The Handoff to Bots by Kevin Kelly

The key metric of fertility is the replacement level. If the total fertility rate is below replacement, then over time, the population decreases, because the current humans don’t replace themselves in numbers. Right now in 2025 every developed country except one (Israel) is below replacement and getting lower each year. Some countries in East Asia are so far below replacement that they are already losing population. Nearly every other country in the world is following this pattern of rapidly modernizing, reducing their birth rate in a one-way direction downward. Not a single country anywhere has been able to raise their birth rate above replacement once it dips below that threshold. It’s like a black hole. (View Highlight)

Since the year 2000, the official forecasts of what the world population would be in the near future have been incorrectly too high each year, because it has been hard to believe fertility rates could fall so fast and not bounce back. Year after year the UN and others keep expecting fertility to bounce back, but it doesn’t. In fact, year and after it collapses even more, and yet the official projections expect fertility to recover above replacement world-wide. (View Highlight)

The official date of world population decline is expected in some four decades but I suspect it will happen in only two decades. Perhaps even as early as 2040. (View Highlight)