> Scroll down the World Bank's fertility numbers on this page [1] to get to data by region. You can add the entire Arab World, Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as having sustainable fertility rates.

You can use metrics from different groups and slice and dice sections and find ways of getting above 2.1 (replacement), sure, but it's not affecting my main point at all, which was that it's not contained to the Western world, and that 3 kids is now an outlier in most of the world.

To your specifics:

South Asia is listed as 2.2. But India has hit 2.1 and is declining, and Bangladesh and Nepal are even further below replacement - the World Bank metric is I presume buoyed by Pakistan, which has hit 3.1 (3.47 in the 2021 numbers on Wiipedia), and is declining, and Afghanistan, which is in even steeper decline - the other countries in the region are mostly rounding errors in terms of population.

It's a difference of whether it's already hit replacement as a region already, or will within 2-3 years at most. I'm perfectly happy to accept the World Bank numbers for the sake of this argument, as it's not relevant to the argument.

With respect to MENA and the Arab World, you're double-counting. The bulk of the countries that are part of the Arab World vs Middle East /North Africa are the same.

The largest non-Arab MENA countries are Iran, which is well below replacement (1.7) and Turkey, at 1.9.

The Arab World also includes several countries considered sub-Sarahan by some or all of other groups (Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan) which pulls it up, and MENA curiously includes Sudan in some statistics, even though it's considered sub-Saharan and/or East Africa by other groupings.

Once you actually exclude the sub-Saharan countries from those groups, the rate lowers significantly. Taking Sudan alone out of MENA brings MENA close to replacement. If you choose to look at the Arab World alone, then, sure, even excluding the sub-Saharan countries they're still above replacement. I'm again, fine with choosing to slice the numbers that way - they do not affect the argument I was making in any meaningful way, because then the remaining MENA countries are below instead.

What we're left with no matter how we slice it, is that roughly half the worlds countries are below replacement, accounting for well above half the worlds current population (but that balance will shift rapidly), and leaving the world average at ~2.3 and declining even by World Bank numbers.

> And places like Latin America are in decline, but still in the realm of realm of being saved at ~1.9.

There's no "being saved" here. Short of economic collapse, we don't know of any reliable measure to drive these numbers back up again, and they've been consistently trending down since the 1960's. China appears to be poised to be the country likely go hardest in trying, now recommending 3 children per family, and given an extremely restrictive immigration policy. That's fine - they don't need to be "saved".

> The only places currently in catastrophic collapse at the EU (1.5), North America (1.6), and East Asia (1.5).

I was not, and is not, and will not be, arguing any "catastrophic collapse" - to me at least that notion is meaningless to most people other than "great replacement" type people.

The world as a whole is headed for a relatively gentle flattening of population growth, and a period of decline, but no "catastrophic collapse" in population. But we are headed for a fairly dramatic shift in politics and economic development as this happens and the countries facing the steepest drops become more dependent on actually courting immigration as a consequence. There will still be enough growth to do that for decades to come.