Over at the Irish Times Kathy Sheridan has gotten her knickers in a knot over fertility rates. She’s not alone. She spent International Women’s Day pondering the impending population decline. The problem for Kathy is that it is only right wing people such as Elon Musk and Vice President Elon Musk who seem to care.
“Musk is not wrong about birth rates. Worldwide fertility fell from an average of five births per woman in 1950 to 2.3 births per woman in 2021. In Ireland the picture is grim; in the first half of 2024, the birth rate fell to 1.5 per woman, according to the Central Statistics Office, well below the replacement rate. It’s even lower than the US rate of 1.6.
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