In a seminar titled "Is Singapore's Birth Rate Too Low?," Prof Wolgang Lutz of Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital said that the total fertility rate of 2.1 is a highly artificial construct.
"If the goal is a constant size of the working age population then under real world conditions with irregular age structures (momentum), migration and mortality changes a TFR of 2.1 will not achieve this. (in Western Europe and the US TFR should be lower, in Eastern Europe higher)," he said. Full story
