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Analysis and Humans

Why falling birth rates will be a bigger problem than overpopulation

Nearly every country is predicted to have a birth rate that is too low to maintain its population by 2100, which may result in too few people of working age

By Clare Wilson

20 March 2024

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The cost of housing and fertility treatments may deter people in high-income countries from having children

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Think of global population problems and you might think of the growing number of people in the world – currently about 8 billion – and our collective toll on the planet. But due to people having fewer children as countries become more prosperous, the real demographic problem may turn out to be falling populations.

Projecting from current trends, demographers have now predicted that, within about 25 years, three-quarters of countries will have birth rates that are too…

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