Source: United Nations Population Division.
– Many low fertility countries are having future fertility fantasies. It’s time for them to end those fantasies and prepare for a future of below replacement fertility with demographic ageing and without immigration declining populations.
Over the past 50 years the general fertility pattern has been unmistakable: once a nation’s fertility rate falls below the replacement level, it tends to stay there. Despite this demographic pattern, the governments of many countries with below replacement fertility believe that they can persuade couples to have additional children.
Today the fertility rates of approximately 80 countries and territories are below the replacement level, i.e., less than 2.1 children per woman. Together those countries represent nearly two-thirds of the world’s population of nearly 8 billion people (Figure 1).