> In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off Yes. A shrinking population means an ever-smaller number of workers need to support increasing nu

> In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off Yes. A shrinking population means an ever-smaller number of workers need to support increasing numbers of retirees. If you can work that out, then you've still got a small pool of workers producing goods for a large, mostly economically-inactive population, which means inflation and plenty of it.