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.
As awareness of the global low fertility crisis has grown, many seem fatalistic, accepting decline because "no country has ever come back from below-replacement fertility."
— More Births (@MoreBirths) October 27, 2023
Actually, plenty of countries have done just that! Let's look at those cases! 🧵, please share and follow! pic.twitter.com/noOdK3AWG2
No comments:
Post a Comment