Plummeting Global Fertility Rates

Although it’s beginning to garner a lot of media attention, many people seem to be lithely unaware that global total fertility rates – the average number of children that a woman has over her life – is plummeting. Check out this data:

The total global fertility rate has halved since 1950!

Here are some charts for individual countries:

Here are the countries and/or regions with the lowest total fertility rate:

“Fertility rate, total (births per woman) | Data.” World Bank Open Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN. Accessed 14 December 2025.

Here are the countries and/or regions with the highest total fertility rate:

Note that they are mainly from sub-Saharan Africa.

What are the consequences?

The massive decline in global fertility rates will certainly cause many ills: elder care crisis, pension system stagnation, an innovation slump, labor shortages, shrinking consumer markets, and aggressive migration (which is already occurring). Just as worrying are the inevitable changes to family life: shrunken social networks as children are raised without siblings and cousins and weakened family-based care that will make individuals more dependent upon the state.

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