New Delhi: The global panic over falling birth rates is recharged by new data—the average number of children born to a woman in two-thirds of 195 countries has fallen below the replacement rate, according to Financial Times. The reason? Most probably, our phones.
Replacement rate—number of child births a woman must go through to keep the population constant from one generation to the next without migration—is 2.1. According to the Financial Times report, it has fallen to one in 66 countries and even to zero in some countries.
As per the experts, it can cause demographic landsliding in the coming years. From the US, Japan, and South Korea, to Brazil, Tunisia, Iran, and Sri Lanka, the issue is now prominent in most countries of the world. As per the report, many developing countries now have lower fertility rates than much wealthier ones, which was not the case earlier.
“In 2023, Mexico’s birth rate fell below that of the US for the first time — as, subsequently, did those of Brazil, Tunisia, Iran and Sri Lanka. Lower- and middle-income countries are now getting old before they get rich,” said the report.
This could lead to the shrinking of workforces and the slowing of economic growth in countries. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a “leading researcher on the consequences of demographic change” said that all the major problems facing the world right now are caused by the fact that women aren’t having as many babies as they should be having.
It is the same story in India. The Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report for 2024, released earlier this month, stated that the total fertility rate (TFR) in the country fell below 1.9. What’s more worrying is that India’s replacement rate isn’t 2.1 like the rest of the world—it is actually higher than 2.15 because of femicide.
“Since fewer girls are born, more births per woman are required for population stability. But our TFR is likely to slide further,” read a Mint report.
“In 1985, India’s TFR was 4.3 and has fallen at a rate of about 0.06 per year and there is no sign that this decline will reverse. At the current pace, our TFR is projected to drop below 1.6 by 2031, America’s current level. By that point, the fertility gap relative to replacement will be so substantial that a headcount contraction in time to come would look unavoidable.”
The only states in India with a TFR higher than 2.1 in 2024 were Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh. The Mint report added that a clearer picture would be drawn once the Census is released next year.
Also read: Modi allies push for bigger families despite India’s 1.4-billion population
The dating disaster & online lifestyle
The main reason behind the falling birth rate is not that more people are opting to be childfree. It is because they aren’t finding partners to have children with.
“In previous decades, the world’s fertility rate went down because couples had fewer children. Now the main reason is that there are fewer couples,” read the Financial Times report.
And no, it is not because women are becoming more financially independent and finding fewer men to respect their agency. Reportedly, the decline in childbirths and mingling of people is actually “much steeper among those with the least education and lowest incomes.” Educated and wealthy people are marrying and having children more often.
It could be because, in this economy, young people are barely able to afford housing and are living with their parents. It definitely affects their dating prospects. However, this is still not the main reason. Even the fact that more women are outperforming men in academics and employment is cited as a cause for a “slow shift”—not the rapid decline in birth rate being witnessed globally currently.
In most countries around the world, the fall in birth rate started between 2007 and 2015, according to Financial Times analysis. It was during this period that more and more people started using smartphones.
“In country after country, the birth rate plunged after the introduction of smartphones, no matter what the previous trend was. The younger the age group, the more pronounced the downturn — a mirror image of smartphone usage patterns,” said the report.
The digital media environment has led to a “decline in romantic coupling,” according to Melissa Kearney, economics professor at the University of Notre Dame.
Since we don’t interact much with people IRL, our sense of reality and real people have become distorted.
“If you spend lots of time socialising with your peers in the real world, your standards [for a potential partner] are anchored in the real world. If you spend your time on Instagram, your standards are anchored to an artificial sense of what is normal,” said demographer Lyman Stone.