Posts in Demographics
Freeze the eggs!

Global birth rates are falling at an accelerated pace. According to the UN, the global total fertility rate (TFR) dropped to a record low of 2.25 in 2023 and is projected to fall further to 2.2 in 2024. At this pace, the TFR is set to dip below the replacement level of 2.1 nearly two decades earlier than the UN’s latest forecasts had anticipated.

The long-run decline in fertility has two main components. The first is the "quantum effect"—the trend for families to have fewer children as incomes rise, choosing instead to invest more in each child, particularly through education. Economics and evolutionary theory both rely on this shift in the quantity-quality trade-off to explain why fertility has fallen since the Industrial Revolution, even as wealth has grown.

The second component is the "tempo effect"—birth postponement. Women are delaying motherhood due to rising labour force participation and career opportunities, which increase the opportunity cost of having children, and shifting social norms. Other contributors include difficulty in finding a partner, precarious housing and job markets, and evolving personal preferences. Meanwhile, outright childlessness is increasing, which neither the quantum nor tempo frameworks fully explain.

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Falling global fertility, how far and how fast?

It has been a while since I last delved into one of my favorite topics: global demographics. In this piece, I revisit the subject by examining high-level data on key global demographic indicators from the UN’s July 2024 Population Prospects database. I will begin with birth rates.

Scarcely a day goes by without an article, podcast, or both highlighting the accelerating decline in global fertility. As I explain in my essay on the fertility wars, this discussion tends to divide interlocutors into two increasingly polarized factions. On one side are those who believe falling fertility is a grave problem; on the other are those who remain more sanguine, viewing declining birth rates as a natural consequence of modernity—or perhaps postmodernism—and less of a threat to economic growth, government budgets, or humanity’s survival. If women choose to have fewer children and prioritize careers and personal freedom—long the exclusive domain of men—shouldn’t we support that choice?

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Audio Essay: The Demographic Transition

My second audio essay is now up. You can listen and download the file directly here, or alternatively subscribe to ‘Alpha Source Audio Essay’ Apple Podcast channel where my future audio essays will also be published. The link to the episode on Apple podcasts is here.

You can find and download all my economics and demographics essays in written form here , as PDFs. You can find links to all references on the landing page for my demographics work here. I plan on doing once a month of these audio essays, time permitting, on demographics, economics, finance and everything in between.

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Things to think about #7 - Glenn Loury, Life History Theory, LatAm fertility and Substack economics

I am a big fan of US economist and academic Glenn Loury. He is smart, honest and well-articulated. He is also not afraid of an intellectual scrap if he stumbles upon one. He is an indispensable public commentator and intellectual whose ideas and influence go far beyond the confines of race, and associated social issues, in the US where he has staked his claim to fame and authority most comprehensively. Glenn has an impressive back-catalogue of writing and citations, but the best way to get a sense of him is by listening to his podcast the Glenn Show, which can be found on all the usual platforms. I am also a big fan of his co-conspirator, John McWorter, a US linguist and public intellectual, with whom Glenn runs a bi-weekly conversation on his podcast, and Q&A for paying subscribers. It is a must-listen. On this occasion, however, I want to recommend Glenn’s recent discussion with Larry Kotlikoff, a US academic economist, in which they discuss the economic policy ideas of the two candidates in the upcoming US presidential election ideas, and the US economy more generally. As the title of the podcast goes; if only we had an economist in the White House!

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