13 ms·

Very few cou tries right now have a self sustaining birth rate. I believe no first world nation has a self sustaining birth rate. This does appear to be a maj

Very few cou tries right now have a self sustaining birth rate. I believe no first world nation has a self sustaining birth rate. This does appear to be a major problem everywhere that is going to be one of the big challenges we face in the coming decades. Not sure what the answer is but off hand it seems that conservatives and those that are religious have higher birth rates than those who are secular and liberal thus part of this problem is clearly values/cultural.

88840-8855 6y ago
The answer is migration. Even Japan is reforming it's ultra conservative migration rules. Let's don't forget that we are soon 8 billion people on this planet. Imagine 8 billion elephants or 8 billion Tigers living on earth. We are too many and that's not sustainable.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Bringing people that share none of your values/cultural background? Thanks but no thanks Which doesn't mean it couldn't be done, but not the way it is done currently.
- dominicl 6y ago
  Have heard this before 8 billion would be too much. I've learned human population is always in an equilibrium with the technological ability to provide for them. So agriculture innovation leads to further population growths. What hard limit are we running into? Why not further innovation and 16 billion?
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    We are not in equilibrium as the climate and environmental situation makes absolutely plain.
    - lnsru 6y ago
      Maybe climate is in absolute equilibrium. Warmer climate opens new areas for living. Just look at the globe - there are much more land in the north than on equator.
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Yes but despite the rhetoric about runaway warmth, northern Canada and Russia remain fairly inhospitable.
        killtimeatwork 6y ago
        I suspect it's a matter of time. However, from what I've read most of the soil in Siberia is very poor for farming, so I guess there won't be much food production coming from there even if the climate becomes warmer...
        kijin 6y ago
        If you really want to, soil quality can be fixed with heavy machinery and chemical fertilizers. But the new, warmer climate isn't particularly stable yet, so it's probably not wise to pour too much resources into that mega-project at this time.
        chrisco255 6y ago
        Don't bet on it. We're still in an ice age and a glacial period will return before Canada and Russia become tropical paradise.
      - esarbe 6y ago
        Well, it's not. In equilibrium, that is. Whatever you mean by it - it's not. What makes you think that these countries will let in the desperate fugitives? No, that won't happen.
      - mytailorisrich 6y ago
        Destroying the environment in order to expand our use of resources is not an equilibrium. We've never been in equilibrium. We've continuously expanded at the expense of other species. It's just that now the limit of this expansion has become very visible
  - esarbe 6y ago
    Yeah, no. There's no equilibrium. What we are currently doing is predatory ecosystem exploitation where we destroy our own life support system for the short gain. All that loss of habitats and of biodiversity? That's going come back to bite use hard and it's not waiting for the far future. This shit is happening within the next 25 years. To think that we are in any kind of equilibrium is to delude yourself.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Long term equilibrium for the species is not a great concept for us right now. At some point we'll run into an ecological problem wiping out most of the corn in the US for a year. That could be a potato famine level event, but we'll regrow in a few decades... equilibrium kept, but it doesn't help those who starved.
- robjan 6y ago
  Migration from where? If all developed countries are below replacement birth rate the only solution is to remove skilled workers from developing countries which ultimately damages their economies.
  - killtimeatwork 6y ago
    Migration across the world and across history was and is generally about unskilled workers. The skilled people are less incentivized to move (the in-demand skills guarantee somewhat decent living in most places on Earth), while for unskilled people from poorest countries migrating can be about baseline survival, so the motivation is very strong. Also, the unskilled people are more welcome in the target country, as they do the worst jobs for the least money [1], which basically increases everybody's standard of living. [1] For example, there would be serious problems in the German society if not for Eastern European immigrants who take care of millions of older people for pennies. If these immigrants were not there, the older people and their families would have to pay 3-4x times the amount for German caretakers, which would of course break the budget of many.
    - corty 6y ago
      That is quite untrue, especially for Germany. Germany does not only siphon off unskilled (mostly seasonal) laborers from eastern Europe. We also draw in a lot of their educated workforce, which is especially apparent and problematic in fields like medicine, where doctors and nurses wander westward and are the missing in their countries of origin.
- morlockabove 6y ago
  Presumably you want every country to be developed. So what happens when every country in the world has a shrinking population?
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    Then we finally start to manage the planet as the finite resource it is.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  This answer brings a lot of questions with it. The rise of the far right in Europe is mostly caused by clashes of cultural norms of native Europeans vs. immigrant Muslims. As of 2020, it is not entirely clear if France, for example, can prevent emergence of dozens of alienated urban zones which aren't part of the national whole in any meaningful sense - a scattering of small Gaza Strips across the map. Neither is it clear whether all of the grooming gangs (mostly Pakistanis of Mirpuri origin) in UK have already been extirpated and how long will the P.R. disaster be remembered. This is a huge headache, because even in the Islamic world, high fertility is typical for backward, bigoted regions. Secular urban centers like Tehran and Izmir are no better than Europe, as far as total number of kids goes, so they cannot serve as a reservoir of workforce. Total fertility today is strongly negatively correlated with education of women, which means that most kids are born in places hostile to female education attainment. Such as Niger, Afghanistan or Yemen. But these are precisely the places whose cultural norms work as a bombshell when suddenly transplanted into Europe.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
  Maybe for America that is such a young country of immigrants all over the world but definetly the majority of world nation states don't see mass immigration as a solution to the problem.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > We are too many and that's not sustainable. Not a sound argument. Earth can easily sustain hundreds of billions of people even at modern day technology level in supreme comfort. By some calculations, even one trillion is possible without having anybody switching to algae diet.
sudeepj 6y ago
To add to the problem it is generally believed/conjectured that once a fertility rate drops, it does not go up [1] (barring few temporary spikes) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822437/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822437/
- arc-in-space 6y ago
  The paper you link makes the case that this hypothesis has no real evidence to stand on. I'm not sure how concerned anyone should be about this particular brand of fortune-telling. Wikipedia states this about the referenced 'demographic transition' model. Note the last sentence: > It must be remembered that the DTM is only a model and cannot necessarily predict the future. It does however give an indication of what the future birth and death rates may be for an underdeveloped country, together with the total population size. Most particularly, of course, the DTM makes no comment on change in population due to migration. It is not applicable for high levels of development, as it has been shown that after a HDI of 0.9 the fertility increases again.
  - sudeepj 6y ago
    You are right. I should have pointed this out. I was trying to find citation about the conjecture I mentioned. I remember reading somewhere but only found this which says that it is an assumption.
powerapple 6y ago
If technology is on track of disrupting our society, countries with advanced technology and smaller population may be the one benefiting a lot from it. A smaller population means the whole expenditure of supporting the population will be small, job losses are affordable, economic solutions such as basic income can actually work better. In order to support smaller populations, the infrastructure needed for a robotic economy is more achievable. You don't need to pump the economy to keep people in jobs. The large developing economy with big population and less advanced technology will be left behind forever.
- raducu 6y ago
  Right, so actually a country with a population of 1 individual would benefit the most? Who knew that the technology game will be won by some loonie that declares his basement a sovereign country?
docdeek 6y ago
Israel (2.4) is above replacement rate, and France is below but close (1.9) for a larger developed country. Other than that, though, they are thin on the ground. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
- oblio 6y ago
  Israel is that high primarily due to ultra orthodox Jews. Who might actually create a sustainability problem if they keep it up since they have many kids per family (4+).
  - bhouston 6y ago
    So Israel's liberal/secular population is declining relative to the religious/conservative? That is my thesis generally. What effect does that have on culture/society in Israel?
    - esarbe 6y ago
      Less tolerance across the board and strong tendencies towards a theocracy?
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    They're also dropping fast, just a little behind the curve but not much different from every one else.
    - oblio 6y ago
      They are? The last articles I read (maybe from 2018) didn't seem to believe this would happen. Do you have a more recent reliable source? Thanks!
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-fertility-trends-across-the-globe https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-f... Last graph
mytailorisrich 6y ago
The answer is to accept and embrace the end of population growth, and even cheer for population decline. This obviously requires a paradigm shift but ultimately can be a net positive for the environment, quality of life, and individual wealth.
- esarbe 6y ago
  While some population decline is probably for the best, we need to stabilize the population at some point. Otherwise there's no foundation for a sustainable civilization.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Obviously. No-one is suggesting to make our species extinct... But let's remember that we were less than 1 billion not too long ago while we're on course to be 10 billion soon, with individual consumption massive increased on top of that. We won't solve climate and environmental problems unless this is tackled. The aim of civilization is to make people better off, not to squeeze them into a dystopian world of overpopulation and environmental collapse.
    - esarbe 6y ago
      Absolutely! I think it would be fine to go back to 1 billion, although the transition to a less extensive infrastructure will probably be quite rough. It's good that we already started concentrating most of the population in cities. This will help with the transition immensely.
      - raducu 6y ago
        Has the concentration of population in cities helped us in the past when things gotten quite rough?
        esarbe 6y ago
        The most important factor in keeping people alive nowadays is infrastructure. We're not self-sufficient anymore and it's pretty delusional to think that we'll be able to move back to some kind of pre-industrial pastoral idyll. We are dependent on high-tech and that's not going to change. The easiest way to make everyone able to participate in that high-tech is to have high-density population centers with little infrastructure benefiting the most people.
bluescrn 6y ago
While it’s an economic problem for a while, a declining population is wonderful news. It’s the best thing that could happen to reduce our destruction of the environment, and the pyramid scheme of ‘endless growth on a finite planet’ had to end at some point.
- bhouston 6y ago
  Declining birthrates are not equal across all demographics. I believe that because liberal and secular have the lowest birthrates it means the future of the world is religious and conservative, no? This means generally tolerance and science literacy could decline. That worries me.
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > Declining birthrates are not equal across all demographics. I believe that because liberal and secular have the lowest birthrates it means the future of the world is religious and conservative, no? Poor, non and under developed nations with poor living standards are the only ones that still have persistently neutral to positive replacement birth rates. And, yes, this has many consequences, which his why I hope S. America, Africa and South E. Asia are the benefactors of a weaker China and they too begin to modernize as the whole Species stands to benefit from that and we decouple from the CCP's violent and belligerent stance against the World. I agree that in the immediate sense a lower population is net boon to allow the Planet to heal itself from myopic Human action/pollution/over consumption, but as we're getting closer to becoming a multi-planetary species we will have to increase this population size significantly to meet the demand of those efforts and I think their is a significant lag time if the culture of having 2 kids per married couple and has been reduced to 2 dogs per married family for my generation and likely those to come and has become the norm in order to remain relevant in the ever shrinking labour market.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      > I hope S. America, Africa and South E. Asia are the benefactors of a weaker China and they too begin to modernize as the whole Species stands to benefit from that and we decouple from the CCP's violent and belligerent stance against the World. There are plenty of belligerent countries in those regions, it's just that they're not considered important enough for their saber-rattling to be noticed internationally, and their enemies tend to be sub-national groups formed around shared ethnicity, control of resources (drugs, oil, mines) or religion who are even less likely to attract attention. By now, lots of people have heard about Mexican drug cartels, Kurdistan or Joseph Kony's "Lord's Resistance Army", but who cared about the Houthis in Yemen before their civil war turned into an international proxy war? Who could've predicted the civil war in Ethiopia? And who knows whether the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, the Naga nationalist movement, the Wa state or the Free Papua Movement will be next to make international news? Modernization doesn't guarantee peace and democracy; it also means higher availability of more powerful or more, cheaper weapons. Combined with population growth, even small areas are able to raise substantial armies, while declining resources (relative to population) incentivize wars to secure a larger slice of the pie. I expect that we'll continue to see large countries only held together by shared colonial history disintegrate violently into smaller regions with more complex borders.
kace91 6y ago
> Not sure what the answer is but off hand it seems that conservatives and those that are religious have higher birth rates than those who are secular and liberal thus part of this problem is clearly values/cultural. Mainly an issue with feminism being widespread but living/working conditions not having caught up with it. Society is set up assuming that the wife will stay home to care for the kids. As a result having children pretty much requires either enough disposable income to outsource caring for the kids (nanny, extracurricular activities, etc), or one of the parents staying at home. For conservatives it's less of a problem because it's more accepted to have the wife stay home. If we want birthrates to raise again we're going to have to figure out how to make having kids not be a stopper for your career.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  > Mainly an issue with feminism being widespread but living/working conditions not having caught up with it. Are you sure that women entering the workforce wasn't _because_ of economic reasons? It seems to me that "feminism", as you put it, may have only been allowed to win, because it was desirable economically. In other words, could feminism be a result of living/working conditions and not the cause? Following this, people are having less kids because there is huge economic incentive not too.
  - morlockabove 6y ago
    It was desirable economically to the upper classes. It was, obviously, bad for workers (two-income trap). The only way it would be a net economic positive for them would be through their share of gains to the overall economy... but we know that the median person's proportional share of the economy has shrunk, so that's a bust.
    - Miner49er 6y ago
      > It was desirable economically to the upper classes. It was, obviously, bad for workers (two-income trap). Long term yes. But did women enter the workforce because of the economic benefit originally? Then as women continued entering wages fell (supply and demand) and the working class ended up trapped, as you say. Another huge factor is globalization. Women maybe had to enter to earn enough when work started being outsourced.
nerdponx 6y ago
What exactly is bad about this?
- srean 6y ago
  The population shifts to the elderly. That can lead to reduced number of people who are actively contributing unless retirement age too is pushed upwards. Gains in productivity can offset this to an extent. Savings scheme where the inflow from new generation pays for the outgoing generation can become unsustainable if the demographics becomes top heavy.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    Sounds like a temporary problem with long term benefits, to me.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    But automation is proceeding at breakneck speed (especially this year). It wont take 'young people' to make the goods that everyone needs, not for much longer (years). And its actual goods and supply, that determine the value of money which is after all, imaginary points.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Goods are only part of the necessary economy. A society with a lot of elderly = demand for huge amounts of daily care, which is hard to automate away, though probably not impossible. (The Japanese are definitely trying.) The only way out of this conundrum would be a breakthrough in longevity, where people would live to 110 in a relatively good shape and being able to care for themselves, then die within weeks from some fast degenerative process.
      - 6y ago
agd 6y ago
A problem in some ways yes, but also an opportunity. A fantastic opportunity for the environment and to solve the housing crisis. I’m still amazed how many politicians think a pyramid scheme of population increase is a good, sustainable way to pay for pensions and healthcare.
- raducu 6y ago
  The environment will need us to solve the mess we created. No way a declining population would be able to, we need at least a stable population. The real crisis is the zombie crisis -- zombie empires and zombie societies that lost all touch with family values and morality, or mental sanity; the problem is all of the developed world is the same, so no winner to take over.
cik 6y ago
I'm in Israel - we have a self-sustaining birth rate amongst both the Jewish and Arab populations, both religious and secular. Then again culture here is very, very family based.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Yet even Israel has seen it drop drastically, not yet to settle. See this, graph at the end: https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-fertility-trends-across-the-globe https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-f...
  - cik 6y ago
    Our birth rate has barely dropped. It's gone from an average of 3.11 births in 2018 to 3.08 births in 2019. Interestingly, the birth rate varies greatly by city, with Jerusalem's being twice Haifa's.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      There were populations that were as high as 9 in the 1960's. All have fallen in line with global trends.
- HuwytNashi_007 6y ago
  I suspect Jews don't allow the same errrr "advertising" in Israel that the largely-progressive Jewish media is renowned for in the West. Our kids experience such hyper-exposure to themes including LGBTQI+, interracial relationships, career > family, promiscuity > monogamy, etc that it's a miracle we're having any kids at all! Things will change though, they always do.

88840-8855 6y ago

The answer is migration. Even Japan is reforming it's ultra conservative migration rules. Let's don't forget that we are soon 8 billion people on this planet. Imagine 8 billion elephants or 8 billion Tigers living on earth. We are too many and that's not sustainable.

raverbashing 6y ago
Bringing people that share none of your values/cultural background? Thanks but no thanks Which doesn't mean it couldn't be done, but not the way it is done currently.
dominicl 6y ago
Have heard this before 8 billion would be too much. I've learned human population is always in an equilibrium with the technological ability to provide for them. So agriculture innovation leads to further population growths. What hard limit are we running into? Why not further innovation and 16 billion?
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  We are not in equilibrium as the climate and environmental situation makes absolutely plain.
  - lnsru 6y ago
    Maybe climate is in absolute equilibrium. Warmer climate opens new areas for living. Just look at the globe - there are much more land in the north than on equator.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Yes but despite the rhetoric about runaway warmth, northern Canada and Russia remain fairly inhospitable.
      - killtimeatwork 6y ago
        I suspect it's a matter of time. However, from what I've read most of the soil in Siberia is very poor for farming, so I guess there won't be much food production coming from there even if the climate becomes warmer...
        kijin 6y ago
        If you really want to, soil quality can be fixed with heavy machinery and chemical fertilizers. But the new, warmer climate isn't particularly stable yet, so it's probably not wise to pour too much resources into that mega-project at this time.
        chrisco255 6y ago
        Don't bet on it. We're still in an ice age and a glacial period will return before Canada and Russia become tropical paradise.
    - esarbe 6y ago
      Well, it's not. In equilibrium, that is. Whatever you mean by it - it's not. What makes you think that these countries will let in the desperate fugitives? No, that won't happen.
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Destroying the environment in order to expand our use of resources is not an equilibrium. We've never been in equilibrium. We've continuously expanded at the expense of other species. It's just that now the limit of this expansion has become very visible
- esarbe 6y ago
  Yeah, no. There's no equilibrium. What we are currently doing is predatory ecosystem exploitation where we destroy our own life support system for the short gain. All that loss of habitats and of biodiversity? That's going come back to bite use hard and it's not waiting for the far future. This shit is happening within the next 25 years. To think that we are in any kind of equilibrium is to delude yourself.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Long term equilibrium for the species is not a great concept for us right now. At some point we'll run into an ecological problem wiping out most of the corn in the US for a year. That could be a potato famine level event, but we'll regrow in a few decades... equilibrium kept, but it doesn't help those who starved.
robjan 6y ago
Migration from where? If all developed countries are below replacement birth rate the only solution is to remove skilled workers from developing countries which ultimately damages their economies.
- killtimeatwork 6y ago
  Migration across the world and across history was and is generally about unskilled workers. The skilled people are less incentivized to move (the in-demand skills guarantee somewhat decent living in most places on Earth), while for unskilled people from poorest countries migrating can be about baseline survival, so the motivation is very strong. Also, the unskilled people are more welcome in the target country, as they do the worst jobs for the least money [1], which basically increases everybody's standard of living. [1] For example, there would be serious problems in the German society if not for Eastern European immigrants who take care of millions of older people for pennies. If these immigrants were not there, the older people and their families would have to pay 3-4x times the amount for German caretakers, which would of course break the budget of many.
  - corty 6y ago
    That is quite untrue, especially for Germany. Germany does not only siphon off unskilled (mostly seasonal) laborers from eastern Europe. We also draw in a lot of their educated workforce, which is especially apparent and problematic in fields like medicine, where doctors and nurses wander westward and are the missing in their countries of origin.
morlockabove 6y ago
Presumably you want every country to be developed. So what happens when every country in the world has a shrinking population?
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Then we finally start to manage the planet as the finite resource it is.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
inglor_cz 6y ago
This answer brings a lot of questions with it. The rise of the far right in Europe is mostly caused by clashes of cultural norms of native Europeans vs. immigrant Muslims. As of 2020, it is not entirely clear if France, for example, can prevent emergence of dozens of alienated urban zones which aren't part of the national whole in any meaningful sense - a scattering of small Gaza Strips across the map. Neither is it clear whether all of the grooming gangs (mostly Pakistanis of Mirpuri origin) in UK have already been extirpated and how long will the P.R. disaster be remembered. This is a huge headache, because even in the Islamic world, high fertility is typical for backward, bigoted regions. Secular urban centers like Tehran and Izmir are no better than Europe, as far as total number of kids goes, so they cannot serve as a reservoir of workforce. Total fertility today is strongly negatively correlated with education of women, which means that most kids are born in places hostile to female education attainment. Such as Niger, Afghanistan or Yemen. But these are precisely the places whose cultural norms work as a bombshell when suddenly transplanted into Europe.
9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
Maybe for America that is such a young country of immigrants all over the world but definetly the majority of world nation states don't see mass immigration as a solution to the problem.
baybal2 6y ago
> We are too many and that's not sustainable. Not a sound argument. Earth can easily sustain hundreds of billions of people even at modern day technology level in supreme comfort. By some calculations, even one trillion is possible without having anybody switching to algae diet.

sudeepj 6y ago

To add to the problem it is generally believed/conjectured that once a fertility rate drops, it does not go up [1] (barring few temporary spikes) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822437/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822437/

arc-in-space 6y ago
The paper you link makes the case that this hypothesis has no real evidence to stand on. I'm not sure how concerned anyone should be about this particular brand of fortune-telling. Wikipedia states this about the referenced 'demographic transition' model. Note the last sentence: > It must be remembered that the DTM is only a model and cannot necessarily predict the future. It does however give an indication of what the future birth and death rates may be for an underdeveloped country, together with the total population size. Most particularly, of course, the DTM makes no comment on change in population due to migration. It is not applicable for high levels of development, as it has been shown that after a HDI of 0.9 the fertility increases again.
- sudeepj 6y ago
  You are right. I should have pointed this out. I was trying to find citation about the conjecture I mentioned. I remember reading somewhere but only found this which says that it is an assumption.

powerapple 6y ago

If technology is on track of disrupting our society, countries with advanced technology and smaller population may be the one benefiting a lot from it. A smaller population means the whole expenditure of supporting the population will be small, job losses are affordable, economic solutions such as basic income can actually work better. In order to support smaller populations, the infrastructure needed for a robotic economy is more achievable. You don't need to pump the economy to keep people in jobs. The large developing economy with big population and less advanced technology will be left behind forever.

raducu 6y ago
Right, so actually a country with a population of 1 individual would benefit the most? Who knew that the technology game will be won by some loonie that declares his basement a sovereign country?

docdeek 6y ago

Israel (2.4) is above replacement rate, and France is below but close (1.9) for a larger developed country. Other than that, though, they are thin on the ground. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

oblio 6y ago
Israel is that high primarily due to ultra orthodox Jews. Who might actually create a sustainability problem if they keep it up since they have many kids per family (4+).
- bhouston 6y ago
  So Israel's liberal/secular population is declining relative to the religious/conservative? That is my thesis generally. What effect does that have on culture/society in Israel?
  - esarbe 6y ago
    Less tolerance across the board and strong tendencies towards a theocracy?
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  They're also dropping fast, just a little behind the curve but not much different from every one else.
  - oblio 6y ago
    They are? The last articles I read (maybe from 2018) didn't seem to believe this would happen. Do you have a more recent reliable source? Thanks!
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-fertility-trends-across-the-globe https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-f... Last graph

mytailorisrich 6y ago

The answer is to accept and embrace the end of population growth, and even cheer for population decline. This obviously requires a paradigm shift but ultimately can be a net positive for the environment, quality of life, and individual wealth.

esarbe 6y ago
While some population decline is probably for the best, we need to stabilize the population at some point. Otherwise there's no foundation for a sustainable civilization.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Obviously. No-one is suggesting to make our species extinct... But let's remember that we were less than 1 billion not too long ago while we're on course to be 10 billion soon, with individual consumption massive increased on top of that. We won't solve climate and environmental problems unless this is tackled. The aim of civilization is to make people better off, not to squeeze them into a dystopian world of overpopulation and environmental collapse.
  - esarbe 6y ago
    Absolutely! I think it would be fine to go back to 1 billion, although the transition to a less extensive infrastructure will probably be quite rough. It's good that we already started concentrating most of the population in cities. This will help with the transition immensely.
    - raducu 6y ago
      Has the concentration of population in cities helped us in the past when things gotten quite rough?
      - esarbe 6y ago
        The most important factor in keeping people alive nowadays is infrastructure. We're not self-sufficient anymore and it's pretty delusional to think that we'll be able to move back to some kind of pre-industrial pastoral idyll. We are dependent on high-tech and that's not going to change. The easiest way to make everyone able to participate in that high-tech is to have high-density population centers with little infrastructure benefiting the most people.

bluescrn 6y ago

While it’s an economic problem for a while, a declining population is wonderful news. It’s the best thing that could happen to reduce our destruction of the environment, and the pyramid scheme of ‘endless growth on a finite planet’ had to end at some point.

bhouston 6y ago
Declining birthrates are not equal across all demographics. I believe that because liberal and secular have the lowest birthrates it means the future of the world is religious and conservative, no? This means generally tolerance and science literacy could decline. That worries me.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Declining birthrates are not equal across all demographics. I believe that because liberal and secular have the lowest birthrates it means the future of the world is religious and conservative, no? Poor, non and under developed nations with poor living standards are the only ones that still have persistently neutral to positive replacement birth rates. And, yes, this has many consequences, which his why I hope S. America, Africa and South E. Asia are the benefactors of a weaker China and they too begin to modernize as the whole Species stands to benefit from that and we decouple from the CCP's violent and belligerent stance against the World. I agree that in the immediate sense a lower population is net boon to allow the Planet to heal itself from myopic Human action/pollution/over consumption, but as we're getting closer to becoming a multi-planetary species we will have to increase this population size significantly to meet the demand of those efforts and I think their is a significant lag time if the culture of having 2 kids per married couple and has been reduced to 2 dogs per married family for my generation and likely those to come and has become the norm in order to remain relevant in the ever shrinking labour market.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    > I hope S. America, Africa and South E. Asia are the benefactors of a weaker China and they too begin to modernize as the whole Species stands to benefit from that and we decouple from the CCP's violent and belligerent stance against the World. There are plenty of belligerent countries in those regions, it's just that they're not considered important enough for their saber-rattling to be noticed internationally, and their enemies tend to be sub-national groups formed around shared ethnicity, control of resources (drugs, oil, mines) or religion who are even less likely to attract attention. By now, lots of people have heard about Mexican drug cartels, Kurdistan or Joseph Kony's "Lord's Resistance Army", but who cared about the Houthis in Yemen before their civil war turned into an international proxy war? Who could've predicted the civil war in Ethiopia? And who knows whether the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, the Naga nationalist movement, the Wa state or the Free Papua Movement will be next to make international news? Modernization doesn't guarantee peace and democracy; it also means higher availability of more powerful or more, cheaper weapons. Combined with population growth, even small areas are able to raise substantial armies, while declining resources (relative to population) incentivize wars to secure a larger slice of the pie. I expect that we'll continue to see large countries only held together by shared colonial history disintegrate violently into smaller regions with more complex borders.

kace91 6y ago

> Not sure what the answer is but off hand it seems that conservatives and those that are religious have higher birth rates than those who are secular and liberal thus part of this problem is clearly values/cultural. Mainly an issue with feminism being widespread but living/working conditions not having caught up with it. Society is set up assuming that the wife will stay home to care for the kids. As a result having children pretty much requires either enough disposable income to outsource caring for the kids (nanny, extracurricular activities, etc), or one of the parents staying at home. For conservatives it's less of a problem because it's more accepted to have the wife stay home. If we want birthrates to raise again we're going to have to figure out how to make having kids not be a stopper for your career.

Miner49er 6y ago
> Mainly an issue with feminism being widespread but living/working conditions not having caught up with it. Are you sure that women entering the workforce wasn't _because_ of economic reasons? It seems to me that "feminism", as you put it, may have only been allowed to win, because it was desirable economically. In other words, could feminism be a result of living/working conditions and not the cause? Following this, people are having less kids because there is huge economic incentive not too.
- morlockabove 6y ago
  It was desirable economically to the upper classes. It was, obviously, bad for workers (two-income trap). The only way it would be a net economic positive for them would be through their share of gains to the overall economy... but we know that the median person's proportional share of the economy has shrunk, so that's a bust.
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    > It was desirable economically to the upper classes. It was, obviously, bad for workers (two-income trap). Long term yes. But did women enter the workforce because of the economic benefit originally? Then as women continued entering wages fell (supply and demand) and the working class ended up trapped, as you say. Another huge factor is globalization. Women maybe had to enter to earn enough when work started being outsourced.

nerdponx 6y ago

What exactly is bad about this?

srean 6y ago
The population shifts to the elderly. That can lead to reduced number of people who are actively contributing unless retirement age too is pushed upwards. Gains in productivity can offset this to an extent. Savings scheme where the inflow from new generation pays for the outgoing generation can become unsustainable if the demographics becomes top heavy.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Sounds like a temporary problem with long term benefits, to me.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  But automation is proceeding at breakneck speed (especially this year). It wont take 'young people' to make the goods that everyone needs, not for much longer (years). And its actual goods and supply, that determine the value of money which is after all, imaginary points.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Goods are only part of the necessary economy. A society with a lot of elderly = demand for huge amounts of daily care, which is hard to automate away, though probably not impossible. (The Japanese are definitely trying.) The only way out of this conundrum would be a breakthrough in longevity, where people would live to 110 in a relatively good shape and being able to care for themselves, then die within weeks from some fast degenerative process.
    - 6y ago

agd 6y ago

A problem in some ways yes, but also an opportunity. A fantastic opportunity for the environment and to solve the housing crisis. I’m still amazed how many politicians think a pyramid scheme of population increase is a good, sustainable way to pay for pensions and healthcare.

raducu 6y ago
The environment will need us to solve the mess we created. No way a declining population would be able to, we need at least a stable population. The real crisis is the zombie crisis -- zombie empires and zombie societies that lost all touch with family values and morality, or mental sanity; the problem is all of the developed world is the same, so no winner to take over.

cik 6y ago

I'm in Israel - we have a self-sustaining birth rate amongst both the Jewish and Arab populations, both religious and secular. Then again culture here is very, very family based.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Yet even Israel has seen it drop drastically, not yet to settle. See this, graph at the end: https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-fertility-trends-across-the-globe https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-f...
- cik 6y ago
  Our birth rate has barely dropped. It's gone from an average of 3.11 births in 2018 to 3.08 births in 2019. Interestingly, the birth rate varies greatly by city, with Jerusalem's being twice Haifa's.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    There were populations that were as high as 9 in the 1960's. All have fallen in line with global trends.
HuwytNashi_007 6y ago
I suspect Jews don't allow the same errrr "advertising" in Israel that the largely-progressive Jewish media is renowned for in the West. Our kids experience such hyper-exposure to themes including LGBTQI+, interracial relationships, career > family, promiscuity > monogamy, etc that it's a miracle we're having any kids at all! Things will change though, they always do.