It’s complicated, my understanding is that the current idea of the western state and middle class traces itself back to the period right after the Black Death c

It’s complicated, my understanding is that the current idea of the western state and middle class traces itself back to the period right after the Black Death created one of the largest population shocks in history, which effectively ended serfdom and loosened the grip of the Catholic Church. Basically the effects of population dips are not cut and dry. It’s not clear to me it would necessarily play out as people stopping all non critical work to take care of old people. Maybe it would, on a family level - People would spend more time taking care of their parents, and then maybe conclude they should have more kids to take care of them when they are older like they do in the developing world. But the modern pyramid-shaped pension program is a recent invention and not necessarily one I think would be so durable as to destroy other industries?