Khaberni - An international study conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, the United Nations Population Division, and the University of Oslo, reveals that global fertility rates are undergoing a radical transformation.
After decades of men having higher birth rates than women, the scales tipped globally in 2024, with the total fertility rate for women surpassing that of men.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains that this global shift is primarily due to the higher percentage of men in the population compared to women.
But what is the difference between male and female fertility?
To understand the difference between male and female fertility, one must first define the basic concept: the total fertility rate, which is the average number of children a woman is expected to bear during her lifetime based on birth rates for a specific year.
However, the researchers in this study applied the same concept to men for the first time with this level of precision, calculating the average number of children one man bears over his lifetime.
The surprising result was that this rate has become higher for women than for men globally in 2024, an unprecedented shift.
The main reason is that there are currently more men than women globally. When there are more men, some remain without a partner or children, while others may have children with multiple women. This demographic imbalance leads to a lower average number of children per man compared to per woman.
In other words: the current superiority of women in fertility rates is not due to biological reasons, but rather an inevitable result of the current demographic composition.
The study explains this shift with long-term trends, including general decreases in mortality rates, narrowing gaps between female and male mortality, and the ongoing practice of sex-selective abortion in some countries, which disrupts the gender balance from birth and keeps the male population proportion high throughout life.
However, the timing of this shift varies from region to region around the world; not all countries are in the same situation. For example, Europe and North America preceded the rest of the world significantly, where the crossover (i.e., shift where women's fertility becomes higher than men's) occurred several decades ago, specifically in the 1960s and 70s. In Latin America, the shift occurred relatively recently, while Oceania, South America, and Asia have only recently adopted this new pattern. But sub-Saharan Africa remains an exception; this shift is not expected to occur before 2100, as fertility rates there have remained high (i.e., women there are still having far more children than women in the rest of the world), and death rates are still high, making the population composition completely different from other world regions.
This change poses serious social challenges, especially for men who remain childless, a situation linked to their deteriorating health and increased reliance on care in old age. Therefore, the researchers recommend three urgent policies:
· Enhancing the status of women in society to prevent sex-selective abortion.
· Improving education and creating job opportunities for unmarried men and childless men, to protect them from sliding into organized crime.
· Providing institutional and technological solutions for them, such as encouraging friendship circles and legalizing assisted reproduction technologies for single individuals.
The research team warns that ignoring the challenges faced by these men could lead to a violent cultural backlash against gender equality and increase social conflicts.
