[duaneb]

> It's not really about population -- it's about having no future, which is something a lot of people constantly worry about.

One thing the movie (unintentionally) got right was how absurd this is. It really ruined the movie to me, TBH, because it was laughably implausible. Reproduction is what life does best.

I'll obviously have to watch again for the world building....

[knz]

And yet fertility rates are declining in many nations. Science fiction often takes current events to their extreme outcome for the sake of social commentary (Black Mirror being the latest example).

[stephengillie]

Human fertility itself isn't in decline. Fertility and human births are conflated in the US government definition, implying that we are somehow losing the physical ability to reproduce. What's actually happening is that our society is getting so complex that our agency of reproduction is impaired. It's entirely social; it's all in our heads.

[smallnamespace]

Jury is still out, but there's accumulating evidence that male fertility isn't doing well across the developing world:

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a46/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873233945045786076...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-158463/Why-male-fe...

http://jezebel.com/finally-an-answer-to-declining-male-ferti...

[stephengillie]

Your first article debates the efficacy of current attempts to investigate infertility:

Recent years have seen many similar reports of falling human sperm counts, but there has been much debate over whether the problem is real. “The principal trouble has been selection bias,” says Joëlle Le Moal, an environmental health epidemiologist at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in Saint Maurice, France, and joint first author of the new article with colleague Matthieu Rolland. She explains that few studies have involved sperm samples collected from randomly selected members of the general population; for the few that did, only a small percentage of men agreed to be included, and the studies were run in restricted areas. So most studies have had to rely on sperm donors or couples coming to fertility clinics, which do not represent the general population.

That article focuses on France, which is rarely counted among developing worlds. The second article is paywalled. The third two could easily be considered Submarine Articles[0] for male supplements and stimulants.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

[onion2k]

If the premise of the film actually happened and the birth rate were to reach zero, I doubt the fact it was psychological rather than physical would be much comfort.

Sometimes the technical reason is less important than the outcome.

[ozmbie]

It's really just a plot device. Suspend your belief for that one part of the movie, and enjoy the rest of the social and political commentary.