Enrica Sciullo News Today

Nations are confronting a reversal that will make first-birthday parties rarer than funerals

(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) May 24, 2021 3:42 PM ET Font Size: An “avalanche” of “expanding and accelerating” demographic forces is driving birth rates down, demographers warned The New York Times.  The publication described ghost cities in northeastern China, South Korean universities scrambling for students, hundreds of thousands of razed properties in Germany and shut down maternity wards in Italy. Demographers predicted to the Times that by the second half of the century �...

Read more about Fewer workers, more retirees: Slowing population spells problem for world on Business Standard. Demographers predict that by latter half of the century, global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.

All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.