“Childless couples reach ‘alarming’ level” | Paul Yip

There's an interesting pod by John Anderson with Louise Perry discussing the issue of declining birth rates globally. Louise says there's only 3% of countries where the birth rates are not declining . That includes places like India and Bangladesh where birth rates are also declining. 

Many people (David Attenborough) think this is a good thing. "We have too many people!" Demographers say that when you get into a downward trend it can lead to a death spiral. 

Monika Lam, highlight above, says we need a "holistic approach" to getting the rate back up — it's now well below replacement at just 772 babies per 1,000 women — but experience elsewhere suggests that's really difficult. Even in China. Where it was easy, kind of, to reduce population growth by the horrid One Child Policy, but where they're finding it difficult to bring the rates back up now they realise they're going to get old before they get rich. 

Sent from my iPad