The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think

Derek Thompson

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The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think<br>Everybody knows about the decline in birthrates. Fewer people understand why—or just how significantly it could transform society in the next few decades.

Derek Thompson<br>May 18, 2026

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Photo by Europeana on Unsplash<br>Why has the number of births declined everywhere, all at once?<br>This was the subject of last week’s Plain English episode and a new blockbuster report from the Financial Times’s John Burn-Murdoch. In fact it feels like just about everybody has been taking a crack at this question recently.<br>Some blame it on technology. One week ago, my feed was flooded with a viral video of Connor Leahy, an AI researcher, speaking about the sterilizing effects of modern technology. Among his friends, “no one’s having kids,” said Leahy, who was 30 at the time. “Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children?” If you asked Leahy what the explanation was, “my answer is technology,” he said. “My answer is social media. My answer is AI.”<br>#Ai #technology #techdoom ","username":"AndrewofA","name":"A𝓸𝓯A","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/2054399902671605760/nLS_UPjA_normal.jpg","date":"2026-05-01T04:57:38.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/wpeicrervvjqdhhnd2ft","link_url":"https://t.co/TM5OEaaEtf"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":1,"like_count":1,"impression_count":214,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2050077077634678784/vid/avc1/720x1280/WhyeGAz3F6wK1FsQ.mp4","belowTheFold":false}" class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-gap-12 pc-padding-16 pc-reset bg-primary-zk6FDl outline-detail-vcQLyr pc-borderRadius-md sizing-border-box-DggLA4 pressable-lg-kV7yq8 font-text-qe4AeH tweet-fWkQfo twitter-embed">

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AI critic Connor Leahy<br>Clip from the Nexus Conference 2025. #Ai #technology #techdoom

4:57 AM · May 1, 2026 · 214 Views

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Others blame a kind of 21st century weltschmerz—a world sadness about the state of the world and our uncertain future in it. A long essay in the New York Times by Anna Louie Sussman, entitled “Why So Few Babies? We Might Have Overlooked the Biggest Reason of All,” an excerpt from her forthcoming book Inconceivable, argued that we have “overlooked” the pervasive sense of existential uncertainty among young adults. Between climate change, rising housing costs, political instability, AI, inflation chaos, doomscrolling, and declining social trust, today’s generation is too anxious about the future to make the irreversible commitment of having a child.<br>So who is right? Is this about phones and technology, or is it a reflection of modern anxiety about the world? Or, perhaps, both?<br>I always like to begin my analysis of the subject here: Any complete and responsible explanation of this phenomenon cannot begin in the 21st century and should never pretend that this is some tragedy brought about by exclusively terrible things. Birthrates have been declining in developed countries for a long time, as child mortality has declined; as women’s education has increased; as female labor force participation has soared; as modern contraception has proliferated; and as modern notions of feminism have empowered women to take more control over their bodies and their economic futures. And birthrates have continued to decline around, or even accelerated in their downturn in developed countries, as smartphone usage has surged; as housing prices of increased; as time spent at home on the Internet has grown; and as socialization and coupling have declined.

The decline is accelerating faster than almost anybody predicted. As Burn-Murdoch reported, UN demographers predicted that there would be 350,000 births in South Korea in 2023; the real figure came in at 230,000—a whopping 50 percent miss. The total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman in almost every country in North America, South America, Europe, and Southern and Eastern Asia. It’s falling swiftly in most African countries. And birthrates might be set to crash in China. In the 2026 paper “The Rise of Zero Fertility Desire in China,” a Brown University researcher reported that according to the China General Social Survey, the share of young women with “no desire for children” increased from approximately 5 percent in 2012 to 47 percent in 2023.

The epicenters of the baby bust will surprise many people. Europe has a higher fertility rate than Thailand. Tokyo has a higher fertility than Mexico City, Bogotá, or Santiago. China may already a lower fertility rate than Japan.

“Only two things are important right now in life: fertility and deep learning,” the University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús...