To tell you that if a UK woman has not had her first child by 28, there is a 50% probability she will never have children.

I know they would. Which I don't think is fair. I do think it's interesting that they are reproducing like this without centering men in their lives. It's a very matriarchal model.

Now I know that female headed families like this do tend to use the benefit system. But what is the problem really? Either men support the next generation directly through marriage, or indirectly through taxes. Most of the women in the family are finished with childbirth by 30 and also proceed to work and support their children and grandchildren for many years.

The replacement TFR in developed countries is 2.1 (the 0.1 accounts for the fact that male births are slightly more prevalent than female births, and for childhood mortality). So at a TFR of 2.1, a population remains stable, neither increasing nor decreasing. The historic TFR, and the current TFR in some low income countries is higher, due to higher infant mortality.

Yes, roughly.

(For the UK it's actually 2.08 per the ONS - as some children unfortunately don't survive to adulthood to be able to start the next generation. In countries with high infant mortality replacement rate is higher.)

I've seen some people worry we are breeding for religion as religious people tend to have more kids - but ignores fact that children may not follow the parents religion or be religious at all.

TBH most likely scenario is population decreases across many countries and socites adapt as best they can and at some point some sort of equilibrium is found - but we've never had this on such a wide spread scale so no-one really knows.

Short term more planning would be helpful - making sure there are enough people attracted to key skills and adapting societies so older people can manage for longer with less support.

That usually happens in dicatorships/authoritarian governments not democarcies - democarcies usally go for pronatalist polices ie usually money.

Or in patriarchal usually religious cultures where women have no status outside of traditional family structures and very little inside of them either.

@OldOrMaybeNotThatOld I wanted to add this as a separate post to keep the ideas separate.

It's very hard to answer the UK version without getting into a debate on immigration because that has been the main lever pulled over the past few decades, so the consequences of that are mixed up in the consequences of the low birth rate.

i.e. a more likely scenario than rapid population crash is rapid population replacement - i.e. instead of 50% drop in population, the population stays the same but is now 50% foreign.

Either scenario is deeply destabilising culturally though. We already see riots, protests, inter-ethnic tensions, voting blocs etc now in the "immigration" scenario (now imagine that if 50% of the population is foreign origin).

But also imagine having to yank pensions out suddenly from existing pensioners, many more homeless on the street as we realise belatedly we cannot afford benefits, IMF style bailouts with harsh conditions etc; imagine not being able to stand up an army in the new world where "geopolitics is back, baby"...

Electorally the maths is very difficult though. Politicians know that immigration is not popular but they also know how extreme they'd have to be in policy-making for the no-immigration scenario.

Is ideal replacement 2? Ie every man and every woman replaces themselves?

No it's a reasonable question. And the TFR is not constant and adapts under normal circumstances (e.g. the baby boom TFR was nearly 3 and that only lasted for one generation). It also depends if you mean on a global level or the UK.

The issue is that there is something called the "low fertility trap" for a country, perhaps somewhere around 1.3, where we literally have no examples at all in history of a country turning it around. At the very best, we have examples like a few Nordic countries managing to claw their way up from say 1.5 to 1.8, with the absolute best in childcare subsidies etc etc, still not managing to get up to replacement, and it's falling again. We don't have any examples of a country getting to the 1.2, 1.3 kind of level and managing to improve (this is the Japan scenario).

So what I mean is the difference between 1.2/1.3 and 1.5/1.6 might seem small but it's actually the difference between "maybe recoverable" and "permanent disaster".

Global population will inevitably stabilise - the western Roman Empire collapsed but new states filled the gap - but no such promise exists for an individual country.

If you think women can’t be forced to have babies — oh, please. History says otherwise, and I can dream up a few modern twists in no time.

That usually happens in dicatorships/authoritarian governments not democarcies - democarcies usally go for pronatalist polices ie usually money.

There lots of reasons to worry about state of democracy round the world. The USA - the way they've gone restricting access to contraceptives and abortions while still being a democarcy is worrying though their fertlity rate is on the decline and is below replacment levels 1.6 last year and likley going to fall - but their poltics are worrying.

Plus China a very authoritarian state who did have great impact on resticting fertlity is having huge problems increasing their birth rate - is just not as simple as some people think.

And to add… I have step children and my SD is very much of a Christian marry young and have children young mindset. There are some young people wiling to do the saving of the world.

@Almostwelsh your distant relatives are very much outliers. They would also be routinely demonised as "net takers" on here.

It’s a lot to take in. I’m childless not by choice but for a multitude of reasons including the age at which I met someone decent enough to want to breed with meant that I was beyond my most fertile years. Initially not having children was painful but as I’ve gotten older I’ve actually become quite self centered in the way I think and whilst I know that we really should be looking out for each other other and doing things that are in the best interests of future generations, I am quite comfortable with the idea that I die and none of this is my problem or my children’s problem because I don’t have any.

I don't think men want this. They don't want any financial dependants at all - neither a wife nor children. Very, very few men and women hook up "below their pay grade". They want companionship and sex with someone who is financially independent. Women increasingly seem to want the same. And children simply don't figure in that kind of calculation.

This is a late stage capitalism issue. We expect women to do the double whammy of contributing through paid work while also producing the next generation.

Women with careers can't afford to do this to a large extent.

I have some distant relatives who do seem to be bucking the trend. They are a large family and have numerous babies, giving birth between the ages of 16 and 30. All the women have 2+ children. The key is that most of the women don't have careers, or if they do it's work that can be flexible as a self employed person, such as hairdresser. The women are the rocks of the family and support their sisters, children and grandchildren with their young families. They don't marry and the men are not the focus of the family (although some do contribute financially and work in factories, building sites). Most of the women have jobs in things like retail and hospitality and arrange childcare with other family members around shifts. They support each other and all live very locally - often walking distance. I'm not privy to their finances, but they probably do claim benefits where they are entitled to.

The latest addition to the family has 18 year old parents who are not in education, something that the middle classes would tut at. This baby has been welcomed with pride and love by all the family, who are supporting the young parents in many practical ways. The grandmother is in her 30s, the great grandmother in her 50s. These young grandparents are key in supporting the young parents and do so. The children of the family are well looked after, attend school regularly and have hobbies and do sports.

This is a way of life that was common when birth rates were higher. The isolated lives many people live now feeding the corporate machine has removed all the support women used to have when having children, hence they have fewer and often none.

The Incels are completely correct aren’t they?
For men to get what they want women will have to be controlled and their choices removed.

Then men can be happy again. Earn the money, get a dependant person to serve them, get children without having to do the parenting.

If you think women can’t be forced to have babies — oh, please. History says otherwise, and I can dream up a few modern twists in no time.

Step one: ban women from universities. Scrap any meaningful education while you’re at it. Leave a couple of “useful” courses, of course — cooking, cleaning, maybe ironing — to enhance those all-important wifely skills. God forbid a woman had a qualification she could actually use to support herself.

Step two: if you do allow women into higher education, punish them properly. Let’s say an 80% income tax for daring to “squander” their precious fertile years on books instead of babies. Nothing like fiscal policy to drive home the lesson.

Step three: outlaw contraception entirely. That way survival itself depends on attaching yourself to a man — literally any man will do. The OP could probably find himself a nice 18-year-old that way.

And for the uncooperative women who somehow slip through the cracks? Don’t worry. There’ll be state-sponsored “impregnation clinics” waiting. Because heaven forbid a womb goes to waste

Every generation is smaller than previous one so less people to have kids - plus socially it becomes normalised not to or to have one or two at most. It could go on centuries like the population rise.

Plus you reach the point where adding more dependents ie kids is hard because there are so many depenedents already - (ie older people who also need more health care).

Lower fertility is also related to urbanization and young people fock to urban centers - this has some experts worried there won't be enough people growing the food. Then longer term will there be enough people to maintain existing infrastructures.

We've been under the replacement level in UK nearly 50 years - immigration has filled gaps. Plus every where but sub saharan africa is seeing fertlity drops so attracting immigrants could get competative and countries could get creative in trying to keep their young population.

We also seeing ageing populations have an effect on economies - stagnation and rising health care costs. Innovation sceintfic and technoogical is also asscoaited with younger members of society - so worried progress will slow or stop. It has an effect on voting - there is always an older voting block - and population below is always less - can mean getting changes is harder.

TBH the population decline and aging populations are baked in Europe at least - China as well likely - it will be adapting and how fast the population declines.

None of my close female friends or I (around 8 of us) have kids and every one of us is educated with good jobs with partners with good jobs. Scientists, doctors, engineers and finance executives. We could have all easily afforded them and none of us wanted them. Not all women want children, not even close.

@OldOrMaybeNotThatOld

I'm sure some politicians are aware but the majority, as with climate change, simply don't grasp the magnitude of the issue. Their time horizon is 5 years max.

In order to 'recover' from a disaster-level population crash to a stable population you need to get the TFR back to 2.1. It's currently 1.4 in England and Wales.

In the past, when countries have had a disastrous population crash (Ireland is a close to home example), they have suffered huge economic decline but then once the factor causing the population decline is resolved (famine and emigration in the case of Ireland), the population rapidly stabilised. This is because the TFR never declined: women were still having babies, but they were either dying or leaving, and old people were dying much earlier.

Now we have the TFR at record lows, and longevity at record highs - so we don't actually (yet) see a population decline as people are living longer than ever. Unfortunately when you have a large number of economically inactive elderly people, and fewer economically active young pople, that is problematic. Western countries have so far plugged the gap with immigration (most apparent in the care sector, where there simply aren't enough young people to care for all the elderly people) - but this is becoming politically more and more untenable.

So what is the possibility of the rapid decline being like a disaster level event as a once off (over say 30 years) and then we recover with a replacement rate of 1 for 1?

Im not really applying my mind to the maths so forgive me.

Without going into a debate on immigration. Do you think that the politicians actually use this data when policy making and the general public just don’t (or don’t want to) understand?

See @OneAmberFinch's excellent post showing the magnitude of the issue. With current fertility rates, you're looking at dramatic falls in population over quite short time periods, rather than a manageable gentle decline. Levelling out will only occur if at some point fertility rates recover to replacement levels but I'm struggling to imagine a scenario under which this might happen - if anything the economic turmoil associated with rapid population crash and a top-heavy demographic pyramid will make women even more reluctant to have children.

I wonder if people really have a strong idea of what different TFRs mean for a country. We all have an intuition that "a bit over 2 is replacement" and that therefore "below 2 is falling", mixed with a bit of "the earth is overpopulated so that's a good thing".

A slow decline would probably be fine - you could slowly tinker with, say, pension funding giving everyone decades of notice to plan, etc.

However E&W's TFR is 1.4, Scotland's is 1.25.

Very roughly, especially in a developed country with low child mortality, TFR divided by 2 times 100% is the size of the next generation relative to the previous. So TFR of 2.0 --> next gen is 2/2 * 100% = 100% of the size of the last gen, i.e. roughly the same size. (Replacement rate is actually something like 2.08 in the UK - a very small bit above 2, not 2.2 or 2.4 as I often see cited.)

With a TFR of 1.4 (England & Wales):

• Next gen is ~70% of the last, so a 30% decrease
• Population halves in just 2 generations, or about 60 years (absent immigration)

With a TFR of 1.25 (Scotland):

• Next gen is ~62% of the last, so a nearly 40% decrease
• Population halves in less than 1.5 generations, or about 40 years

Comparison with the post-baby boom generation

• Next gen was about ~80-90% of the baby boom, so a 10-20% decrease

That starts to be within human lifetimes and means you need radical not incremental solutions - whether that's radical mass migration, or radical reforms to pension policy, or radical investment in technology to reduce the need for a standing army, etc etc.

How radical? Somewhere between 2x and 4x as radical as the solutions we needed after the baby boom, because the natural population is decreasing 2-4x as fast.

@AlmostwelshI think you are spot on. Women cannot afford dc and of course they want to keep their work position. I agree men put off having dc or even forming lasting relationships.

I have never wanted children my entire life. No amount of carrots or sticks could make me change my mind.