The Fight to Revive Europe’s Shrinking Rural Areas
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The Incredible Global Birth Crash
AI Summary. Israel is the only wealthy democracy where fertility has risen over the past generation, reaching a total fertility rate of 3.0, driven entirely by Jewish fertility growth; secular Jewish Israelis average nearly 2 births per woman—2x the rate of secular Jewish Americans.
Nicholas Eberstadt and Patrick Norrick American Enterprise Institute- Date Posted:
The rise in Israeli Jewish fertility is an exception to the collapse across advanced economies. TFR is 1.9 among secular Jews, 2.1–2.7 among traditional Jews and 3.7 among Dati Jews. Eberstadt suggests mimetics—social imitation—may help explain it.
Why is fertility rising in one wealthy democracy while falling everywhere else?
[Israel is] the lone affluent democracy where national fertility (estimated TFR) actually rose over the past generation (albeit slightly—from 2.9 in 1991 to 3 in 2021). This was powered wholly by a rise in Jewish fertility, from about 2.6 births per woman in 1995 to 3.1 in 2024. In 2022–24 fertility in Israel was over 20% higher for Jews than Muslims. Much has been made of Israel’s extraordinarily prolific Haredi community and its six-plus-children-per-woman estimated TFR. But fertility for the rest of Israeli Jewry is unique for modernity too. For secular, natural-religious and traditional Jews combined, the current average TFR is about 2.5 births per woman. And for secular Israeli Jews, per se, it is almost two births per woman.Related Articles:
- Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World — Global fertility has fallen below replacement level, meaning population will peak at roughly 9 billion around 2056 and then decline, driven by large existing generations masking the underlying shortfall in births.
- Depopulation Globally and in the Asia-Pacific: The Shape of Things to Come — Nicholas Eberstadt warns that depopulation will stress families as smaller families “become ever less able to bear weight—even as the demands that might…
- The Worldwide Fertility Crash Is Bringing Countries Back to Pre-Industrial Birth Levels — Japan's birth count has fallen below levels recorded over 150 years ago, with 2024 births at roughly 686,000 — less than 25% of the 1947 peak and lower than figures from the earliest available records.
Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World
AI Summary. Global fertility has fallen below replacement level, meaning population will peak at roughly 9 billion around 2056 and then decline, driven by large existing generations masking the underlying shortfall in births.
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Patrick Norrick University of Pennsylvania- Date Posted:
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The UN appears to systematically overestimate births; e.g. 33 of 37 countries with high-quality statistics registered fewer births in 2024 than the UN had forecast. Fernández-Villaverde and Norrick infer humanity is below replacement fertility in 2026.
Will declining birth rates eventually shrink the global economy?
Core argument: Global fertility has fallen below replacement level as of 2026, ending humanity’s ability to sustain long-run population stability without a reversal in trends.
In Table A1 we compare the World Population Prospects (WPP) estimates of births in 2022-2023 with the official numbers reported by several countries. [A2 shows the full sample with the deviations.] As of 2026, humanity is likely to be below the replacement fertility level: we are having fewer births than we need to keep population constant in the long run. This astonishing fact does not mean that population has stopped growing. Because of momentum effects (the large cohorts of women born two or three decades ago are having their children now, and their own parents have not died yet), world population will keep growing for another 30 years or so. But unless trends change, it will peak at roughly 9 billion around 2056 and then start falling, first slowly, then fast.Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI
- Global fertility has fallen below replacement level as of 2026, ending humanity’s ability to sustain long-run population stability without a reversal in trends.
- Population momentum—driven by large cohorts of women now in peak childbearing years—will sustain growth for roughly 30 more years before world population peaks at approximately 9 billion around 2056 and begins declining.
Related Articles:
- The Demographic Future of Humanity: Facts and Consequences — The world’s 2024 total fertility rate (TFR) was likely ~2.17, below the replacement rate of 2.21, notes Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, intensifying…
- Depopulation Globally and in the Asia-Pacific: The Shape of Things to Come — Nicholas Eberstadt warns that depopulation will stress families as smaller families “become ever less able to bear weight—even as the demands that might…
- The Wealth of Working Nations — Japan achieved GDP growth per working-age adult of 31.9% between 1998 and 2019, slightly faster than the US at 29.5%. @King_ofSweden
The Worldwide Fertility Crash Is Bringing Countries Back to Pre-Industrial Birth Levels
AI Summary. Japan's birth count has fallen below levels recorded over 150 years ago, with 2024 births at roughly 686,000 — less than 25% of the 1947 peak and lower than figures from the earliest available records.
Nicholas Eberstadt American Enterprise Institute- Date Posted:
China’s total births in 2025 were about on par with those of the Qing Dynasty in the 1750s. Japan’s 2025 births were on par with those of the Tokugawa shogunate in the late 1600’s.
Is the global fertility collapse reversing a century of population growth?
Core argument: Japan’s 686,000 births in 2024 represent barely one-quarter of the 1947 peak of 2.7 million and fall below the country’s 1873 baseline, erasing more than 150 years of demographic growth.
The admirable Human Mortality Database, pioneered by researchers at Berkeley and Rostock, Germany, offers careful reconstructions of such historical birth numbers for dozens of developed countries. We can use their figures for our comparisons. Start with Japan. By 2024, the Japanese birth level was barely a quarter of its peak in 1947, 77 years earlier (686,000 vs. over 2.7 million). But Japan’s 2024 level was also significantly lower than the corresponding total for 1873—over 150 years earlier, at the dawn of the Meiji era, when Japan first started gathering such numbers. And remember—fertility levels around the world are still falling.Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI
- Japan’s 686,000 births in 2024 represent barely one-quarter of the 1947 peak of 2.7 million and fall below the country’s 1873 baseline, erasing more than 150 years of demographic growth.
- Fertility decline across developed economies has returned birth totals to pre-industrial levels, and the trajectory continues to fall.
Related Articles:
- Depopulation Globally and in the Asia-Pacific: The Shape of Things to Come — Nicholas Eberstadt warns that depopulation will stress families as smaller families “become ever less able to bear weight—even as the demands that might…
- The Demographic Future of Humanity: Facts and Consequences — The world’s 2024 total fertility rate (TFR) was likely ~2.17, below the replacement rate of 2.21, notes Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, intensifying…
- Baby Busts and Growth Booms: Demographic Change and the Macroeconomy — Cross-country evidence from 1950 to 2020 shows that a 1pp lower birth rate is associated with 22 log points (~25%) higher GDP per worker 40 years later and 29…
The U.S. Mortality Crisis as a Preston Curve Reversal
AI Summary. After 2010, U.S. life expectancy stagnated or declined despite continued income growth, reversing a decades-long pattern in which rising income reliably produced longer lives. The breakdown was also unequal: the gap in life expectancy between richer and poorer places widened, meaning income increasingly predicted longevity outcomes more strongly across locations.
Ritikaa Khanna, Rourke O'Brien, Andrew Stokes, Atheendar Venkataramani, et al. National Bureau of Economic Research- Date Posted:
Between 2010 and 2019, states and counties became richer, but did not experience the commensurate longevity gains seen btw 1980 and 2009. This is not “because income, education, wealth, or insurance coverage simply moved in the wrong direction.”
Does rising income still guarantee longer lives in America?
Core argument: After 2010, U.S. states and counties continued accumulating real per capita income yet recorded stagnant or declining life expectancy, breaking the classic Preston-curve pattern that held consistently from 1980 through 2010.
Figure 1 shows Preston curves relating life expectancy to log real per capita income across U.S. states and counties. Among states, the curves follow the classic pattern from 1980 through 2010: states became richer and longer-lived [as did counties from 2000 to 2010]. That pattern changed after 2010. Between 2010 and 2019, states and counties continued to become richer, but the curves did not shift upward: resource accumulation continued, but commensurate longevity gains did not. The post-2010 period involved both decoupling and divergence: rising income no longer translated into broad longevity improvement, and places became more unequal in their capacity to convert aggregate resources into longer lives. Figure 4 asks a simple counterfactual question: if earlier covariate–life expectancy relationships had persisted, how much life expectancy would later years have achieved, given the actual changes in these covariates? Together, the decomposition results sharpen the central interpretation. The 2010s mortality crisis did not occur because income, education, wealth, or insurance coverage simply moved in the wrong direction. In many respects, aggregate socioeconomic conditions improved. Instead, what changed was the relationship between those conditions and longevity. The United States became less successful at converting collective resources into population-level longevity gains.Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI
- After 2010, U.S. states and counties continued accumulating real per capita income yet recorded stagnant or declining life expectancy, breaking the classic Preston-curve pattern that held consistently from 1980 through 2010.
- The post-2010 Preston-curve reversal is distributional as well as aggregate: steeper curves across states and counties signal widening inequality in the capacity to convert income gains into longevity.
Related Articles:
- The Geography of American Exceptionalism — An analysis of census data finds residents of the mean “prosperous” (top-quintile) county live 5.3 years longer than those in the mean “distressed”…
- Comments On: “Accounting For the Widening Mortality Gap Between American Adults With and Without a BA” By Anne Case and Angus Deaton — Caroline Hoxby argues that Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s recent findings on the divergence btw Americans with a BA and those without is largely driven by…
- Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap Between American Adults With and Without a BA — As of 2021, US adults with a college degree have a life expectancy at age 25 on par with Japan, but US adults without a BA have a life expectancy that’s 8.5…
Americans Are Done With Being Put in Racial Boxes
AI Summary. Intermarriage across racial and ethnic lines is rising across all major demographic groups in the United States, producing a growing share of the population that does not fit neatly into any single government-defined racial or ethnic category.
Justin Fox Bloomberg- Date Posted:
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Less than half of Americans < 29 years old are non-Hispanic whites. As of 2020, 33.8mm Americans – 10.2% of the population – identify as being of two or more races, largely driven by intermarriage between whites and either Hispanics or Asian Americans.
Is the traditional racial classification system becoming obsolete?
Core argument: Post-1960s immigration from Asia and Latin America is the primary driver of rising U.S. demographic diversity and the declining non-Hispanic White population share.
The increase in immigration from Asia and Latin America since the 1960s has been the chief driver of the rise in diversity and decline in the non-Hispanic White share of the population. But those immigrants have been doing what generations of immigrants before them did and, well, becoming Americans. Marriages across racial and ethnic lines are much more prevalent among Hispanic and Asian Americans than Black or non-Hispanic White Americans, while intermarriage rates have been rising steadily for the latter two groups, too. As a result, a growing share of Americans just isn’t going to fit neatly into any single racial or ethnic category that the US government can come up with.Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI
- Post-1960s immigration from Asia and Latin America is the primary driver of rising U.S. demographic diversity and the declining non-Hispanic White population share.
- Intermarriage rates among Hispanic and Asian Americans exceed those of Black and non-Hispanic White Americans, expanding a multiracial population that no single government racial category can accurately capture.
Related Articles:
- Do Adults Have the Skills They Need to Thrive in a Changing World? — The 2023 OECD Survey of Adult Skills reveals the US has ~ 3 low-scorers for every high-scorer. Germany has nearly 3X as many high-scorers per low-scorer as the…
- Do Past Wealth Gaps Explain Modern Inequality? Evidence From Immigration To The United States — European immigrants who arrived with nearly no wealth converged to similar wealth levels as earlier European settlers within a few generations, while Black, Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican households remained substantially behind, indicating that initial wealth gaps do not uniformly predict long-run inequality across all groups.
- America’s Immigration Mess: An Illustrated Guide — The US foreign-born population reached 51.4mm, or 15.4% of the population in 2024, Nicholas Eberstad notes, surpassing the prior peak of 14.8% set in 1890.
The Pig In The Python: US Decennial Labor Flows And Economic Opportunity, 1910–2040
AI Summary. A surge in labor force entrants during the 1970s created a persistent worker glut that suppressed wages and hiring demand for decades, as the oversupply remained embedded in the workforce until retirement rather than dissipating at entry.
Steven Ruggles Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences- Date Posted:
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Accounting for both inflows and the overhang of previous labor market entrants, Ruggles predicts a labor shortage such that “Americans born in the 2020s might be the first cohort in a half century that earns significantly more than their parents did.”
Does a one-time labor surge create permanent wage pressure?
Core argument: Baby-boom labor-force entry during 1960–1980 suppressed young-worker wages, which declined sharply after peaking in 1973, reducing economic opportunity for new.
Figure 3A highlights the influx of workers that occurred between 1960 and 1980, as the large baby-boom cohort entered the labor force, female labor-force participation expanded, and immigration rose [see Figure 2 for a detailed breakdown]. It was difficult for the economy to absorb all the new workers, and wages for young people declined sharply after peaking in 1973. Figure 3A does not, however, provide a valid measure of labor-market competition because the baby boomers and newly employed women and immigrants did not suddenly vanish after they entered the labor force; they kept working and occupying jobs until they eventually retired decades later. The glut of workers entering the labor force in the 1970s would continue to stifle demand for new workers until their eventual exit from the labor force, a process that is still in progress. The index of employment competition shown in Figure 3B is [a better] measure of relative cohort size than 3A. It represents the cumulative net labor-market entries over the previous five decades as a % of the working-age population in the current decade. As shown in Figure 1C, we are already seeing signs of an uptick in the wages of young workers, and as the demographic shortage accelerates we may finally see real wages of the young exceed the levels of the early 1970s.Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI
- Baby-boom labor-force entry during 1960–1980 suppressed young-worker wages, which declined sharply after peaking in 1973, reducing economic opportunity for new.
- Cumulative labor-market entries over five decades as a % of working-age population drives employment competition that persists decades after initial.
- Female labor-force participation expansion and immigration during 1960–1980 created a sustained worker glut that stifled demand for new employment until.
Related Articles:
- Baby Busts and Growth Booms: Demographic Change and the Macroeconomy — Cross-country evidence from 1950 to 2020 shows that a 1pp lower birth rate is associated with 22 log points (~25%) higher GDP per worker 40 years later and 29…
- Technology and the Baby Bust Paradox — Aging societies face structural labor shortages that create permanent incentives to automate, making demographics a long-run driver of AI deployment. Technology-producing economies benefit twice: by offsetting domestic labor scarcity and by exporting automation solutions to every other aging society.
- Can A Depopulating America Still Flourish? — Eberstadt finds as of the summer of 2025 ~7mm American men 25–54 were not in the labor force. Despite record high prime age female LFP, ~3.5mm prime age women…