Elon Musk laments the declining birth rate: 'If there aren't enough people for Earth, then there definitely won't be enough for Mars'
- Elon Musk says people should be more concerned about the "population collapse."
- The SpaceX CEO has said the company will land humans on Mars in five to 10 years.
Elon Musk wants people to be more concerned about the falling birth rate.
The entrepreneur shared his worries in a series of tweets on Wednesday, following a general decline in birthrate amid the pandemic. In the US, the birth rate fell 4% from 2019 to 2020, marking the country's lowest number of births since 1979.
Musk, who is the founder and CEO of space exploration company SpaceX, is aiming to put humans in a settlement on Mars. He said in a podcast last month that SpaceX will land humans on the planet with its Starship rocket in five to 10 years.
But if the demographic crisis doesn't let up, there won't be enough people for Mars, he said.
It's not the first time Musk has shared his worries about the falling birth rate.
Last month, he said that unless people have more children, "civilization is going to crumble."
"I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birthrate," said the father of six at The Wall Street Journal's annual CEO Council.
According to the World Bank, the global birthrate has been steadily declining since 1960. Economic uncertainties brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the trend of falling birthrates, wrote Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos, a market research firm on the World Economic Forum website.
Birth rates are also falling in the world's two most populous countries, China and India.
China's Department of Statistics announced on Monday that the country's birth rate plummeted to a record low of 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021. That's even though the country scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016 and is now allowing couples to have up to three children. And India's fertility rate fell to below a key replacement level last year, according to the Times of India.