“We did not evolve to want to be parents.” This is why I’m not worried in the long term. I personally have very little sex drive, but have had a drive to be a parent since I was a teenager. I know I am in the minority here, but I’m part of a minority that is having much larger families than the people who only have a sex drive. In 100 years, I expect the majority of people that are left will have a stronger parenting drive than a sex drive and enjoy spending time with their children.
Israel is a rich country with a high fertility rate, close to 3. Secular Israelis are around 2, the only secular first-world population that is even at the replacement rate.
Love your work, but this is a very “vibes” based analysis.
There’s tons of scholarship on this topic and ‘we’ already know there are primarily two things that drive birth rates down: 1) secularism 2) female literacy rates.
Harsh to even consider #2 for obvious reasons but the stats back it up.
#1 is fairly obvious in the West but it also explains the upcoming population collapse in (even) Africa and India.
So yeah I agree with the premise we likely have no solution to this problem yet, but it isn’t because kids are annoying on planes or any other “developed country” issue. It’s much deeper than that.
There will not be a problem is EVERY people has a declining birth rate. The fear would be that Europe and developed Asia will see populations collapse, but traditional Islamic and other cultures will not, and those people will come to dominate the others, eliminating cultural ideas like equality for women and minorities, and birth control itself (get rid of hormonal birth control and populations will come back--condoms have been around for centuries with no observable impact on reproductions rates).
Immigration countries such as the US will do fine, as will countries such as Japan that have a national esprit de corps, but there may be destructive outcomes with smaller populations disappearing as lands and their cultures are abandoned. This is not new. The Vietnamese exterminated the Cham, the Turks stole Greek Asia, the Arabs invaded and destroyed cultures from the Atlantic to Syria and Iraq, the English/French/Spanish/Portuguese conquered and dominated the Americas,..., but it will be the first time when people did it to themselves.
The primary issue I see is rapid depopulation. Japan has managed decline very well, but their declines have been gradual;. How rapid declines in South Korea, China, Nepal and other countries will play out is far from obvious. There are real security implications. Furthermore, the collapse of pensions and social welfare is not a joke. If a democratic society decides to burden a tiny working population, the youth might simply leave, accelerating the disappearance of cultures.
This is a real problem with real costs for everyone. It is highly likely that societies will need to promote pro-natalist policies such as significant tax deductions or even outright payments to mothers. The other problem, which you did not discuss, is the issue of women who want children and end up childless after following new culture norms that they felt that they had to obey. No one minds women not giving birth when they do not want children. I can tell you that as you age, you will know women who wanted children but waited too long and could not have them. That is a situation that we can remedy by providing more flexibility and support to mothers. We would be foolish not to.
Most of all, there will not be an appreciable benefit to lower populations in terms of global carbon emissions. That is not something moderated by declining populations in South Korea or Germany. It is driven by poor, rapidly-growing populations buying refrigerators, cars, vacations via plane, and powering it with fossil fuels, especially coal. Diesel generators in Africa will offset any population declines in Japan or Italy, assuming both countries do not simply replace those people with immigrants who go from consuming little fossil fuels to many overnight. The climate is changing. If anything, rapid population decline will result in more mass migration making it worse.
The global decline in birth rates largely reflects a trend where many women choose not to become mothers. However, those who reject this trend continue to have children. It’s not that 'birth rates can’t be fixed,' but rather that secular societies face challenges in sustaining themselves and risk fading away over time.
I see no problem with a declining population. The United States is a nation of immigrants and a highly desirable place to live, so we can continue to add new young people as we like, at least for the next generation or two. A declining population will lead to less global warming and pollution in the long run. Economic growth will slow, but as long as people are fed and housed, I don't see the problem here.
Problem is economic growth will not just grow slow, but rather, it will collapse. It'll be Detroit all over in slow motion. Innovation will be literally killed in the cradle, with less people and less thinking and competition. It won't be same pie for less people, it will be a rapidly shrinking pie where nothing gets made for less people.
This hasn’t happened anywhere in the world, not even Japan, which has the worst problem with demographics. Slow and steady population decline is not a problem. A total collapse probably would be.
Japan is not a good example, for almost anything, it is singularly unique. For your point however, Japan has a robust economy and foreign workers are pouring in, nearly three quarters of a million Chinese for example.
The biggest problem is social welfare and the maintenance of infrastructure. The US should be good, but other countries are going to face serious problems or even collapse, not to mention the disappearance of cultures. For those who hate social welfare, this is not a problem, but I would not want to count on a pension in South Korea.
Great piece. You made all of the points I’ve made regarding the birth rate. Once you get rid of accidental births with birth control it becomes clear that few people WANT to have children. It is what it is.
it’s probably because you and your lot are ugly autistic weirdos who no one wants to procreate with unless on the same level, creating a child worse off.
only a woman knows what its like to have children and when system enabled them to show their resourcefulness through other ways why would they stick to old ways to prove their resourcefulness?
Well let’s start with Pay Them! Lots of policy methods to slant the cost/benefit: increase dependent child deduction 10X or 20X, expand EITC to higher incomes, etc.
Smaller populations will help humanity win the battle against life threatening climate disaster and save the other species we share the planet with.
Robots equipped with artificial general intelligence will wipe our aging asses and grow and prepare our food.
Young people will have less competition for jobs so their wages will rise and with less demand for housing the cost of the existing housing stock will become more affordable.
Paul Krugman looked at low birth rate Japan and penned an amazingly optimistic report on its economic conditions. "In some ways, Japan, rather than being a cautionary tale, is a kind of role model - an example of how to manage difficult demography while remaining prosperous and socially stable.
“We did not evolve to want to be parents.” This is why I’m not worried in the long term. I personally have very little sex drive, but have had a drive to be a parent since I was a teenager. I know I am in the minority here, but I’m part of a minority that is having much larger families than the people who only have a sex drive. In 100 years, I expect the majority of people that are left will have a stronger parenting drive than a sex drive and enjoy spending time with their children.
Israel is a rich country with a high fertility rate, close to 3. Secular Israelis are around 2, the only secular first-world population that is even at the replacement rate.
So this is a bottleneck, and those who pass through it means the fertility rate will go up again in the future.
This is a bad article with bad arguments
Love your work, but this is a very “vibes” based analysis.
There’s tons of scholarship on this topic and ‘we’ already know there are primarily two things that drive birth rates down: 1) secularism 2) female literacy rates.
Harsh to even consider #2 for obvious reasons but the stats back it up.
#1 is fairly obvious in the West but it also explains the upcoming population collapse in (even) Africa and India.
So yeah I agree with the premise we likely have no solution to this problem yet, but it isn’t because kids are annoying on planes or any other “developed country” issue. It’s much deeper than that.
There will not be a problem is EVERY people has a declining birth rate. The fear would be that Europe and developed Asia will see populations collapse, but traditional Islamic and other cultures will not, and those people will come to dominate the others, eliminating cultural ideas like equality for women and minorities, and birth control itself (get rid of hormonal birth control and populations will come back--condoms have been around for centuries with no observable impact on reproductions rates).
Immigration countries such as the US will do fine, as will countries such as Japan that have a national esprit de corps, but there may be destructive outcomes with smaller populations disappearing as lands and their cultures are abandoned. This is not new. The Vietnamese exterminated the Cham, the Turks stole Greek Asia, the Arabs invaded and destroyed cultures from the Atlantic to Syria and Iraq, the English/French/Spanish/Portuguese conquered and dominated the Americas,..., but it will be the first time when people did it to themselves.
The primary issue I see is rapid depopulation. Japan has managed decline very well, but their declines have been gradual;. How rapid declines in South Korea, China, Nepal and other countries will play out is far from obvious. There are real security implications. Furthermore, the collapse of pensions and social welfare is not a joke. If a democratic society decides to burden a tiny working population, the youth might simply leave, accelerating the disappearance of cultures.
This is a real problem with real costs for everyone. It is highly likely that societies will need to promote pro-natalist policies such as significant tax deductions or even outright payments to mothers. The other problem, which you did not discuss, is the issue of women who want children and end up childless after following new culture norms that they felt that they had to obey. No one minds women not giving birth when they do not want children. I can tell you that as you age, you will know women who wanted children but waited too long and could not have them. That is a situation that we can remedy by providing more flexibility and support to mothers. We would be foolish not to.
Most of all, there will not be an appreciable benefit to lower populations in terms of global carbon emissions. That is not something moderated by declining populations in South Korea or Germany. It is driven by poor, rapidly-growing populations buying refrigerators, cars, vacations via plane, and powering it with fossil fuels, especially coal. Diesel generators in Africa will offset any population declines in Japan or Italy, assuming both countries do not simply replace those people with immigrants who go from consuming little fossil fuels to many overnight. The climate is changing. If anything, rapid population decline will result in more mass migration making it worse.
The global decline in birth rates largely reflects a trend where many women choose not to become mothers. However, those who reject this trend continue to have children. It’s not that 'birth rates can’t be fixed,' but rather that secular societies face challenges in sustaining themselves and risk fading away over time.
It'll fix itself through evolutionary genetic selection.
I see no problem with a declining population. The United States is a nation of immigrants and a highly desirable place to live, so we can continue to add new young people as we like, at least for the next generation or two. A declining population will lead to less global warming and pollution in the long run. Economic growth will slow, but as long as people are fed and housed, I don't see the problem here.
Problem is economic growth will not just grow slow, but rather, it will collapse. It'll be Detroit all over in slow motion. Innovation will be literally killed in the cradle, with less people and less thinking and competition. It won't be same pie for less people, it will be a rapidly shrinking pie where nothing gets made for less people.
This hasn’t happened anywhere in the world, not even Japan, which has the worst problem with demographics. Slow and steady population decline is not a problem. A total collapse probably would be.
Japan is not a good example, for almost anything, it is singularly unique. For your point however, Japan has a robust economy and foreign workers are pouring in, nearly three quarters of a million Chinese for example.
Let's see what happens to South Korea in the next few decades.
The biggest problem is social welfare and the maintenance of infrastructure. The US should be good, but other countries are going to face serious problems or even collapse, not to mention the disappearance of cultures. For those who hate social welfare, this is not a problem, but I would not want to count on a pension in South Korea.
Great piece. You made all of the points I’ve made regarding the birth rate. Once you get rid of accidental births with birth control it becomes clear that few people WANT to have children. It is what it is.
Pharma and other medical interventions have created this fertility problem, and that is the elephant in the room for the real scientists to reveal.
it’s probably because you and your lot are ugly autistic weirdos who no one wants to procreate with unless on the same level, creating a child worse off.
only a woman knows what its like to have children and when system enabled them to show their resourcefulness through other ways why would they stick to old ways to prove their resourcefulness?
Well let’s start with Pay Them! Lots of policy methods to slant the cost/benefit: increase dependent child deduction 10X or 20X, expand EITC to higher incomes, etc.
Smaller populations will help humanity win the battle against life threatening climate disaster and save the other species we share the planet with.
Robots equipped with artificial general intelligence will wipe our aging asses and grow and prepare our food.
Young people will have less competition for jobs so their wages will rise and with less demand for housing the cost of the existing housing stock will become more affordable.
Paul Krugman looked at low birth rate Japan and penned an amazingly optimistic report on its economic conditions. "In some ways, Japan, rather than being a cautionary tale, is a kind of role model - an example of how to manage difficult demography while remaining prosperous and socially stable.
we should also take into account the drastic increase in infertility, so even couples who want to have children may be unable
over the past 50 years, men's sperm counts have gone down 50-60%. testosterone levels are way down too
this has been variously attributed to phthalates, GMOs, vaccines, and a range of environmental pollutants