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It appears that something monumental happened in 2023.
Demographers will need to crunch a lot of numbers over the next few years just to be sure.
For now, there are compelling reasons to believe that two years ago, for presumably the first time in history, the global fertility rate slumped below humanity’s “replacement threshold.”
Population setbacks are nothing new. Wars, famines, plagues, and natural disasters have routinely reduced the number of human beings at certain times and places. But a global crash in birth rates, which signifies that a majority of those in younger generations are not bringing children into the world, is something entirely different.
This development comes as a surprise. As recently as 50 years ago, a number of scientists were warning of the consequences of over-population. The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich, predicted the starvation of millions of people in the 1970s as food supplies would inevitably fail to keep pace with an accelerating number of newborns.
But that catastrophe never happened.
Ehrlich and others failed to anticipate that scientists would develop hardy new strains of crops that could miraculously feed the world’s hungry, and that a rising tide of economic prosperity (especially in India and China) would lift billions of people out of poverty – and consequently reduce those cultures’ traditional impulses to produce large families.
In an article in The Atlantic last February titled “The End of Children,” Gideon Lewis-Kraus notes that “declining fertility is a near-universal phenomenon,” and wonders aloud if it’s time for thoughtful people to get worried.
European countries are promoting lucrative tax incentives for couples willing to have children. But few are jumping at the offer. Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, recently declared that her country is “destined to disappear.” A Japanese economist has somberly noted that if his nation’s birth rate continues its current plunge, the last child born in Japan will arrive on January 5, 2720.
Then there’s South Korea, which has a fertility rate of 0.7. “This is the lowest rate of any nation in the world,” Lewis-Kraus writes. “It may be the lowest in recorded history.”
For a population to be sustained, the replacement rate must be at least 2.0 – two new kids for every two adults of parenting age. If you’re struggling to comprehend the significance of a 0.7 fertility rate, consider this: Each South Korean generation is now on a trajectory to be only one third the size of its predecessor. That means that 100 contemporary Koreans of childbearing age will produce only 12 grandchildren – a truly daunting prospect for any culture hoping to survive and thrive.
In 1970, a million Korean children came into the world. In 2023, that number was down to 230,000.
Lewis-Kraus reports, “A baby-formula brand has retooled itself to manufacture muscle-retention smoothies for the elderly. About two hundred day-care facilities have been turned into nursing homes, sometimes with the same directors, the same rubberized play floors, and the same crayons.”
The government in Seoul offers a “Multi-Child Happiness Card,” originally intended to reward parents of at least three kids with discounts at theaters and amusement parks. Now you only need two children to qualify. A Korean artist sighs, “We joke that soon enough they’re going to give the ‘multiple-kids card’ to households with only one.”
Korea is far from the only developed nation experiencing population decline. Demographers are increasingly concerned about America, and the White House has openly pondered childbearing incentives.
Why would a government need to dangle financial incentives for a choice that couples used to pursue for free?
No one disputes that parenting can be challenging, expensive, and unpredictable. Author Nora Ephron once mused whether she would rather get a dog, which would ruin her carpets, or have a child, which would ruin her life.
“Parenting as an inconvenience” is frequently cited as a rationale for intentional childlessness. But life has always been hard, and that never stopped previous generations from praying for kids.
So, what else might be happening here?
Philosophers and theologians suspect there is an underlying rejection of the goodness of the material world itself. It’s hard to put that idea into words, but at a time when so much of daily life is embodied by images electronically generated on flat screens, childrearing – which inevitably concerns diapers, temper tantrums, runny noses, and the drama of middle school broken hearts – just seems so utterly messy.
There’s also what can only be described as an epidemic of hopelessness. “Why would I want to bring a child into a world like this?” Wouldn’t it be merciful to spare a child the anxieties associated with fascism, climate change, artificial intelligence, future pandemics, and civilization-terminating meteor strikes?
According to Christian thinkers of every generation, No, that would not be merciful.
That would be a refusal to believe that God’s gift of new life is indeed a good gift – a miracle bestowed by the God who evidently thought human existence on this planet is such a beautiful and important thing that his own Son experienced all its messiness for something like 30 years.
And Jesus, by “going to heaven,” didn’t leave the material world behind. He lives on with a resurrected human body.
Those trying to convince younger generations to bring children into the world are known as “pronatalists.”
The Bible makes it clear that God is the original pronatalist. “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” he tells the primal couple in Genesis 1:28.
“Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift?” says the psalmist, “the fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are you parents, with your quivers full of children!” (Psalm 127:3-4).
Yes, children can be exasperating. Loving and leading them can take much of our time, drain our bank accounts, and keep us awake at night.
But something else would be far worse.
That would be a world without the blessing of their presence.