We are in the throes of a global crisis, which touches every nation, threatens our economic prosperity, and if left unaddressed, could bring about the demise of the human species. Yet we have no agencies dedicated to responding to it, have invested no major funding into researching it, and almost never talk about it in the political sphere. This is the situation we face with regard to our declining fertility.

Birth rates across the developed world have fallen well below replacement levels and are not projected to rise or rebound in any meaningful way in the future. This means ageing societies, mounting fiscal strain, and, for many countries, shrinking populations.

Despite these enormous social and economic stakes, few institutions are talking about the fertility collapse. In the West, the governance infrastructure to respond to it simply doesn’t exist.

This contrasts starkly with how we have responded to other long-term threats. Climate change, for example, is discussed at every level of governance, from local councils to global treaties. It has dedicated agencies, major funding streams, and entire industries devoted to mitigating its effects. Climate concerns occupy a central place in media, politics, and academia. Fertility decline, by comparison, has attracted little sustained attention and few institutions dedicate any time or money at all to solving it. 

While the issue is finally beginning to draw more attention, for the past several decades it has been largely overlooked. When fertility trends do surface in mainstream discourse, those raising the alarm are often treated with suspicion or derision—fertility decline is portrayed as the concern of reactionaries or racists, rather than as a legitimate policy challenge worthy of serious engagement.

Given the way this issue has been neglected by mainstream media and institutions, it’s crucial to ask why it has taken so long for people to realise how important this is, especially since it poses such a serious long-term threat. Why were mainstream commentators, academics, policymakers, and journalists so late to this issue?

I would argue that the lack of widespread engagement with this topic is no accident—it is the product of three intersecting forces: societal structures that obscure demographic trends, knowledge-producing institutions warped by ideological blind spots, and social norms that make fertility a fraught, even taboo, subject.

Part of the confusion stems from a simple but powerful illusion: the global population is still growing. If we were truly facing a crisis, wouldn’t we see it in the numbers? 

But this is where conventional intuition misleads. The world’s population continues to rise not because we have healthy fertility rates, but because of demographic momentum—past generations were large, and their children are still moving through the system. Think of it like a rocket. Even after its engines cut out, a rocket continues to rise on the strength of its existing momentum. But the trajectory inevitably slows, plateaus, then falls.

So it is with fertility. Global birth rates have dropped well below replacement in the developed world and are falling rapidly elsewhere. The demographic “fuel” needed to sustain growth—or even just stability—has already been spent. We are coasting upward on inertia. The fall, when it comes, will be slow and uneven—but it is inevitable unless we change course.

Immigration has allowed developed nations to avoid confronting the implications of falling fertility rates and population decline. Young migrants have sustained many of our cities—economically, culturally, and demographically. They’ve kept service industries running, housing markets buoyant, and consumer demand strong. The result is a veneer of vitality that conceals the gradual erosion of native-born generational renewal.

This illusion is reinforced by how we measure economic health. National GDP continues to rise in many developed countries, creating the impression of prosperity. But per capita GDP—a better proxy for individual economic well-being—tells a different story. When growth is decoupled from demographic stability, metrics can obscure more than they reveal.

Migration can also suppress fertility not only in the places people move to, but also in the countries they leave behind. When young people move abroad for work, they often do so before they have married and formed families; many also leave their partners behind to follow years later. These years of separation disrupt the timing of marriage and childbearing, often leading to fewer children overall. Far from solving the fertility problem, migration can displace and diffuse it.

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There’s also a moral overlay that appears to justify immigration as the solution to demographic erosion. In elite circles, high immigration to the West is not just seen as economically beneficial—it’s perceived as inherently virtuous. By contrast, pronatalist policies are often coded as insular, traditionalist, or even ethnonationalist. This limits what can be discussed without stigma.

Conversations about fertility quickly intersect with politically sensitive topics—immigration restrictions, gender roles, and national identity. As a result, those who worry about falling birth rates are often caricatured, ignored, or shut down entirely. Rather than engage with the policy challenge on its merits, many people prefer to avoid the debate altogether.

The reticence extends beyond politics into the institutions that shape public knowledge. For decades, the dominant narrative has been that of overpopulation. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, published in 1968, warns of environmental collapse and global famine. Those predictions didn’t come to pass, but the narrative has cast a long shadow over the discourse. Many institutions still operate under the assumption that population growth is the real problem, rather than population decline.

Demographics also shape the way we think about this issue. Academia and think tanks are disproportionately staffed by highly educated professionals who are more likely to be childless or have smaller families. When the people producing research don’t view child-rearing as central to their own lives, it’s less likely to become a focus of institutional attention.

For others, encouraging higher birth rates in the West goes against the goal of “global justice.” Within many international frameworks, reproductive restraint in wealthy countries is framed as a developmental goal. What gets lost is any serious engagement with the social or economic costs of below-replacement fertility in the countries most affected.

If institutional inertia explains part of the silence, social norms explain much of the rest. Fertility touches on emotionally sensitive terrain—grief, loss, and unrealised hopes. For those who are involuntarily childless, discussions about declining birth rates can feel deeply personal. If you raise fertility as a public issue in a professional setting, you risk sounding intrusive or judgmental. The whole conversation makes people uncomfortable, so they avoid it.

Even in contexts where demographic decline is acknowledged—such as when people are discussing ageing populations or labour shortages—any mention of the role of declining fertility is often conspicuously absent. People are more willing to talk about migration or productivity than about why people aren’t having children.

Part of the problem is how fertility is framed. In most liberal democracies, having children is seen as a lifestyle choice—a private decision outside the realm of public concern. But fertility is not just a personal matter; it has public consequences. When too few people have children, the whole society feels the effects—in workforce shortages, rising dependency ratios, and the long-term decline of the human population.

Fertility decline is not merely a demographic curiosity—it is a structural challenge with civilisational implications. Immigration has papered over the cracks. Cultural elites have moralised one side of the debate and stigmatised the other. Institutions have inherited outdated population models. And emotional norms have rendered the issue too delicate to broach.

Addressing fertility decline will require more than new policies to incentivise childbearing—it will demand a cultural shift toward a more pronatalist society. We need to relearn how to see children not as burdens to be offset, but as bearers of continuity, care, and cultural inheritance. We must learn to speak of having children not just as a private milestone, but as a shared civic good. After all, can a modern, technologically advanced society be considered truly successful if it loses the will to reproduce itself across time?

In the end, children are the only reliable means we have of projecting human life, human consciousness, and human potential into the future. No machine, institution, or archive can do that. If we fail to make it not only possible but desirable to bear and rear children, we risk more than skewed labour ratios and bankrupt social security schemes. We risk a downward spiral for humanity from which we may never emerge. 

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