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A somewhat unstated reason why decreasing birth rates are considered alarming is because our entire economic system is built around growth that's only really po

A somewhat unstated reason why decreasing birth rates are considered alarming is because our entire economic system is built around growth that's only really possible if both the labor pool and/or the consumer pool grow. The only two ways that can happen are if we make new workers and consumers (birth, immigration) or we make people who weren't previously workers or consumers into those (this happened post-WWII when women entered the workforce in larger numbers and was probably part of why economic growth was so strong for so long after the war). Fundamentally, if the number of people participating in the economy shrinks, the economy will shrink, and our late capitalist system is extremely ill equipped to deal with that. Now there's also a powerful movement against immigration, that is also aggressively for increasing birth rates to fend off an imagined conspiracy to "replace" them, which makes this a particularly thorny problem for the political class.

pyuser583 5y ago
There’s no reason our economic system requires population growth. There are certainly examples where shrinking populations corresponded with higher growth: Ireland had a shrinking population and growing economy from 1850 to 1960. The issue is a population that has a massive number of elderly to care for while having few young people to do it. Ireland had no problem having tons of kids who left the country upon reaching adulthood, even though the total population was shrinking.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Capitalism is a global system (at least at this point). Certainly you can have pockets that experience abnormal growth[1] because no country is a closed system. If businesses in one country have new markets open to them outside their borders that's just another way of adding to their economy. And definitely an aging non-working population can be a downward drag on a capitalist economy as well. Even though they live longer, they are still to some extent "exiting the economy" since they usually live off fixed incomes and don't contribute to the labor pool. In aggregate, though, you still need growth to make capital investment make sense. There may be other ways to achieve it than population growth overall, especially in small niches, but if you lose that source of growth it should have ramifications on the economy, even if they're counteracted. [1] Do you have a source on the ireland thing? I'm not really finding anything. And which Ireland for that matter? There are effectively at least three polities called that in that period. All with very different access to markets, political situations, etc.

pyuser583 5y ago

There’s no reason our economic system requires population growth. There are certainly examples where shrinking populations corresponded with higher growth: Ireland had a shrinking population and growing economy from 1850 to 1960. The issue is a population that has a massive number of elderly to care for while having few young people to do it. Ireland had no problem having tons of kids who left the country upon reaching adulthood, even though the total population was shrinking.

stormbrew 5y ago
Capitalism is a global system (at least at this point). Certainly you can have pockets that experience abnormal growth[1] because no country is a closed system. If businesses in one country have new markets open to them outside their borders that's just another way of adding to their economy. And definitely an aging non-working population can be a downward drag on a capitalist economy as well. Even though they live longer, they are still to some extent "exiting the economy" since they usually live off fixed incomes and don't contribute to the labor pool. In aggregate, though, you still need growth to make capital investment make sense. There may be other ways to achieve it than population growth overall, especially in small niches, but if you lose that source of growth it should have ramifications on the economy, even if they're counteracted. [1] Do you have a source on the ireland thing? I'm not really finding anything. And which Ireland for that matter? There are effectively at least three polities called that in that period. All with very different access to markets, political situations, etc.