i watched the first part of an amazing documentary last night (“Birthgap”), and here are some of my key takeaways…

- birthrates across developed nations are well below the replacement rate (2.0) and have been for awhile now; most nations sit roughly around 1.5 😬

- for a lot of nations this trend start during the 1970s, but not always; these low birthrates seems to correlate with significant economic or societal events of hardship

- these low birthrates AREN’T driven by couples having less children, they ARE driven by people having NO children

- across the board, the distribution of families having 1, 2, 3 and 4+ children remains almost identical as prior to the drops in birthrates

- it’s being caused by an explosion of people NOT having any children at all (i.e. childlessness)

- but, people willingly choosing to not have kids remains at roughly 10%, and people medically unable to have kids remains at roughly 10% too; so where does the spike in childlessness come from then?

- the spike in childlessness is being driven by people who want to have children, but it seems like they simply underestimate the window of opportunity and “run out of time”

🤯