With Greece’s fertility rate one of the lowest in Europe, in May the government plans to introduce measures such as cash benefits for families, affordable housing for young people, financial incentives for assisted reproduction, and incorporating migrants into the workforce

Continue reading...

When desperate measures to persuade women to have children fail, it’s time to think differently about demographics

• Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

For the past 75 years in global public health, one of the major priorities has been exponential population growth and Malthusian concerns that the supply of food on the planet won’t be able to keep up. In 1951, the world’s population was 2.5 billion, which increased to 4 billion by 1975, 6.1 billion by 2000, and 8 billion by 2023. Governments in the two most populous countries, India and China, even implemented, respectively, draconian policies such as forced sterilisation and a one-child restriction.

It now seems that many nations have switched to worrying about the opposite problem. Findings published last month from the Global Burden of Disease study, which examines epidemiological trends across the world, notes that fertility rates are falling in most countries. This can be seen as a public health success: lower fertility rates tend to reflect fewer children dying in the first 10 years of life, and an environment that protects women’s bodily autonomy and access to birth control, as well as girls’ education. Having mainly planned pregnancies is seen as societal progress.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Continue reading...

A slowdown in global birthrates is a problem for states such as South Korea, but not for humanity and especially women

‘It’s funny, but it’s dark, because we know we could be causing our own extinction.” That was the sardonic response of one single 30-year-old South Korean, to a BBC reporter , to the data released last week that showed her country has the lowest fertility rate ever recorded. On average, women in South Korea are now having only 0.72 children . For a country to have a stable population, that number needs to be a little over 2. A little over because not all children reach mid-adulthood, anywhere in the world.

In South Korea, the fall in babies has occurred despite successive governments spending £226bn over the past 20 years trying to incentivise women to have more children. The BBC story focused on the trade-offs of having a career or a family, the excessive costs of private education and the competitive misery of growing up in South Korean society. However, not once, in the 2,500-word story, did the words “inequality”, “poverty” or “destitution” appear. It might be that such words are now no longer welcomed in copy for a public broadcaster that represents Europe’s most unequal large country (by income). Or it might just be that we tend to think of these issues as being the aggregate of millions of individual choices not to have children, rather than part of a wider story.

Continue reading...

Average number of births per woman falls to 0.71 in country that already has the world’s lowest rate, and has spent billions since 2006 to reverse the trend

South Korea’s fertility rate, already the world’s lowest, dropped to a fresh record low in 2023, defying the billions of dollars spent by the country to try to reverse the trend as the population shrank for a fourth straight year.

The average number of expected babies for a South Korean woman during her reproductive life fell to 0.72, from 0.78 in 2022, data from Statistics Korea showed on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Expense of child-rearing and challenge of balancing work and family-life key factors in China’s declining birthrate and shrinking population

China is one of the most expensive places in the world to raise a child, outstripping the US and Japan in relative terms, a prominent Chinese thinktank has said.

A report released on Wednesday by the Beijing-based Yuwa Population Research Institute found that the average cost of raising a child in China until the age of 18 is 538,000 yuan (£59,275) – more than 6.3 times as high as its GDP per capita, compared with 4.11 times in the US or 4.26 times in Japan.

Continue reading...

L'Île-de-France, avec ses 12,3 millions de résidents selon le recensement le plus récent, se positionne comme la région la plus densément peuplée de France. Néanmoins, Paris voit sa population décroître.

Public policies shouldn’t be shaped around boosting birth rates, says Madeleine Hewitt . Plus a letter from Val Harding

While it’s a tragedy that so many are afraid to have children due to climate breakdown, that doesn’t have to be a decision drawn from fear, but a positive, proactive choice to help solve the climate crisis ( More people not having children due to climate breakdown fears, finds research, 9 November ).

Our growing numbers place increasing strain on the environment, with the IPCC having just last year cited population growth as one of the two strongest drivers (alongside per capita GDP) of carbon emissions. A greater public understanding of how the climate crisis will impact future generations is a good thing, motivating and equipping us all to take the actions and demand the changes that are so vitally needed. In light of this, public policies should be shaped to strengthen environmental protections and adapt to managing an ageing population, rather than boost birth rates. A universal human pursuit is to want to improve things for the next generation, even if in this case it means having a smaller one.
Madeleine Hewitt
Campaigns and media officer, Population Matters

Continue reading...

The 10-yearly survey is too expensive, say ministers. But without it, vital data will be lost

The concept of a census – a count of every member of a population – is almost as ancient as civilisation . The Babylonians recorded a population count on clay tiles from 4000BC. The Egyptians collected census data from 2500BC to inform projects such as the construction of the pyramids and the reassignment of land after the flooding of the Nile.

And, as every child who’s performed the nativity knows, the Romans required everyone to return to their place of birth for a count every five years to inform tax collection from the 6th century BC.

Continue reading...

Nous venons de franchir le cap des 8 milliards de personnes vivantes sur Terre. Les experts estiment que nous serons 10 milliards en 2080.

La population mondiale a quadruplé en 100 ans mais elle commence à stagner