Global Fertility Rate Dropped Below Replacement

Humanity’s total fertility level dropped below the replacement rate last year, marking a demographic shift that foreignaffairs.com reported has never happened before outside of wars or epidemics.

The global population will peak around 2055 and then begin to fall simply as a function of human choices. The United Nations World Population Prospects report released in 2024 placed the total fertility rate slightly above replacement in 2026 under its medium variant.

Demographic assumptions have overturned as wealthier people and countries increasingly boast higher fertility rates than poorer ones. The United States holds the highest fertility rate among countries in the Americas with at least 20 million inhabitants.

A Mexican woman could expect to have 1.2 children over her lifetime according to a 2024 survey cited by foreignaffairs.com. That figure sits well below the 1.57 average of non-Hispanic white women in the United States, even though Mexico’s income per capita is only about 28 percent of the U.S. level.

Child-rearing at the scale necessary to maintain populations is fundamentally at odds with the structures of modern life. Parents must equip children with formal knowledge and credentials through decades of effort and spending, while tight career schedules conflict with biological clocks.

Adults still want to have children and flourishing families. Gallup asked Americans about their ideal number of children in July 2025, and the average answer was 2.7, a figure that has barely changed since the 1970s.

Children have become an economic luxury that richer people can afford more of than poorer ones. Prosperous parents can afford help at home, prepared meals, premium grocery delivery, laundry services, and tuition.

Richer and more educated households in advanced economies now tend to have more children than poorer and less educated ones. This dynamic portends a world in which economic inequality is accentuated by demographic inequality.