Falling fertility has taken much of the urgency out of the debate about population growth, at least among experts, since it seems to be solving the problem of excessive births (a view criticised by Mr May, who points out that even if fertility has declined, the momentum of change means populations will go on rising for a while).
Already, several European nations have fertility rates even more modest than Japan's (though they still have a lower ratio of elderly, due to shorter life spans).
When the cohort born roughly in the years between 1993 and 2005 enters prime child-bearing years, there is going to be a pretty significant decline in the crude birth rate even if the total fertility rate (TFR) continues to move modestly higher.
Mu Guangzong of Renmin University of China in Beijing says that even without it the fertility rate in big cities would only be around 1.5, well below the replacement threshold (but higher than 1.0 as it now is in Beijing and Shanghai).
Africa's population is still growing, remember, even if more slowly because fertility is falling.
But even with such disclosure, the fertility case differs in another important way.
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The United States has, thankfully, not experienced either a mortality surge or a fertility plunge that are even remotely comparable to those experienced by Russia during its transition from communism.
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Even more controversial has been the suggestion that male fertility could be improved by correcting the varicocele by surgery.
And even after that, he adds, Okkhoy will need the help of a fertility doctor to successfully procreate.
Even within supposedly decadent and corrupt Europe, there are very large variations both in fertility patterns and in economic dynamism.
Even if you exclude that region, the sub-Saharan part includes areas of relatively low fertility such as southern Africa, where families of three prevail.
They knew that China's fertility rate, or the average number of children born to each woman, was in decline even before the one-child policy began in 1980.
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