{"id":33383,"date":"2025-02-04T00:06:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T00:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/?p=33383"},"modified":"2025-02-04T00:06:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T00:06:43","slug":"you-cant-stare-down-reality-population-collapse-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/you-cant-stare-down-reality-population-collapse-has-begun\/","title":{"rendered":"You can’t stare down reality: population collapse has begun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By: Louis T. March, originally published January 30, 2025, Mercator<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prodigious and profound \u2013 that\u2019s my take on a study just released by the prestigious McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), \u201cDependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study is a wake-up call for a world sleepwalking into unprecedented social upheaval. It examines\u201cimplications of a new demographic reality brought on by falling fertility and increasing longevity\u2026 reshaping global populations.\u201d This is not a forecast; it is unfolding as we speak. The implications are breathtaking. Humanity is on the cusp of precipitous and prolonged population collapse caused by an unprecedented decades-long birth dearth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MGI states the obvious: \u201c[F]ertility rates have fallen below the replacement rate required to maintain a stable population.\u201d Stable? Demographic instability<\/em> is the new reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falling fertility rates shift the demographic balance toward youth scarcity and more older people, who are dependent on a shrinking working-age population. Longer life spans accelerate the shift. This phenomenon has begun to play out across advanced economies and China, where in three-fifths of counties annual deaths already exceed births. Emerging economies have more runway, but they face the need to get richer before the demographic transformation sets in.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYouth scarcity and more older people\u201d means everything<\/em> is changing. Growth models and projections traditionally based on demographic stability<\/em>, reliant on baseline assumptions about human behaviour, values and preferences are now obsolete. Every aspect of human endeavour \u2013 productivity, consumption, pensions, politics \u2013 and the basic socio-economic paradigms heretofore taken for granted are mutating under the ineluctable arc of demography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humanity is drifting into uncharted waters. We\u2019ve endured population decline from war and disease but have never encountered a prolonged birth dearth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merely a generation ago, the notion of population collapse was unfathomable to most. Now demographers deem it inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, many dismiss warnings about the world running out of people. They attack the messengers as sensationalist gloom-and-doomers or pronatalist fanatics who care nothing for the environment and would force procreation by religious edict. Further, if something is projected to occur beyond the next election cycle there is scant public consciousness. Denial, the \u201cit\u2019ll never happen\u201d mentality prevails. Don\u2019t be fooled. Read the data. Per Arthur Schopenhauer: \u201cAll truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falling fertility rates are propelling major economies toward population collapse in this century. Two-thirds of humanity lives in countries with fertility below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family. By 2100, populations in some major economies will fall by 20 to 50 percent, based on UN projections.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world reached its maximum number of annual births in 2012, when 146 million babies were born, and the global number of births will continue to slowly decline.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Global North countries where total fertility rates (TFRs) have been below replacement level for at least 50 years, those population pyramid graphs are morphing into inverted obelisks because there are fewer children than senior citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waves of change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This demographic metamorphosis brings potentially paralysing social challenges. \u201c[T]he demographic shift will require society to rethink existing systems for work and retirement in ways that may compel a change in our social contract\u2014no easy feat.\u201d What politician wants to talk about that? As they say in America, kick the can down the road!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MGI presents global demographic metamorphosis as transpiring in three waves by tracking working-age (15-64) populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first wave, well underway, is in the Global North: Europe, the Anglosphere and East Asia. These regions were the first to see below-replacement fertility. Working-age people are 67 percent of the population (down from a 2010 peak of 70 percent) and rapidly declining. China\u2019s working-age population peaked in 2010; the US in 2007; Germany in 1986. That\u2019s one reason why Deutschland was flooded with migrants. It didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today 35 percent of world population is in the Global North. It will be less than 20 percent by century\u2019s end. The demographic dividend (a disproportionately large labour force) is gone for good. Robust economic growth will be a thing of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second wave has just begun in the Global South (excepting Sub-Saharan Africa). This includes Latin America, the Caribbean, India, the Middle East and North Africa. Average TFR is 2.2, just over the 2.1 replacement level and falling. Like the Global North, two thirds of their populations are of working age, though rising, expected to peak in the latter 2030s. The support ratio in India, the world\u2019s most populous country, is 9.8 working-age people for every retiree. It will be half that by mid-century and 1.9 by 2100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third wave? Sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sub-Saharan exceptionalism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

[In Sub-Sharan Africa] the average fertility rate is 4.4 today, and just 56 percent of the population is working age. This share will continue to grow, peaking at 66 percent well into the second half of the century, when the third wave of the demographic shift hits its shores.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that time, global population collapse will be well underway. However:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Sub-Saharan Africa\u2019s fertility rate is falling fast, almost 300 of the world\u2019s next thousand babies will be born there. Nigeria alone will become home to 57 of the next thousand\u2014or five more than the 52 born across Central, Eastern, and Western Europe combined.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2100\u2026 Sub-Saharan Africa will drive nearly all the growth in the share of the total population. In 1997, 11 percent of the global population lived in the region. This share increased to 16 percent in 2023 and is projected to climb to 23 percent in 2050 and 34 percent in 2100.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sub-Saharan Africa\u2019s median age is 19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will Africa cash in on the demographic dividend and become an economic powerhouse? Or will tribalism, corruption and failure to adapt hold them back? Some international corporations pass on operations in Africa for those reasons. Will the lure of cheap labour finally reel them in? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ageing gracefully? Fuggedaboutit!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Barring a radical TFR reversal, ageing societies are here to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[T]he global age mix is shifting. While many people call this phenomenon \u201caging,\u201d in fact the declining number of young people\u2014a youth deficit\u2014is driving the bulk of the demographic shift.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s median age is over 40. Japan is at 50, South Korea 45. Traditionally, East Asians are proud of their ancient civilizations and veneration of ancestors is baked into that. But the pronatalist lifestyle essential for civilizational survival is absent. Population is already declining in every \u201cAsian tiger\u201d economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe\u2019s median age is in the 40s, the US at 39. The West\u2019s attempt to at once suppress wages and stave off population decline with mass immigration hasn\u2019t worked. Socially engineered multiculturalism has failed, and social discord is soaring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior citizens will account for a quarter of global consumption by 2050. The global support ratio was 9.7 in 1997. It is 6.5 today, projected to be 3.9 by 2050. In first wave countries it is 3.9, projected at 2.0 by 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While we should continue combating the birth dearth, let\u2019s face it: our reality is decreasing fertility and a youth deficit that will sharply reduce the working-age component of societies across the globe. We\u2019re looking at a fundamentally different world on the horizon. Accept and plan accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here and there insular high-fertility communities of faith (Amish, Haredis, traditionalist Catholics) are resistant to this trend. Thus people of faith are a growing percentage of humanity. However, even in high-fertility sub-Saharan Africa TFRs are crashing. MGI:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absent swift and comprehensive action, younger workers today will inherit a weaker world economy, strained public retirement systems, and eroded wealth transfers between generations. Building resilience to this demographic transformation requires fundamental societal and economic shifts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no \u201cswift and comprehensive action\u201d on the horizon. Social contracts will be shredded. In living memory the world economy has been overheated all along, fuelled in large measure by those completely unnecessary though highly profitable world wars that built the military-industrial complex. We\u2019re on the cusp of yet another. Let us pray that the powers-that-be don\u2019t start World War III just to keep the lucre flowing. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Louis T. March\u00a0has a background in government, business, and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author, and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Louis T. March, originally published January 30, 2025, Mercator Prodigious and profound \u2013 that\u2019s my take on a study just released by the prestigious McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), \u201cDependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality.\u201d The study is a wake-up call for a world sleepwalking into unprecedented social upheaval. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nYou can't stare down reality: population collapse has begun - Cincinnati Right to Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/you-cant-stare-down-reality-population-collapse-has-begun\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You can't stare down reality: population collapse has begun - Cincinnati Right to Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By: Louis T. March, originally published January 30, 2025, Mercator Prodigious and profound \u2013 that\u2019s my take on a study just released by the prestigious McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), \u201cDependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality.\u201d The study is a wake-up call for a world sleepwalking into unprecedented social upheaval. 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