Fertility Corrected for Survival

Post #1284

The website, Our World In Data, is phenomenal, and they compile data and present it in really useful forms. While I had known that fertility rate data sets were available, I just found out that more advanced sets also exist: fertility rates corrected for survival to child-bearing age and fertility rates corrected for survival to workforce age.

I found many places with very low adjusted fertility in 2023:

It helps to hover over the chart with your computer mouse, to get the actual values presented in a window which opens. Here is the situation back in 1950:

And here is the situation in 2023:

Because the replacement rate for a stable population is estimated to be 2.1 children per woman, then the expectation is that these regions are currently set on a path to extinction. A hypothesis about this trend is that it is due to four factors, though the first two compete with one another in a theoretical antagonism:

1. raised living standards allowing couples to postpone child-rearing

2. collectivist political systems that create economic doom-n-gloom

3. collectivist political systems which interfere in natural relationships

4. environmental insults which harm physiologic fertility

The last two are worth mentioning. Factor #3 is depicted in dystopian novels like 1984, where the government is seen as the parent of the people, and families can be torn asunder at a moment’s notice if it is thought that they are a threat to the State. Factor 4 stems from unhealthy food and environment, even possibly COVID shots.

Here is a close-up of recent years:

All of these places have corrected fertility rates below 1.4 children per woman.

Reference

[fertility rates corrected for survival] — https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/effective-fertility-rate-children-per-woman-who-are-expected-to-survive-until-childbearing-age