The Impact of Fewer Babies Being Born in Countries Around the Globe

0:00Today on State of the World, the impact of fewer babies being born in countries around the globe. You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The decision whether or not to have kids is a deeply personal one, but it also has larger impacts on society and the economy. In many countries around the world, people are choosing to have a lot fewer babies. That means in some of those places, including the U.S., There aren't enough children being born to maintain a stable population, which can have all kinds of consequences.

0:42In today's episode, NPR's Brian Mann and Sarah McCammon tell us why this dramatic change is happening and what it could mean. When we first started looking at the data showing this massive drop in the number of babies being born around the world, Brian and I were both a bit confused. Yeah, remember, the big fear back in the 1960s and 70s was people having too many kids. No intelligent, patriotic American family ought to have more than two children, preferably one. That's Paul Ehrlich, a famous scientist. He warned of a population bomb during that 1970 interview. On WOI-TV, he called for a government campaign to convince Americans big families are dangerous.

1:26You get a scene which shows Los Angeles in the smog and it just says this city has a fatal disease. It's called overpopulation. But now, all these decades later, things have changed so dramatically. It is baffling and alarming many of the experts who study this. We're actually really facing the question of depopulation. Melissa Carney is an economist. She studies population trends at the University of Notre Dame. All over the world, especially in high-income countries, the birth rate has very quickly plummeted in a sustained way. If you're listening to this story in a traffic jam or on a crowded subway, you know, fewer people might actually sound like a really good thing.

2:06But people studying this trend say it's accelerating and they think all kinds of things could start to unravel as populations rapidly age and shrink. In many countries, it's already harder to find young workers. Innovation and demand for goods could stagnate. Pension and social security programs could buckle. Now, the truth is, economists don't know for sure how all of this will play out. The world has never seen the kind of population decline that many researchers say is now inevitable. But Carney thinks it'll be huge. This demographic issue is poised to potentially remake so much of our society in a way that people just don't seem to be thinking about.

2:47Women around the world and here in the U.S. are having roughly half as many children on average compared to women in the 1960s. That's according to data from the United Nations and the Federal Reserve. And here again, researchers aren't sure why. Some experts think maybe it's a question of affordability, the rising cost of raising children, others point to things like social isolation, fears about the planet's future. But one leading theory is that this is really happening because of something most of us would consider positive. Lots of young people, especially women, just have more freedom and economic independence.

3:23And they're making very different decisions about their lives. Hello, I'm Ben. I'm Sarah. Sarah and Ben Brewington live in Los Angeles. They're both 35 years old. Been together since high school? We started dating senior year. After getting married, they moved to L.A., and they kind of did everything you'd expect from a young couple. They built good careers, they bought a cute house with a garden. This year is probably our best year of tomatoes. Normally, we don't get enough to try to make... And Sarah told us for years, they assumed their next step would be kids. It just seemed like the normal thing to do.

3:58And then I started thinking, what do I want? So they held off for a year. than another year. And they were surprised by the gradual discovery that children were just not part of the plan anymore. It's a resounding no. Like, it's, you know, it's not something that I'm interested in or want. I don't feel guilty about it at all now to say, like, I don't want kids. And here's the thing. Researchers say what Ben and Sarah are doing, having fewer babies or opting out of parenting altogether, this is becoming more and more common. What's interesting about the United States is we're sort of a latecomer to this game.

4:34That's Philip Levine. He studies population trends at Wellesley College. We called him to help us think through the scale of this change and what it means. In the rest of the developed world, in high-income countries, the birth rate's been falling for decades. And Levine gave us a really simple way to think about all this. He uses a number that researchers call the total fertility rate. Total fertility, that is a technical term, of course, but it's used by scientists to predict something important, the number of babies each woman will have over her lifetime. And for a population to remain stable, so we're talking just flat, no growth, no decline, every woman would need to have an average of 2.1 kids.

5:16So you need to replace yourself, you need to replace a partner, and you need a little extra for mortality. But here in the U.S., the total fertility rate has been dipping below that 2.1 line for decades. And after 2007, the number of births per woman began plunging. In 2023 and 2024, the U.S. hit record lows of 1.6. Levine says the U.S. is actually doing better than most developed countries. We're at 1.6, which we're worried about at 1.6. South Korea is at 0.7. There's just, relatively speaking, no children being born in South Korea. And South Korea is not alone. A United Nations study published last month found more than one in 10 countries now have what researchers think of as hyper-low fertility.

6:02Again, there's a debate about why this is happening. But Levine agrees the biggest single factor may just be growing freedom. You have more choices in life today than you used to. And there's a whole host of options that doesn't involve having children. Which brings us back to Ben and Sarah Brewington, the couple in L.A. They told us they're aware that personal choices like theirs about kids and parenting could reshape the world. I know that there definitely is, like, there is going to come a time where, like, everyone's retiring and there's not going to be a workforce. But here's the challenge.

6:38Younger adults we've been talking to, including Sarah Brewington, say convincing them to have more children won't be easy. It feels unethical to tell people to go through a grueling process because you want to have another baby in the world. But governments around the world are searching for ways to boost the number of babies being born. It's happening in progressive countries like France and Sweden. It's happening in authoritarian places like China and Russia. And it's happening here in the U.S. I'm Sarah McCammon. And I'm Brian Mann, NPR News.

7:22That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.