Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Some say: “If birth rate continues to plummet, human civilization will end”. Is this ‘population panic’ justified—and can policy reverse low fertility?
Find out more in this lecture by family sociologist Katya Ivanova.
In 2024 The Lancet projected that within 25 years, three out of four countries will have fertility rates below the much-cited “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman.
Even if you didn’t know that projection, it’s hard to open a newspaper, turn on the TV, or scroll through social media these days without hearing that something deeply worrying is happening to fertility. The question is whether current anxieties about declining fertility are warranted—and, if so, whether policy interventions can meaningfully reverse this demographic trend.
This lecture was organized by Studium Generale Tilburg in collaboration with Study Association Sociology Versot.
Recorded on November 27, 2025 at Tilburg University
Questions? studiumgenerale@tilburguniversity.edu
Some say: “If birth rate continues to plummet, human civilization will end”. Is this ‘population panic’ justified—and can policy reverse low fertility?
Find out more in this lecture by family sociologist Katya Ivanova.
In 2024 The Lancet projected that within 25 years, three out of four countries will have fertility rates below the much-cited “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman.
Even if you didn’t know that projection, it’s hard to open a newspaper, turn on the TV, or scroll through social media these days without hearing that something deeply worrying is happening to fertility. The question is whether current anxieties about declining fertility are warranted—and, if so, whether policy interventions can meaningfully reverse this demographic trend.
This lecture was organized by Studium Generale Tilburg in collaboration with Study Association Sociology Versot.
Recorded on November 27, 2025 at Tilburg University
Questions? studiumgenerale@tilburguniversity.edu
