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Ghost cities and abandoned areas with a declining population

175 points by haakonhr 6y ago

chaostheory 6y ago
The issue is that male fertility and testosterone keeps falling consecutively every year in developed countries. We don’t know why. If I were to guesss, it’s due to the use of plastics with our food. Even without extremes of temperature, research has found that plastic will leech synthetic hormones like BPA (synthetic estrogen) and BPS. This is making its way into almost all of our food and drink On the bright side, the threat of overpopulation is lessened
- apsec112 6y ago
  The vast majority of fertile-age, opposite-sex couples can conceive fairly quickly if they try, and people in the upper half of the global income distribution now have access to medical care if they run into any issues. Infant mortality is also way down compared to past centuries. https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/trying-to-conceive/up-your-chances-of-getting-pregnant-at-every-age/ https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/trying-to-conceive/...
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    It's not just about the ability to conceive though. Testosterone is a hormone that has very wide ranging effects.[0] The regulation of sex-drive alone could have an impact on the fertility rate. [0] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/understanding-how-testosterone-affects-men https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/underst...
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      I think this overthinks the situation. Kids are an expensive luxury in first world countries, which many can’t afford and a proportion who can don’t want them. At the same time, in environments with easy access to contraceptives and where women are educated and empowered, the fertility rate falls without fail (per Our World In Data). https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
    - Angostura 6y ago
      I think even with reduced sex drive, the chances are that you would still be able to have sex successfully at least 3 times in your fertile life. The "issue" – and lets face it, a gradual, managed decline in population is just what the Earth ordered – is that we have collectively decided we would like fewer kids and are deploying birth control.
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    The data in this Parents article is really out of date I can’t find the white papers I want to cite but here’s a better article, even though it’s also older https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertility-rates-collapse-finger-pointing-blame-follow/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertilit... Even accounting for social (contraception and abortion) and economic changes, fertility has gone down in developed countries
- lisper 6y ago
  > On the bright side, the threat of overpopulation is lessened That's a significant bright side. Personally, as someone who enjoys spending time in nature, I would much rather deal with the problems of underpopulation than overpopulation.
  - convolvatron 6y ago
    seriously - what is the problem with 'underpopulation'? just the fact the the financial system is structured around infinite growth?
    - lisper 6y ago
      Yep, that's pretty much it. But don't underestimate the difficulty of solving this problem. The entire structure of human society currently rests on this assumption. Discharging it is not easy.
    - fogihujy 6y ago
      It's just not the financial system, though, it's our entire societies that are designed with growth in mind. It's obvious we need some kind of alternative way to solve this, but getting from here to there isn't something one just does.
- frabbit 6y ago
  So you discount the idea that when people have the choice not to have large numbers of children (good healthcare to provide for old age, easily accessible contraception) they prefer to have fewer children? Also, the central premise of the article seems to be in dispute: Professor David Coleman from the University of Oxford said: 'Much has been written about the 'Death of the West', with its threatened demise reportedly due to the low level of reproduction in Western countries. We show that this so-called decline has been exaggerated and trends in European fertility have been misunderstood. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427211644.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427211644.h...
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    I can’t find the white paper, but the decline in fertility rate takes into account social changes such as contraception. In fact, if I remember it correctly, social changes masked the decline
- huitzitziltzin 6y ago
  >We don’t know why. If I were to guesss, due to the use of plastics with our food. What evidence do you have to dismiss the (IMO much, much more plausible) idea that it's just men becoming more sedentary, moving and exercising less? Also... I agree w/ one of the other commenters that declining testosterone does not appear to be an obstacle to couples intentionally trying to conceive, so I would be very hesitant to (essentially) blame plastic in food for declining population.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    Because there are residual differences in testosterone for the intergenerational comparisons after controlling for physical activity.
    - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
      > after controlling for physical activity You say that like it's easy to do. It's not. That's not directly measurable, certainly not across generations. It's only barely become measurable in the past five or six years. How would you go about getting this information in the 1970's? Self-reported data would be the best you can do. Getting actual measurements of that information is something which (I suspect) is not available at a large scale beyond a few years of data. Whether it is (even now) linked to measurements of testosterone at a large scale is doubtful. I doubt that there is high-quality data on actual physical activity at a large scale at all, let alone linked to measurements of hormone levels from any of the 1990's, 1980's, 1970's, ... etc. It will only get much much harder going back. So "controlling for" physical activity is a non-trivial task in the very best case.
  - AuryGlenz 6y ago
    My understanding is that we’d expect to see it leveling off if that’s the case, but every year it just keeps dropping.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  I think issues are a lot less complex than you think. From anecdata, it simply looks like the burden of government, extended family, and increasing QOL costs, is much greater than ever on childbearing age men & women, for those living in developed countries. For example, men and women only started to take 10-30 year debt to buy a house, or to become a nurse...in the last 50 or so years. Thus, there are far fewer resources (including testosterone!) for child-rearing. Take for example what psychologists say about males being less fertile when they make less money than their partners, for example. Not having an opinion on whether this is good or bad. It just seems to be true.
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    The lowered fertility rate accounts for economic and social factors. This is biological and it started in the 1950s. It was masked by social changes starting in the 1960s
- camgunz 6y ago
  This is a popular theory but, plastics and other hormone disrupters are everywhere, including places with high birth rates and strong machismo cultures. The controlling variable is women’s rights and their ability to control their bodies. The sooner we can internalize that fewer women are choosing to have children, and when they do they choose to have fewer, the sooner we can start to make social and policy changes to address it.
- trhway 6y ago
  >testosterone keeps falling consecutively every year in developed countries. We don’t know why. the more developed the society is the less valuable are the testosterone benefits like the ability for heavy physical work in harsh conditions, etc. and the less tolerance the society has for the testosterone driven behavior - thus natural selection drives testosterone down. For example when you have a car accident, display of rage would put you in a losing position in US where you just need to exchange insurance info, and your higher muscle mass and hand-to-hand combat skills decide nothing, whereis for example in Russia the rage is a synergetic addition to the metal tire tool in you hand displayed as a credible threat. Another correlation which would suggest why testosterone would be selected out from government and management positions in developed societies: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/kykl.12169 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/kykl.12169 " To measure testosterone exposure, we apply the facial width‐to‐height metric (fWHR) – a standard proxy widely used in the psychological literature – and look at a sample of Russian regional governors. We find a positive relationship between the fWHR of the governor and the level of repression in his region. "
  - throwaway8822 6y ago
    Please stop repeating the "testosterone==aggressiveness" falsehood. There isn't a 1:1 correlation. Humans are way more complex than that. > thus natural selection drives testosterone down Also you are implying that natural selection is currently existing in human society. It does not. ...and that such selection works so fast that it changes human genome within a generation of two. This is simply impossible.
    - trhway 6y ago
      >Please stop repeating the "testosterone==aggressiveness" falsehood. There isn't a 1:1 correlation. i didn't say "==". I stated "->", i.e. positive causality from testosterone to aggressiveness (The opposite is obviously not true as evidenced by aggressiveness without testosterone, say in women). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/#:~:text=There%20is%20evidence%20that%20testosterone,aggressive%20phases%20of%20sports%20games https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/#:~:tex.... "Atavistic residues of aggressive behavior prevailing in animal life, determined by testosterone, remain attenuated in man and suppressed through familial and social inhibitions. However, it still manifests itself in various intensities and forms from; thoughts, anger, verbal aggressiveness, competition, dominance behavior, to physical violence. Testosterone plays a significant role in the arousal of these behavioral manifestations in the brain centers involved in aggression and on the development of the muscular system that enables their realization. There is evidence that testosterone levels are higher in individuals with aggressive behavior, such as prisoners who have committed violent crimes." >Also you are implying that natural selection is currently existing in human society. It does not. natural selection never stops. Some people naively think that the "fittest" necessarily means strongest/healthiest/etc. which is just not the case. So, then it comes to the drivers, one can say that societal natural selection is less "natural" (in that very naive understanding of it) and more like selective dog breeding and similarly it works very fast. Add to that the positive feedback between testosterone production and testosterone style behavior - ie. the more testosteronish style behavior of an individual causes more testosterone production in his body and vise versa (that famous barn swallow experiment where they painted the male bird chests dark to fake high testosterone characteristic or the article referred above: "Several field studies have also shown that testosterone levels increase during the aggressive phases of sports games. In more sensitive laboratory paradigms, it has been observed that participant’s testosterone rises in the winners of; competitions, dominance trials or in confrontations with factitious opponents.").
- driverdan 6y ago
  This is false. Birth rates are down because people are choosing to have fewer children, not because something is preventing them from having children they want.
- nradov 6y ago
  Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are probably bigger factors in declining testosterone levels.
dasudasu 6y ago
>A vision of the future, perhaps, in a post-peak world: smaller populations crowding ever more tightly into urban centres. And outside, beyond the city limits, the wild animals prowling. That seems inevitably tied to the increasing specialization and efficiency of agriculture. What was the original reason for humans to spread out in rural area, if not to get some farming land for yourself? Economic activity isn't much tied to land use anymore. It's seems hard to fathom any reason why would humans just go back to rural areas if not for some unforeseen technology to make this sensible, considering all the advantages living close to large metropolitan areas provide – and no, WFH isn't it.
- enkid 6y ago
  Some people like living in nature. With utilities already built out or alternatives like solar power for electricity and starlink for internet, people could untether themselves from urban areas all together.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- frabbit 6y ago
  Dark skies, peace, quiet. All these make me enjoy being away from conurbations. I especially dislike the lack of darkness in winter.
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  A future rural home will have off-grid power (solar + power wall), off-grid internet (starlink) and off-grid water is already solved. Why again do I need to be packed and stacked? And why do we keep talking about urban life as aspirational? Many of those currently leaving SF and NYC are wealthy enough to move on a whim. These aren't flights of desperation. Why are wealthy people leaving?
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    > Many of those currently leaving SF and NYC are wealthy enough ... Why are wealthy people leaving? Maybe you have noticed a worldwide event this past year that temporarily impedes many of the activities people moved to SF and NYC to enjoy? But anecdotally, most of the people I know who have left SF in the past several years were not especially wealthy (by SF standards at least) and have growing children. (This is a biased selection, since I spent lots of time at the playground.) The reasons for leaving included: rent-controlled apartment felt too small but moving to a market-rate bigger apartment was unaffordable; child care was too expensive compared to free help someplace else from grandparents / extended family; parents wanted their children to experience a suburban childhood similar to their own; parents didn't want to send their children to schools alongside poor children, but couldn't afford or didn't want to pay for private school, so preferred to move to a less economically diverse school district; parent's temporary city job finished, and the newly found job happened to be somewhere else. The wealthier families I know have been less likely to move, since they either have a big enough home or can afford to move to one; can afford to pay for nannies etc., or can afford to have one parent stay home; can afford private school if they want; have more permanent jobs or an easier time finding a new job in the same area; ...
bane 6y ago
When I was a teenager my family decided to dedicate one of our preciously few vacation to visiting my father's hometown. It was a town that was built and existed for two things: farming and oil. The oil dried up two generations ago and it threw the town into poverty and disrepair. My father escaped to "the city", the Army, college and a better life. His siblings and other relatives held on for as long as they could until eventually the entire clan of dozens had left or passed away. For decades they refused to contact or talk to my father, thinking him a "traitor to the family" with his fancy college degree and overseas adventures. From time to time two of his brothers would keep in touch, the common thread to their story was time spent in the military and overseas as well. The town was a ruin. Beautiful turn of the 20th century facades were crumbling, what was once a bustling town square was overgrown and had an abandoned truck left in the middle of it. The roads were in disrepair. All commerce of any kind had moved to another town a few miles away and existed solely of a couple eateries, a drug store, a small bank, and some farm supply stores. We drove aimlessly around as my father explained what this piece of abandoned oil pumping equipment was for or about some childhood adventure he had had pushing one of his polio paralyzed brothers around in his wheelchair or how they had engaged in minor industry to make the $.05 for an ice cream. Rather than a fond trip through nostalgia, the crumbling and abandoned state of the area was hard on him. These areas that are both economically depressed and depopulating slide into poverty, drug dependency, and most recently pointless, embarrassing, and dangerous political radicalization. Industry is not coming back to these place, the oil is dried up, the mill has shut down, the mine is all dug out, and so on. People stay because of memories and family and sometimes "history and heritage". In the case of my father they chose to shame him for decades for abandoning them. It's kind of cult-like in a way. It seems simple to solve, move! Migrate to where the jobs are. But beyond these emotional circumstances that nail people to these failing areas, there is a difficult monetary restraint. It's expensive to move elsewhere, especially with an established multigenerational family. It means abandoning functioning domiciles, maybe vehicles or even business relationships with no guarantee of success. We pay people to stay where they are, even if there's no long-term prospect, but I would support a "Move America!" program that offered some kind of incentive for people to move to areas with better economic outlook. This means cities for the most part. Both parties don't want this because this means a massive transformation in the politics of the urban/rural divide.
jgilias 6y ago
The effects of climate change absolutely have to be taken into account when modelling population dynamics around the world, but this is almost never done. I would really like to see a model that as a minimum includes the effects of all of the following: * Water stress * Effects of a prolonged forest fire season in Southern Europe * Temperature increases * Climate change effects on coastal communities Also ease of migration between places should be taken into account. The population models I see usually are limited to "birthrate in this country is projected to be this number, therefore population is projected to change in this way". Which seems to be much too simplistic to me.
- onethought 6y ago
  Prolonged forest fires in Europe??? Is that a thing? I’ve heard of Australia having insanely massive fires (easily bigger than all of Southern Europe) and west coast US having smaller but more intense fires. Where are the fires in Southern Europe?
  - coryrc 6y ago
    prolonged season Greece
    - onethought 6y ago
      There is a prolonged fire season in Greece? Do you mean in 2018? It's not really seasonal.
  - jgilias 6y ago
    Google 'forest fires Portugal'. I mentioned Southern Europe not because I would think that the fire problem there is more dire than in Australia or California but because the effects on international migration would likely be different. Affected people in Portugal have a very easy time moving to a different European country and Portugal itself is quite small. So, whereas one could argue that forest fires in the US are unlikely to affect the population dynamics of the US taken as a whole, they are in fact likely to affect population dynamics of Portugal. With people first moving to the coastal areas and Lisbon, and afterwards many moving further to some place like Germany or Scandinavia.
m23khan 6y ago
being a wealthy country often means: nuclear families + rise in dual income households = greater GDP = greater inflation = push for knowledge economy = loss of unionized workplaces = reduced workplace benefits such as defined benefit pension = increase scrutiny of worker = more educated workforce = more competition at workplace = greater time commitment towards work and self knowledge upgrade = greater demands for expensive leisure activities Not against any step of the process that I listed above. I am just stating the societal transformation as I see it for any xyz country out there that becomes wealthy over time. However, this model ultimately ends up treating children and sometimes marriage (And even romantic relationships to an extent) as shackles and hurdles on the road to success. And for those who still want to get into relationship and have kid(s) unfortunately means you have to work and save for a lot longer time before making it economically feasible to have kid(s). While this may still work out in case of males, for females, unfortunately, the more they wait to have kids (hey, I am not saying anything against this -- it is their body and their choice and their is nothing wrong with this and yes, all the power to them -- I get that, thx) - the more likely they won't have as many kids as in previous generations (Due to their biological clocks). Of course, it is always going to be down to individual will power and personality, but I am stating from common person's perspective.
- sjg007 6y ago
  I remember when the big tech companies started offering an egg freezing benefit in addition to IVF. I hope they also offer flexible work for new moms and dads as well. But the US as a whole needs to do better, we are way behind the curve.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    When my first was born there was no paternity or maternity leave. Apparently it was unpaid FMLA or use your PTO. Thankfully it was "unlimited" PTO and I've not yet encountered any shadow limits. (Though did have to get VP approval for 15 consecutive days.)
    - pylua 6y ago
hermitcrab 6y ago
A gradual decline in human population is surely a good thing? The change in demographics will cause problems. But significantly less than the problems caused by unending population growth, which could lead to rampant climate change, environmental collapse, mass migration and war. Also different countries are in different situations. The rich, ageing countries can allow immigration from poorer countries whose populations are still growing.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  A 25% decline in the human population is completely irrelevant compared to the economic growth which is raising 6 billion people from a near-subsistence existence into the middle class. Losing a few million British people is completely irrelevant as Nigeria and its 150mm people enter the developed, high-energy, economy. The solution to climate change is a technological restructuring of human carbon usage patterns. Not fewer humans.
  - hermitcrab 6y ago
    A 25% decline in population across all the richest countries would be highly significant. But it won't be enough if people in developing countries start consuming more and more. Hopefully their populations will also start to level off and then decline as they become richer.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      For the most part they already are. Nigeria has gone from 7 to 5 since 1980, and Ethiopia from 7 to 4. Which is not declining, but certainly progress. India went from 5.5 to 2.2, nearly replacement. Bangladesh went from above 6 to 2.04. The Phillipines in particular shows a dramatic decline from 7.15 in 1960 to 2.58 today.
      - hermitcrab 6y ago
        Is that annual % population growth?
lanevorockz 6y ago
As The Guardian always have an addiction for pushing a narrative. In the real world, population is still growing by 80 million per year and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion. The fact is that the poorer a country is, the more likely is for families to have more kids to raise their chances in life. Population in western world is certainly declining and relying on immigration to keep numbers sustainable.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion. According to who? Hans Rosling famously[1] didn't think so. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    Neither does the UN: > The UN projects that the global population increases from a population of 7.7 billion in 2019 to 11.2 billion by the end of the century. By that time, the UN projects, fast global population growth will come to an end. https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth
asebold 6y ago
I think a lot of people expect the rise in working from home to fix this problem but it’s more than that. Rural areas need access to affordable broadband internet, and more industries need to embrace remote work. I think an overall decline in population is good but the remaining population needs to be properly dispersed to see any real benefit from it. And that’s going to require intentional support and intervention from government.
- Someone 6y ago
  That would only move the problem of “there are too many houses” to cities or suburbs, not solve it. Also, I don’t think empty houses are the main problem. An older population costs more and pays less taxes. So, if one keeps current infrastructure spending, budget deficits will increase, and government debt will go up. And if the population shrinks, government debt per capita will go up even more. If their population really halves, I think many countries will have to make hard choices as to which villages or even cities, and roads leading into them, to abandon. I can’t find it now, but I remember some people arguing Japan should do that with Fukushima after the tsunami.
  - asebold 6y ago
    Not at all. Cities are crowded af. With more of the population dispersed, we can redesign urban life with more living space, create more parks, support more robust urban farming, etc. Cities wouldn’t look the same as they do today, but I think that’s a good thing.
hyper_reality 6y ago
The article notes that in South Korea, "from next year, cash bonuses of 2m won (£1,320) will be paid to every couple expecting a child, on top of existing child benefit payments". These cash awards for having children being paid by developed countries are laughably far too little, too late in their intention. Looking at the issue in financial terms, having a child and bringing them up well is an enormous cost both in money and time. The most significant being the opportunity cost of at least one parent's ability to participate economically being severely reduced for years. Brian Tomasik estimated that having a child may cost over $300k when measured in those terms, although there is some USA slant in his analysis (https://reducing-suffering.org/the-cost-of-kids/ https://reducing-suffering.org/the-cost-of-kids/). Now, Tomasik does mention that having children cannot be judged economically, it's a special and important experience that you can't place a price on. On the other hand, there's no denying that raising a child in today's world is simply unthinkable for many young adults who are struggling with insecurity in housing, careers, and a bleaker outlook on the future. Many commodities are historically cheap today but property is extremely less affordable, and most prospective parents would rather delay having children until they can achieve career stability and afford a reasonably-sized house, which is happening very late in life (if at all) compared to previous generations. If governments were really serious about reversing the decline in birth rates, they should be looking at pursuing better policies for ensuring more people can afford a home, or providing free childcare at scale - tackling the underlying societal reasons why this trend is occurring rather than adding a hopelessly insufficient cash bandaid. Furthermore, a cash bonus creates a perverse incentive where some people may grab the short term reward without necessarily considering the long term sacrifice involved in having kids.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Also a lot of pressure is being put on being a child in SK so no wonder people refuse to have children and put them through a torturous schooling system.
- mykowebhn 6y ago
  Although I have no issue with the gist of what you wrote, I wouldn't classify South Korea as a developing country.
ubertoop 6y ago
> it recently announced that state clinics would no longer hand out contraceptives or offer vasectomies What a backwards and ill informed way of handling a declining birth rate. We should not be promoting accidental births, but instead doing everything we can to ensure couples live in a world where they WANT to bring another life into it. - Good pay - Safe neighborhoods - Balance work/life - Assurances of healthcare for themselves and their family - Hope that the future will be even better than the already wonderful, today. Very few of these things are true for the average worker these days. Often in the US, if you want to have kids, you are writing off your ability to ever retire.
- Ygg2 6y ago
  > instead doing everything we can to ensure couples live in a world where they WANT to bring another life into it. Neither of those suggestions actually increased birth rates, individually or in aggregate. Pretty sure many Scandinavian countries tried all of those, and it had little to no impact on their birth rate. Do you have any source to show improvements to birth rate?
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    All those things are themselves good, and unplanned families are not good. Falling population is good, working shortages will increase the demand for automation and result in worker dignity. We simply need a fuck-ton of immigration to amortize things a bit, until we get to post-scarcity post-growth steady state in 2100.
    - Ygg2 6y ago
      > Falling population is good Depends. If population is falling everywhere, you can't have things like free healthcare or pensions, barring some medical miracle like eternal youth. Even if you allow immigration, you're only draining something else of its population, and that's not sustainable. > working shortages will increase the demand for automation and result in worker dignity. That depends on power distribution. If Amazon automated its processing center, do you think that workers would benefit or just Amazon? Plus what jobs would the newly laid off be given? But giving workers power isn't a solution either. Give them option to choose, and their jobs would never be automated. It's not in their interest to be made expendable. Not to mention the their ego would be bruised if they knew they could be made expendable.
tsss 6y ago
There is no problem here. We should be happy that this unsustainable all-consuming population growth is slowly coming to an end. Not having children is by far the best thing you can do for the environment and the world as a whole.
- firecall 6y ago
  Agreed. Dispassionately, we have to accept that we cannot bring the entire planet up to western standards of living and life expectancy. The planet cant support it, based on our current technology and practive. Unless something changes in how we manage the planet, we'll end up destroying it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
newdude116 6y ago
Lets worry about Corona and protect the >70year old childless boomers. https://twitter.com/bleppyman/status/1351286077823324160 https://twitter.com/bleppyman/status/1351286077823324160
grapecookie 6y ago
People choosing not to replace themselves is a strong indicator that we are failing to thrive.
mapgrep 6y ago
I thought these were some very eye opening stats: “ there are 1.97 cars per U.S. household, but in Des Moines, Iowa, there are 19 parking spaces per household. In Jackson, Wyoming, there are 27. “ The article goes on to discuss how parking lots are major opportunity sites for housing development, especially in suburbs. This worked well in downtown Oakland, where from ~1998-2008 there were 10k units built, many on former parking lots. This has the benefit of reducing gentrification impacts.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Jackson Wyoming gets a lot of tourists in the summer, probably way more than they have residents, and most come by car...
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Holiday towns really should not be considered as lessons to take for good urbanism. Most tourist towns would have their desirable tourism qualities destroyed if they became a land of usually-empty condos like Benidorm.
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      If you look at Zillow, Jackson makes Seattle look cheap, you can get a smallish townhome for under a million, but everything else is in the multi million range.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        I would imagine that, pre-COVID & WFH, the salary to housing ratio would probably be worse, though. Tourism jobs, particularly seasonal ones, don't pay all that well.
        seanmcdirmid 6y ago
        A lot of rich retirees, and the only blue county in Wyoming. It might be an interesting place to WFH from, though that part of the country isn’t cheap, even crossing over into Montana things are unusually expensive.
markvdb 6y ago
Latvia went approximately -30% in 30 years, from 2.6610^6 in 1990 to 1.89410^6 in 2020. Further decreases are expected to bring this to under 1.5*10^6 in 2050. These numbers are massive, _and_ they underestimate the change in the countryside and smaller cities. Many don't even bother unregistering from their native country when emigrating. There is also massive internal migration of youth to the capital Riga. That's the main reason the capital's population is more or less stable...
djohnston 6y ago
This seems like great news. In the face of our collective inability to do anything about climate change, if we could cut our current population by 2100 it might help with the crop failures and such.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  while the developed world shrinks, the developing world and esp. africa are exploding. These events do not balance each other as dev. world is much less productive and going to face extreme economic problems.
ardy42 6y ago
> But what does population decline look like on the ground? The experience of Japan, a country that has been showing this trend for more than a decade, might offer some insight. Already there are too few people to fill all its houses – one in every eight homes now lies empty. In Japan, they call such vacant buildings akiya – ghost homes. > Most often to be found in rural areas, these houses quickly fall into disrepair, leaving them as eerie presences in the landscape, thus speeding the decline of the neighbourhood. Many akiya have been left empty after the death of their occupants; inherited by their city-living relatives, many go unclaimed and untended. With so many structures under unknown ownership, local authorities are also unable to tear them down. It doesn't help that the Japanese have a strong bias against old/used homes, so land with a home on it is worth less than a vacant lot (because you have to factor in the cost of demolishing the existing home). I'm speculating, but that would probably also lead to houses that aren't built to last, and thus fall into disrepair more quickly.
gumby 6y ago
It's really hard for me to get upset by this. If people want fewer children, great! Yes, I understand the pyramid problem of caring for people who can no longer care for themselves, but socializing it (i.e. no leaving the burden to fall directly on the adult children, taking them out of the workforce) is ignored or condemned in most OECD countries. And increasing automation and efficiency should free more people do do these caring tasks, and reduce cost of living.
CapitalistCartr 6y ago
My wife and I (USA) have a son we adopted. He has state-supplied medical insurance, without which we couldn't have. Want people to have children? How about being able to live near extended family because of a robust economy? How about maternity & paternity leave that aren't dependant on employer? How about teaching children being a respected career? How about laws with teeth requiring employers to respect employee work/life balance, private life?

175 points by haakonhr 6y ago

The issue is that male fertility and testosterone keeps falling consecutively every year in developed countries. We don’t know why. If I were to guesss, it’s due to the use of plastics with our food. Even without extremes of temperature, research has found that plastic will leech synthetic hormones like BPA (synthetic estrogen) and BPS. This is making its way into almost all of our food and drink On the bright side, the threat of overpopulation is lessened

apsec112 6y ago
The vast majority of fertile-age, opposite-sex couples can conceive fairly quickly if they try, and people in the upper half of the global income distribution now have access to medical care if they run into any issues. Infant mortality is also way down compared to past centuries. https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/trying-to-conceive/up-your-chances-of-getting-pregnant-at-every-age/ https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/trying-to-conceive/...
- Aerroon 6y ago
  It's not just about the ability to conceive though. Testosterone is a hormone that has very wide ranging effects.[0] The regulation of sex-drive alone could have an impact on the fertility rate. [0] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/understanding-how-testosterone-affects-men https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/underst...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    I think this overthinks the situation. Kids are an expensive luxury in first world countries, which many can’t afford and a proportion who can don’t want them. At the same time, in environments with easy access to contraceptives and where women are educated and empowered, the fertility rate falls without fail (per Our World In Data). https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
  - Angostura 6y ago
    I think even with reduced sex drive, the chances are that you would still be able to have sex successfully at least 3 times in your fertile life. The "issue" – and lets face it, a gradual, managed decline in population is just what the Earth ordered – is that we have collectively decided we would like fewer kids and are deploying birth control.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  The data in this Parents article is really out of date I can’t find the white papers I want to cite but here’s a better article, even though it’s also older https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertility-rates-collapse-finger-pointing-blame-follow/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertilit... Even accounting for social (contraception and abortion) and economic changes, fertility has gone down in developed countries
lisper 6y ago
> On the bright side, the threat of overpopulation is lessened That's a significant bright side. Personally, as someone who enjoys spending time in nature, I would much rather deal with the problems of underpopulation than overpopulation.
- convolvatron 6y ago
  seriously - what is the problem with 'underpopulation'? just the fact the the financial system is structured around infinite growth?
  - lisper 6y ago
    Yep, that's pretty much it. But don't underestimate the difficulty of solving this problem. The entire structure of human society currently rests on this assumption. Discharging it is not easy.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    It's just not the financial system, though, it's our entire societies that are designed with growth in mind. It's obvious we need some kind of alternative way to solve this, but getting from here to there isn't something one just does.
frabbit 6y ago
So you discount the idea that when people have the choice not to have large numbers of children (good healthcare to provide for old age, easily accessible contraception) they prefer to have fewer children? Also, the central premise of the article seems to be in dispute: Professor David Coleman from the University of Oxford said: 'Much has been written about the 'Death of the West', with its threatened demise reportedly due to the low level of reproduction in Western countries. We show that this so-called decline has been exaggerated and trends in European fertility have been misunderstood. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427211644.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427211644.h...
- chaostheory 6y ago
  I can’t find the white paper, but the decline in fertility rate takes into account social changes such as contraception. In fact, if I remember it correctly, social changes masked the decline
huitzitziltzin 6y ago
>We don’t know why. If I were to guesss, due to the use of plastics with our food. What evidence do you have to dismiss the (IMO much, much more plausible) idea that it's just men becoming more sedentary, moving and exercising less? Also... I agree w/ one of the other commenters that declining testosterone does not appear to be an obstacle to couples intentionally trying to conceive, so I would be very hesitant to (essentially) blame plastic in food for declining population.
- bordercases 6y ago
  Because there are residual differences in testosterone for the intergenerational comparisons after controlling for physical activity.
  - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
    > after controlling for physical activity You say that like it's easy to do. It's not. That's not directly measurable, certainly not across generations. It's only barely become measurable in the past five or six years. How would you go about getting this information in the 1970's? Self-reported data would be the best you can do. Getting actual measurements of that information is something which (I suspect) is not available at a large scale beyond a few years of data. Whether it is (even now) linked to measurements of testosterone at a large scale is doubtful. I doubt that there is high-quality data on actual physical activity at a large scale at all, let alone linked to measurements of hormone levels from any of the 1990's, 1980's, 1970's, ... etc. It will only get much much harder going back. So "controlling for" physical activity is a non-trivial task in the very best case.
- AuryGlenz 6y ago
  My understanding is that we’d expect to see it leveling off if that’s the case, but every year it just keeps dropping.
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
I think issues are a lot less complex than you think. From anecdata, it simply looks like the burden of government, extended family, and increasing QOL costs, is much greater than ever on childbearing age men & women, for those living in developed countries. For example, men and women only started to take 10-30 year debt to buy a house, or to become a nurse...in the last 50 or so years. Thus, there are far fewer resources (including testosterone!) for child-rearing. Take for example what psychologists say about males being less fertile when they make less money than their partners, for example. Not having an opinion on whether this is good or bad. It just seems to be true.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  The lowered fertility rate accounts for economic and social factors. This is biological and it started in the 1950s. It was masked by social changes starting in the 1960s
camgunz 6y ago
This is a popular theory but, plastics and other hormone disrupters are everywhere, including places with high birth rates and strong machismo cultures. The controlling variable is women’s rights and their ability to control their bodies. The sooner we can internalize that fewer women are choosing to have children, and when they do they choose to have fewer, the sooner we can start to make social and policy changes to address it.
trhway 6y ago
>testosterone keeps falling consecutively every year in developed countries. We don’t know why. the more developed the society is the less valuable are the testosterone benefits like the ability for heavy physical work in harsh conditions, etc. and the less tolerance the society has for the testosterone driven behavior - thus natural selection drives testosterone down. For example when you have a car accident, display of rage would put you in a losing position in US where you just need to exchange insurance info, and your higher muscle mass and hand-to-hand combat skills decide nothing, whereis for example in Russia the rage is a synergetic addition to the metal tire tool in you hand displayed as a credible threat. Another correlation which would suggest why testosterone would be selected out from government and management positions in developed societies: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/kykl.12169 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/kykl.12169 " To measure testosterone exposure, we apply the facial width‐to‐height metric (fWHR) – a standard proxy widely used in the psychological literature – and look at a sample of Russian regional governors. We find a positive relationship between the fWHR of the governor and the level of repression in his region. "
- throwaway8822 6y ago
  Please stop repeating the "testosterone==aggressiveness" falsehood. There isn't a 1:1 correlation. Humans are way more complex than that. > thus natural selection drives testosterone down Also you are implying that natural selection is currently existing in human society. It does not. ...and that such selection works so fast that it changes human genome within a generation of two. This is simply impossible.
  - trhway 6y ago
    >Please stop repeating the "testosterone==aggressiveness" falsehood. There isn't a 1:1 correlation. i didn't say "==". I stated "->", i.e. positive causality from testosterone to aggressiveness (The opposite is obviously not true as evidenced by aggressiveness without testosterone, say in women). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/#:~:text=There%20is%20evidence%20that%20testosterone,aggressive%20phases%20of%20sports%20games https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/#:~:tex.... "Atavistic residues of aggressive behavior prevailing in animal life, determined by testosterone, remain attenuated in man and suppressed through familial and social inhibitions. However, it still manifests itself in various intensities and forms from; thoughts, anger, verbal aggressiveness, competition, dominance behavior, to physical violence. Testosterone plays a significant role in the arousal of these behavioral manifestations in the brain centers involved in aggression and on the development of the muscular system that enables their realization. There is evidence that testosterone levels are higher in individuals with aggressive behavior, such as prisoners who have committed violent crimes." >Also you are implying that natural selection is currently existing in human society. It does not. natural selection never stops. Some people naively think that the "fittest" necessarily means strongest/healthiest/etc. which is just not the case. So, then it comes to the drivers, one can say that societal natural selection is less "natural" (in that very naive understanding of it) and more like selective dog breeding and similarly it works very fast. Add to that the positive feedback between testosterone production and testosterone style behavior - ie. the more testosteronish style behavior of an individual causes more testosterone production in his body and vise versa (that famous barn swallow experiment where they painted the male bird chests dark to fake high testosterone characteristic or the article referred above: "Several field studies have also shown that testosterone levels increase during the aggressive phases of sports games. In more sensitive laboratory paradigms, it has been observed that participant’s testosterone rises in the winners of; competitions, dominance trials or in confrontations with factitious opponents.").
driverdan 6y ago
This is false. Birth rates are down because people are choosing to have fewer children, not because something is preventing them from having children they want.
nradov 6y ago
Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are probably bigger factors in declining testosterone levels.

dasudasu 6y ago

>A vision of the future, perhaps, in a post-peak world: smaller populations crowding ever more tightly into urban centres. And outside, beyond the city limits, the wild animals prowling. That seems inevitably tied to the increasing specialization and efficiency of agriculture. What was the original reason for humans to spread out in rural area, if not to get some farming land for yourself? Economic activity isn't much tied to land use anymore. It's seems hard to fathom any reason why would humans just go back to rural areas if not for some unforeseen technology to make this sensible, considering all the advantages living close to large metropolitan areas provide – and no, WFH isn't it.

enkid 6y ago
Some people like living in nature. With utilities already built out or alternatives like solar power for electricity and starlink for internet, people could untether themselves from urban areas all together.
deleted 6y ago
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frabbit 6y ago
Dark skies, peace, quiet. All these make me enjoy being away from conurbations. I especially dislike the lack of darkness in winter.
anewaccount2021 6y ago
A future rural home will have off-grid power (solar + power wall), off-grid internet (starlink) and off-grid water is already solved. Why again do I need to be packed and stacked? And why do we keep talking about urban life as aspirational? Many of those currently leaving SF and NYC are wealthy enough to move on a whim. These aren't flights of desperation. Why are wealthy people leaving?
- jacobolus 6y ago
  > Many of those currently leaving SF and NYC are wealthy enough ... Why are wealthy people leaving? Maybe you have noticed a worldwide event this past year that temporarily impedes many of the activities people moved to SF and NYC to enjoy? But anecdotally, most of the people I know who have left SF in the past several years were not especially wealthy (by SF standards at least) and have growing children. (This is a biased selection, since I spent lots of time at the playground.) The reasons for leaving included: rent-controlled apartment felt too small but moving to a market-rate bigger apartment was unaffordable; child care was too expensive compared to free help someplace else from grandparents / extended family; parents wanted their children to experience a suburban childhood similar to their own; parents didn't want to send their children to schools alongside poor children, but couldn't afford or didn't want to pay for private school, so preferred to move to a less economically diverse school district; parent's temporary city job finished, and the newly found job happened to be somewhere else. The wealthier families I know have been less likely to move, since they either have a big enough home or can afford to move to one; can afford to pay for nannies etc., or can afford to have one parent stay home; can afford private school if they want; have more permanent jobs or an easier time finding a new job in the same area; ...

bane 6y ago

When I was a teenager my family decided to dedicate one of our preciously few vacation to visiting my father's hometown. It was a town that was built and existed for two things: farming and oil. The oil dried up two generations ago and it threw the town into poverty and disrepair. My father escaped to "the city", the Army, college and a better life. His siblings and other relatives held on for as long as they could until eventually the entire clan of dozens had left or passed away. For decades they refused to contact or talk to my father, thinking him a "traitor to the family" with his fancy college degree and overseas adventures. From time to time two of his brothers would keep in touch, the common thread to their story was time spent in the military and overseas as well. The town was a ruin. Beautiful turn of the 20th century facades were crumbling, what was once a bustling town square was overgrown and had an abandoned truck left in the middle of it. The roads were in disrepair. All commerce of any kind had moved to another town a few miles away and existed solely of a couple eateries, a drug store, a small bank, and some farm supply stores. We drove aimlessly around as my father explained what this piece of abandoned oil pumping equipment was for or about some childhood adventure he had had pushing one of his polio paralyzed brothers around in his wheelchair or how they had engaged in minor industry to make the $.05 for an ice cream. Rather than a fond trip through nostalgia, the crumbling and abandoned state of the area was hard on him. These areas that are both economically depressed and depopulating slide into poverty, drug dependency, and most recently pointless, embarrassing, and dangerous political radicalization. Industry is not coming back to these place, the oil is dried up, the mill has shut down, the mine is all dug out, and so on. People stay because of memories and family and sometimes "history and heritage". In the case of my father they chose to shame him for decades for abandoning them. It's kind of cult-like in a way. It seems simple to solve, move! Migrate to where the jobs are. But beyond these emotional circumstances that nail people to these failing areas, there is a difficult monetary restraint. It's expensive to move elsewhere, especially with an established multigenerational family. It means abandoning functioning domiciles, maybe vehicles or even business relationships with no guarantee of success. We pay people to stay where they are, even if there's no long-term prospect, but I would support a "Move America!" program that offered some kind of incentive for people to move to areas with better economic outlook. This means cities for the most part. Both parties don't want this because this means a massive transformation in the politics of the urban/rural divide.

jgilias 6y ago

The effects of climate change absolutely have to be taken into account when modelling population dynamics around the world, but this is almost never done. I would really like to see a model that as a minimum includes the effects of all of the following: * Water stress * Effects of a prolonged forest fire season in Southern Europe * Temperature increases * Climate change effects on coastal communities Also ease of migration between places should be taken into account. The population models I see usually are limited to "birthrate in this country is projected to be this number, therefore population is projected to change in this way". Which seems to be much too simplistic to me.

onethought 6y ago
Prolonged forest fires in Europe??? Is that a thing? I’ve heard of Australia having insanely massive fires (easily bigger than all of Southern Europe) and west coast US having smaller but more intense fires. Where are the fires in Southern Europe?
- coryrc 6y ago
  prolonged season Greece
  - onethought 6y ago
    There is a prolonged fire season in Greece? Do you mean in 2018? It's not really seasonal.
- jgilias 6y ago
  Google 'forest fires Portugal'. I mentioned Southern Europe not because I would think that the fire problem there is more dire than in Australia or California but because the effects on international migration would likely be different. Affected people in Portugal have a very easy time moving to a different European country and Portugal itself is quite small. So, whereas one could argue that forest fires in the US are unlikely to affect the population dynamics of the US taken as a whole, they are in fact likely to affect population dynamics of Portugal. With people first moving to the coastal areas and Lisbon, and afterwards many moving further to some place like Germany or Scandinavia.

m23khan 6y ago

being a wealthy country often means: nuclear families + rise in dual income households = greater GDP = greater inflation = push for knowledge economy = loss of unionized workplaces = reduced workplace benefits such as defined benefit pension = increase scrutiny of worker = more educated workforce = more competition at workplace = greater time commitment towards work and self knowledge upgrade = greater demands for expensive leisure activities Not against any step of the process that I listed above. I am just stating the societal transformation as I see it for any xyz country out there that becomes wealthy over time. However, this model ultimately ends up treating children and sometimes marriage (And even romantic relationships to an extent) as shackles and hurdles on the road to success. And for those who still want to get into relationship and have kid(s) unfortunately means you have to work and save for a lot longer time before making it economically feasible to have kid(s). While this may still work out in case of males, for females, unfortunately, the more they wait to have kids (hey, I am not saying anything against this -- it is their body and their choice and their is nothing wrong with this and yes, all the power to them -- I get that, thx) - the more likely they won't have as many kids as in previous generations (Due to their biological clocks). Of course, it is always going to be down to individual will power and personality, but I am stating from common person's perspective.

sjg007 6y ago
I remember when the big tech companies started offering an egg freezing benefit in addition to IVF. I hope they also offer flexible work for new moms and dads as well. But the US as a whole needs to do better, we are way behind the curve.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  When my first was born there was no paternity or maternity leave. Apparently it was unpaid FMLA or use your PTO. Thankfully it was "unlimited" PTO and I've not yet encountered any shadow limits. (Though did have to get VP approval for 15 consecutive days.)
  - pylua 6y ago

hermitcrab 6y ago

A gradual decline in human population is surely a good thing? The change in demographics will cause problems. But significantly less than the problems caused by unending population growth, which could lead to rampant climate change, environmental collapse, mass migration and war. Also different countries are in different situations. The rich, ageing countries can allow immigration from poorer countries whose populations are still growing.

bpodgursky 6y ago
A 25% decline in the human population is completely irrelevant compared to the economic growth which is raising 6 billion people from a near-subsistence existence into the middle class. Losing a few million British people is completely irrelevant as Nigeria and its 150mm people enter the developed, high-energy, economy. The solution to climate change is a technological restructuring of human carbon usage patterns. Not fewer humans.
- hermitcrab 6y ago
  A 25% decline in population across all the richest countries would be highly significant. But it won't be enough if people in developing countries start consuming more and more. Hopefully their populations will also start to level off and then decline as they become richer.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    For the most part they already are. Nigeria has gone from 7 to 5 since 1980, and Ethiopia from 7 to 4. Which is not declining, but certainly progress. India went from 5.5 to 2.2, nearly replacement. Bangladesh went from above 6 to 2.04. The Phillipines in particular shows a dramatic decline from 7.15 in 1960 to 2.58 today.
    - hermitcrab 6y ago
      Is that annual % population growth?

lanevorockz 6y ago

As The Guardian always have an addiction for pushing a narrative. In the real world, population is still growing by 80 million per year and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion. The fact is that the poorer a country is, the more likely is for families to have more kids to raise their chances in life. Population in western world is certainly declining and relying on immigration to keep numbers sustainable.

guerrilla 6y ago
> and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion. According to who? Hans Rosling famously[1] didn't think so. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Neither does the UN: > The UN projects that the global population increases from a population of 7.7 billion in 2019 to 11.2 billion by the end of the century. By that time, the UN projects, fast global population growth will come to an end. https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

asebold 6y ago

I think a lot of people expect the rise in working from home to fix this problem but it’s more than that. Rural areas need access to affordable broadband internet, and more industries need to embrace remote work. I think an overall decline in population is good but the remaining population needs to be properly dispersed to see any real benefit from it. And that’s going to require intentional support and intervention from government.

Someone 6y ago
That would only move the problem of “there are too many houses” to cities or suburbs, not solve it. Also, I don’t think empty houses are the main problem. An older population costs more and pays less taxes. So, if one keeps current infrastructure spending, budget deficits will increase, and government debt will go up. And if the population shrinks, government debt per capita will go up even more. If their population really halves, I think many countries will have to make hard choices as to which villages or even cities, and roads leading into them, to abandon. I can’t find it now, but I remember some people arguing Japan should do that with Fukushima after the tsunami.
- asebold 6y ago
  Not at all. Cities are crowded af. With more of the population dispersed, we can redesign urban life with more living space, create more parks, support more robust urban farming, etc. Cities wouldn’t look the same as they do today, but I think that’s a good thing.

hyper_reality 6y ago

The article notes that in South Korea, "from next year, cash bonuses of 2m won (£1,320) will be paid to every couple expecting a child, on top of existing child benefit payments". These cash awards for having children being paid by developed countries are laughably far too little, too late in their intention. Looking at the issue in financial terms, having a child and bringing them up well is an enormous cost both in money and time. The most significant being the opportunity cost of at least one parent's ability to participate economically being severely reduced for years. Brian Tomasik estimated that having a child may cost over $300k when measured in those terms, although there is some USA slant in his analysis (https://reducing-suffering.org/the-cost-of-kids/ https://reducing-suffering.org/the-cost-of-kids/). Now, Tomasik does mention that having children cannot be judged economically, it's a special and important experience that you can't place a price on. On the other hand, there's no denying that raising a child in today's world is simply unthinkable for many young adults who are struggling with insecurity in housing, careers, and a bleaker outlook on the future. Many commodities are historically cheap today but property is extremely less affordable, and most prospective parents would rather delay having children until they can achieve career stability and afford a reasonably-sized house, which is happening very late in life (if at all) compared to previous generations. If governments were really serious about reversing the decline in birth rates, they should be looking at pursuing better policies for ensuring more people can afford a home, or providing free childcare at scale - tackling the underlying societal reasons why this trend is occurring rather than adding a hopelessly insufficient cash bandaid. Furthermore, a cash bonus creates a perverse incentive where some people may grab the short term reward without necessarily considering the long term sacrifice involved in having kids.

tartoran 6y ago
Also a lot of pressure is being put on being a child in SK so no wonder people refuse to have children and put them through a torturous schooling system.
mykowebhn 6y ago
Although I have no issue with the gist of what you wrote, I wouldn't classify South Korea as a developing country.

ubertoop 6y ago

> it recently announced that state clinics would no longer hand out contraceptives or offer vasectomies What a backwards and ill informed way of handling a declining birth rate. We should not be promoting accidental births, but instead doing everything we can to ensure couples live in a world where they WANT to bring another life into it. - Good pay - Safe neighborhoods - Balance work/life - Assurances of healthcare for themselves and their family - Hope that the future will be even better than the already wonderful, today. Very few of these things are true for the average worker these days. Often in the US, if you want to have kids, you are writing off your ability to ever retire.

Ygg2 6y ago
> instead doing everything we can to ensure couples live in a world where they WANT to bring another life into it. Neither of those suggestions actually increased birth rates, individually or in aggregate. Pretty sure many Scandinavian countries tried all of those, and it had little to no impact on their birth rate. Do you have any source to show improvements to birth rate?
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  All those things are themselves good, and unplanned families are not good. Falling population is good, working shortages will increase the demand for automation and result in worker dignity. We simply need a fuck-ton of immigration to amortize things a bit, until we get to post-scarcity post-growth steady state in 2100.
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    > Falling population is good Depends. If population is falling everywhere, you can't have things like free healthcare or pensions, barring some medical miracle like eternal youth. Even if you allow immigration, you're only draining something else of its population, and that's not sustainable. > working shortages will increase the demand for automation and result in worker dignity. That depends on power distribution. If Amazon automated its processing center, do you think that workers would benefit or just Amazon? Plus what jobs would the newly laid off be given? But giving workers power isn't a solution either. Give them option to choose, and their jobs would never be automated. It's not in their interest to be made expendable. Not to mention the their ego would be bruised if they knew they could be made expendable.

tsss 6y ago

There is no problem here. We should be happy that this unsustainable all-consuming population growth is slowly coming to an end. Not having children is by far the best thing you can do for the environment and the world as a whole.

firecall 6y ago
Agreed. Dispassionately, we have to accept that we cannot bring the entire planet up to western standards of living and life expectancy. The planet cant support it, based on our current technology and practive. Unless something changes in how we manage the planet, we'll end up destroying it.

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newdude116 6y ago

Lets worry about Corona and protect the >70year old childless boomers. https://twitter.com/bleppyman/status/1351286077823324160 https://twitter.com/bleppyman/status/1351286077823324160

grapecookie 6y ago

People choosing not to replace themselves is a strong indicator that we are failing to thrive.

mapgrep 6y ago

I thought these were some very eye opening stats: “ there are 1.97 cars per U.S. household, but in Des Moines, Iowa, there are 19 parking spaces per household. In Jackson, Wyoming, there are 27. “ The article goes on to discuss how parking lots are major opportunity sites for housing development, especially in suburbs. This worked well in downtown Oakland, where from ~1998-2008 there were 10k units built, many on former parking lots. This has the benefit of reducing gentrification impacts.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Jackson Wyoming gets a lot of tourists in the summer, probably way more than they have residents, and most come by car...
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Holiday towns really should not be considered as lessons to take for good urbanism. Most tourist towns would have their desirable tourism qualities destroyed if they became a land of usually-empty condos like Benidorm.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    If you look at Zillow, Jackson makes Seattle look cheap, you can get a smallish townhome for under a million, but everything else is in the multi million range.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      I would imagine that, pre-COVID & WFH, the salary to housing ratio would probably be worse, though. Tourism jobs, particularly seasonal ones, don't pay all that well.
      - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
        A lot of rich retirees, and the only blue county in Wyoming. It might be an interesting place to WFH from, though that part of the country isn’t cheap, even crossing over into Montana things are unusually expensive.

markvdb 6y ago

Latvia went approximately -30% in 30 years, from 2.6610^6 in 1990 to 1.89410^6 in 2020. Further decreases are expected to bring this to under 1.5*10^6 in 2050. These numbers are massive, _and_ they underestimate the change in the countryside and smaller cities. Many don't even bother unregistering from their native country when emigrating. There is also massive internal migration of youth to the capital Riga. That's the main reason the capital's population is more or less stable...

djohnston 6y ago

This seems like great news. In the face of our collective inability to do anything about climate change, if we could cut our current population by 2100 it might help with the crop failures and such.

cblconfederate 6y ago
while the developed world shrinks, the developing world and esp. africa are exploding. These events do not balance each other as dev. world is much less productive and going to face extreme economic problems.

ardy42 6y ago

> But what does population decline look like on the ground? The experience of Japan, a country that has been showing this trend for more than a decade, might offer some insight. Already there are too few people to fill all its houses – one in every eight homes now lies empty. In Japan, they call such vacant buildings akiya – ghost homes. > Most often to be found in rural areas, these houses quickly fall into disrepair, leaving them as eerie presences in the landscape, thus speeding the decline of the neighbourhood. Many akiya have been left empty after the death of their occupants; inherited by their city-living relatives, many go unclaimed and untended. With so many structures under unknown ownership, local authorities are also unable to tear them down. It doesn't help that the Japanese have a strong bias against old/used homes, so land with a home on it is worth less than a vacant lot (because you have to factor in the cost of demolishing the existing home). I'm speculating, but that would probably also lead to houses that aren't built to last, and thus fall into disrepair more quickly.

gumby 6y ago

It's really hard for me to get upset by this. If people want fewer children, great! Yes, I understand the pyramid problem of caring for people who can no longer care for themselves, but socializing it (i.e. no leaving the burden to fall directly on the adult children, taking them out of the workforce) is ignored or condemned in most OECD countries. And increasing automation and efficiency should free more people do do these caring tasks, and reduce cost of living.

CapitalistCartr 6y ago

My wife and I (USA) have a son we adopted. He has state-supplied medical insurance, without which we couldn't have. Want people to have children? How about being able to live near extended family because of a robust economy? How about maternity & paternity leave that aren't dependant on employer? How about teaching children being a respected career? How about laws with teeth requiring employers to respect employee work/life balance, private life?