More children were born in October 2022 than in October 2021, but fewer compared to the previous month (September 2022), representatives of the National Institute of Statistics reported on Monday. For 10 months, the number of births was less than last year, by more than 10,000 cases

The number of deaths in October 2022 was about half that of October 2021, but slightly higher than the previous month (September 2022).

In October 2022, the number of marriages increased compared to October 2021, but decreased compared to September 2022, and the number of divorces decreased compared to October 2021, but increased compared to September 2022.

In 1937, John Maynard Keynes gave a lecture entitled “Some Economic Consequences of Depopulation.” The purpose of Keynes’s lecture was to warn: population decline has unpleasant economic consequences, writes the Financial Times.

Keynes worried several generations prematurely. Birth exploded after the war. Today, however, his warning can be considered a prophecy. Populations are already shrinking in countries like Japan, and a future global recession is more likely than ever.

Future generations will face a steady decline in birth rates. In rich countries, fertility rates remained below the reproduction rate of 2.1 children per woman for decades, but now middle-income countries, from Iran to Thailand to Brazil, are also below that threshold. South Korea’s fertility rate fell to 0.98 last year, and even in the US it hit an all-time low of 1.73 births per woman.

Some of the economic consequences are obvious: fewer people will produce fewer things, so a shrinking population means slower economic growth.

Keynes’s main concern was that in a world where companies expected fewer customers, investment would be lower. This can lead to low demand and therefore high unemployment. Demography was closely associated with Alvin Hansen’s original theory of “secular stagnation” in the 1930s.

In a new article provocatively titled “The End of Economic Growth?” Stanford University economics professor Charles Jones models what could happen in a world with a shrinking population. In his opinion, the standard of living will stagnate, as the population will gradually decrease.

He suggests that economic growth ultimately comes from new ideas, and the discovery of new ideas depends on the number of people looking for them. If the population started to decline worldwide, that would mean that fewer and fewer people would become researchers, and we would see slower and slower progress.

Jones’s book argues that population decline can lead to slower growth in living standards and, more worryingly, a vicious cycle in which low birth rates in one generation perpetuate low birth rates in the next, resulting in a downward population spiral. This is a scenario that demographer Wolfgang Lutz and his colleagues call the “low fertility trap hypothesis.”

October 2022 compared to September 2022

In October 2022, the birth of 15,135 children was registered, which is 2,325 children less than in September 2022.

The number of deaths in October 2022 was 21,495 (11,252 males and 10,243 females), which is 1,721 more deaths (870 males and 851 females) than in September 2022. The number of deaths of children under the age of 1 in October 2022 was 81, the same as in September 2022.

In October 2022, 66.5% of the total number of deaths occurred among people aged 70 or older.

According to the main cause of death, most people died from: diseases of the circulatory system (11,758 people, or 54.7%); tumors (4026 people, which is 18.7%); respiratory diseases (1,678 people, which is 7.8%).

The natural increase in October 2022 remained negative (-6360), the number of deaths exceeded the number of live births by 1.4 times.

October 2022 compared to October 2021

The number of live births registered in October 2022 compared to the corresponding month of 2021 was 799 more.

The negative natural increase in October 2022 compared to October 2021 significantly decreased (-6,360 people in October 2022 versus -32,240 people in October 2021).

In October 2022, 25,081 fewer people died than in October 2021. According to the first three main causes of death in October 2022 compared to October 2021, 14,264 fewer people died from respiratory diseases, 9,845 fewer. deaths from diseases of the circulatory system and 287 fewer deaths from tumors as the main cause.

The number of dead children under one year of age in October 2022 was 22 less than in October 2021.

Marriage and divorce

The number of marriages in October 2022 exceeded by 120 the indicator recorded in the same month of the previous year.

Through final court decisions and in accordance with Law no. 202/2010 in October 2022 there were 338 fewer divorces than in October 2021.