English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The long-term fertility trends in different parts of the world will matter greatly for sustainable development and future human well-being on this planet. Progress in the global demographic transition and the resulting changes in the sizes and structures of human populations have been shown to be key drivers of modern economic growth through several mechanisms. Unified Growth Theory (Galor 2011) clearly demonstrates how the increase in human capital associated with the shift from the quantity to the quality of children has been driving economic development. This has also been shown by the extensive literature on the demographic dividend (Bloom and Williamson 1998; Lutz et al. 2019). But the future paths of fertility and the resulting population growth have also been identified as important factors in efforts to deal with climate change and other environmental risks (Bongaarts and O’Neill 2018). The effect of fertility on economic growth and environmental change may be even more important than the challenges posed by population growth in providing people with the ability to live a life of dignity and freedom from poverty, as stipulated by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is clearly harder to meet all of these goals while leaving no one behind – one of the key SDG principles – if the world population continues to grow rapidly. Among the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), the Stalled Development Scenario (SSP3) projects that the global population will grow to around 14 billion people by the end of the century, while the Rapid Development Scenario (SSP1) projects a corresponding figure of just seven billion (Lutz et al. 2018). This difference by a factor of two, which is mostly due to different fertility assumptions, will have serious implications for future human well-being.

Fertility will be determined by the changing ideal family size and the empowerment to reach these targets