by Gary Alexander
January 13, 2026
As Louis Navellier has often reminded us, an economy needs population growth and new family formation to generate economic growth. As appealing as it sounds to imagine fewer people, smaller crowds and less congestion on roads and in airports, the dangers of a shrinking population (like the dangers of deflation) are less advertised by doomsday writers, but equally (or even more) dangerous.
When it comes to “total fertility rate” (TFR, the number of births per woman), demographers say we need at least 2.1-births per female just to maintain our current population level (the last 0.1 mostly accounts for infant mortality). Last year, the overall global TFR rate was 2.24, but if you omit Africa, the TFR rate is well under 2.0. Most of the largest advanced industrial nations reported TFR rates under 2.0 during 2025:
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
No major developed (rich) nation has averaged a TFR over 2.1 (replacement level). Except for Africa, the world is shrinking. Back in 1950 through 1970, the world’s richest nations averaged over 2.7-births per woman, then averaged only 1.6-births per woman since 1995, with an all-time low at 1.5 from 2020-2025.
As a whole, world population is slowly increasing – due mostly to Africa and the longer lives of our elderly – but Asia’s two-biggest economies – China and Japan – are shrinking in population, which implies a limited capacity for economic growth. More seriously, the fewer younger workers in those nations can’t afford to underwrite the costs of servicing their long-living (and often ill) elderly forebears.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
China has repudiated its long-held “one child” policy, but the habit stuck. Young couples don’t want even one child these days. They want more work and bigger paychecks, while the fruits of the one child policy sowed seeds of a major problem – of couples (pre-2010) discovering the sex of their embryo and aborting girls so they could raise a “Young Emperor” to support them in their old age. This created a dangerous surfeit of male children (118 males to 100 female births from 2002 to 2008) with fewer females to marry.
When a group of our newsletter subscribers toured China in 1996, we noticed the typical household was seven – four-grandparents, two-parents and a spoiled, coddled “Young Emperor,” whom all six-adults relied on for their security in old age. This inverted demographic pyramid doesn’t add up, financially.
Europe is even worse off in the fertility sweepstakes, averaging just 1.4-children per woman, and Europe has an even more generous safety net of old age pensions. This is why Europe has delegated its security costs to the U.S, a strategy which may backfire as President Trump insists they fund their own defense.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
The United States is in better shape than Europe or Asia – partly due our fairly rapid assimilation of immigrants and high family formation rates in our more conservative regions of the nation – but with the President’s new limitations on immigration, while capturing and shipping out undocumented workers – I have to wonder if we have enough willing young workers to fill up all those new “on-shored” factories.
There is another time bomb implanted in these charts and trends. Social Security (and Medicare) are a time compact between generations, with younger workers funding the immediate needs of the elderly and their rising medical costs. Unlike a 401(k) or IRA, these aren’t savings accounts but are unfunded entitlements based on past demographic trends of higher birth rates. With the current generations less likely to marry and have children – also, less likely to create lucrative careers instead of “gig” jobs – we will face major challenges for funding these future benefits for those unwilling to beget new Americans.
A Personal Recollection Brings This Crisis Home
My wife Karen and I were married 58-years ago this week, on January 14, 1968 – a Super Bowl Sunday (#2, or II), and we weren’t even aware of the game going on. (Now, we both love to watch football!).
Wedding day aside, 1968 was a year of terrible events – far worse than any recent year, in my view. During our honeymoon, North Korea seized the U.S.S. Pueblo and imprisoned its 83-man crew for 11-months. Then came the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, followed by the My Lai massacre, multiple campus riots and racial riots, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April, and Robert Kennedy in June. In August, Russian tanks rolled into Prague, followed by riots at Chicago’s Democratic convention. Then, Richard Nixon edged Hubert Humphrey, after LBJ retired and decent candidates were forced out.
In such a cauldron, why bring new children into the world? But we created three in quick order, our first in December 1968, then two more in 1970 and 1972, during times of hijacked airplanes, campus riots and thousands of domestic bombings each year. In addition, 1968 books warned of a “Population Bomb” and “Famine in 1975,” so by what right (or logic) did we bring three new lives into such a troubled world?
Due to improved agriculture, no mass starvation ensued. Now, many of us are battling obesity instead.
Today, our children in their 50s have wonderful life-affirming careers, giving us six-grandchildren along the way, but our four-grandsons in their late 20s (born 1996 to 1998) express no inclination to mate or reproduce, generally citing “affordability” issues, or crises like global warming, pandemics and the like.
There’s no way for me to convince young people not alive in 1968 to 1972 to know how much worse times were when we were in our mid-20s. Affordability also challenged us, as I took home about $100 a week in 1968, but somehow managed a down payment on our first home in 1972. Perhaps I can appeal to their self-interest – with fewer children, shrinking Social Security funding can’t enrich their retirement.
Demography is destiny. So we need more new families and great innovation, creating better lives for all.
All content above represents the opinion of Gary Alexander of Navellier & Associates, Inc.
Also In This Issue
A Look Ahead by Louis Navellier
Major Moves in the Caribbean Region Keep Oil Flowing
Income Mail by Bryan Perry
The New Year Is Loaded with Lots of Moving Parts
Growth Mail by Gary Alexander
As Birth Rates Shrink, Demography Defines Our Destiny
Global Mail by Ivan Martchev
As the First Week in January Goes, So Goes the Year
Sector Spotlight by Jason Bodner
The New Year Brings a New Hunt for Market Winners
View Full Archive
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About The Author
Gary Alexander
SENIOR EDITOR
Gary Alexander has been Senior Writer at Navellier since 2009. He edits Navellier’s weekly Marketmail and writes a weekly Growth Mail column, in which he uses market history to support the case for growth stocks. For the previous 20-years before joining Navellier, he was Senior Executive Editor at InvestorPlace Media (formerly Phillips Publishing), where he worked with several leading investment analysts, including Louis Navellier (since 1997), helping launch Louis Navellier’s Blue Chip Growth and Global Growth newsletters.
Prior to that, Gary edited Wealth Magazine and Gold Newsletter and wrote various investment research reports for Jefferson Financial in New Orleans in the 1980s. He began his financial newsletter career with KCI Communications in 1980, where he served as consulting editor for Personal Finance newsletter while serving as general manager of KCI’s Alexandria House book division. Before that, he covered the economics beat for news magazines. All content of “Growth Mail” represents the opinion of Gary Alexander
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