sperrico87 said:
Note: You'll find most westernized, developed nations having low birth rates and aging populations. Generally speaking, the wealthier you are, the busier you are, the less likely you are to have children, and so it leads to heavy declines in birth rates. Just look at Europe... some of those countries are literally dying off. |
I don't think this is quite the case. The regions with some of the biggest GDP per capita on Europe like Norway have the highest fertily rates while the poorer eastern and mediterranean countries have the lowest. Usually times of economic crisis will mean less children, not the opposite. Lingering sexism is also an issue, counter-intuitively: where parents have more balanced roles, like the scandinavian countries, were the fathers are more willing to take care of children, fare better than the more sexist mediterranean countries, were women feel more like having only one kid since they're going to take care of it alone anyways. And there is also all the ecocatastrophe porn...
I expect birth rates to rebound though, surpassing or equaling the 2.1 replacement line first on France, then on the Scandinavian countries, then unexpectedly on eastern Europe and Korea, then finally on Germany, Japan and the Mediterranean countries, as ecocatastrophe porn loses its effectiveness as the obvious issue on itself and to public awareness becomes overpopulation and polution on developing, not developed countries, government pressure, more gender equality and lower household costs etc.
