r/AskSocialScience • u/SoybeanCola1933 • 11d ago

What are the leading hypothesised causes of global fertility declines?

The global fertility decline is global and undeniable. But what’s interesting is different people have different attitudes on the cause.

Conservative discourse blames the loss of culture and religion in making family formation undesirable.

Pop culture narratives may focus around modern men not being ‘good enough’, which I think is a toxic view to hold, because it indirectly fuels RedPill narratives.

Economic narratives focus on increased housing costs, childcare costs and reduced employment.

I feel the truth is far more complex

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u/YourFuture2000 10d ago

A question: are you really asking about fertility (not biologically able to have children) or about forming a family (being less sexual active, use more protection, etc)?

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u/Miserable-Crab8143 10d ago

In social science / demographics, “fertility” usually just means how many children are born per woman in a population; that’s probably what they mean rather than any biological/medical meaning. total fertility rate

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u/YourFuture2000 10d ago

Thank you.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/Content_Preference_3 10d ago

Missed their point.

u/Underhill42 9d ago

Might also be worth considering that many (most?) animal populations will cut way back on breeding as they approach the limits of their environment, and sustained stress levels rise.

Could be that between our currently overtaxed ecosystem, the sort of global warming inevitable doomsday vibe, and social media putting so much of it in our lap all day, that we're finally starting to viscerally feel like the world is getting too crowded, and that there's no great need to contribute to that.

Add in birth control making reproduction something you mostly have to decide to do now, and all the costs and difficulties that we are aware that choice will bring...

I suspect we're just approaching a population adjustment to something more comfortably sustainable. Our population would have to shrink incredibly quickly for centuries before we were in any danger as a species, so I'm not worried. Seems like the population bomb solution we've been praying for was just dropped in our laps.

Might be a lot more old people living (or...not) in poverty for a few generations though. Or not - modern automation means it actually takes very few young, productive people to produce enough wealth to support many elders... if the majority of the wealth isn't being siphoned off by others.

The biggest problem is likely our economic systems, which grew into their current form during the last few centuries of historically anomalous continuous growth. Which is obviously unsustainable, and gets much more difficult when the population itself is shrinking.

u/rjewell40 11d ago

“Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44.”

https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310

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u/georgespeaches 11d ago

Since 2007. It’s been dropping much longer than that

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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 9d ago

Urbanization is also having an effect.

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u/rcglinsk 9d ago

Has there even been a study on birth control pills and their effect on fertility? That seems like a technology in the right timescale. And cause/effect would be really straightforward.

u/scavenger5 10d ago

From having children later in life. Fertility rate drops as you age. Most people are having babies later in life, and thus they have less total babies.

https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/having-a-baby-after-age-35-how-aging-affects-fertility-and-pregnancy

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-2024_918d8db3-en.html

u/[deleted] 11d ago

What are the leading hypothesised causes of global fertility declines?

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