来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2021年7月8日
本文适合英语二考生
Fertility rates are falling across the globe – even in places, such as sub-Saharan Africa, where they remain high. This is good for women, families, societies and the environment. So why do we keep hearing that the world needs babies?
全球各地的生育率都在下降——即使在撒哈拉以南非洲等仍处于高水平的地区也是如此。这对妇女、家庭、社会和环境都有好处。那么，为什么我们总是听到世界需要婴儿？
The short-range answer is that, even though this slowdown was predicted as part of the now 250-year-old demographic transition – whose signature is the tumbling of both fertility and mortality rates – occasional happenings, such as the publication of US census data, force it back into our consciousness, arousing fears about family lines rubbed out.
短期的答案是，尽管这种放缓被预测为已经有250年历史的人口转型的一部分——其特征是生育率和死亡率的下降——偶尔发生的事情，比如美国人口普查数据的公布，迫使我们重新意识到这一点，这引发了人们对家族血脉被抹去的恐惧。
The longer range answer is that our notion of a healthy, vibrant society is still rooted in the past. The inevitable byproduct of the demographic transition is that populations age, but life expectancy, and particularly healthy life expectancy, have increased dramatically over the last half-century, and the societal definition of “old” has not kept up.
更长远的答案是，我们对一个健康、充满活力的社会的概念仍然植根于过去。人口结构转型不可避免的副产品是人口老龄化，但预期寿命，特别是健康预期寿命，在过去半个世纪急剧增加，社会对“老”的定义没有跟上。
In the 19th century, a country needed youth to operate its factories, consume what they churned out and constitute a fighting force in times of war. That became less true over the 20th century, and in the 21st it bears very little relation to reality. More and more of the jobs that require strength – including fighting – are done by machines, while a nation’s products are consumed globally.
在19世纪，一个国家需要年轻人来经营工厂，消费他们生产的产品，并在战争时期组成一支战斗力量。在20世纪，这种说法变得不那么正确了，在21世纪，这种说法与现实几乎没有关系。越来越多需要力量的工作——包括战斗——由机器完成，而一个国家的产品则被全球消费。
Gross domestic product (GDP) might influence a nation’s geopolitical standing and a large GDP fills government coffers, but there’s no evidence that young workers are any more productive than older ones today. Twenty-somethings and 50-somethings have different kinds of intelligence, says gerontologist Sarah Harper of the University of Oxford, but both play a part in entrepreneurship. And if you care about human wellbeing you should pay more attention to GDP per person than per country.
国内生产总值(GDP)可能会影响一个国家的地缘政治地位，庞大的GDP会填满政府的金库，但目前没有证据表明年轻工人的生产率比年长工人更高。牛津大学的老年学家萨拉•哈珀表示，20多岁和50多岁的人拥有不同类型的智力，但他们都在创业中发挥了作用。如果你关心人类的福祉，你应该更多地关注人均GDP，而不是每个国家的GDP总量。
Demographer Ron Lee of the University of California, Berkeley, and others have shown that GDP per person, and hence living standards, are highest when fertility falls just below replacement level (around 2.1 births per woman) – to 1.6 or even less. When fertility is either much higher or much lower than that, quality of life falls off again. Lee would be worried if he was South Korea at 0.8 births per woman, he says, but England and Wales (1.6), the European Union (1.5) and the US (1.6) are all hovering around that sweet spot.
加州大学伯克利分校的人口统计学家Lee和其他人已经表明，当生育率下降到略低于更替水平(大约每个妇女生育2.1个孩子)到1.6甚至更低时，人均GDP和生活水平是最高的。当生育率明显高于或低于这个水平时，生活质量就会再次下降。李说，如果他在韩国，每个妇女生育0.8个孩子，那他会很担心，但英格兰和威尔士(1.6个)、欧盟(1.5个)和美国(1.6个)都在这个最佳水平附近徘徊。