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.

TLDR version:Individuals have less control over family size than they think. If most of someone’s friends,family+neighbors have~2 kids then chances of them having a big family are small. The reverse is true as well. Culture drives this obviously (10% will go against the grain).

Germany is highly likely to have seen fewer than 700,000 births in 2023. Their TFR will be sub 1.4. The lowest levels for over a decade despite Germany’s population growing due to largish levels of immigration. Germany turning Canadian with high immigration and very low TFR?

The German SPD is going to go extinct due to demographics. Since 2000 party membership has fallen by ~half to just 365,000. Of those remaining members a whopping 57% are over 60 years old. SPD going the way Mason Lodges did in the United States.

During 2023, the population of Spain grew by 508,000, or 1.06%. The strong growth was mostly driven by immigration from Latin America.

This mass migration may lead to population implosion 30 years down the road (when there are no longer masses from Latam who want to emigrate to replace those retiring). Also if they have low TFR (& Spanish Natl TFR hovers around 1.0)expect aging almost as fast as South Korea.

Belarusian births crashing. Births were apparently ~65,000 in 2023 compared to the previous record low of 73,906 in 2022 & ~119,000 in 2015. The cohort giving birth now (which was mostly born from 1996-2006) is also very small. That is likely a major driver of the⬇️in births along with emigration of young Belarusians.

https://t.co/9gCgUlW3MB

🇬🇷👶Like most countries reporting births in January so far Greece is up on 2023. Births for January 2024 are up more than 4% over January 2023. Expect we will see increases year on year in most countries in 2024 as 2023 was almost universally bad in developed countries for births.

This graphic clearly shows how demographics will drive major economic change. China will lose a whopping 216 million working-age people between now & 2050. Europe to lose well over 50 million, Japan & South Korea a combined 30 plus million, & Brazil+Chile 5 million. The big gains will be in the Indian subcontinent, parts of the Middle East, & Africa. Seismic change.