This is a summary of the June 3 cover article in The Economist, Global Fertility Has Collapsed, With Profound Economic Consequences.
The following is the main content.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the global population has been expanding, but it will decline in this century.
Fertility rates are falling in many places. The fertility rates of the top 15 countries in terms of GDP are all below the replacement line (2.1). Aging countries are not only Japan and Italy, but also Brazil, Mexico and Thailand. Even Africa's fertility rate is falling rapidly.
What are the impacts?
The labor force is shrinking, and pensions are difficult to support, which will lead to tax increases, delayed retirement, low returns for savers, and fiscal crises. This is only one aspect. An aging society has less entrepreneurial spirit and is more risk-averse. The lack of young inventors makes it more difficult to produce breakthrough innovations, which restricts productivity growth. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that low fertility is a crisis.
What should be done?
Persuading people to have more children limits freedom of choice. Introducing immigrants is a misjudgment - because by the middle of the century, the world may face a shortage of young labor.
People want children but don't take action. The gap between desire and reality is: they can't afford to raise them, lack housing, and lack of childbirth benefits. Even without these obstacles, economic development will still reduce the desire to have children - Singapore has subsidies, tax rebates, and child care subsidies, but the fertility rate is only 1.0.
Some backward areas have undereducated groups, and releasing these potentials can alleviate the shortage of young labor.
But labor shortages will eventually come, and AI and robots will be the way to deal with it.
Low fertility makes the birth of geniuses less and less. Ironically, only geniuses can solve this problem.