Few Britons will have heard the phrase ‘apocalyptic winter’, but that may soon change. It’s how Italian politicians describe the season when deaths in the country outstrip births. In Italy, the total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime, is now 1.24, far below the 2.1 required to sustain population growth. Other European nations are faring worse: in Malta, it’s barely over 1; in Spain, just 1.19. In the UK, meanwhile, the TFR decreased to 1.49 children per woman in 2022 from 1.55 in 2021.
According to a new study in the Lancet, this trend will get much worse, on a global scale, and fast. The world population, researchers suggest, will fall, within decades, for the first time since the Black Death. By 2100, it is projected that just six countries out of 204 will have birth rates higher than the replacement level. There
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