Briefing | Population implosion
Humanity will shrink, far sooner than you think
Demography sneaks up on you
«In the past”, says Furkan Kayabasoglu, an obstetrician in Istanbul, “I would deliver a couple’s first baby and then their second or even a third.” These days, however, “one and done” parents are becoming the norm. Out of every ten births Mr Kayabasoglu attends, only one is of a second child. “We can’t even reach the number of births needed to train new doctors,” he laments.
Last year Turkey’s total fertility rate (tfr), the number of births a typical woman will have in her lifetime if current patterns persist, fell to 1.48. That is well below the level needed to keep the population stable in the long run, which is about 2.1. It was also below what demographers had expected. The United Nations Population Division thought that Turkey’s tfr would not fall so low until at least the year 2100.
Slumping birthrates are not confined to Turkey. All over the world, in poor and middle-income countries as well as rich ones, fertility is in much sharper decline than most projections had expected.
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