Declining fertility
We are having fewer children. Speaking at a BNY Mellon event in 2023, Camilla Cavendish, former head of the policy unit for UK government, highlighted that almost every country in the world outside of sub-Saharan Africa is seeing fertility rates fall.
The world fertility rate has been falling since the 1970s. In 2020 it stood at 2.3, only slightly above the rate needed to allow one generation to replace itself. In the 1960s it was 4.7. (Source Visual Capitalist April 2023)
“This is the first time in human evolution this has happened,” explained Cavendish. “We have spent decades worrying about a population growth time bomb and its impact on the climate. Now, almost overnight, we are beginning to worry about the opposite.”
While fertility rates remain a crucial concern, Cavendish stresses that there should be more focus on how to reframe age and ‘life eras’ more generally.
“The changing ratio of young to old people in the world means that we’re going to have to rethink pretty much everything,” she said. Jobs and retirement funding are among the critical areas to re-evaluate, she added.