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There’s a reason birth rates are an increasingly prominent feature in discourse and policymaking today. Population ageing and decline is one of the most powerful forces in the world, shaping everything from economics to politics and the environment.
But a weakness to the debate — perhaps even the term “birth rates” itself — is that it implies the goal is the same today as it was in the past: finding ways to encourage couples to have more children. A closer look at the data suggests a whole new challenge.
Take the US as an example. Between 1960 and 1980, the average number of children born to a woman halved from almost four to two, even as the share of women in married couples edged only modestly lower. There were still plenty of couples in happy, stable relationships. They were just electing to have smaller families.
But in recent years most of the fall is coming not from the decisions made by couples, but from a marked fall in the number of couples. Had US rates of marriage and cohabitation remained constant over the past decade, America’s total fertility rate would be higher today than it was then.
The central demographic story of modern times is not just declining rates of childbearing but rising rates of singledom: a much more fundamental shift in the nature of modern societies.
Relationships are not just becoming less common, but increasingly fragile. In egalitarian Finland, it is now more common for couples who move in together to split up than to have a child, a sharp reversal of the historical norm.
When pictured as a rise in happily childless Dinks (dual income, no kids couples) with plenty of disposable income, the social trends accompanying falling birth rates seem benign.
But the rise of singledom and relationship dissolution is a less rosy story, especially considering the drop in relationship formation is steepest among the poorest. Of course, many people are happily single. The freedom to choose how to spend one’s life and who with (or without) is to be celebrated. But the wider data on loneliness and dating frustrations suggests not all is well.
The trend is global. From the US, Finland and South Korea to Turkey, Tunisia and Thailand, falling birth rates are increasingly downstream of a relationship recession among young adults. Baby bonuses put the cart before the horse when a growing share of people are without a partner. Even in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, similar trends may be under way.
Why an almost worldwide decline, and why now? The fact that this is happening almost everywhere all at once points more to broad changes acting across borders than country-specific factors.
The proliferation of smartphones and social media has been one such exogenous shock. Geographical differences in the rise of singledom broadly track mobile internet usage, particularly among women, whose calculus in weighing up potential partners is changing. This is consistent with research showing social media facilitates the spread of liberal values (notably only among women) and boosts female empowerment.
The fall in coupling is deepest in extremely-online Europe, east Asia and Latin America, followed by the Middle East and then Africa. Singledom remains rare in south Asia, where women’s web access is more limited.
This is not to overstate the role of social media. Other cultural differences between countries and regions mediate both the spread of liberal ideals and people’s ability to act on them. Caste and honour systems encourage high rates of marriage, irrespective of media access, and female education, income and employment differ markedly between regions.
But while the specific mechanisms are up for debate, the proliferation of singledom and its role in cratering birth rates shows that while financial incentives and other policy tweaks can nudge birth rates higher, they are labouring against much stronger sociocultural forces.
Policies aimed at facilitating relationship formation might be more effective than those aimed at helping couples have babies.
A world of rising singledom is not necessarily any better or worse than one filled with couples and families, but it is fundamentally different to what has come before, with major social, economic and political implications. We are faced with a conundrum: is this what people really want? If not, what needs to change?
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