Thank you universe for someone putting out the counterargument. I am so sick of reading these hyperbolic, hysterical claims of "population collapse"! And no one ever offers the counter, mostly because I think it just seemed obvious or maybe even gauche. But now that so many are intensifying this drum beat and people like Elon Musk (who has blatantly said he actually *hopes* to accelerate exceeding Earth's carrying capacity because it will prompt humans to invest in his goal of going interstellar) are blasting out these false proclamations of gloom and doom, it does need to be addressed.
Traffic, traffic everywhere, yet teetering on the verge of extinction. Never mind there are a billion more people than there were just ten years ago.
Thank you, Kate, very much. I appreciate it more than you know. It definitely is one of those things that everyone repeats without investigating, which flies in the face of all facts and evidence that's right in front of their faces, or, as you put it, precisely, traffic everywhere, yet, we're on the verge of extinction. It's such an absurd claim.
With eight billion and counting already on the planet, I'm not too nicked about women's unwillingness to breed (totally get it, I never did and never regretted it). Elon Musk just wants more cheap labour and he's not spending enough time with any of them. Take parenting advice from Elon Musk like you'd take marital advice from Donald Trump.
Absolutely. And I think Musk and other rich people are worried changing demographics means we'll have to figure out more sensible ways to structure society, something they don't want because they want to remain pornographically wealthy. Same here, I got the snip and have no plans to have kids on an overcrowded planet with finite resources.
Thank you for your kind words, Jasmine, and thanks for reading. Absolutely. I concur, I think it's right at the intersection of racism and sexism. For some, they don't want immigrants; for others, they want to control women. All of them have a little bit of both, but some lean more one way than the other. That's my hypothesis, anyway.
I’m GLAD fewer people are having kids. Let the people who really love being parents have them, and let’s shrink the world population naturally to a couple billion less.
Thank you so much, Michelle, it means the world to me coming from you. Seriously. And yes, as am I glad fewer people are having kids. We can't have an infinite growth paradigm on a finite planet.
Excellent piece. It always baffles me how the people who are determined to replace virtually every human activity with a robot or AI are the same people worried that there won't be enough humans on the planet in the near future.
And yes, fewer teenage pregnancies are great news. Fertility rates are also dropping because women who would have three or four children 50 years ago are now having one or two, which isn't necessarily bad. One thing that gets me, though, is unplanned childlessness. It would be great to get numbers on how many women today are childless when they reach menopause even though they wanted to become mothers vs. how many did 50 years ago.
100%. If you had a baby in 1950, it had a 32% chance of dying before age one. If you had 2, there’s a strong chance neither of them would live to see 5. So you had to have another baby if you wanted one (and people did—they kept trying). Today, medicine has thankfully gotten so good that babies have a 99% chance of survival.
What’s also ridiculous is how often it’s the same people who are dead set against immigration who are panicking about “fertility collapse.” That just doesn’t make sense. If you believe we’re not going to have enough people in the future, you’d want to bring more in.
I’d like to see these numbers too. Particularly as certain trios of chronic illness that include endometriosis are causing infertility. And also the rise of impotency in men tied in with perimenopause reducing from mid to late 40’s down to 36.
I do love the fact that declining numbers are not having the negative impact on the economy that is driving this fear in the first place. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent. It’s the ones most adaptable to change”
A great read - thank you very much for taking this time to share all this research and opening up the lens on such a complex picture.
Highly informative. Another factor could be women delaying children until their late 20s-30s. That leads to a temporary fall in birth rates that should recover to a degree.
Hey George, thank you so much for reading and yes, absolutely spot-on. That is another factor. I actually covered it recently debunking some other moral panics along the way here, in case you're interested, and I've removed the paywall so it's free:
Glad you found this informative and, since I actually cut it short and edited out a whole lot of writing, I'm working on an addendum currently that's almost finished that will beefen up the argument a bit. A ton of material wound up on the cutting room floor.
Right, it's like, "I'm old enough to remember in the year 2000 when civilization was going to collapse because of computers with Y2K. I'm old enough to remember when the end of the Mayan Calendar was supposed to bring the end of the world after that. I've been on this ride before, and it's always been dreadfully boring."
Hmmmm I would expect to get some pushback on this one, Joe. That paper you cited contends, that “Sperm declines were only statistically significant in studies in ‘Western’ countries.” Not true. A 2023 global meta-analysis using meta-regression analysis of samples collected globally in the 20th and 21st centuries found that sperm counts were definitely down. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36377604/
Either way, sperm counts are not the only factor in fertility. Swan’s book did not only warn about sperm counts. Her main concern was morphology (shape). Unfortunately those cousin It of sperm don’t get the job done no matter how many you have.
Carlyn, a pleasure to see you here as always, and thanks for reading and chiming in. I welcome pushback and discussion, as you know. So, there are a couple of things to tease out here.
One is, that specific sperm measurements—which can be (and are likely to be) flawed or can misrepresent reality—are very different from, quote, "it's a global existential crisis." What the 2021 paper argued was that sperm rates fluctuate naturally so much that drawing lines like these is futile.
Another is the importance of variability. There was an additional section on testosterone that I removed for brevity's sake, but it's a great example of what the issue is with these scary studies pertaining to both sperm and testosterone. Here's an except from that discussing the ~20% decline in testosterone some are reporting since the 1970s:
"A 23% decline in average testosterone levels pales in comparison to the 233% swing between men on the higher end of the healthy range and men on the lower end. It’s a trivial 10% of healthy variation."
Testosterone is another panic of what I call "reproductive anxiety," with many, especially people on the alt-right, terrified that T levels are declining. But T is influenced by so many factors and, like sperm, isn't a static number with wide swings in variation over time.
When a guy's favorite sports team loses, his T levels drop. When they win, their T levels rise, so much so that many sports teams watch games of their losses *after* their games (to study what they did wrong) and games of their wins *before games* (to raise T levels and thus competitiveness). In short, if any long-term trends observed aren't within the natural range of the natural short-term swing, they don't really say anything. If my blood pressure is 110/70, and it rises 5 points, it's not a cause for alarm, as I'm still well within the healthy range and it's a small rise.
The same applies to sperm. From the meta-analysis you provided:
"Overall, SC declined appreciably between 1973 and 2018 (slope in the simple linear model: –0.87 million/ml/year, 95% CI: –0.89 to –0.86; P < 0.001)."
So, over a forty-five-year period, men lost, on average, 0.87 million sperm/year.
As you very well know, men produce hundreds of millions of sperm per day. Not a cause for alarm. Another great example would be if they measured that people were eating, on average, 20 fewer calories per year over the past 45 years. That's only 1% of the daily value of calories the average person takes in, and 20 fewer calories per year isn't going to lead to starvation, which is what calling declining sperm counts "a global existential crisis" is arguing. This is the same percentages cited in this meta-analysis mapped onto calorie count. These findings are just too small to matter.
There are also perfectly benign hypotheses for why this (very small) decline might be happening. It takes men an average of 64 days to fully regenerate sperm, hence the problem with ideas like these. How many men do you know who've gone 64 days without ejaculating? It's an extremely difficult thing to monitor and study and men could simply be more willing to cheat the abstinence period required before donating sperm, which seems to me infinitely more likely. The paper only mentions abstinence before collection once, meaning they didn't give it serious thought, like men are just really going to stop all ejaculations for 64 days and never lie about it. If I know anything about men and sex, it's that a substantial number of them are willing to lie to gratify their sexual drives.
This meta-analysis is also by the same group who I called out in the intro to this piece and who were subsequently debunked. The NY Times did an outstanding job of already debunking this stuff, which I linked at the top, so I'll just let them take it from here:
Projections from the UN assume fertility has always bottomed out every year, even though it hasn’t. It decreases almost everywhere every year now. And population stats include mass immigration while not yet including the inevitable baby boomer die off.
Ultimately you’re confusing yourself by making it more complicated than it is.
It’s measured that we now have 1.5 births or so per woman, who are half the population. So the natural born population goes down 25% or so each cohort so long as that’s true. Internationally there is variation: Sub Saharan Africa is above replacement (for now), and Korean culture will die off precipitously with a fertility rate half of ours.
The long term outcome of a culture that doesn’t make babies is direct and obvious.
"Ultimately you’re confusing yourself by making it more complicated than it is."
That sounds an awful lot like, "I prefer a very simplistic explanation to a thorough one," and you totally ignored the fact that the decline in infant mortality has been greater than the decline in births, meaning more U.S.-born people are surviving into adulthood, which makes the whole panic moot.
"Korean culture will die off precipitously with a fertility rate half of ours."
See, I'm an evidence guy, not a hyperbole guy. Show me the evidence of this because so far, I've seen none, all I've seen is random hypotheses by people like Elon Musk who are tragically, embarrassingly wrong about everything.
"The long term outcome of a culture that doesn’t make babies is direct and obvious."
You mean like Japan? We become Japan? The thing is, we already have a case study, Korea is getting there as well, and neither society has fallen apart. They've adapted to the new way and endured. It seems like every few years there's something new threatening society and none of it ever happens. The only thing that's real is climate change, and the real devastating consequences of that on a civilization-threatening scale are still hundreds of years away.
I'm old enough to remember when Y2K was the rage and all computers would shut down and society would collapse. I'm old enough to remember 2012, when the end of the Mayan calendar was supposed to be the end of the world. It's been a recurrent theme since the beginning of time.
Hiya, fertility naturally declines with the emancipation and education of women. There's no going back. This fake 'crisis' from the likes of Musk, Trump and Jordan Peterson openly feeds into their patriarchal agenda, set up in opposition to the woke, feminist, environmentalist, vegan agenda that supposedly wants to depopulate us with degrowth, and preventing us from using fossil fuels or eating animals.
Thing is: they invented this supposed left wing big government depopulating and control agenda themselves.
Are you suggesting the UN is making up numbers or are you just not good at typing (and thinking)? I can't tell which.
"If there are fewer than 2 babies per couple, and less every year, forever, what happens?"
That depends on how many of those babies survive into adulthood. If people have fewer babies but more reach adulthood, equilibrium will be struck. But the idea that we're going to somehow disappear is just lunacy. Evolution spent literally billions of years programming people to reproduce. It's one of the most valuable things in people's lives and one of our most primordial drives, so the idea that suddenly, everyone, literally everyone, will just quit, is absurd.
And you never answered my question. If each couple has an average of children that’s much less than 2, and this continues forever, what happens? In your head, what are you imagining to happen that keeps the population steady? Where do *you* think the UN is getting projections from, or are you just quoting them blindly?
Even if infant mortality falls to 0 it’s still an inevitable decline if the replacement level wasn’t conceived in the first place
"That depends on how many of those babies survive into adulthood. If people have fewer babies but many more reach adulthood, equilibrium will be struck. But the idea that we're going to somehow disappear is just lunacy. Evolution spent literally billions of years programming people to reproduce. It's one of the most valuable things in people's lives and one of our most primordial drives, so the idea that suddenly, everyone, literally everyone, will just quit, is absurd."
"Even if infant mortality falls to 0 it’s still an inevitable decline if the replacement level wasn’t conceived in the first place"
This assumes that the number will continue falling and won't hit a certain threshold where it stops and rises again, which is a projection into the future. Who's the one making up numbers now?
It also assumes that immigration doesn't happen, as these numbers only count American-born people.
For what it's worth, the fertility rate rose in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and fell in 2023 and 2024, so the assumption that it can *only fall* is baseless.
Sp you’re basically telling me: “it’ll be fine, because one day… *poof* it’ll go back up again”
That really, really doesn’t prove that it’s not a problem in the first place, but rather that you’re assuming it’ll fix itself later for no reason. While actively trying to make fun of people even pointing out the problem to drive discussion about solutions.
Says the person who clearly has no idea how statistics work.
So, let me get this straight, what you're telling me right now is that you believe the "fertility crisis" panic that's been spread on social media by strangers you've never met or spoken to, and those strangers are using the UN's data, but the UN's data is just "making up numbers"—that's what you're telling me here? Basically, you're saying, "My is belief is right and when the evidence supports it, the evidence is legitimate; but when the evidence doesn't support it, it's 'just making up numbers.'"
Joe, my kudos for an outstanding essay and excellent sources to support your beliefs. Your analysis and conclusions are noteworthy and very reassuring. You are a very wise and ethical man. Thanks and please keep up your good work!
One thing that seems odd to me is that whenever South Korea is discussed, there isn’t mention of how a declining population might impact South Korea’s ability to defend itself from invasion by North Korea (which itself has a low fertility rate, but one that is still substantially higher than in South Korea). The rest of the problems people mention about declining population seem manageable. But defense when you have neighbors or rivals like Russia, China, N. Korea, etc. seems like something that isn’t really manageable without a large and growing population of fighting age men.
Fantastic article! So good to see someone looking past the hype.
As you mention, a link has been drawn between population growth and economic growth. You make a good case for doubting this, using the Japan example. But a plateauing/declining global population from about 2050 (that's just 25 years away!) will gradually but inexorably challenge the economic orthodoxy of infinite growth.
I believe a crucial task for our leaders is to begin to plan for and move towards a mature steady-state economy that takes this reality into account. It will also likely be an economy that will give the natural world space to heal.
Japan being an extremely healthy and long lived population, active into old age and not putting pressure on social services (that require young people working) is surely an important factor.
If the US was't run by pharma which aims to keep people fat, sick and on drugs, they could do this too.
Your data may be correct but it’s ahistorical. Traditionally families chose your partner? No. In clan and kin based societies, yes, and they are still having large families. But the history of law was to find a way to trust outside kin and clan, prevent endless cycles of retribution via a method of justice for all and thus provided the basis for love marriage. Arguably this happened in 1066, but Shakespeare was already mocking those Italians in Romeo & Juliet, and commoners were marrying into the higher classes at least since Henry VIII. Jane Austen’s world had no arranged marriage. It was encouraged for economic advantage because they wanted the best for their daughters in a cruel society that could cast them out, but women always had final say.
Hey Michelle, thank you for reading and chiming into the discussion. Thanks for giving me the chance to clarify here, and I think we're saying approximately the same things, but differently.
I don't mean arranged marriages specifically (which is why I chose res familia instead of "arranged marriage"), though arranged marriages are one type of familial marriage arrangement, i.e., where the family has most or all of the power or say in whom an individual marries. If we look at the Roman style of marriage, the Paterfamilias (hence the Latin term), which was prominent in other areas of later Europe, and places like the Arab world and Indian worlds, we see a pattern of either political familial marriages or family marriages in order to solidify wealth or contacts. Sir Thomas Boleyn played a significant role in facilitating Anne Boleyn's marriage to Henry. This wasn't uncommon at the time and facilitated political influence, wealth, etc. from the family in question. Most royalty were wed for no other purpose than solidifying alliances, much like the Paterfamilias.
The Marquis de Sade lamented, at length, the social expectation that he married who was set up for him as his later wife, Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil in the late 18th century. He also complained on the behalf of women more widely that it's unfair that families had such power to influence marriages by withholding assets or downright sabotage. These social expectations were still present in various forms as late as the early 20th century, as Zaza Lacion, Simone de Beauvoir's best friend in youth, fell in love with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the two intended to marry, but her family would not permit it, an instance of both sabotage and arranged marriages.
Mostly, I'm coming from a U.S. perspective, so what I had in mind was America during the early years when we were largely agrarian and then the following Industrial Revolution, when parents kept strict tabs on their kids' activities. In the early years, marriage was more about building familial coalitions and having children as young as possible to yield as many farm helps as possible as quickly as possible. During the Industrial Revolution, it became more about wealth consolidation. The idea of romantic love and self-determination was largely absent and women often bore the brunt of these decisions.
This followed through into the Industrial Revolution, as we start to see some free women going against the tide in the 19th-century, but they were often widows. In the States, it wasn't really until the invention of the automobile that young people could escape the prying eyes of their parents and fall in love with whomever they wanted.
With the invention of the automobile, finally, young people could travel and fall in love at a distance which radically changed the way people found love, eventually growing up into what we have now, which is a world where the responsibility to date and secure a partner (and, or family) almost entirely falls squarely on the shoulders of the individual, the opposite of what it was a little over a century a go, and certainly before that.
Thanks again for reading and popping into the discussion. I appreciate both.
I highly recommend engine watched #Birthgap on YouTube. While I like the originality of Joe's writing, the real world serves to prove the opposite of what he contend. Does reproductive anxiety play a role in the population decline? Yes, it does. https://youtu.be/A6s8QlIGanA?si=N2SLjMKEFqu1VxH8
I found your point about tracking the infant mortality rate alongside the birth rate very interesting. Certainly it gives a better impression of how many young children are actually about, and what that means for the age profile of a country.
But you actually don't really discuss the concerns about ageing Western societies, which to my recollection come up much more in reporting on this subject then population collapse. Given your righteousness on misleading reporting, I found this quite misleading.
Thanks, I'll take the compliment. And thank you for reading. It means the world to me, sincerely. Unfortunately, the second part of this comment...needs to be addressed. Here's how this went down:
Me: "I'm going to address "Fertility Collapse"
You: "I find it misleading that you didn't talk about subtle demographic changes"
This just doesn't follow.
I even brought quotes, particularly from Musk who ensured us, he wasn't talking about subtle demographic shifts and aging populations, but said, quote, “I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birthrate. If people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words."
"Civilization is going to crumble" is totally divorced from "concerns about aging population."
Next up...
I even clarified the distinction, saying: "With women having fewer babies, we’re going to need to think about how we structure society into the future thanks to the demographic shifts that will occur. Most of us alive now will be dead by the time that happens toward the end of this century. But that’s different from “fertility collapse” which is the conspiracy theory that shifts in the birth rate will lead to such rapid, drastic changes, that society will 'collapse.'”
Though, please do tell where I was "righteous"—I'd love to hear it.
I found the whole piece kind of righteous because of things like the references to misogyny, which I think are largely misplaced. Most people are looking at the ageing aspect and worrying about the implications for the dependency ratio, public spending and so on. In my view, of course.
It's also a little strange you misquoted my words back to me in responding to this comment. People can just read what I said! But anyway, appreciate your interesting points.
Buddy, that was a summary of what just went down in the conversation above. Look, misogyny and racism are two huge driving forces and those can’t be overlooked, but I think you’re conflating two things here, as I said—demographic shifts and fertility collapse, and there’s a world of distance between them.
Nonetheless, the misogynistic implications are quite clear when you get to talking to people—someone just told me yesterday, in no uncertain terms, that it’s immoral for women not to have babies. What else am I to call that?
And how else am I supposed to interpret this idea that we can’t possibly develop new technologies to handle demographic shifts, especially coming from someone like Elon Musk whose entire reputation is technological development? He can dream of flying cars but can’t seem to envision a society where we can develop technologies to take care of old people or can’t picture a fairer income distribution to ensure that can happen while being the richest man of the world? Both of which Japan , England, Eastern Europe, etc. have already done? And instead insists women start plopping out babies? What else am I supposed to say?
If I was to characterise your last paragraph as saying we can just get robots to take care of all the old people so we can ignore them, I think you'd find it a tad uncharitable. That to me is a similar jump you're making with the broad misogyny allegation.
To be clear, I'm aware that some of those worrying about fertility are also traditionalists about gender roles. But I don't think such views are they common among elite opinion formers who write for the BBC. Sure there's Musk, who has his following, but I think his specific take is unusual.
I say all this writing from England, where our relatively generous welfare state has not relieved us of these concerns around fertility. Perhaps an indication it is easier to build a flying car than to coordinate our way through these issues.
Indeed, it could be read two ways—shut old people up, out of sight, where robots can take care of them; or machines assist in the care of the elderly and infirm (which is a tremendous amount of work). I think the former would be quite awful and the latter quite wonderful.
For a bit about my perspective on this, I’m in the United States and our mother-in-law lives with us. She’s paralyzed from the neck down and has been for twenty-five years. We talk daily, at length, but I can’t begin to imagine what her life is like. Twenty-five years confined to a chair, unable to move. We have to feed her, give her water, bathe her, etc.
Alexa and Apple have been a huge help. Before Alexa, we had to change the channel on the TV if she got bored, turn on/off the lights for her, or the fan (it gets extremely hot here in Florida). Voice assistants are far from perfect but they’re a godsend for families like ours. I gave her my old iMac and turned on the Voice Control feature in the Accessibility Settings, so she can control the computer with her voice. She has one functioning hand that somewhat works enough to control a trackpad mouse, but that’s all, so these tools have helped us come leaps and bounds and has made not only our lives easier, which is of secondary concern, but have enriched her life tremendously. She can now read books online for free or listen to audiobooks, or watch AppleTV+ when she wants. And probably the single most important part is intangible: this gives her a bit of self-determination. No matter how reassuring we and other caretakers are, people will always quietly worry that they’re a burden, so being able to do things on her own is immensely important.
So my view of this is colored by this daily experience. I always say, you never really know how fragile life truly is until you’ve fed someone who can’t feed themselves. We try to spend every moment we can with her, but work calls, and that’s where machines can be beneficial for people in such conditions.
As far as I know, the real worry of the age demographic shifts is economic—that people in midlife won’t have the money to take care of the Baby Boomers as they age, but that can’t be solved by women having babies (that won’t even be adults yet), nor could it be solved that way if it was a sheer shortage of workers to care for them. That would, ironically, force more people to care for both very young and very old.
What makes the most sense is a combination of immigration and technology helping us do more with less.
Thank you universe for someone putting out the counterargument. I am so sick of reading these hyperbolic, hysterical claims of "population collapse"! And no one ever offers the counter, mostly because I think it just seemed obvious or maybe even gauche. But now that so many are intensifying this drum beat and people like Elon Musk (who has blatantly said he actually *hopes* to accelerate exceeding Earth's carrying capacity because it will prompt humans to invest in his goal of going interstellar) are blasting out these false proclamations of gloom and doom, it does need to be addressed.
Traffic, traffic everywhere, yet teetering on the verge of extinction. Never mind there are a billion more people than there were just ten years ago.
Thank you, Kate, very much. I appreciate it more than you know. It definitely is one of those things that everyone repeats without investigating, which flies in the face of all facts and evidence that's right in front of their faces, or, as you put it, precisely, traffic everywhere, yet, we're on the verge of extinction. It's such an absurd claim.
With eight billion and counting already on the planet, I'm not too nicked about women's unwillingness to breed (totally get it, I never did and never regretted it). Elon Musk just wants more cheap labour and he's not spending enough time with any of them. Take parenting advice from Elon Musk like you'd take marital advice from Donald Trump.
Absolutely. And I think Musk and other rich people are worried changing demographics means we'll have to figure out more sensible ways to structure society, something they don't want because they want to remain pornographically wealthy. Same here, I got the snip and have no plans to have kids on an overcrowded planet with finite resources.
"Take parenting advice from Elon Musk like you'd take marital advice from Donald Trump." = excellently put.
Fantastic read! Eugenics and white supremacy are the root causes of this myth. Thank you.
Thank you for your kind words, Jasmine, and thanks for reading. Absolutely. I concur, I think it's right at the intersection of racism and sexism. For some, they don't want immigrants; for others, they want to control women. All of them have a little bit of both, but some lean more one way than the other. That's my hypothesis, anyway.
You're welcome😊 Sounds about right. Agreed. It's a good hypothesis.
Yep, plus misogyny/ unrelenting desire to control women
Yep.
This is a great piece.
I’m GLAD fewer people are having kids. Let the people who really love being parents have them, and let’s shrink the world population naturally to a couple billion less.
Thank you so much, Michelle, it means the world to me coming from you. Seriously. And yes, as am I glad fewer people are having kids. We can't have an infinite growth paradigm on a finite planet.
Excellent piece. It always baffles me how the people who are determined to replace virtually every human activity with a robot or AI are the same people worried that there won't be enough humans on the planet in the near future.
And yes, fewer teenage pregnancies are great news. Fertility rates are also dropping because women who would have three or four children 50 years ago are now having one or two, which isn't necessarily bad. One thing that gets me, though, is unplanned childlessness. It would be great to get numbers on how many women today are childless when they reach menopause even though they wanted to become mothers vs. how many did 50 years ago.
100%. If you had a baby in 1950, it had a 32% chance of dying before age one. If you had 2, there’s a strong chance neither of them would live to see 5. So you had to have another baby if you wanted one (and people did—they kept trying). Today, medicine has thankfully gotten so good that babies have a 99% chance of survival.
Hiya, I don't think it's medicine so much that's lead to improved infant mortality- I think it's improved sanitation, nutrition and housing.
What’s also ridiculous is how often it’s the same people who are dead set against immigration who are panicking about “fertility collapse.” That just doesn’t make sense. If you believe we’re not going to have enough people in the future, you’d want to bring more in.
I’d like to see these numbers too. Particularly as certain trios of chronic illness that include endometriosis are causing infertility. And also the rise of impotency in men tied in with perimenopause reducing from mid to late 40’s down to 36.
I do love the fact that declining numbers are not having the negative impact on the economy that is driving this fear in the first place. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent. It’s the ones most adaptable to change”
A great read - thank you very much for taking this time to share all this research and opening up the lens on such a complex picture.
Ask and ye shall receive, Amber. Immigration is toward the bottom. And thank you so much.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thescienceofsex/p/the-fertility-crisis-debunked-addendum?r=4b7qi&utm_medium=ios
“And also the rise of impotency in men tied in with perimenopause reducing from mid to late 40’s down to 36.” Do you have some data on that?
Highly informative. Another factor could be women delaying children until their late 20s-30s. That leads to a temporary fall in birth rates that should recover to a degree.
Hey George, thank you so much for reading and yes, absolutely spot-on. That is another factor. I actually covered it recently debunking some other moral panics along the way here, in case you're interested, and I've removed the paywall so it's free:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thescienceofsex/p/debunking-the-male-loneliness-epidemic?r=4b7qi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Glad you found this informative and, since I actually cut it short and edited out a whole lot of writing, I'm working on an addendum currently that's almost finished that will beefen up the argument a bit. A ton of material wound up on the cutting room floor.
**Thank you for this** !!
Here's a laugh for those of you old enough to remember the '70s!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
Oh man, throwback!
Right, it's like, "I'm old enough to remember in the year 2000 when civilization was going to collapse because of computers with Y2K. I'm old enough to remember when the end of the Mayan Calendar was supposed to bring the end of the world after that. I've been on this ride before, and it's always been dreadfully boring."
Hmmmm I would expect to get some pushback on this one, Joe. That paper you cited contends, that “Sperm declines were only statistically significant in studies in ‘Western’ countries.” Not true. A 2023 global meta-analysis using meta-regression analysis of samples collected globally in the 20th and 21st centuries found that sperm counts were definitely down. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36377604/
Either way, sperm counts are not the only factor in fertility. Swan’s book did not only warn about sperm counts. Her main concern was morphology (shape). Unfortunately those cousin It of sperm don’t get the job done no matter how many you have.
Carlyn, a pleasure to see you here as always, and thanks for reading and chiming in. I welcome pushback and discussion, as you know. So, there are a couple of things to tease out here.
One is, that specific sperm measurements—which can be (and are likely to be) flawed or can misrepresent reality—are very different from, quote, "it's a global existential crisis." What the 2021 paper argued was that sperm rates fluctuate naturally so much that drawing lines like these is futile.
Another is the importance of variability. There was an additional section on testosterone that I removed for brevity's sake, but it's a great example of what the issue is with these scary studies pertaining to both sperm and testosterone. Here's an except from that discussing the ~20% decline in testosterone some are reporting since the 1970s:
"A 23% decline in average testosterone levels pales in comparison to the 233% swing between men on the higher end of the healthy range and men on the lower end. It’s a trivial 10% of healthy variation."
Testosterone is another panic of what I call "reproductive anxiety," with many, especially people on the alt-right, terrified that T levels are declining. But T is influenced by so many factors and, like sperm, isn't a static number with wide swings in variation over time.
When a guy's favorite sports team loses, his T levels drop. When they win, their T levels rise, so much so that many sports teams watch games of their losses *after* their games (to study what they did wrong) and games of their wins *before games* (to raise T levels and thus competitiveness). In short, if any long-term trends observed aren't within the natural range of the natural short-term swing, they don't really say anything. If my blood pressure is 110/70, and it rises 5 points, it's not a cause for alarm, as I'm still well within the healthy range and it's a small rise.
The same applies to sperm. From the meta-analysis you provided:
"Overall, SC declined appreciably between 1973 and 2018 (slope in the simple linear model: –0.87 million/ml/year, 95% CI: –0.89 to –0.86; P < 0.001)."
So, over a forty-five-year period, men lost, on average, 0.87 million sperm/year.
As you very well know, men produce hundreds of millions of sperm per day. Not a cause for alarm. Another great example would be if they measured that people were eating, on average, 20 fewer calories per year over the past 45 years. That's only 1% of the daily value of calories the average person takes in, and 20 fewer calories per year isn't going to lead to starvation, which is what calling declining sperm counts "a global existential crisis" is arguing. This is the same percentages cited in this meta-analysis mapped onto calorie count. These findings are just too small to matter.
There are also perfectly benign hypotheses for why this (very small) decline might be happening. It takes men an average of 64 days to fully regenerate sperm, hence the problem with ideas like these. How many men do you know who've gone 64 days without ejaculating? It's an extremely difficult thing to monitor and study and men could simply be more willing to cheat the abstinence period required before donating sperm, which seems to me infinitely more likely. The paper only mentions abstinence before collection once, meaning they didn't give it serious thought, like men are just really going to stop all ejaculations for 64 days and never lie about it. If I know anything about men and sex, it's that a substantial number of them are willing to lie to gratify their sexual drives.
This meta-analysis is also by the same group who I called out in the intro to this piece and who were subsequently debunked. The NY Times did an outstanding job of already debunking this stuff, which I linked at the top, so I'll just let them take it from here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-reproduction-crisis.html
Projections from the UN assume fertility has always bottomed out every year, even though it hasn’t. It decreases almost everywhere every year now. And population stats include mass immigration while not yet including the inevitable baby boomer die off.
Ultimately you’re confusing yourself by making it more complicated than it is.
It’s measured that we now have 1.5 births or so per woman, who are half the population. So the natural born population goes down 25% or so each cohort so long as that’s true. Internationally there is variation: Sub Saharan Africa is above replacement (for now), and Korean culture will die off precipitously with a fertility rate half of ours.
The long term outcome of a culture that doesn’t make babies is direct and obvious.
"Ultimately you’re confusing yourself by making it more complicated than it is."
That sounds an awful lot like, "I prefer a very simplistic explanation to a thorough one," and you totally ignored the fact that the decline in infant mortality has been greater than the decline in births, meaning more U.S.-born people are surviving into adulthood, which makes the whole panic moot.
"Korean culture will die off precipitously with a fertility rate half of ours."
See, I'm an evidence guy, not a hyperbole guy. Show me the evidence of this because so far, I've seen none, all I've seen is random hypotheses by people like Elon Musk who are tragically, embarrassingly wrong about everything.
"The long term outcome of a culture that doesn’t make babies is direct and obvious."
You mean like Japan? We become Japan? The thing is, we already have a case study, Korea is getting there as well, and neither society has fallen apart. They've adapted to the new way and endured. It seems like every few years there's something new threatening society and none of it ever happens. The only thing that's real is climate change, and the real devastating consequences of that on a civilization-threatening scale are still hundreds of years away.
I'm old enough to remember when Y2K was the rage and all computers would shut down and society would collapse. I'm old enough to remember 2012, when the end of the Mayan calendar was supposed to be the end of the world. It's been a recurrent theme since the beginning of time.
Hiya, fertility naturally declines with the emancipation and education of women. There's no going back. This fake 'crisis' from the likes of Musk, Trump and Jordan Peterson openly feeds into their patriarchal agenda, set up in opposition to the woke, feminist, environmentalist, vegan agenda that supposedly wants to depopulate us with degrowth, and preventing us from using fossil fuels or eating animals.
Thing is: they invented this supposed left wing big government depopulating and control agenda themselves.
I’m asking you to use your *brain* instead of UN made up numbers.
If there are fewer than 2 babies per couple, and less every year, forever, what happens?
Are you suggesting the UN is making up numbers or are you just not good at typing (and thinking)? I can't tell which.
"If there are fewer than 2 babies per couple, and less every year, forever, what happens?"
That depends on how many of those babies survive into adulthood. If people have fewer babies but more reach adulthood, equilibrium will be struck. But the idea that we're going to somehow disappear is just lunacy. Evolution spent literally billions of years programming people to reproduce. It's one of the most valuable things in people's lives and one of our most primordial drives, so the idea that suddenly, everyone, literally everyone, will just quit, is absurd.
And you never answered my question. If each couple has an average of children that’s much less than 2, and this continues forever, what happens? In your head, what are you imagining to happen that keeps the population steady? Where do *you* think the UN is getting projections from, or are you just quoting them blindly?
Even if infant mortality falls to 0 it’s still an inevitable decline if the replacement level wasn’t conceived in the first place
Now, I'll turn the question back on you:
If there are fewer than 2 babies per couple, and less every year, but not forever, as we've seen the fertility rate can and does rise, what happens?
And what would you suggest be done about it? What's the plan, here?
I did answer your question. Here it is again:
"That depends on how many of those babies survive into adulthood. If people have fewer babies but many more reach adulthood, equilibrium will be struck. But the idea that we're going to somehow disappear is just lunacy. Evolution spent literally billions of years programming people to reproduce. It's one of the most valuable things in people's lives and one of our most primordial drives, so the idea that suddenly, everyone, literally everyone, will just quit, is absurd."
"Even if infant mortality falls to 0 it’s still an inevitable decline if the replacement level wasn’t conceived in the first place"
This assumes that the number will continue falling and won't hit a certain threshold where it stops and rises again, which is a projection into the future. Who's the one making up numbers now?
It also assumes that immigration doesn't happen, as these numbers only count American-born people.
For what it's worth, the fertility rate rose in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and fell in 2023 and 2024, so the assumption that it can *only fall* is baseless.
Sp you’re basically telling me: “it’ll be fine, because one day… *poof* it’ll go back up again”
That really, really doesn’t prove that it’s not a problem in the first place, but rather that you’re assuming it’ll fix itself later for no reason. While actively trying to make fun of people even pointing out the problem to drive discussion about solutions.
Projections are literally making up numbers. That’s what they are. You invent assumptions and ask your excel sheet what would happen.
For example, assuming a recovery of fertility even if it’s never happened so far.
Says the person who clearly has no idea how statistics work.
So, let me get this straight, what you're telling me right now is that you believe the "fertility crisis" panic that's been spread on social media by strangers you've never met or spoken to, and those strangers are using the UN's data, but the UN's data is just "making up numbers"—that's what you're telling me here? Basically, you're saying, "My is belief is right and when the evidence supports it, the evidence is legitimate; but when the evidence doesn't support it, it's 'just making up numbers.'"
Joe, my kudos for an outstanding essay and excellent sources to support your beliefs. Your analysis and conclusions are noteworthy and very reassuring. You are a very wise and ethical man. Thanks and please keep up your good work!
Best
Fred
Thank you, Fred. Much appreciated, as always. :)
“Ultimately you’re confusing yourself by making it more complicated than it is.” Nah you’re oversimplifying to suit your own ideological agenda.
One thing that seems odd to me is that whenever South Korea is discussed, there isn’t mention of how a declining population might impact South Korea’s ability to defend itself from invasion by North Korea (which itself has a low fertility rate, but one that is still substantially higher than in South Korea). The rest of the problems people mention about declining population seem manageable. But defense when you have neighbors or rivals like Russia, China, N. Korea, etc. seems like something that isn’t really manageable without a large and growing population of fighting age men.
Fantastic article! So good to see someone looking past the hype.
As you mention, a link has been drawn between population growth and economic growth. You make a good case for doubting this, using the Japan example. But a plateauing/declining global population from about 2050 (that's just 25 years away!) will gradually but inexorably challenge the economic orthodoxy of infinite growth.
I believe a crucial task for our leaders is to begin to plan for and move towards a mature steady-state economy that takes this reality into account. It will also likely be an economy that will give the natural world space to heal.
Japan being an extremely healthy and long lived population, active into old age and not putting pressure on social services (that require young people working) is surely an important factor.
If the US was't run by pharma which aims to keep people fat, sick and on drugs, they could do this too.
Your data may be correct but it’s ahistorical. Traditionally families chose your partner? No. In clan and kin based societies, yes, and they are still having large families. But the history of law was to find a way to trust outside kin and clan, prevent endless cycles of retribution via a method of justice for all and thus provided the basis for love marriage. Arguably this happened in 1066, but Shakespeare was already mocking those Italians in Romeo & Juliet, and commoners were marrying into the higher classes at least since Henry VIII. Jane Austen’s world had no arranged marriage. It was encouraged for economic advantage because they wanted the best for their daughters in a cruel society that could cast them out, but women always had final say.
Hey Michelle, thank you for reading and chiming into the discussion. Thanks for giving me the chance to clarify here, and I think we're saying approximately the same things, but differently.
I don't mean arranged marriages specifically (which is why I chose res familia instead of "arranged marriage"), though arranged marriages are one type of familial marriage arrangement, i.e., where the family has most or all of the power or say in whom an individual marries. If we look at the Roman style of marriage, the Paterfamilias (hence the Latin term), which was prominent in other areas of later Europe, and places like the Arab world and Indian worlds, we see a pattern of either political familial marriages or family marriages in order to solidify wealth or contacts. Sir Thomas Boleyn played a significant role in facilitating Anne Boleyn's marriage to Henry. This wasn't uncommon at the time and facilitated political influence, wealth, etc. from the family in question. Most royalty were wed for no other purpose than solidifying alliances, much like the Paterfamilias.
The Marquis de Sade lamented, at length, the social expectation that he married who was set up for him as his later wife, Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil in the late 18th century. He also complained on the behalf of women more widely that it's unfair that families had such power to influence marriages by withholding assets or downright sabotage. These social expectations were still present in various forms as late as the early 20th century, as Zaza Lacion, Simone de Beauvoir's best friend in youth, fell in love with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the two intended to marry, but her family would not permit it, an instance of both sabotage and arranged marriages.
Mostly, I'm coming from a U.S. perspective, so what I had in mind was America during the early years when we were largely agrarian and then the following Industrial Revolution, when parents kept strict tabs on their kids' activities. In the early years, marriage was more about building familial coalitions and having children as young as possible to yield as many farm helps as possible as quickly as possible. During the Industrial Revolution, it became more about wealth consolidation. The idea of romantic love and self-determination was largely absent and women often bore the brunt of these decisions.
This followed through into the Industrial Revolution, as we start to see some free women going against the tide in the 19th-century, but they were often widows. In the States, it wasn't really until the invention of the automobile that young people could escape the prying eyes of their parents and fall in love with whomever they wanted.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23559846/#:~:text=We%20reviewed%20the%20current%20literature%20on%20sexual%20hookups,popular%20culture%20to%20place%20hooking%20up%20in%20context.
With the invention of the automobile, finally, young people could travel and fall in love at a distance which radically changed the way people found love, eventually growing up into what we have now, which is a world where the responsibility to date and secure a partner (and, or family) almost entirely falls squarely on the shoulders of the individual, the opposite of what it was a little over a century a go, and certainly before that.
Thanks again for reading and popping into the discussion. I appreciate both.
I highly recommend engine watched #Birthgap on YouTube. While I like the originality of Joe's writing, the real world serves to prove the opposite of what he contend. Does reproductive anxiety play a role in the population decline? Yes, it does. https://youtu.be/A6s8QlIGanA?si=N2SLjMKEFqu1VxH8
I found your point about tracking the infant mortality rate alongside the birth rate very interesting. Certainly it gives a better impression of how many young children are actually about, and what that means for the age profile of a country.
But you actually don't really discuss the concerns about ageing Western societies, which to my recollection come up much more in reporting on this subject then population collapse. Given your righteousness on misleading reporting, I found this quite misleading.
Thanks, I'll take the compliment. And thank you for reading. It means the world to me, sincerely. Unfortunately, the second part of this comment...needs to be addressed. Here's how this went down:
Me: "I'm going to address "Fertility Collapse"
You: "I find it misleading that you didn't talk about subtle demographic changes"
This just doesn't follow.
I even brought quotes, particularly from Musk who ensured us, he wasn't talking about subtle demographic shifts and aging populations, but said, quote, “I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birthrate. If people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words."
"Civilization is going to crumble" is totally divorced from "concerns about aging population."
Next up...
I even clarified the distinction, saying: "With women having fewer babies, we’re going to need to think about how we structure society into the future thanks to the demographic shifts that will occur. Most of us alive now will be dead by the time that happens toward the end of this century. But that’s different from “fertility collapse” which is the conspiracy theory that shifts in the birth rate will lead to such rapid, drastic changes, that society will 'collapse.'”
Though, please do tell where I was "righteous"—I'd love to hear it.
I found the whole piece kind of righteous because of things like the references to misogyny, which I think are largely misplaced. Most people are looking at the ageing aspect and worrying about the implications for the dependency ratio, public spending and so on. In my view, of course.
It's also a little strange you misquoted my words back to me in responding to this comment. People can just read what I said! But anyway, appreciate your interesting points.
Buddy, that was a summary of what just went down in the conversation above. Look, misogyny and racism are two huge driving forces and those can’t be overlooked, but I think you’re conflating two things here, as I said—demographic shifts and fertility collapse, and there’s a world of distance between them.
Nonetheless, the misogynistic implications are quite clear when you get to talking to people—someone just told me yesterday, in no uncertain terms, that it’s immoral for women not to have babies. What else am I to call that?
And how else am I supposed to interpret this idea that we can’t possibly develop new technologies to handle demographic shifts, especially coming from someone like Elon Musk whose entire reputation is technological development? He can dream of flying cars but can’t seem to envision a society where we can develop technologies to take care of old people or can’t picture a fairer income distribution to ensure that can happen while being the richest man of the world? Both of which Japan , England, Eastern Europe, etc. have already done? And instead insists women start plopping out babies? What else am I supposed to say?
If I was to characterise your last paragraph as saying we can just get robots to take care of all the old people so we can ignore them, I think you'd find it a tad uncharitable. That to me is a similar jump you're making with the broad misogyny allegation.
To be clear, I'm aware that some of those worrying about fertility are also traditionalists about gender roles. But I don't think such views are they common among elite opinion formers who write for the BBC. Sure there's Musk, who has his following, but I think his specific take is unusual.
I say all this writing from England, where our relatively generous welfare state has not relieved us of these concerns around fertility. Perhaps an indication it is easier to build a flying car than to coordinate our way through these issues.
Indeed, it could be read two ways—shut old people up, out of sight, where robots can take care of them; or machines assist in the care of the elderly and infirm (which is a tremendous amount of work). I think the former would be quite awful and the latter quite wonderful.
For a bit about my perspective on this, I’m in the United States and our mother-in-law lives with us. She’s paralyzed from the neck down and has been for twenty-five years. We talk daily, at length, but I can’t begin to imagine what her life is like. Twenty-five years confined to a chair, unable to move. We have to feed her, give her water, bathe her, etc.
Alexa and Apple have been a huge help. Before Alexa, we had to change the channel on the TV if she got bored, turn on/off the lights for her, or the fan (it gets extremely hot here in Florida). Voice assistants are far from perfect but they’re a godsend for families like ours. I gave her my old iMac and turned on the Voice Control feature in the Accessibility Settings, so she can control the computer with her voice. She has one functioning hand that somewhat works enough to control a trackpad mouse, but that’s all, so these tools have helped us come leaps and bounds and has made not only our lives easier, which is of secondary concern, but have enriched her life tremendously. She can now read books online for free or listen to audiobooks, or watch AppleTV+ when she wants. And probably the single most important part is intangible: this gives her a bit of self-determination. No matter how reassuring we and other caretakers are, people will always quietly worry that they’re a burden, so being able to do things on her own is immensely important.
So my view of this is colored by this daily experience. I always say, you never really know how fragile life truly is until you’ve fed someone who can’t feed themselves. We try to spend every moment we can with her, but work calls, and that’s where machines can be beneficial for people in such conditions.
As far as I know, the real worry of the age demographic shifts is economic—that people in midlife won’t have the money to take care of the Baby Boomers as they age, but that can’t be solved by women having babies (that won’t even be adults yet), nor could it be solved that way if it was a sheer shortage of workers to care for them. That would, ironically, force more people to care for both very young and very old.
What makes the most sense is a combination of immigration and technology helping us do more with less.
Hopefully this clarifies my perspective it a bit.
Cheers.