Population decline and an ill-informed chorus

Demographic thinking has always been intertwined with public discourse and, at times, poorly interpreted. With every passing ‘Population Day’, we see a shifting discourse: from a Malthusian cry about runaway growth and ecological strain to an animated fear of fast-falling fertility rates.

The two sides

A rising chorus of voices is warning the world of population decline and civilisation “dwindling to nothing”. Yet, much of this alarmism is premature, analytically flawed, and ethically troubling. While there is no ambiguity that the fertility rate is falling, the implications drawn are often ill-informed. Pro-natalist movements are gaining currency among nation-states with varying degrees of urgency. For the last few years, the self-identified ‘demographer’ Elon Musk has been ‘concerned’ about falling birth rates and predicted a ‘population collapse’ within the next 20 years. The Musk Foundation even made its biggest donation to a higher education institution — about $10 million, to the University of Texas — to establish the ‘Population Wellbeing Initiative’.

Juxtaposed with Mr. Musk’s claims are the data by the United Nations World Population Prospects (WPP), released every two years. The world’s population is predicted to increase during the next 50 years, from 8.2 billion in 2024 to a peak of about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, according to WPP 2024. The world’s population is expected to steadily decline after a peak of 10.2 billion by the end of the century; 10.2 billion people is proof that the population collapse is a hoax, even though it is predicted that the world’s population in 2100 will be 6% smaller, or roughly 700 million fewer people than it was predicted 10 years ago.

A large portion of the alarmism misses two points. First, projections are not predictions. The underlying assumptions regarding future vital rates drive these projections — the farther the projection, the less accurate it is. Second, there is a lag effect in demographic change, in other words, the time lag between changes in vital rates (survival and reproduction) and their apparent implication on the age distribution and population size. When a population reaches below-replacement fertility (total fertility rate or TFR value of less than 2.1), it can continue to have increments for decades. This phenomenon is known as population momentum. In other words, growth is maintained because a significant portion of the reproductive-age population continues to produce children, albeit fewer than in the past. No population shrinks overnight or reaches stationarity (zero growth) linearly.

The ‘real fertility crisis’

In the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report, ‘The Real Fertility Crisis: The Pursuit of Reproductive Agency in a Changing World’ (2025), around 14,000 people from 14 countries were asked whether they ‘feel able’ to have children, to which one in five responded that they would not be able to have the number of children they desire. Nearly 23% of respondents desired having a child, which went unfulfilled at the preferred time.

And, 40% of these respondents ultimately had to forgo their desire to have a child. Irrespective of whether the surveyed country had higher or lower fertility rates, people are either over-/under realising their desired fertility, indicating ubiquitous barriers to achieving their ideal family size. When asked about the factors that influenced people to have fewer children than they desire, unsurprisingly, infertility (13%), financial limitations (38%), housing limitations (22%), lack of quality childcare (18%) and unemployment (21%) stood out for the Indian respondents. The Republic of Korea spent more than $200 billion to boost its population over the last 20 years. Ending a nine-year declining trend, for the first time births in South Korea are showing a slight rebound of 7.3% in the first quarter of 2025 when compared to the same period last year. This uptick in births seems to be backed by a rise in marriages and a positive outlook on marriage and children. Despite this optimistic trend, respondents in the Republic of Korea cite financial (58%) and housing limitations (31%) as factors leading them to have fewer children.

Need for societal changes

The panic over falling births and an ageing population has unjustly targeted women who have opted out of childbearing, curbing their rights to abortion and other means of contraception. The homogenisation of women as a single entity, shedding the idea of childbearing, is absurd. Most people want to have children, on average, around two, yet they are shut out of parenthood. It is a reminder that the focus should shift to those women who want to have children and are unable to do so — not to the ones who are voluntarily childless. Be that as it may, target-driven pronatalism, such as baby bonuses and one-off benefits, often reinstates traditional gender roles and ignores men’s contribution, and does more harm than good.

Countries facing declining fertility need to let go of their ethno-nationalist discourse and support significant societal changes in favour of women and families. The associated fear of a shrinking workforce should not be addressed through forcing women to have more babies, but through hiring them in the paid workforce and not penalising them for motherhood.

Devikrishna N.B. is Doctoral Fellow, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, International Institute for Population Sciences. Udaya Shankar Mishra is Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, International Institute for Population Sciences