Breathe
By Fátima Masse
The world faces a very different demographic challenge than it did last century. We are no longer concerned with birth control, but with how to manage a population that is aging across the board, putting the economies and development of most countries, including Mexico, in check.
According to World Bank data, the global fertility rate, understood as the average number of children a woman has, fell from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.3 in 2021. This figure is close to what is known as the replacement rate (2.1) at which a population is considered stable. Although with these data it would seem that the world is in balance, in reality this average is driven by countries in Southwest Asia and Africa where this indicator oscillates between 3 and 6, while the rest of the nations register figures below 2.
