The number of births in Poland continues its steep decline: In the first quarter of 2024, there were 64,500 births, 9.8% fewer than in 2023 despite the additional leap day this year. The TFR this year could fall to 1.1 kids per woman, again the lowest value ever recorded.

Fertility in France is not highly variable by ancestral background. Women with entirely French grandparents still had nearly-replacement-rate completed fertility in 2019-20.

This is from the TeO2 survey, it hugely oversamples immigrants.

I like this 1942 map of the USSR from a French news publication quite a bit. It shows more borders made of natural barriers than Russia has today. Allegedly Russia's attack on Ukraine is part of a fantasy to get these secure borders back. Source: buff.ly/3UalCdZ

Just like Chile and Colombia, Costa Rica started 2024 with another big decline in the number of births: In Jan 2024, there were 8.5% fewer births than 2023. In 2023, the TFR was already as low as 1.22 kids per woman. The bottom hasn't been reached yet.

I always wondered why the fairly urbanized region of Chaoshan in coastal Eastern Guangdong had such a high birth rate. Here is an explanation. The important question for China is: Is this a Chinese breeder cult or just a group with a delayed fertility transition?

We rarely see fertility studies focusing on men.
A new Finnish study finds that a man's major or field of study has a big impact on how many children he will have!
The researchers explain that in fields with higher economic uncertainty, men tend to have fewer children.

Not all regions of China equally enforced 1 child policy before its abolishment.

In Chaoshan (Teochew) area of Guangdong, families would traditionally keep having children in order to produce a son. This family has 12 daughters

4th century BC Athenian workers had about the same daily wage as 17th century Dutch workers at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age.

history is not what you think it is.

TFR of Kazakhstan in 2023 - 2.96 (3.05 in 2022)

Bulgaria is currently the country with the largest natural population decline in peacetime. Here is a historical perspective on the birth surplus/deficit since records began.

Love this interactive ONS map on births in England and Wales.

London, Cambridge, Oxford, York - all baby-free zones. Unsurprising given house prices!

Not a single LA with TFR above replacement rate (Barking and Dagenham comes closest at 1.98).

Interesting thread about the element of fertility in the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. With a 70%+ TFR advantage over pagans, the early Christians would have rapidly gained population share over the decades and centuries even in the absence of conversions.

GDP per hour worked as a % of the US level for an assortment of advanced economies from the OECD productivity level database. The trend is less uniformly negative than the dominant narrative on Twitter suggests, and even since 2019 there are more gaining than losing ground (!)

OECD avg number of rooms per person

Over the last 90 years, the pattern of regional fertility in Japan has flipped upside-down: In 1930 northerners had the most children on average, nowadays the highest TFRs are in the south.

Japan:TFR in 1930, 1960, 2000, and 2020 by prefecture.

Approximately 100 years ago, TFR in the northeastern region of Japan was at the same level as today's Chad or DR Congo. But now it is at the same level as Spain.