Is low birth rate a matter of values, or a matter of institutions? Having read two articles from The Economist (September 11, 2025), 『Humanity will shrink, far sooner than you think』 and 『A contracting population need not be a catastrophe』, I organize my thoughts here.
What lowers the birth rate
To summarize the articles, in the majority of countries worldwide the total fertility rate (TFR) falls below 2.1—the level needed to stably maintain the population over the long term—and the pace of decline has been accelerating from the 2000s to the 2010s to the 2020s.
What is pointed to as causes is that, with reduced child mortality, the expansion of women's education and economic activity, access to contraception, and the expansion of social security, the "incentive to have many children to spread survival risk" has weakened. The UN also suggests the possibility of a long-term rebound, but the strengthening of women's capabilities so far has, on the whole, gone hand in hand with declining birth rates.
Population decline shakes the structures of pensions, healthcare, debt, real estate, and consumption, but there is room for productivity correction through capital deepening (an increase in capital per person), and the articles' view is that the solution is not pessimism but a package of adaptation policies. Childbirth starts not from a national cause but from individual desires and expectations. When an individual's losses (opportunity cost, career risk, caregiving burden) are greater than the gains, they rationally postpone or give it up.
Not a disaster but a redesign task
A realistic recognition is needed that the more women's opportunities for education, income, and career expand, the more the TFR falls. That said, this cannot be reversed, and I agree that it should be eased with a childrearing system free of career interruption. But this, too, can increase the burden on companies, and how far the state will subsidize it also requires social consensus.
Population decline looks more like a redesign task than a disaster frame. Restructuring of the pension system, raising the retirement age and retraining, an orderly contraction of cities, and improving the productivity of elderly labor are needed.
I see the medical field, too, shifting its demand structure toward quality (chronic care, prevention, wellness). Even if total investment decreases, capital per person rises, making productivity correction possible. In hospital operations, too, automation, standardization, AI triage, and remote monitoring can achieve "higher quality with fewer staff." Rather than cash-based birth incentives, caregiving infrastructure, housing, flexible working hours, and career protection can create tangible incentives.
The UN's assumption that it "will correct itself" still has thin empirical evidence. It seems we must also coolly prepare for scenarios regarding a nation's sustainability—of continued decline in the event of policy failure. In the political economy of urban contraction, the "orderly contraction" of schools, healthcare, and transportation carries a high political cost and a high difficulty of execution.
Low birth rate can be viewed not as a "corruption of values" but as the expansion of choice created by the success of modernization. Therefore, the solution requires not a return to the past but institutional change that lowers risks and costs. To persuade people toward childbirth, first the predictability of life and a margin of time are needed. The more medical and caregiving infrastructure is in place, the bolder the choices individuals can make.
Author: Lee Donghee, Chief Director