‘Hum-do, hamare-do’ – the catchy Family Planning slogan of the 1970s and 80s – has probably not something the millennials have ever heard of. It was coined in the days of high poverty and deprivation, when the government struggled to slow the high fertility rate of 4-5 children per woman. It is from the days when ‘emergency’ and nasbandi were both bad words!
The world has moved on since. As global fertility rates fall, for the first time in modern history, the world’s population is expected to stop growing by the end of this century, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of UN population data.
Between 2050 and 2100, 90 countries will show a shrinking population, most of them in Europe and Latin America. Africa is the only region projected to show strong population growth for the rest of this century. Between 2020 and 2100, the continent’s population is expected to increase from 1.3 billion to 4.3 billion.
The stark case of South Korea’s plummeting fertility rate is well documented. Politicians have been offering sops, and community leaders begging parents to produce more kids. Both have hit a wall. In 2023, the country’s reproductive hit a new low, and there are fears that the country’s population of 51 million may halve by 2100 if current trends continue. The fear of ‘national extinction’has forced the government to spend $270 billion on child care programmes, while parents are given a sweetener of $1,510 on the birth of a child. These sops have not reversed the trends as the South Korean birth rate is expected to further fall to 0.68 children per woman this year from 0.72 in 2022.