drop Below Replacement Rate for First Time as Underpopulation Crisis Continues

The Wall Street Journal is raising concern over declining global birth rates, which experts predict will dip below the replacement rate, 2.2, for the first time in human history. “The world is at a startling demographic milestone,” the outlet reported in a May 13 feature piece. “Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the […]

The post Birth Rates Will Drop Below Replacement Rate for First Time as Underpopulation Crisis Continues appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The Wall Street Journal is raising concern over declining global birth rates, which experts predict will dip below the replacement rate, 2.2, for the first time in human history.

“The world is at a startling demographic milestone,” the outlet reported in a May 13 feature piece. “Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened.”

The United Nations’ most recent statistics revealed that the global fertility rate was down to 2.3 in 2021, 0.2 points lower than experts estimated that it was in 2017. The UN has not yet released data for 2022 and 2023.

In its analysis of the downward trend, WSJ cites research from 2021, which found that “state-level differences in parental abortion notification laws, unemployment, Medicaid availability, housing costs, contraceptive usage, religiosity, child-care costs and student debt could explain almost none of the decline.”

Instead, researchers stated that the global declining birth rate is likely the result of a societal change not easily quantified.

The WSJ speculated that the trend may be the result of “a societywide reorientation toward individualism that puts less emphasis on marriage and parenthood, and makes fewer or no children more acceptable.”

Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.

Thanks to “urbanizations and the internet,” WSJ continues, even women living in small villages where traditional gender roles were once strictly observed are now “plugged into global culture,” which tells them that “fewer children and a higher quality of life are the norm.”

As CatholicVote previously reported, recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed that birth and fertility rates in the US have plummeted to their lowest levels since they have been recorded. Predominantly blue states have the lowest levels.

While state and federal legislators in the US have not made addressing the issue of declining birth rates an explicit priority, as WSJ observed, countries such as Hungary and Japan have created numerous financial incentives for young people to have more children.

In Hungary, for example, the WSJ notes that women under 30 who have children are exempt from paying personal income tax for the rest of their life. The country also boasts lengthy maternity leave policies and various housing and childcare subsidies.

LifeNews Note: Madalaine Elhabbal writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Birth Rates Will Drop Below Replacement Rate for First Time as Underpopulation Crisis Continues appeared first on LifeNews.com.