Item Link: Access the Resource
Date of Publication: June 2
Year of Publication: 2023
Publication City: Costa Mesa, CA
Publisher: Nation of Change
Author(s): Phoebe Barnard , Carter Dillard
Understanding the connection between women’s and children’s rights, family planning, and the environmental crisis
Angst about declining global fertility and population is palpable and building. While certain high-fertility hotspots in developing countries will help to fuel a surge in the global population for many decades to come—reaching an estimated 10.4 billion people by 2100—humanity is at an inflection point where population decline is a lived experience and possibly irreversible in many parts of the world.
Deaths outpace births in many countries including China, as the cohort of retirees grows. With immigration slowed during the pandemic, Europe is now depopulating. Japan’s fertility rate has been so low for so long that one government official recently quipped, “If we go on like this, the country will disappear.” South Korea’s fertility rate (0.78 percent) is the lowest in the world, as women’s attitudes there turn sharply against marriage and childbirth.
Today’s drop in fertility rates was predictable and predicted for decades. The worst thing about its arrival now is that it’s so late in coming.
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