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Demography

Babies make a comeback

Nature volume 460, pages 693–694 (2009)Cite this article

The population of some wealthy countries is shrinking because of a declining birth rate. It comes as a surprise, and one with policy implications, that after a certain point of development that trend can reverse.

For many years, environmental concerns have been used to argue that it would be a good thing if human populations became smaller. If that's true, should we not welcome low fertility and population decline wherever it occurs? The difficulty with this view is that although smaller populations may indeed be desirable in the long term, in the short term population decline poses challenges that we do not know how to manage. Low fertility means fewer babies, and eventually a smaller workforce that would have to pay higher per capita costs of infrastructure and social support systems. A consequence of low fertility and long lives is an ageing population with its attendant social and economic effects. National economic output would probably decline along with the size of the workforce. Political and military capability and influence would decline along with population. Thus, for many rich countries, population decline is a serious concern.

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References

  1. United Nations Population Division. Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? (United Nations, 2002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and the Department of Biological Sciences, Shripad Tuljapurkar is in the Stanford Center for Population Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5020, USA. tulja@stanford.edu,

    Shripad Tuljapurkar

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  1. Shripad Tuljapurkar
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Tuljapurkar, S. Babies make a comeback. Nature 460, 693–694 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/460693a

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