Finnish policymakers seem to have made the decision to go Canada lite to resolve their demographic crisis. Finnish TFR currently lowest low (below 1.3) & annual net immigration higher than annual births.

Situation in Spain, Greece, Romania, Italy completely untenable. All their populations currently in natural decline & this youth unemployment will do two things: keep the fertility rate low, encourage further emigration for young people. https://x.com/spectatorindex/status/1754079137135022355?s=46&t=4B1VZvcCmqy_LsZnd1cuig

Ghana TFR probably ~3.5. It was ~5.0 in 2000, ~4.0 in 2015 & ~3.75 in 2018. By 2030 it will be ~2.75 at this rate & replacement before 2040 if smartphone proliferation+education improvement trends continue. Well ahead of all forecasts. Anyone saying Africa immune was foolish.

🔗 Link

No regions will be spared obviously. By 2050 the only countries with TFR ~3.0 or higher will be Niger (maybe), Mali, Israel, Somalia, Afghanistan (maybe), & maybe 4-5 others.

Armenian birth numbers out. Births fell by an extremely slight amount (0.2%) with TFR still above 1.75. Neighboring rival Azerbaijan will likely see births fall by more than 7% & TFR fall to below 1.6. One of a very small # of areas where Armenia is outperforming Azerbaijan.

France in 2023, despite its substantial fall in births and fertility rate, still enjoyed a higher TFR than the United States. France was on 1.675 while the US will probably end up on ~1.63. Immigrant birthrates are an equal factor in both countries.

High immigrant fertility (particularly amongst undocumented Latam immigrants)in the US is similar to high TFRs of immigrants to France from North Africa. & both France and the US see children of immigrants have their TFR levels converge rapidly with the non immigrant population.

Italy likely ran a deficit of 5.3% in 2023 & will run one of 4.3% in 2024. Italian bond yields are nearly 5%. Net public debt was 144% of GDP in 2022 & they have an absolutely terrible demographic situation. Italy could very easily produce a fiscal crisis that threatens the EU.

The Year of the Dragon 🐉began on February 10th 2024. If February, March & April birth numbers are not at least 7% above those of the same months of 2023 then I think we can obviously begin to conclude that the Dragon Year has lost a lot of cultural resonance for births compared to 2012 year when births⬆️10%+.

For the record I fully expect a 7-10% year on year⬆️in births from February 2024-January 2025 on average. If this doesn’t happen then we have witnessed a major cultural shift which will also be visible in the scale of the⬆️in births we are likely to see to Chinese Malaysians, Singaporeans, mainland Chinese etc.

Even the Year of the Dragon won’t help Malaysian Chinese avoid demographic death. Due to extremely low (sub 1.0) TFR and high emigration Chinese Malaysian births have plummeted from 114,000 during the 2000 Year of the Dragon to just 40,000 in 2022. A 10-15% boost in births this year won’t do much.

The Congressional Budget Office’s TFR forecasts for the United States are extremely optimistic. They see TFR increasing from this year onward and eventually returning to 1.7 by 2035. Based on current trends what is a bit more likely is TFR declining to ~1.5 and then gradually rising to ~1.6 by 2035.

Government spending on pensions as a % of GDP will double (and in some cases triple) for many of the countries on this list. Defense, health, & education spending will have to adjust to the new reality. Spain+Italy may never meet the 2% of GDP on defense target.

As the elderly become decisive segments of the electorate it will be next to impossible to trim pension+other entitlement spending. Situation in many countries(such as South Korea,Taiwan,& Singapore)is set to get exponentially worse. Tough times ahead for overtaxed working age.

IMHO much of the original global decline in births can be explained by the spillover effect. During the 1960s+70s overpopulation alarmism drove many couples to ⬇️their # of children. This led others to follow suit, helping to explain plunging developed world TFR from 1969-1980.

The origins of the larger recent global decline (particularly in the developed world) is also due to the spillover effect. These is simply no longer a culture in most countries that says having large families is a societal good. Sure most governments now promote children but not large families.

Thus when people see that most in their community & country have smaller families of ~2 kids (and that having no kids has no real social or other stigma) they opt for smaller families too. In some places (like the ROK) the spillover effect leads to micro families being the norm.

So can there be a reverse spillover effect that brings back large families? Of course! & at some point (likely decades down the road) there will be. Those children of families which opted for more children will at some point predominate and the cycle will change.