Birth Rate Collapse & Economic Utility of a Birth This is really weird, but I suspect it’s overlooked in socio-economic research literature. Below I present 2 zones on the same chart. The pink zone on the left chart shows the useful economic life of 1 human birth in the year 1851. The green zone on the right chart shows the useful economic life of 1 human birth in 2011. Now because of medical advances, sanitation, public health, etc, etc we have significantly improved life expectancy and reduced infant mortality. This means that a birth in 2011 has vastly more hours of economic output than a birth in 1851. Historic mortality rates really cut down the expected economic lifespan of a birth, but how much? The pink area on left = 40 years * 40% + ( 40 years * 30% )/2 = 22 years of economic work per birth (yikes!) The green area on the right = 51 years * 98% = 50 years of economic work per birth. These numbers are massively different. The expected working lifespan of a human at birth has increased by 127% over 160 years. Even though we work to approximately the same age. This means that in economic terms 1 birth in 2011 is worth 2.27 births in 1851. How does that gain in economic utility per birth compare to the collapse in volume of births? Today there are 2.31 births per woman worldwide. In 1850 there were 5.82 births per woman. 5.82/2.31=2.52 So we have 2.27x gain in utility per birth and a 2.52x fall in the volume of births? These ratios are within 10% of one another, they almost perfectly track inversely to give a fixed amount of ‘human economic utility birthed per woman’. I find this to be a staggering coincidence. Is the collapsing birth rate just supply and demand? Did longevity gains simply create a temporary oversupply of units of human utility? The population crisis might just be market forces. Or rather, it’s just macro-ecology.