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Notes -
I think the decline in fertility below 2.1 (replacement rate) can be directly linked to modern day feminism and women's rights. However, what I have noticed is that rich female friendly nations do far better in terms of birth rate than rich conservative strict gender role societies.
For example - France has a fertility rate around 1.8. 1.7 for the US. Germany 1.4.
In the east with more strict gender norms the rich societies however have far more abysmal fertility rates - Japan 1.3, South Korea 0.8, Taiwan 1.1, Singapore 1.2.
Now one may argue that the decline in fertility rate is not due to feminism and women's emancipation but rather due to improvements in wealth of society. However, a counterpoint to this is that faster modernizing societies; in terms of becoming more feminist, tend to have declining fertility rates even when not wealthy nations.
Example- Nepal - 1.8, India - 2.0-2.1.
Based on the above data I would posit that feminist societies result in fertility rates declining to below replacement rates, but once a country is wealthy it is far worse for the population to remain conservative than for it to be a feminist nation due to the fact that conservative rich nations do far worse on population growth than feminist nations.
Conclusion - modern feminism doomed/ saved human civilization to constant steady population decline and that's the best case scenario for population demographics from all the options currently available.
Thoughts?
I am curious if the strict gender norms you mention for eastern societies are worse for women with children vs. women without (my suspicion is that they are). This would seem to present a real disincentive to having children.
In societies with more equal/flexible gender roles, there is less of a loss to a woman's status and freedom when she has children, which makes it more attractive. Now just imagine if men and women bore equal responsibility for child-bearing!
But even in western societies that bear equal responsibility for children, the total fertility rate tends to be below replacement. Which suggest again that it is not a solution, just something that slows down population decline to acceptable levels. So maybe yeah it is a solution.
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