As pointed out in email

[james_davis_nicoll]

India’s declining fertility rate, now only slightly higher than that of the United States, is part of a global trend of lower population growth. Yet the media and many educated Americans have entirely missed this major development, instead sticking to erroneous perceptions about inexorable global population growth that continue to fuel panicked rhetoric about everything from environmental degradation and immigration to food and resource scarcity.

In a recent exercise, most of my students believed that India’s total fertility rate (TFR) was twice that of the United States. Many of my colleagues believed the same. In actuality, it is only 2.5, barely above the estimated U.S. rate of 2.1 in 2011, and essentially the replacement level.

Comments

[mishalak]

I remember years ago arguing with two fellow college students about the US fertility rate. This was before ubiquitous internet and thus I could not settle it by pointing to an authoritative source, but I suspect even today that many quite smart people assume that the US is growing due to having babies rather than just due to immigration. Also, even if we were not growing, we still would be having more people move to larger cities as rural America continues to empty and so I think even if the population were stable people would still assume we were growing just due to the shifting around.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It amazes me how many people really believe that the population curve is on a forever extending exponential growth curve. I pointed out to a well educated friend recently that with current trends the population would probably max out around 9bn before starting to decline again and they didn't believe me.