Elon Musk has spoken out to agree that “population collapse is the biggest threat to civilisation” as new figures show the UK has the lowest number of babies born in 20 years, while South Korea continues to set new records for the world’s lowest fertility rates.
A Doge designer account tweeted some of the stark population statistics that had made headlines recently, leading with Japan’s recoding of the “largest total drop in population since 1968” – a trend described by the country’s prime minister as a crisis.
In fact, the number of people who died in 2022 (1.56 million) in Japan, was roughly twice that of the number of births in the country (771,000).
The account also noted that the U.S. continues its birth stagnation – fertility rates there are well below replacement level – while new figures show China’s fertility rate is serious trouble, hitting a record low of 1.09, a pattern also seen elsewhere.
The fertility rate — the average number of children born to a woman in her reproductive years – is linked to economic growth, and a shrinking population can expect serious issues not just with the economy but with pension and healthcare provision.
In response to the tweet, which featured a photo of Musk supposedly holding a sign saying “The population crisis is real”, the founder of Tesla and owner of X (formerly known as Twitter) affirmed with a one-word affirmation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2023
The UK’s baby’s bust made headlines last week, when figures showed a further decline in births were recorded between England and Wales last year.
The birth rate has been “in freefall for a decade”, the Daily Mail says. National statistics reveal that there were 605,479 live births between the two nations in 2022: 577,046 in England and 28,296 in Wales – the lowest number since 2002 – and 20,000 fewer births than 2021.
“In 2020, the total fertility rate (TFR) – the number of children per woman – stood at 1.58 in England & Wales, almost half the post-World War Two peak of 2.93. The recent decline in fertility is even more pronounced in Scotland, where the TFR is 1.29,” the Social Market Foundation (SMF) said.
“The long-term trend towards people having fewer children could leave the UK with fewer workers, a weaker economy and unsustainable public finances,” the think tank continued. “Scotland faces a particularly acute problem.”
“The SMF said the demographic outlook for Britain should spark public and political debate about the scope for government policies to help people who want to have more children to do so.”
In South Korea, the baby bust has led to a fertility rate of 0.78, according to the Korean government last February. The country continues to set record lows for the scarcity of children being born, despite billions being spent on government interventions, with some commentators blaming cultural and economic factors in the decline of families.
Time magazine reports that:
Demographers in the early 2000s coined the “low-fertility trap,” hypothesizing that a series of self-reinforcing economic and social mechanisms make it increasingly difficult to raise the fertility rate once it dips below a certain threshold. The academics posited that lower fertility results in increased individual aspirations for personal consumption but at the same time it also results in an aging population and less job creation—and thus greater pessimism about the economic future—which in turn disincentivizes having more children. Moreover, as the average family size grows smaller and smaller generation after generation, the social norm of an ideal family size shrinks, too. These forces together lead to a persistent “downward spiral” for the fertility rate that can be impossible to reverse.
Ireland’s fertility rate has also fallen fast, and has been well below replacement level for years, coming in at just 1.7 for 2022.
The number of births in Ireland have declined by 20 per cent in the last decade, figures from the Central Statistics office show. In 2009, 75,554 children were born in the state, but that fell to 57,540 babies in 2022.
Abortion rates have climbed since its introduction in 2019, with 6,666 in the first year, 8,156 in 2022, and a possible 10,000 abortions for 2023 if trends continue.
Musk previously has said that: “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”