Saturday, December 2, 2023

What are the dynamics and context for recovery from below-replacement TFR?

There are many parties piling on to the panic bandwagon about plunging global fertility rates with a number of large countries (Chine) with markedly low fertility.  Total Fertility Rates (TFR) substantially below replacement rates.  

A claim which often arises in these discussions is some variant of "no country has ever come back from such low below-replacement fertility rates."  This has always seemed nonsense to me.  There are innumerable instances of low TFR arising from exogenous circumstances such as war, famine, plague, etc.  I can think of plenty of instances of dramatically below replacement rates of TFR which have occurred in particular countries for a few years at a time before recovering.

My suspicion has always been that there instances of recovery from decadal long below-replacement-TFR but I have never researched it.  It seems intuitively likely that a society can possibly recover from a generational TFR drought.  Maybe two.  Three generations?  Maybe, but then it begins to look iffy.  A matter of context and circumstance.

But I have never seen any sort of rigorous treatment of the issue.  

Possibly this will shed some light.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment