Will the Falling Worldwide Birth Rates Ever Rebound?
The Numbers Seem to be Fudged in a Lot of Places, but the Downward Trend Remains. Are We Seeing a Population Collapse?
Igor Chudov had an interesting piece about unvaccinated sperm which revisited the birth rate declines that have been seen in country after country across the world. Continued elevated excess deaths are starting to get a small amount of attention, but falling birth rates have been less noticed for the last several months. The hoped for rebound in births has not materialized. As threats of economic collapse and all out war loom during these darkest days, I don’t blame people for not wanting to bring a child into the world under current conditions.
Here is the birth rate chart for Sweden, with numbers updated through August of 2023. Notice how the numbers drop every year and every month in a step down fashion:
Here is a chart of the birth rate for France, with updated numbers through August of 2023. Although there is some rebound such as a rebound from Covid closures in early 2021 before the mass jab campaign commenced, most years have been a steady decline. And 2023 looks like the worst one yet!
I used to try to run the birth rate numbers on Thailand but the monthly updated birth numbers began giving me an error screen no matter what searches I did late last year. A google search revealed a continued declined to a 71 year low:
“Only 502,000 children were born in Thailand last year, about 30% below the target of 700,000 and the lowest birth rate in 71 years, Anukul Pidkaew, permanent secretary at the ministry, told a press conference.
According to the National Statistical Office, 540,000 children were born in Thailand in 2021, down from 580,000 in 2020, and 600,000 in 2019.
More people have been dying than have been born in Thailand for a few yers. Where it becomes interesting is in doing a search looking for 2023 Thailand birth numbers. This article came out on November 1, 2023. Thailand’s population is expected to halve in the next 60 years:
Public Health Minister Dr Cholnan Srikaew said the decline in Thailand’s birthrate has hit critical levels. The number of newborns has dropped from over 1 million per year from 1963 to 1983, to just 485,085 newborns versus 550,042 deaths in 2021. This resulted in a net population decrease of 64,957 that year.
Did you notice the discrepancy in birth numbers for 2021? I did. The National Statistical Office said there were 540,000 children born in Thailand in 2021, while the health minister said that there were 485,085 newborns born that year. This 55,000 birth difference is not a rounding error, as it represents a huge 11% drop in total births. It also is not due to data lag, as the Health Statistics numbers were reported in January of 2023 while the health minister’s statements were made here in November. Lagging birth registrations should have moved the number higher, not lower. I had to go back to my own numbers before the Thailand dataset stopped giving me results to see if I could clarify the numbers:
Thailand's Demographic Collapse
Igor Chudov used to routinely present month on month datasets about drops in birth rates from various countries around the world. As my very first article on substack was regarding a drop in births in Thailand where I am based, I always wanted to add my part to the list, but I never could find the granular up to date data. That changed based on a link found on theCovidBlog
So my dataset only tracked the first eight months of each year until it stopped providing me with data in around October of 2022, but if the birth numbers held up for 2021 they would be around the 485,000 or so quoted by the health minister. Although they are fudging the datasets all are showing a sustained year on year decline in births. Each year is single digit percents lower than the year before.
Super Sally in the Philippines has also been noticing numerical descrepanies on datasets: deaths seem massaged lower and births sometimes seem propped up higher, or an alarming drop in births is blamed on a data lag
As SuperSally writes:
“OWID projects that the Philippines population will stabilize and then start dropping by 2080 when projected deaths exceed projected births. I find it curious how their actual data ends in 2021 and is thereafter modelled predictions, presented as if 2020 and 2021 never happened. Further, their shown annual birth rates are far higher than those reported by PSA, and also do not reflect the dropping birth rates from 2019 to 2022.”
Most google searches on births are using modelled and forecast assumptions in a GIGO model which, especially since the pandemic, consistently overestimates population growth. My suspicion is that globally we are already in population decline. The only areas where population is growing, such as Africa, are the most reliant on GIGO (garbage inputs, garbage outputs) modelling.
Here’s SuperSally’s total birth charts through the end of 2022 in the Philippines:
Fudging numbers in ways that are directly contradictory is happening more and more on Google search, which is losing its utility as any type of honest arbiter of information. I did a search for the number of births in Israel in 2022. Here were two of my top search results:
Israel Birth Rate 1950-2023
https://www.macrotrends.net › countries › ISR › birth-...
The birth rate for Israel in 2022 was 19.248 births per 1000 people, a 1.49% decline from 2021. The birth rate for Israel in 2021 was 19.539 births per 1000 ...
Israel Has a Demographic Crisis. And It's Not About Birth ...
https://www.haaretz.com › Israel News
Jun 22, 2566 BE — The number of newborns dropped to a record low of 6.77 per 1,000 people in 2022, which boils down to negative population growth. In March ...
The difference between 19.2 births per 1000 people and 6.77 births per 1000 people is extremely significant. Which number is closer to the truth?
Of course elevated excess mortality of young and fertile populations creates its own negative fedback loop: every young person who dies is someone who will have no children, or less of them. The demographic implications of this shift are different than they are for older populations.
Of course one thing that causes a hollowing out of young and especially male populations traditionally is war. I found this pyramid chart of the demographic breakdown in Ukraine since the start of the conflict with Russia very ominous.
Both men and women of reproductive ages have completely been hollowed out. Are they dead or did they leave the country? Probably a bit of both.
So are the birth rates collapsing everywhere universally? Although I see small jumps such the the USA’s 0.8% birth increase from 2022 over 2021, helped greatly by, you guessed it, immigration policies, they seem to be the exception more than the rule. I’d love to find a large and highly vaccinated country that is not being helped by immigration where births are increasing. What are they doing differently there?
I don’t believe there has been a sustained period of global human population decline, though world wars and plagues have taken their toll in affected areas. This makes sense as a war on a virus respresented a war on every living breathing human being on the planet. Is there a point where we turn to building towards the future again? Or is the worst still yet to come?
What do you think?
Few babies born, fewer still playing outside ever, are they all on social media?
the neighbors behind me have a pandemic baby… probably not representative of what’s happening but gives me hope… looking out the window doing dishes can see the little girl having a tea party and mom swinging on swingset with baby… gives me a peaceful sense of normalcy in an upside down world.