By the 1960’s, the industrialized west was unmistakably trending not just from a “decrease in population increase,” but toward outright depopulation.
Across the planet birth rates have dropped below death rates. In particular an explosion in people no longing having children is driving population collapse. History teaches us that societies who go down this path rarely reverse this catastrophic tendency.
Birthgap
Film maker Stephen Shaw’s latest documentary, Birthgap, interviews experts in this field seeking answers as to why the world has shifted into demographic decline. Many of those experts weren’t able to provide definitive answers.
As a data analyst, Shaw studied the numbers himself, and found that beginning in the early 1970s, an explosion of childlessness had set a widespread depopulation trend in motion. For instance, one in twenty women in Japan in 1974 were childless. Moreover, Shaw found that this ratio had increased to one in four by 1977. By 1990 it had risen to one in three, a figure that was still true in 2020.
In Italy, another country known for its severe demographic decline, one in thirty women were childless in Italy in 1974. According to Shaw, the rate of childlessness also skyrocketed there by 1977, reaching one in five women, and went up to one in three by 1990.
In a recent survey in the UK 37% of respondents said they would rather have a pet than be a parent, which rose to 70% for the 11-26 age group.
Millennials are choosing pets over babies
Birth Control
Writing for Lifesitenews.com, Emily Mangiaracina opines that Shaw underestimates the effects of modern use of birth control. By not addressing fertility statistics prior to 1970, Shaw ignores falling fertility rates in some regions that had already started in the 1960s, shortly after the birth control pill was introduced. This includes the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.
Source UN
Social, economic and technological factors have all played a part. However, economic and social upheavals going back further than modern use of birth control have also set the stage.
Generational Change
History shows us that economic and social calamities account for marked periods of birthrate decline. But they also have correlated with longer trends, which indicate lasting generational impacts.
Take France, a culturally commanding country in the 19th century up until the start of WWI.
Portrait of a large family from Lyon late 19th century
French women having fewer children had a cultural influence beyond its borders. In the case of France, the period of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars created conditions which may well have affected the subsequent “French fashion” of sophisticated, decadent culture which spurned the bourgeois value of having large families.
The Industrial Revolution, with its urbanization of populations and agricultural advances, has had complicated effects with regard to human population.
It’s widely acknowledged that advances in agricultural fertilisers and farming techniques, allowed an overall explosion in world population in the 20th century. That explosion was most pronounced in third world regions, which benefited from the food exports of developing and developed powerhouses like the U.S. and Europe.
Meanwhile, the move of populations to urban centres and factory work and white collar jobs, brought with it changes in family sizes. The manual labour of children on family farms had no comparable corollary in urban environments, where children were more likely to be regulated via child labour and education requirements, from the late 1800s on.
In the UK with the introduction of the old age pensions the reliance on children to support you into old age lessened. Additionally, falling mortality rates in both childbirth and infant mortality led to decreased family sizes.
Other social changes, such as increased opportunities for entertainment, social and cultural activities, and so on contributed to this change. Birth rates in industrialized western nations dropped even as they produced goods and services in abundance for themselves, and for export to the world.
By the 1960’s, the industrialized west was unmistakably trending not just from a “decrease in population increase,” but toward outright depopulation.
Forecasts
Despite the fact that the UN forecasts an overall world population increase over the next 50 years, it also predicts that by the end of the century, the effects of a rapidly accelerating depopulation will overtake the world:
One of the big lessons from the demographic history of countries is that periods of rapid population growth are temporary. For many countries, the demographic transition has already ended, and as the global fertility rate has now halved we know that the world as a whole is approaching the end of rapid population growth.
The above graph clearly shows the marked flux in annual growth rate dating from the 1960s, that has become a precipitous free fall from 1990 onward. The UN, for example, has predicted Russia’s population will halve by 2100 .
According to Census Bureau data , (May 2020) the median U.S. population has trended significantly older since 2000, with the proportion of people 65 and older increasing by more than a third between 2010 and 2020, while that of children under the age of 5 decreased. Fewer children were born from 2010 to 2020, compared to the previous 10 years. Meanwhile, the populous Baby Boom generation are now squarely in their elderly years.
What this spells is fewer young people contributing to future jobs and productivity, greater strains on Social Security and social welfare systems, and higher medical costs related to the ailments that correlate with ageing, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and dementia.
However, it’s not just one country or region facing these prospects. Europe and Asia are well advanced, but even Africa is poised to suffer from the same problem in the coming decades. All in all 2100 will not likely resemble the world as it is today.
We aren't looking at overpopulation... never were. It was all propaganda.
But we are looking at serious all causes mortality increase.
And if the VAXXX has made a lot of women sterile, we may be looking at an extinction event.
The jab did cause a lot of nasty side effects but I am not seeing any clear impact on birthrate in the statistics I follow.
This is as expected. At first, you are not even trying, then you think it is just bad luck and then you find out you have problems.
During the clot-shots, there was a lot of miscarriages and abnormal births.
And, i know of the cases, but the data is missing :-(
I expect to see fertility rates skyrocket.
And we are already below replacement levels on children being born.
Indeed!
This is some much needed information, completely countering the narrative of overpopulation. Perhaps the alarming effects of the mass-injection may also contribute further to the depopulation agenda.
That sounds really bad, however the explanation is that since "new vaccines" would cause child mortality to be lowered, parents would "choose" to have fewer children. But that's not what he said. He said "new vaccines" right in parallel with "reproductive health services" which is sterilization and abortion. If the "new vaccines" caused infertility, then yes, child morality would be reduced and since they "chose" the new vaccine, they would also "choose" to have fewer children.
Billy said lowering "that" (9 billion) by 10-15% (using his numbers), means these prescribed measures would lower the birth numbers, resulting in the prevention of 900,000,000 - 1,350,000,000 souls. Old vaccines were developed to prevent disease, perhaps "new vaccines" are developed to prevent something else.
Excellent analysis of an issue that is rarely talked about yet is the biggest crisis facing the world.
This issue is not just facing the richest countries but also the middle rung countries. With very limited exceptions, only the poorest and least educated countries still have a total fertility rate (TFR) above the replacement level of 2.1. Even India has recently dropped below 2.1.
What this and most analyses of this issue lack is an examination of why the exceptions are exceptional and whether those factors which have led to higher TFR can be duplicated. In particular:
a) the only advanced economy to have been able to maintain a TFR well above replacement and what factors are at play there to allow at TFR of around 3.0;
b) the only example I am aware of a large country with a very low TFR (1.2) managing to substantially increase it to around 1.7.
I will send 5 Hive to the first person to answer the names of the countries in a) and b) above.
My guesses are Israel and Russia
a)Israel is the only advanced economy that has been able to maintain a TFR of about 3, but that's down from almost 4 in the 1960's
b) Russia had a very low TFR in the late '90s, but has increased much in recent years.
@apshamilton
Well done! You picked correctly. 5 Hive is on its way to you.
It is because both these countries are controversial, and the means they have used to promote high fertility (patriotism and religiosity) unpalatable to many that these important issues are rarely discussed.
Thank you for your interesting questions. I think firstly it may depend on what sources you are using, secondly on your definition of "advanced" and thirdly what time span you are talking about.
a) Possibly South Africa. This country does however have a legacy of apartheid in which not everyone lives a standard of living seen as "advanced". Israel has a lower fertility rate then SA but that is also a country with apartheid and the inclusion of Palestinians as second class citizens (those living within Israel itself) complicates matters.
b) I couldn't detect a country that had this type of increase. Yes, Russia following the collapse of Stalinism did see a decline followed by a rise, but this is on the decline again. One large country that seems to have been consistent for some time is Iran - but compared to say 1988 it has also collapsed.
Close, but no cigar!
See my comment to winner above.
South Africa is not an advanced economy. At best 2nd world.
Russia dropped to 1.2 and recovered to between 1.6 and 1.8 (depending on which figures you believe). Maybe there has been some drop again but not back to 1.2 levels.
Iran fertility has suffered massive collapse from 7 to 1.7.
With regard to your allegation that Israel is a country with apartheid I refer you to my Hive post from 5 years ago on the topic:
https://peakd.com/informationwar/@apshamilton/israel-the-un-apartheid-state-a-comparison-with-australia
My belief that Israel is an apartheid state is based on a wide variety of sources - see below:
In 2020 Yesh Din and in 2021 B'Tselem issued separate reports which concluded that the bar had been met for labeling Israel an apartheid state.
Yesh Din report 'The Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid:
B'Tselem report 'A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid'
Then in April 2021 Human Rights Watch issued a report,' A Threshold Crossed
Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution'
This was followed in 2022 by Amnesty International's report,' Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity'
During 2022 several senior UN officials declared Israel to be an apartheid state. A good example would be Canadian professor Michael Lynk who was appointed to the UN Human Rights Council and in March 2022 stated: "enshrined a system of domination by Israelis over Palestinians that could no longer be explained as the unintended consequence of a temporary occupation."
I would also refer you to the work of Jewish academics such as Dr. Norman Finkelstein and Professor Noam Chomsky who also take the same view.
Besides this, I have spoken to Palestinians living in Israel who have described first hand the daily discrimination they face.
Have you ever actually visited?
Everything above is debunked anti-semitic BS.
Come and see with you own eyes.
One day I would like to visit Israel and see the holy sites and just sample life for people on both sides of the divide.
I'm curious to know. Are saying that Jewish human rights organisations such as B'Tselem and Yesh Din have produced anti semitic reports?
Are you also saying that Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were Auschwitz survivors, is anti semitic due to his many books exposing the apartheid state of Israel?
Is Professor Noam Chomsky anti semitic?
Yes, and so is George Soros.
Applying double standards to Israel is anti-semitism.
It doesn't matter the identity of the person saying it.
It matters the content of the statement.
Israel has a way better record on human rights, non-discrimination, % of civilians killed in warfare etc etc than the US, UK, Russia, Ukraine and pretty much every other country involved in a conflict.
It is not perfect, but its defence forces hold themselves to a far higher moral standard than anyone else's.
It is fine to criticise Israel (for example I have been highly critical of its COVID-19 policies) but not to apply double standards.
That must be a typo.
Was there a war I wasn't told about? Assuming a complete replacement of women didn't happen in three years, where did all the childless women come from? All those women with children either ceased to exist, or all their kids died, in three years. That just makes no sense.
Thanks!
Hi thanks for your response. These figures came from the documentary Birthgap by Shaw. I think it needs to be read that the number correlates to women having babies. So it doesn't extend to women who have already had children. Hope that makes a little sense?
It does not make more sense no matter how I imagine it to refer to women. Once a woman has given birth to a child she is no longer childless. I cannot imagine any way of counting women to arrive at such dramatic changes in numbers of childless women in only three years.
It's a ratio of women who have had children to women that have not had children.
Then it isn't a ratio of women who have had children to women that have not, which is what it is described as.
Something is inexplicable about that number.
You know I've thought about what you wrote and I think you make a good point and I'm confused now as well!