Elon Musk has claimed “population collapse is coming” as a major economy reports record-low birthrates.
The tech billionaire, who has 12 children, shared a screengrab an article by Australia’s ABC News posted by another account reporting that Bureau of Statistics figures in the country show 286,998 births were registered last year, resulting in a total fertility rate of 1.50 babies per woman.
Commenting on the headline, Musk added, “Birth rates continue to plummet. Population collapse is coming.”
According to official Australian figures, the Total Fertility Rate (known as TFR), has gradually dropped from 1.86 in 1993 to 1.5 in last year.
Over that period the birth rate for girls and women aged 15 to 19 has dropped by more than two thirds, with women aged 20 to 24 also seeing a large decline.
Australian National University demographer Liz Allen told the outlet the country’s birth rate has “hit rock bottom.”
“Once we hit ultra-low fertility like say, for example, countries in our region, like South Korea, there is generally no return,” Dr Allen went on to say.
“We are not going to see a baby boom of the likes of Australia’s post-World War II period because we don’t have the necessary ingredients for a baby boom,” she added.
Terry Rawnsley, an urban economist at accounting firm KPMG told the outlet the 1.5 number is “dramatic”.
“If you look at the international data and you look at countries who have slipped below [a fertility rate of] 1.5 — places like Italy, South Korea, Japan — and in those countries you do start to have this demographic time bomb starting to go off,” he argued.
“There’s less and less workers being able to generate economic activity, people start to leave the country due to a lack of economic opportunities, and you do start to have a slippery slope towards a declining population.”
The US and the UK are among other major enonomies seeing declining birth rates. The total fertility rate decreased to 1.49 children per woman in 2022 from 1.55 in 2021, according to ONS figures released earlier with year, with the TFR on the decline since 2010.
According to experts, countries in the developed world need a birth rate of 2.1 on average to increase or maintain the population, a metric known as the “replacement rate”.
The Tesla and SpaceX owner has previously warned that of the “mass extinction of entire nations” if the global trend of population decline persists.
In 2022, U.K.-based charity Population Matters published on the impact of Musk‘s social media posts on the subject, writing: “Since at least 2017, Elon Musk has been tweeting and speaking regularly about his concerns regarding population ‘collapse.’
“Due to his high media profile and social media following, his views are widely disseminated and read. His claims are in some cases inconsistent with the existing evidence and/or expert opinion, and his opinions are open to challenge on a wide range of fronts,” the report added.
Sarah Harper, professor of gerontology (the study of the impact of aging) at the University of Oxford previously told BBC News she doesn’t think there is a “demographic timebomb” as some suggest, but says it’s a predicted part of the “demographic transition”.
“We knew this was going to happen, and happen across the 21st Century. So, it is not unexpected, and we should have been preparing for this for some time.”
She noted that it’s occurring all over with the world, with “two thirds of the world’s countries now have childbirth rates below the replacement rate,” Prof Harper said back in May. “Japan is low, China is low, South Korea is the lowest in the world,” with only sub-saharan Africa seeing population growth.
Experts believe the slowing numbers have come as more women are educated, and have better lives the more they work and save.
Many now prefer avoid the impact on their income and career prospects that having children can bring, having fewer children or deciding not to have them at all.
Countries like Singapore have sought to tackle the issue by keeping the population heathier and in work for longer, a measure experts say can be effective, as well as immigration on a large scale to make up for the aging population.
