All countries will eventually experience population decline, it’s just the speed of each that is different [1]. Global fertility rate already appears to be below replacement rate. Even China appears to be below 1 at this time [2]. India and Africa will arrive there likely in the next ~5-10 years, depending on rate of empowerment of women.
People attribute it to empowerment of women, but I wonder if it's more correlation than causation. Women empowerment happened in the same time frame there was a large shift towards urbanization. The situation across the world before was like ~80% of people living in rural areas, and ~20% living in cities. Now those proportions are approximately flipped in many places. IIRC cities appear to be a net population sink for most of history, counting on an steady stream of people moving from the countryside each generation to replenish sub-replacement numbers. Raising children "free-ranging" is more straightforward in the countryside. In cities they demand a lot of micromanagement and resources from parents, because car-infested, cramped urban landscape is expensive and hostile to children. So perhaps the causation arrow flows from accelerated urbanization to both women empowerment and sub-replacement fertility rates, not necessarily from women empowerment to sub-replacement rates.
> Most demographers now say the population bomb has largely fizzled, and some predict that the long-term trend toward a smaller global population, with fewer consumers and a smaller human footprint on the planet, could benefit the environment.
> There appear to be other upsides to declining fertility. Along with growing individual freedom and economic empowerment of women, the U.N. study also found a rapid drop in the number of girls and teenagers giving birth.
> "The decline of the adolescent birth rates has been, I would say, one of the major success stories in global population health over the past three decades," said Vladimíra Kantorová, the U.N.'s chief population scientist.
(scholar of the global demographic system; urbanization is certainly a component in a declining fertility rate, but the primary driver is women choosing to have less children, delay having them, or not having them at all, while having the means to assert those choices)
> smaller human footprint on the planet, could benefit the environment.
This i highly doubt. Humans are able to increase per capita (resource) consumption at a far faster rate! Old age care/consumption can also grow to infinity
Remains to be seen, good longitudinal study over the next 100 years imho. Old age care/consumption isn’t infinite; it’s bounded by what will be provided via social systems or personal resources. If there’s nothing to give (or no personal resources on hand), it’s homelessness or poverty until death. Can’t spend what isn’t there.
> People attribute it to empowerment of women, but I wonder if it's more correlation than causation.
Before going to far down the rabbit hole, have a look at the fertility rate of TSMC employees. TSMC employees make up 0.3% of Taiwan’s population, they are responsible for 1.8% of all babies born in Taiwan. [0]
The average TSMC woman is highly educated and highly paid, which eliminates most of the usual reasons touted for low the fertility rates in OECD nations. "All" TSMC does is make it possible for their female employees to have a career and raise a family, mostly by providing child care in-house and flexible working hours.
To pull that off TSMC must have a culture than prioritizes families and child raising over profit. In most industries with not be possible. Either their higher costs would lead to them being eaten alive by their competitors, or bought out by PE because their employees could be squeezed to pay out more profit to their owners. There isn't going to be a rash of companies with TSMC style family policies breaking out any time soon.
But a government policy could made it happen, which is another way of saying if a society or country decided they didn't want to wither away to nothing because of low birth rates, it could be done. They could mandate every company adopts TSMC style policies, or they could raise taxes and provide free child care (like they do for education), or more likely some mix that has the same effect. Everyone would have to be willing to be a bit poorer of course, because you are forcing people to spend less on fast cars and big houses, and more of child care.
But does seem like it could be done, so if South Korea (or any of the OECD) had the will, there is a way.
> To pull that off TSMC must have a culture than prioritizes families and child raising over profit. In most industries with not be possible. Either their higher costs would lead to them being eaten alive by their competitors, or bought out by PE because their employees could be squeezed to pay out more profit to their owners. There isn't going to be a rash of companies with TSMC style family policies breaking out any time soon.
Israel has a fertility rate of 3 and is very advanced so not all countries. It’s a cultural thing. We’ve given up religion and values for doomscrolling and dopamine hits.
> In 2020, the total fertility rate among ultra-Orthodox women in Israel was 6.6, while the rate among Arab women was 3.0, and among secular women, it was 2.0— still well above the OECD average— according to a report from the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.
(dopamine and doomscrolling are just as bad as religion and traditional values, for different reasons, imho)
[1] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44851759