Our civilization is on a crossroad, nothing new there. Our values, even those which are foundations of our positive moral and ethical behavior, are being tested like never before.
In most of the world there are delayed milestones in lives of people. The socioeconomic circumstances are prolonging big decisions. One of them is starting a family. Most couples would like to live on their own when they want to start a family. Purchasing housing or renting one requires stable incomes, so most future parents decide to be accomplished professionals before doing that. Hence, most couples are deciding to start a family in their late 30’s or throughout their 40’s. This rather late creation of family, compared to the previous generations, is one of the reasons why couples have less children. 71% of world’s population lives in regions with fertility rates below 2.1 children per woman, which is below the replacement level.
The global average in total fertility rate is roughly 2.2 children per woman, barely above replacement level. What’s concerning is that there are serious regional disparities. The main drive in increase of population is focused in just two regions, 85% of all babies born in 2026 will come into the world in Asia (49%) and Africa (36%), mostly in underdeveloped countries. Europe, North America and Oceania will account together for only 8% of global births. Heavily industrialized and densely populated regions have some of the lowest native birth rates in the world.
The degradation of the living environment, tougher socioeconomic conditions, higher use of pesticides in food production, increase infertility in men and women alike. In up to 30% of cases, medical evaluation doesn’t reveal a definite medical cause, referred to as unexplained infertility.
The world demographics by age groups is heavily concentrated in the working age group, 65% of people account in the 15 – 64 years. Children and youth makes up for 24,5%, and the Elderly are 10,5%. The global median age is 31.1 years, which means that half of world population is under this age. These statistics echo a positive global population landscape. However, in some regions, such as Europe and East Asia the demographics are alarming, since the elderly population outnumbers the youth. These societies are aging and with it comes a heavier toll on the medical system, social services and brings pension funds into serious trouble, since the number of active working personnel per pensioner is getting lower year on year. In these countries, medical, social and pension systems need to undertake serious reforms and transformations to adapt to the new reality.
These generational changes in demographics influence socioeconomic circumstances in societies, starting from the family, which is a core part of society. Harder economic factors starting from COVID and further amplified by the Cost of living crises, mean that many parents need to work multiple jobs to cover end-to-end decent living conditions for their families. This influences the functioning and the cohesion of the family itself.
The educational system is watering down, widespread digitalization caused an opposite effect in education. There’s a serious drop in basic abilities: reading, writing, spelling, simple math calculations. Additional tutoring is expensive and can be afforded by higher earning classes. Parenting, education and safe upbringing of children has become ever so harder.
The family as the harbor of core values in a society is slowly failing. It’s importance in the society is getting marginalized. This influences not just the demographics of societies, but also their functioning as a whole. All analyses point that if the world population starts to drop, it won’t end at a certain point, it’ll continue to drop further. This will impact the entire humanity and threaten our existence.
