Is the Birth Rate Low Because of Climate Anxiety?
Fertility has fallen substantially in recent years, and not just in the rich world. The vast majority of countries now have ‘below replacement’ fertility—that is, a birth rate less than 2.1 children per woman. Only in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia can you still find birth rates in the 3s or 4s. And in parts of Europe and East Asia, you can find birth rates below 1.5.
At the same time, concerns about climate change are widespread. In a 2022 survey of 19 mostly-rich countries, Pew Research asked respondents about five global threats: climate change; online misinformation; cyberattacks; the global economy; and infectious diseases. They found that climate change was seen as the greatest or second greatest threat in 12 out of 19 countries—including every European country sampled.
Could the one be linked to the other? Is the global fertility crash due, at least in part, to worries over the climate? You’d certainly get that impression browsing the headlines. “Climate change is making people think twice about having children”, reports CNBC. “Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children,” states the Guardian.
A new study sheds some light on the matter. Kirsti Jylhä and colleagues examined the relationship between fertility and climate anxiety in Sweden, drawing on two national surveys.
Incidentally, the land of ABBA and IKEA is a particularly useful setting in which to conduct such a study owing to its self-perceived status as a ‘humanitarian superpower’. If there’s anywhere that people would stop having children to try and save the planet, it’s Sweden.
Confirming previous studies, the authors documented a high level of concern about climate change. Almost three quarters of Swedes said they were either “somewhat” or “very” worried, while less than 10% said they were “not at all” worried. What’s more, about two thirds of Swedes said that people should take account of the environment when deciding how many children to have.
However, when they dug a little further, they found that the relationship between fertility and climate anxiety was weak. Individuals who said they were more worried about the climate did not have substantially fewer children. Nor did they have a noticeably different ideal family size. Across several different analyses, the researchers picked up a couple of statistically significant correlations—but they were small in magnitude.
Despite the fact that most Swedes think you should take account of the environment when deciding how many children to have, few, it seems, actually do.
Incidentally, another recent study found marginally stronger relationships between fertility and climate anxiety. For example, individuals “very worried” about climate change were about 3 percentage points less likely to say they wanted to have a child in the future than those who were not or merely “somewhat” worried. However, even this is a pretty small difference.
Overall, there is little evidence that concern about climate change is an important contributor to low fertility—though this could change in the future.
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Money or kids?
Ms Reeves is taxing down the birth rate……
Whilst taxing up inflation, unemployment and the national deficit. 🤔
Confidence in all things can be very fragile, and its easy to talk yourself into a crisis
Porn. People have retreated into their smartphones.
Don’t forget the mRNA injections which have seriously reduced fertility as shown in a recent YouTube video by John Campbell.
Low birth rate (In this country anyway) is mainly due to crippling property prices,the need for two incomes to cover a mortgage, which in turn leads to child care from a very young age. In short, a hostile environment for traditional families.
The fact that immigrant “communities” don’t seem to be afflicted in the same way is another question.
Fears for the future haven’t always discouraged child raising: I have relatives born in the darkest days of WWII, when the outcome was far from certain.
The clue is in the illustration, isn’t it? Okay, let me be the one who links to the Mises Institute article linking low birth rates with the mandatory child safety seat laws.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/yes-car-seat-laws-reduce-birth-rate
People do like to try and distill this very complex issue down to, say, one thing that they think is the root cause of the declining birth rates in the Western world, but the truth is there are a myriad of reasons for what’s driving this which will differ depending on who you ask. Some people might say it’s due to financial constraints, others that they want a secure job first, others that they would prefer to get on the housing ladder and put down firm foundations before starting a family, some might say they want to travel and fulfill some ambitions/progress in their career first, others can’t find the right partner to settle down with and others just might not want to breed, they aren’t maternal/paternal/monogamous types and so they place value on different things. This doesn’t make them wrong, they’re just making different decisions about their lives to what other people might make. The reasons, because we are way more complicated creatures than our friends in the animal kingdom, go on and on and vary significantly. You will never be able to conveniently home in on one causal factor. This is because society nowadays has irrevocably changed and… Read more »
There’s lots of reasons – agreed. And the contraceptive pill has put many more women in sole charge of responding to those reasons.
I don’t follow you.
I meant that because ‘the pill’ is a hidden means of contraception a woman might choose to avoid having a child without the worries of how such behaviour might be viewed by others.
“…without the worries of how such behaviour might be viewed by others.”
Interesting wording. I don’t think other people’s opinions about when or if a woman decides to have a child even enter her head when she’s choosing suitable forms of birth control, let alone cause her “worry”. She has nobody else to consider because this is a health intervention which exclusively affects only her.
What sort of person would have a problem with a woman behaving responsibly and exercising her human right to bodily autonomy and being in sole control of her own reproductive system? What an adult decides to do with their body and their life is their business and their’s alone.
I suspect many might not have children because they are swayed by the guilt the phony planet savers try to instil in them, but I would think that it is finance that stops people having children. Can they afford to or not is probably the main consideration.
I’m not convinced there are many people who are a actually worried about “climate change” as opposed to pretending to be to others and to themselves because it sounds cool, virtuous, makes them feel excited etc.
When I was growing up in the 70s we were still meant to be worried about WW3 but despite me having a tendency to overthink things, I was much more worried about the discovery that I was going to die one day than I was about nuclear weapons.
I suspect it is caused a profound and fundamental psychological and spiritual paradigm shift. Nietzsche noticed it back in the 1880’s.
Basically we no longer see a reason to reproduce. I think for a lot of people the prospect of an eternal dreamless sleep is more attractive than eternal life.
Swedes are pretty holier than thou, on a virtue signaling scale of 1 to 10, They would be at 11 so nothing would surprise me.
UK car safety rules make two children the absolute maximum unless you can afford a people-mover.
Yes, it’s an easy fix.
This is truer than people think. Remember that you are not allowed to put a child in the front seat because of air bags. The choice of bigger cars is very limited and is causing minicabs a problem.
Sayed M. Mahdi Al-Modarresi :
“First of all, our religious scriptures are clear as daylight that Islam wants us to have as many children as possible. I reiterate: as many children as possible, meaning that you should not set a cap on the number of kids you are going to have.”
Why this article and a few more talking about low testosterone, low sperm count and low fertility never quote the above? The fact that they always refer to “the population” in general and avoid to mention the discrepancy between the fertility rates of ethnic groups proves that we do indeed live in ttS’s police state.
Errr well that’s a bit of a one-sided assessment of human fertility, it takes 2 to tango
It is better to know or simply accept you don’t know things, but once you start to “believe” you will find yourself in all kinds of trouble. This is what is happening to many people who “believe” all kinds of stuff. We see with climate change people gluing themselves to buildings because they “believe”. They lay down in the road and block traffic because they “believe”. They think the weather is all messed up because they “believe”. They demand fossil fuels are removed because they “believe”. They don’t have children because they “believe”. —–Believing things is RELIGION. It is based entirely on faith and emotion, not facts and reason.
It is down to a number of things. My mother worked part of the week so I made my own way home from school and arrived home alone. My sister made her way home from a school further away. This is frowned upon now even though I believe not illegal. Increasing prosperity does tend to reduce the birth rate possibly due to cost of living. The car seat restriction plays more of a role than the downtickers obviously believe. Sperm counts are falling due to oestrogen in the water supply. And sperms counts seem to be furhter reduced by having mRNA jabs.
Blind eye again?
there is now very good evidence linking the mRNA Covid 19 gene therapy toxic jab wickedly recommended to women spread pregnant or trying to become pregnant and their small gamete provider, with the drop in fertility- try looking at Steve Kirsch and his examination of the Czech National records linking the jabs to fertility data.