Rich or poor or poorer. Advanced or undeveloped. Asian or American or European or African. Religious or secular. Educated or not. Large population countries like China and India or small ones like Barbados and Liechtenstein. With one exception, all are on a glide path to oblivion, albeit at different rates.

Here is the view of the high-income countries, provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis’ data bank, Federal Reserve Economic Data.  https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINHIC

And for the Low Income Countries

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINLIC

And for the Least Developed Countries

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINLDC

And black Africa:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINSSA

And the European Union:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINEUU

And for the world as a whole

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINWLD

The riddle to solve: What do all these countries from different regions and different demographics have in common, to put them in the same trajectory?

Answers to the riddle are welcome. Scroll to the end to leave your response.

A related riddle: One country in the world stands as an outlier — Israel. It was on the same trajectory as all the others until the early 1990s. Then something happened to pull it out of national suicide.

What made Israel different?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINPSE

Whatever changed Israel didn’t affect the Arabs next door.

Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories resembled the rest of the world in their fertility.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINJOR

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINPSE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINSAU

Answers to the riddle are welcome below:

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To check out your own country, see: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/33512