Why Birth Rates Are Falling Everywhere All at Once | FT
Why It Matters
Persistently low fertility will shrink future workforces, raise eldercare and pension costs, and compress GDP per capita, forcing difficult trade‑offs in taxation, public investment and immigration policy. If the driver is social and technological change rather than income, standard policy levers may be less effective at reversing the trend.
Summary
Birth rates have plunged across diverse countries over the past 10–15 years, with more than two‑thirds of nations now below the replacement rate and 66 countries nearer to one child per woman. The recent fall is unusual because it reflects a collapse in couple formation—fewer people having any children—rather than dramatically smaller families among those who do. Traditional economic explanations like housing, wages or social spending only partly explain the synchronized timing; researchers increasingly point to smartphones and changes in digital social life as a likely trigger that reduced in‑person socialising and delayed family formation. The shift is broad, rapid, and observable even where economic conditions are stable, challenging previous demographic models and policy assumptions.
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