Gruntled Center (Beau Weston): 1.85
Ben Wattenberg's Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, begins with a momentous observation. In 2002 the U.N. predicted that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of the world would soon drop to 1.85 children per woman. The replacement rate – the average number of children that each woman has to have to keep the population numbers steady – is 2.1.
Wattenberg calls this a Copernican revolution in the history of demography. …
…If the world TFR is 1.85 for even a generation, it is inevitable that the world population will decline. Wattenberg predicts that after hitting a peak of perhaps 8 billion in mid-century, the population will fall back to 6 billion (the current number) by the end of the 21st century. And it could be much lower.
The last time world population declined was due to the Black Death.
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