From your last paragraphs, feels like Brazil and Peru are especially vulnerable as neither of the main factions is particularly enamored with democracy
«The cause (or causes) of these declining birthrates continues to attract significant attention. Of particular interest is how uniform the trend has been. Birthrates are falling in rich and poor countries alike, while political programs championed by both the left and right have struggled to nudge these back up.»
The cause is actually quite simple but "we do not speak about that" because it is politically incorrect because it is based on the fact that strong, independent women make rational decisions about their welfare:
* Traditionally women (and most men) worked outside the money economy so their main way to invest in pension assets was "in kind" that is their sons were their pension assets ("tiger moms").
* When they have the option to work and be paid in money and then be able to save money in some financial assets they switch their pension assets from sons to financial assets (property, investment accounts, ...) because bearing and raising sons is both more dangerous and risky.
* As "The Economist" noted several years ago that means that when women work for money then children switch from being a necessary investment to expensive discretionary consumption (children become hobbies) in competition with other discretionary consumption options like a better car, a kitchen remodeling, nicer holidays, ...
So the way to get natality rates up is to make an expensive hobby a cheap hobby, by providing state funded and generous maternity leave, ginecological care, nurseries, child health care, schooling; but the main opponents of all that are women who do not
care about that hobby and do not want themselves or their husbands to fund the child bearing and raising of other women.
But there is a very important additional argument: some women have a genetic inheritable drive to have children, rather than an obsolete utilitarian motivation, and will continue to have children even if they can afford financial pension assets. Since only these women will continue to have daughters and their daughters will inherit their genetic drive to have children eventually most women will have such a genetic drive and there will be a natality boom.
A recent joke: "sterility is hereditary: if you are sterile all your children will also be sterile and all your grandchildren too". It is a very profound insight.
«In the United States and Europe, demographics and their discontents have led some to decry “Total Boomer Luxury Communism” a concept coined in a 2025 article by Russ Greene for the American Mind. As Greene puts it “The essence of [Total Boomer Luxury Communism] is that it redistributes wealth from younger families and workers to seniors, who are on average much richer.”»
The concept is not so new, even if the label is catchy:
http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/index4.html “It’s fine to be unconcerned that the rich are getting richer, but blind to deny that middle-class wages have stagnated or worse over the past dozen years. In the aftershock of 2008, large numbers of Americans feel exploited and abused. Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservativism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation.”
BTW it is important to note that the "baby-boom generation" in the Rust Belt and similar areas has been shafted (lost their union jobs, lost the valuation of their houses) as hard by the other baby-boomers as the younger generations.
Great piece. I wonder where Datawrapper got its numbers: two children and change for Guatemala is low. Was this an urban count or did they gather nationwide?
Many thanks for your comment! I pulled the birthrate data from the UN Population Division Data Portal and as best I can tell it should reflect the total national average for 2024
And who knows where the U.N. got it from: they're not exactly famous for getting out into the local populace in Guatemala, unless it's a photo opp. But who knows!
From your last paragraphs, feels like Brazil and Peru are especially vulnerable as neither of the main factions is particularly enamored with democracy
Excellent piece! And a great resource with the graphs :)
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the piece!
«The cause (or causes) of these declining birthrates continues to attract significant attention. Of particular interest is how uniform the trend has been. Birthrates are falling in rich and poor countries alike, while political programs championed by both the left and right have struggled to nudge these back up.»
The cause is actually quite simple but "we do not speak about that" because it is politically incorrect because it is based on the fact that strong, independent women make rational decisions about their welfare:
* Traditionally women (and most men) worked outside the money economy so their main way to invest in pension assets was "in kind" that is their sons were their pension assets ("tiger moms").
* When they have the option to work and be paid in money and then be able to save money in some financial assets they switch their pension assets from sons to financial assets (property, investment accounts, ...) because bearing and raising sons is both more dangerous and risky.
* As "The Economist" noted several years ago that means that when women work for money then children switch from being a necessary investment to expensive discretionary consumption (children become hobbies) in competition with other discretionary consumption options like a better car, a kitchen remodeling, nicer holidays, ...
So the way to get natality rates up is to make an expensive hobby a cheap hobby, by providing state funded and generous maternity leave, ginecological care, nurseries, child health care, schooling; but the main opponents of all that are women who do not
care about that hobby and do not want themselves or their husbands to fund the child bearing and raising of other women.
But there is a very important additional argument: some women have a genetic inheritable drive to have children, rather than an obsolete utilitarian motivation, and will continue to have children even if they can afford financial pension assets. Since only these women will continue to have daughters and their daughters will inherit their genetic drive to have children eventually most women will have such a genetic drive and there will be a natality boom.
A recent joke: "sterility is hereditary: if you are sterile all your children will also be sterile and all your grandchildren too". It is a very profound insight.
«In the United States and Europe, demographics and their discontents have led some to decry “Total Boomer Luxury Communism” a concept coined in a 2025 article by Russ Greene for the American Mind. As Greene puts it “The essence of [Total Boomer Luxury Communism] is that it redistributes wealth from younger families and workers to seniors, who are on average much richer.”»
The concept is not so new, even if the label is catchy:
http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/index4.html “It’s fine to be unconcerned that the rich are getting richer, but blind to deny that middle-class wages have stagnated or worse over the past dozen years. In the aftershock of 2008, large numbers of Americans feel exploited and abused. Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservativism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation.”
BTW it is important to note that the "baby-boom generation" in the Rust Belt and similar areas has been shafted (lost their union jobs, lost the valuation of their houses) as hard by the other baby-boomers as the younger generations.
Great piece. I wonder where Datawrapper got its numbers: two children and change for Guatemala is low. Was this an urban count or did they gather nationwide?
Many thanks for your comment! I pulled the birthrate data from the UN Population Division Data Portal and as best I can tell it should reflect the total national average for 2024
And who knows where the U.N. got it from: they're not exactly famous for getting out into the local populace in Guatemala, unless it's a photo opp. But who knows!
Fair enough! Take it with a grain of salt, as they say, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics