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See Horsey's cartoon at: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/a-brave-new-world-with-fewer-babies/

(IMHO, it is quite interesting that Horsey does not even
mention the Muslim population * see bottom)

A brave new world with fewer babies
June 5, 2024 at 9:11 am

David Horsey By David Horsey
Seattle Times cartoonist

Not that long ago, we were told to worry about the population bomb. The
number of humans on the planet was rising so high and so rapidly that
there was fear that all those extra billions of people would outstrip
the planet’s resources.

Now, the new worry is a global phenomenon of declining birthrates and
fertility that appears to be leading toward a drop in the world’s
population that will cause chronic worker shortages, economic decline,
and a severe imbalance between a smaller number of younger homo sapiens
and a much higher number of the elderly.

In 1950, the global average was 4.86 children for each father and
mother. By 2023, that average had dropped to 2.15, just below the
replacement rate of 2.2 that would keep the Earth’s human population at
an equilibrium. The numbers for economically advanced nations are
starker. The birthrate per couple in the United States is 1.62. South
Korea is the lowest at 0.72.

India has passed China as the country with the most people, yet India’s fertility rate is at less than replacement level. China’s fertility
numbers have dropped dramatically. The same is the case in Europe and
Japan. Mexico, which not that long ago had an average of seven kids per
family, is now closer to two. Even in Africa, which has long had the
highest birthrate of any continent, new babies are becoming markedly
scarcer.

Why is this happening? Part of the answer is falling fertility.
Environmental pollutants, such as plastics and pesticides, may very well
be causing lower sperm counts in young men and other complications for
young women. But perhaps the biggest factor is the medical and social revolution that has occurred in the past half-century that has freed
women from circumscribed lives and changed people’s attitudes toward childbearing all across the planet.

Effective birth control has had a dramatic effect, from Tokyo, Seattle,
London and Istanbul to the smallest villages in the most remote corners
of the globe. More and more women have been given a choice about how
many children they will bear and that has opened up avenues to different
lives, less confined to motherhood and economic subservience to men.

Liberating the female half of the world’s population is a very good
thing, but it has profoundly altered attitudes toward marriage and child-rearing. Through most of human history, marriage was a
socio-economic arrangement which had little to do with love or
compatibility. Children were an inevitable result of biological urges
that no one could control. No longer is that true. Today, more and more
women — and men — are marrying later, or not marrying at all, and are having fewer children, or none.

Marriage is tough. Raising kids is difficult. Both require sacrifice and self-denial. A lot of people are deciding it is not worth it; they have
better things to do. And that is creating a brave new world that we are
only beginning to perceive.

See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons

Editor’s note: Seattle Times Opinion no longer appends comment threads
on David Horsey’s cartoons. Too many comments violated our community
policies and reviewing the dozens that were flagged as inappropriate
required too much of our limited staff time. You can comment via a
Letter to the Editor. Please email us at letters@seattletimes.com and
include your full name, address and telephone number for verification
only. Letters are limited to 200 words.

David Horsey is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist
for The Seattle Times. His latest book is “Drawing Apart: Political
Cartoons from a Polarized America.”

*
As of 2020, the world's Muslim population was estimated to be around 1.9 billion people, which is about 25% of the global population. This makes
Islam the world's second largest religion, after Christianity, which has
31.1% of the world's population. Islam is also the fastest growing major religion in the world, and is projected to increase to nearly 2.8
billion by 2050, growing twice as fast as the global population.

What is the average birth rate for Muslims?
2.9 children per woman
Moreover, Muslims have the highest fertility rate of any religious group
– an average of 2.9 children per woman, well above replacement level
(2.1), the minimum typically needed to maintain a stable population.Apr
5, 2017

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