People 65 and older now outnumber children ages 5 and younger worldwide for the first time in recorded history, according to a new report by the U.S. Census.
A global plunge in fertility — demographers’ term for the number of children being born — and increased longevity are creating a demographic inversion that’s projected to deepen for decades.
It’s a trend that’s shifting the historic balance between working-age people and older adults.
The scale and speed of the shift as the youngest Baby Boomers move toward their mid-60s are striking. They reflect the scope of the challenge in caring for the elderly and maintaining programs such as Social Security in the U.S., an Axios analysis of the Census data found.
More than 71% of the world’s population lived in countries with fertility rates at or below the roughly 2.1-births-per-woman replacement level in 2023.
That’s up from 45% in 2013. The Census says the world reached that tipping point much earlier than demographers expected just a decade ago.
The population of those 65+ is projected to grow from 852 million in 2025 to 2 billion in 2060.
The low-birth era has spread far beyond wealthy countries.
China and India — the world’s two most populous countries — now have fertility rates below the roughly 2.1-births-per-woman replacement level, the Census report says.
Bangladesh, Mexico and Vietnam are among the most populous countries to fall below replacement-level births since 2013.
There is no mystery about the most important fact in the Lindsay Clancy case: Lindsay Clancy killed her three children.
She admitted that she did it. Her own defense does not dispute it. There are serious questions for a jury to consider about her mental state and criminal responsibility, but who killed these children is not one of them.
And yet, spend enough time watching videos about this case on TikTok, and you can find yourself in an entirely different reality.
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