the.com/birth rate
The planet's slowest-moving crisis, measured in cribs not clicks.
means The number of live births per thousand people in a given population over a given year — demography's basic pulse-check on a society.
from A straightforward compound: 'birth' from Old Norse 'byrd' (akin to 'bear,' as in bearing a child), paired with 'rate,' from Latin 'rata' meaning a fixed portion or reckoning, via the phrase 'pro rata.' The term 'birth rate' itself is a 19th-century statistical coinage, born alongside the rise of census-taking and actuarial science, when governments began counting populations the way accountants count ledgers — people reduced to tidy annual tallies.
- global trend
- Falling on almost every continent, rich or poor
- replacement level
- 2.1 kids per woman keeps population steady
- south korea
- World's lowest rate, under 0.8 children per woman
- economic ripple
- Fewer workers later means fewer taxpayers funding pensions