Counting The Chickens Before They Hatch

The story of human populations, fertility, and politics through data visualizations

TL;DR

This book is a manifesto

Counting Our Chickens Before They Hatch seeks to confront complicated issues of birth rates and to create simple and accessible information that helps the general public explore fertility rates and demographic changes through data visualization and visual narrative.

Curiosity

Birth, death, work and what else?

Experts say the world population is in the fourth stage of demographic transition, with low, stable birth and death rates. The question is if population stays constant, with fertility matching replacement rate, or moves to a fifth stage where deaths exceed births.

The replacement rate is “the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman” (Craig 1994).

Why is the number 2.1 and not 2.0? What shapes it? And why does it matter when a country slips below or above it?

The idea is that a woman needs to replace herself, which requires her to produce another girl to grow to be of reproductive age to continue the cycle. However, some are not concerned about decreasing birth rates and hesitate to acknowledge the future impact of extremely small birth rates.

Design

Each spread is a story worth sitting with

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Physical book