The McKinsey Global Institute just published an important report – Dependency and Depopulation? Confronting the Consequences of a New Demographic Reality. It details how falling fertility rates and increased longevity are now reshaping global population.
The world is sleepwalking towards certain social upheaval precipitated by decades-long falling birth rates, unless we take urgent action.
To keep population numbers constant each woman should give birth on average to 2.1 children – the replacement fertility rate. Falling fertility rates are now propelling the big world economies towards population collapse this century. Two-thirds of humanity now lives in countries with birth rates below replacement rate. The UN projects that by 2100 the population of some big economies will have fallen by 30-50 per cent.
Ireland traditionally had very high birth rates – in 1960 the fertility rate was 4.1 children per woman. This figure reduced steadily over subsequent decades reaching 1.54 in 2022, compared to the EU average of 1.45. France has the highest fertility rate in Europe at 1.79. Malta has the lowest (1.08), followed by Spain (1.16) and Italy (1.24). Several factors account for falling birth rates, including contraception and greater participation by women in the workplace.
The McKinsey report says the demographic changes will occur in three waves. Wave one is now well under way in the global north, the first area to show below-replacement fertility rates – Europe, the Anglosphere and East Asia. Working-age people comprised 70 per cent of the population in 2010 and are now 67 per cent and rapidly decreasing. Germany’s working-age population peaked in 1986.
Thirty five per cent of global population today lives in the global north but this will decline to 20 per cent by 2100. The social demographic dividend of a disproportionately large labour force is gone for good along with buoyant economic growth.
The second wave of demographic changes is beginning in the global south – Latin America, Caribbean, India, Middle East and North Africa. The fertility rate here is 2.2 and falling. Two–thirds of the population is of working age and rising. This will peak in 2030 and then decline rapidly.
The third wave of demographic changes will occur in sub-Saharan Africa but not until well into the second half of the century, at which time global population collapse will be well under way.
The average fertility rate there is 4.4 but falling rapidly. In 1997, 11 per cent of the world’s population lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Seventeen per cent of the world’s population now lives there. This will rise to 23 per cent in 2050 and 34 per cent in 2100. Africa will surely cash in on this demographic dividend unless failure to adapt holds it back.
But hang on you may say – isn’t declining world population a good thing because it reduces the burden on the global environment?
Well, fair enough, but the situation is far more complex than that. The tumbling global population figures are and will cause big problems. Societies now work to a social contract where disproportionate numbers of working-age (16- to 66-year-olds) people work, create wealth and pay taxes that support the those above 65 years of age over their increasingly lengthy retirement from work.
Obviously, as the retired population grows and the working-age population declines rapidly, significant problems will arise. The way things are going the existing social contract will have to be drastically revised. This will not be easily accomplished, to say the least
The West attempts to stave off population decline with mass emigration but this hasn’t worked well. The halfhearted promotion of multiculturism has failed and social discord is common – witness the experiences of Germany, Sweden and the UK in this regard and even the recent discord in Ireland.
There is one obvious way to at least ameliorate this problem – increase low fertility rates to replacement rates and don’t allow higher fertility rates to fall below replacement rate. But, hardly anyone sees this solution as even remotely likely to happen.
Very few think women who have grown accustomed to having one or no children will ever return to a higher birth rate. But, I believe this mindset could be changed by making changes to ensure the division of labour necessary to care for and raise children from birth onwards is divided strictly evenly between fathers and mothers. Also, apart from anything else, this division of labour is only fair.
- William Reville is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at UCC
