While flipping around cable recently, I came across a show discussing human fertility. Among its claims was that male fertility rates (sperm counts) have declined by 50 percent in the past 30 years and continue to decline. They suggested one possible reason for this is that as much as 80 percent of hormones in female contraceptives get flushed into toilets and end up in our drinking water. Is this true? Will fertile males one day be an endangered species? Should I start saving up my sperm to auction off to the highest bidder? –Louis M. Jiggretts, Seattle
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What you do with your sperm is not something the rest of us need to know, Louis. Fact is, people in the third world are reproducing just fine–it’s the developed world that may have reason to worry. Birthrates in the industrialized countries have plunged to the point that the population of some nations (though not the U.S.) will start falling over the next few decades–Russia’s already is. Nobody knows if that’s just because people don’t want a lot of kids or if more insidious forces are at work, and if the latter what they are. Female hormones in the environment is one candidate, but lots of others have been suggested. For example, you might want to be careful with that laptop–according to one study, it could be cooking your cojones.
In short, we don’t really know what’s going on with male fertility. What we do know is that the population of many industrial countries will soon level off or drop. According to the UN, only four developed countries–Albania, Iceland, New Zealand, and the U.S.–reported a fertility rate of two children per woman or higher in the 1990s. (Replacement level, or the number needed to maintain the current population, is around 2.1.) In 2000, 64 countries accounting for 44 percent of world population had fertility rates at or below replacement. The population of Japan is expected to peak in 2006 and decline 14 percent by 2050; Italy’s population is projected to drop 22 percent. In eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine will have 30 to 50 percent fewer people by 2050. Population increase in the U.S., meanwhile, will be largely driven by immigration and the high birthrate among Hispanic women.
