Tech billionaire Elon Musk sounded an alarm Thursday that the world's population is declining at a rate that's worrying, citing a New York Times population chart highlighting a sharp drop in birth rates over the past year.
Poland showed the greatest decline at 10.5 percent, followed by Ireland at 10.3 percent and the Czech Republic at 10 percent. Some others, like Denmark and the USA, had more modest drops of 1.9 percent, while some others, like the Netherlands and Spain, only saw a 2% drop.
Conversely, some countries showed a slight gain in their populations: Norway increased by 0.3 percent, Malaysia by 2.2 percent, Thailand by 3.6 percent, and the Philippines by an impressive 6.7 percent.
Concerns over a shrinking population are nothing new to Musk. Back in April, he warned that plummeting birth rates may cause a population collapse, pushing nations into decline the way many ancient civilizations vanished over time.
He added that Europe is in an extraordinary weak position, given record-low birth rates, vis-à-vis such a collapse, which is likely to happen even faster across much of Asia.
"Unless below-replacement birth rates rise above 2.1, a country's workforce will decrease at an accelerating rate," he said. "If there aren't enough people for a smaller workforce, it will just be empty—and that can bring a civilization to a halt, as what's left looks like the ruins of a bygone era."
He has earlier said that the collapse of population because of dwindling birth rates is a much bigger threat than global warming. Birth rates are way too low already in places like South Korea, Japan, and China.
A recent study published in *The Lancet* adds that most countries will see fertility rates that are insufficient to sustain their populations by 2100.
A further study published by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said the global total fertility rate would decline from 2.23 births per woman in 2021 to 1.68 by 2050 and 1.57 by 2100 in nearly 97 per cent of countries.
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