Demographers Warn of ‘Epochal Fall in Fertility’ Across the Globe

Baby covered with blanket

An “avalanche” of “expanding and accelerating” demographic forces is driving global birth rates down at alarming rates, demographers warned The New York Times.

“A paradigm shift is necessary,” German demographer Frank Swiaczny, former United Nations chief of population trends and analysis, told the Times. “Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline.”

The publication described ghost cities in northeastern China, South Korean universities scrambling for students, hundreds of thousands of demolished properties in Germany, and shut down maternity wards in Italy, and warned that countries like Hungary, China, Sweden and Japan are already pushing to balance the combination of “swelling” older populations with the needs of young people.

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