Desired fertility is like desired Lambos, all that matters is realized fertility. And realized fertility is trending lower globally, as shown by my numerous citations. I’m willing to bet on this if you want, as a demographic scholar.
> Desired fertility is like desired Lambos, all that matters is realized fertility.
Sure, people are having less kids because we banned building housing and then filled the housing we have with government subsidized illegal immigrants. What’s your point?
People are having less kids because women didn’t want them before, they just have the power to not have them now. This is covered extensively in the citations I provided in the comment you replied to. Housing might be a component, but it is not the root cause. Children are a luxury good now, not an extra hand on the farm.
~40% of annual pregnancies in both the US and internationally are unintended (per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively), so even with fertility rates down in teens and the 21-40 cohort, we still have a long way to go in preventing unwanted pregnancies and children (which translates into a further declining fertility rate curve forward looking, model accordingly).
I assist thousands of folks a year seeking permanent birth control obtain it, mostly the childfree but occasionally someone who already has a kid or two, ama; this is the cheapest, easiest win as it relates to avoiding suffering around unwanted children, and the emotional, time, and monetary costs of unwanted children at scale is simply too high. The historical total fertility rate was because women were not educated and empowered; forward looking fertility rate is the true neutral rate.
You’re overlooking the Gallup studies showing that the desired fertility rate has been stable at 2.7, well above the replacement rate.
> The historical total fertility rate was because women were not educated and empowered; forward looking fertility rate is the true neutral rate
It’s not possible for an outcome that would result one extinction of the species to be the “true neutral rate.” Rather, even if what you say is true (and I think it isn’t given people’s stated preference for 2-3 kids) what you’re seeing is a social contagion that will self correct when child-agnostic cultures die out in favor of cultures in which having children confers higher social status.
https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-pass...
https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool
Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026
The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)
The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival - https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe... - SUERF Policy Note, Issue No 197, October 2020
“Talk is cheap, show me the fertility rate.”