Many lessons to draw from the below fertility map of Nigeria. Fertility can & will fall fast in smartphone penetrated, changing values societies. Ghana, Kenya,South Nigeria etc will likely be below local replacement before 2040. Muslim Sub Saharan nations maybe not until 2050.

Does not take much economic development to reach a high level of mobile internet/smart phone penetration. But once a society gets to that point & former values are displaced, many see large families as holding them back so fertility plummets in the near total majority of cases.

Congressional Budget Office predicts natural decline is right around the corner for the United States. ~2030 deaths expected to outpace births for the first time in American history. The population is only expected to ⬆️ to ~364M by 2056 from 343M today.

This is a far cry from the estimates of almost 400 million Americans ~2050 we say just a decade ago. There are many perspectives on whether or not this is a bad thing. From my point of view the greatest concern is falling births (especially amongst the Middle Class).

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61994

American monthly casualties in the First World War were 35,626. Highest monthly casualties for the U.S. Armed Forces in its history. U.S. losses paled in comparison to those of the UK, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, & Italy. WWI wreaked enormous demographic damage.

Myanmar has lost 2.3 million emigrants to Thailand since 2021 coup ignited a Civil War (2M+additional Burmese emigrated pre 2021). Burma risks losing these assimilatable Buddhists to Thailand forever. However, Thai xenophobia may just push many back post war.

Myanmar also likely has below replacement fertility. So emigration ages the developing country faster.

https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/03/26/millions-of-burmese-struggle-to-find-safety-in-thailand

Thailand with its 68 million people is one of the largest countries in the world to fall below 0.85 TFR (3X Taiwan, 15M larger than South Korea). Its economy,pension scheme,& workforce are in for a wild ride.

Birth numbers for March for Thailand were just released. Despite an awful January showing a fall of almost 15% better birth figures in both February & March improved things a bit & births now down 10.8% in the first quarter of the year. TFR still on track to be sub 0.80 sadly.

Of all Central Asian countries here Turkmenistan is in worst shape. Mass emigration fuels population decline, horrifically bad governance also pushes. Tajikistan also has very high emigration but a TFR to partially make up for it. KZ has huge ethnic difference in fertility.

Uzbekistan falling fast but from 3.21 so it will likely not converge with KZ until 2028-2030. UZ also has a very decent population size & should just get to 50 million before plateauing. Kyrgyzstan may make it to 10 million before doing the same.

Back to Kazakhstan & the internal fertility differential. The fertility rate of ~3.0 for ethnic Kazakhs (~70% of the population) is roughly 3 times higher than the ~1.0 for ethnic Russians (15% of the population). This is based off of 2025 information from the Bureau of National Statistics of Kazakhstan

The fertility rate of Non Hispanic White Americans is higher than that of Mexico, the UK, Sri Lanka, Australia, Tunisia, Colombia, & Brazil to name a few. In 2025 having the largest U.S. race (191 million in size) with slightly increasing fertility rates above 1.5 is pretty significant.

https://x.com/birthgauge/status/2042261192433959239

The US is one of the only countries in the developed world where Gen Alpha will be larger than Gen X. Gen X cohort years saw an average of 3,431,913 births annually. So far the U.S. Gen Alpha cohort years has seen an average of 3,790,268 annual births. Politically significant.

While European Boomers & Xers will be able to impose their political will to a degree on Millennial, Zoomer, & Alpha for many more years, in the U.S. younger generations will have the numbers to push back on everything from taxes to immigration to foreign policy as soon as 2030.

The Ukrainian “births staircase” highlighting the demographic collapse there is truly horrific to behold.  While births were already on a very bad trajectory before the war the births & fertility collapse from 2022 has made things existential.  Unless at least half of the Ukrainian female core cohort (age 18-40) diaspora returns postwar its is hard to picture a national durvival scenario even with a TFR rebound.