Falling Fertility Rates Are Unsustainable

Many of our ruling class are fluent in “sustainability.” They want to build resilient and “sustainable” practices for ranching or fishing, for energy production, and for data centers. And yet, there has been widespread denial of the fact that human population figures are rendering our entire way of life unsustainable.

The figures used by the U.N. to estimate falling fertility rates are built on overoptimistic assumptions. It’s hard-coded into their data sets that no nation can have a fertility rate that dips below 0.5 per woman. It’s also built into their assumptions that the fertility rate in every nation will bounce back long before it dips that low, or that it will simply stabilize. For instance, the U.S. fertility rate has declined from 2.1 to 1.6 since 2008, but the U.N. predicts that we will stay at 1.6 for the rest of the decade. Early results show that we’re continuing to fall at least as rapidly as we have the past decade.

About the Author

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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Many of our ruling class are fluent in “sustainability.” They want to build resilient and “sustainable” practices for ranching or fishing, for energy production, and for data centers. And yet, there has been widespread denial of the fact that human population figures are rendering our entire way of life unsustainable.

The figures used by the U.N. to estimate falling fertility rates are built on overoptimistic assumptions. It’s hard-coded into their data sets that no nation can have a fertility rate that dips below 0.5 per woman. It’s also built into their assumptions that the fertility rate in every nation will bounce back long before it dips that low, or that it will simply stabilize. For instance, the U.S. fertility rate has declined from 2.1 to 1.6 since 2008, but the U.N. predicts that we will stay at 1.6 for the rest of the decade. Early results show that we’re continuing to fall at least as rapidly as we have the past decade.