"The drastic decline in birth rates around the globe is an unheralded revolution". Discuss.

[Jankec]

Apart from Afghanistan and pockets of Sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are plummeting around the world. During the 1970's, most countries in the Global South had birth rates of 6-8. By contrast, nowadays even the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Indian state of Kerala have below replacement birth rates, while Bangladesh is not much above replacement rate either. Except for extreme cases of coercion, such as China's now-axed One Child Policy, most of this has been down to drastic improvements in healthcare and women's rights.

I read a book (I don't remember the name of it) by French philosopher Emmanuel Todd who wrote about these phenomenon cca 10 years ago. This is good news for the future of our planet.

[KirillMazur]

Religiosity in Eastern Europe after the fall of the communist regimes has grown a lot, a bunch of churches were built, promoting religious ideology. How did this affect fertility? Not at all, as it collapsed in the 90s, it remains low. Eastern Europe is dying out and religiosity does nothing to help it.

Again, a correlation between religiosity and fertility was observed when in an agrarian economy, the majority of the population lived in villages and went to church. Then they moved to the cities, got educated and became less religious. Some try to link the fall in the birth rate and the fall in religiosity. As the attempts of the religious renaissance showed - there is no correlation whatsoever - the birth rate fell not because of faith, but because of a change in the economic structure and the prayers of the priests will not return it back.
Why Africa gives birth well - the agrarian way of life is preserved there, which was in Russia in the 19th century, for example. You need to stop thinking in binary categories, in addition to the "good-bad" scale, there are a number of other factors that need to be taken into account.

For example, few people take into account the cost of a child (in the city) until they receive an education and their own housing in a modern industrial society (this is extremely expensive compared to the countryside). As well as the unwillingness of capitalism to pay for even the simple reproduction of the labor force, not to mention growth. As well as the deteriorating level of population health, hormonal problems, infertility, stress, etc.
All this postpones childbearing to a very late date, or cancels it.
Everything is as usual under neoliberal capitalism - a normal strong family - this is only for the rich, and for the rest - if you're lucky enough.

[Tooting Carmen]

Religiosity in Eastern Europe after the fall of the communist regimes has grown a lot, a bunch of churches were built, promoting religious ideology. How did this affect fertility? Not at all, as it collapsed in the 90s, it remains low. Eastern Europe is dying out and religiosity does nothing to help it.

Again, a correlation between religiosity and fertility was observed when in an agrarian economy, the majority of the population lived in villages and went to church. Then they moved to the cities, got educated and became less religious. Some try to link the fall in the birth rate and the fall in religiosity. As the attempts of the religious renaissance showed - there is no correlation whatsoever - the birth rate fell not because of faith, but because of a change in the economic structure and the prayers of the priests will not return it back.
Why Africa gives birth well - the agrarian way of life is preserved there, which was in Russia in the 19th century, for example. You need to stop thinking in binary categories, in addition to the "good-bad" scale, there are a number of other factors that need to be taken into account.

For example, few people take into account the cost of a child (in the city) until they receive an education and their own housing in a modern industrial society (this is extremely expensive compared to the countryside). As well as the unwillingness of capitalism to pay for even the simple reproduction of the labor force, not to mention growth. As well as the deteriorating level of population health, hormonal problems, infertility, stress, etc.
All this postpones childbearing to a very late date, or cancels it.

I never said religiosity is necessarily linked with high fertility - Iran's birth rate has collapsed since the Islamic Revolution, for example.

[Universe]

At least the endangered unique megafauna species like rhinos, lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, elephants etc etc may be able to survive in case humanity stops growing.

[Universe]

Apart from Afghanistan and pockets of Sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are plummeting around the world. During the 1970's, most countries in the Global South had birth rates of 6-8. By contrast, nowadays even the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Indian state of Kerala have below replacement birth rates, while Bangladesh is not much above replacement rate either. Except for extreme cases of coercion, such as China's now-axed One Child Policy, most of this has been down to drastic improvements in healthcare and women's rights.

There was a big drop in birthrates in much of the world. SSA countries are the exception though. A fertility rate of 5 is still very high and not that much different than in the 70s. Overpopulation is an issue in SSA countries imo and Africa won't stop growing in the next couple of decades.

[RogueState]

As pointed out, there are different variables explaining the drop of fertility rates, but the most relevant one is female education (measured with years of studies)

The more educated are women, the lower their fertility rate