Demographic Winter: The Fatal Fall of Fertility Worldwide

A speech by Don Feder at International Summit of Pro-Life & Pro-Family Organizations

Guatemala City, Guatemala – March 9, 2022

The thing about an apocalypse is you never see it coming. Forget pandemics, climate change, a comet hitting the earth or another Extinction Level Event.

Instead, think about Demographic Winter, a catastrophe that’s happening right before our eyes: the fatal fall of fertility worldwide.

Fertility rates are falling fast. Every industrialized nation now has below replacement fertility. Sometime in the next few years, worldwide de-population will begin – slowly at first, then picking up speed.

Elon Musk, reputed to be the world’s richest man, says: “If people don’t start having more children, civilization is going to crumble.” He’s not exaggerating. He understands the fatal fall of fertility worldwide.

In thinking about fertility, the number to keep in mind is 2.1. That’s the number of children the average woman must have in her lifetime to maintain population stability in a country. More and your population increases, less and it declines.

• Worldwide, the fertility rate fell by almost 50% in less than 70 years – from 4.7 in 1950 to 2.4 last year. Within the next decade, we will arrive at below-replacement fertility.

• In America, I was part of a generation called the Baby Boom which started in 1946 and ended in 1964. In the United States, fertility (again, the # of children the average woman has in her lifetime) fell from 3.5 in 1950 to 1.78 today.

• Between 2015 and 2020, Japan (with one of the world’s lowest fertility rates) lost 800,000 people. By the year 2050, it’s expected to lose a total of 27 million – 20% of its current population. Its over-65 population is expected to increase from 27% of the total in 2015 to 38% by 2065.

• So many Japanese are dying at home, alone, because there’s no one to care for them (no children or grandchildren), that there’s a business devoted to removing their remains. The Japanese have a word for the phenomenon. They call it “lonely death.”

• Thanks to its insane, one-child-per-family policy, China now has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates (1.3). Last year, the number of children born reached a record low – 10.6 million, versus 12.2 million in 2019. The proportion of those over 60 in the population will go from 18.9% today to 39% in 2050. Imagine what labor shortages will be like then.

• China abandoned it’s one-child policy in 2016. Now it’s moving in the opposite direction. Recently, it started limiting vasectomies. Some hospitals require proof that a man seeking the procedure is married and has children.

This is where we are. How did we get here?

• For the first time in history, just under half of the world’s population of child-bearing age uses some form of artificial contraception.

• Worldwide there are 73 million abortions a year. That’s more than three times the number of military deaths in World War II.

• Fewer and fewer people are getting married, and more and more who are don’t want children.

• In the United States, among those 18 to 29 years old (those in their prime childbearing years) 59% were married in 1978, versus 20% last year.

• In a Pew Research Poll released last November, 44% of Americans ages 18 to 49 who don’t have children said they don’t want them.

• In the U.S., by 2060, there will be more Americans over 65 than under 18. This means too few workers to pay for pensions and health care for the elderly. In other words, a demographic train wreck is coming.

• Why do so many Americans want a life without children? Pope Francis provided a partial answer when he observed late last year: “We see a form of selfishness. People don’t want to have children. Maybe they’ll have one child and not more than that. And many couples don’t have any children because they don’t want any…. But they have two dogs and two cats.”

• Shmuley Boteach, an Orthodox Rabbi and the father of nine, writes: “A world that has lost its innocence has trouble appreciating beings that are innocent. A world that has become selfish has soured on the idea of a life of selflessness. A world that has become grossly materialistic is turned off to the idea of more dependents who consume resources. And a world that mistakenly believes that freedom means lack of responsibility is opposed to the idea of needy creatures who ‘tie you down.’”

• Thailand is yet another country whose fertility-dissipation light is blinking. Its Deputy Minister of Health wrote recently: “Our ‘modern’ materialist, consumerist, globalist, get-rich-above-all ethos is killing us. Familial love has been supplanted by an inward-looking mentality that views children as an impediment to financial wealth.” Thus, “Children are no longer viewed as a divine gift.”

Over the past 50 years, over-population has become conventional wisdom. Governments everywhere have been fighting a war on procreation, spurred on by International Planned Parenthood and the U.N. Population Fund. Some are waking up – but too late.

Where will it all lead?

We can compensate for any shortage except people. With depopulation, where will we find the workers of the future? Who’s going to work on the farms and in the factories? Where will we get the essential workers – the police and firemen, the soldiers, the teachers, and the medical personnel? Soon, the mighty industrial machine we built over the past two centuries will grind to a halt and rust.

Global population went from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in the year 2000 – and the population-control alarmists – the legion of Chicken Littles — forecast the end of the world.

But look at the progress we made in the last century. We went from the horse and buggy to automobiles, supersonic jets and rockets to the moon. Computers and microsurgery became commonplace.

Every advance in human history has been driven by population growth – from the industrial revolution to the computer age. But what happens when people stop having children? Then we enter what used to be called on Medieval maps terra incognita – unknown territory.

What is the answer to the fertility crisis?

Look at who’s having large families – traditional Catholics, evangelicals, Mormons and Hasidic Jews among them. The average Amish family has seven children.

These are all people who have faith in the future, that comes from faith in a higher power.

At the dawn of history, the first commandment given to mankind was, “Be fruitful and multiple and replenish the earth.” Not if you feel like it. Not if it doesn’t interfere with your career plans or buying a vacation home. Not if you decide it won’t contribute to climate change. But be fruitful and multiply, period. End of story.

Having children can be frustrating and aggravating. But it’s the most important thing you can do in this life. It’s also the most rewarding. To paraphrase, “Jerry McGuire,” it completes you.

To solve the problem of Demographic Winter, we need a renewal of faith. Therein lies our salvation.

About the Ruth Institute

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

To get more information or schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.

Join us on Locals for exclusive content*!

*Censorship free!

Get all of our video content on Rumble*

*Also censorship free