From idyllic motherhood to a childless society: the collapse of birth rates

The end of children: the silent collapse of birth rates in rich countries

In a rural school in South Korea, the noise of recess has fallen silent. Where more than a hundred children once ran around, only five remain today. The image, described in a recent New Yorker antiestéticature, is the perfect metaphor for what is happening in developed economies: motherhood has become a minority choice, and spaces devoted to childhood are starting to disappear.

South Korea, already a pioneer of adults-only hotels and cafés, is leading the global trend towards not having children. But it is not alone. The childfree phenomenon is spreading from Helsinki to Seoul, with economic consequences that some see as a natural cycle and others as an irreversible sentence.

The paradox of development: wealth without children

The economist desev sums it up as "living in Universe 25", a reference to John B. Calhoun's famous experiment in which a colony of mice collapsed due to overcrowding and a lack of social roles. Economic development, he argues, comes at a price: society decides to invest in itself rather than in offspring. More and more people prefer the freedom that high incomes and the absence of family burdens provide.

Not everyone sees this as a tragedy. WerVoss argues there is no problem: "You'll have a richer generation that inherits assets and then rebounds". According to this view, population decline is simply a self-regulating cycle, especially if automation and AI reduce the need for labour. He points out that Spain had fewer inhabitants in the early 20th century and did not collapse.

The uncomfortable debate: immigration yes or no

DonCrisis hits the nail on the head: "Low birth rates are reversible within a generation; what is irreversible is importing millions of people". For him, fixing demographics through immigration is cultural and ethnic suicide. Those who advocate replacing births with foreign arrivals ignore the fact that the social, political and identity cost is indelible.

The opposing stance, represented by those calling to "flood the country with third-world immigration", is regarded as a self-interested lie designed to frighten the population. But between the two extremes, the data show a fall in fertility that shows no sign of finding a floor: in South Korea, the birth rate is already the lowest in the world.

The figures do not lie. The school building still stands, the basketball hoops are waiting, but the children are gone. And while developed countries debate between incentives for motherhood or open borders, the question hanging in the air is whether post-industrial society actually wants to have descendants. Or whether, as in Universe 25, we have already reached the phase of voluntary population collapse.

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