Personally, I think it is far more likely that year after year the amount of "excess deaths" will go up as more jobs are lost due to technological innovation le

Personally, I think it is far more likely that year after year the amount of "excess deaths" will go up as more jobs are lost due to technological innovation leading to more people falling through the cracks and dying due to suicide, drugs, homelessness, poverty etc. I think the wealthy and powerful would prefer a working, vastly smaller population (but more educated and therefore, in their eyes, more tolerable) propped up by AI and robots than current population levels with a sizeable 'leisure' class. I fully expect the trend of depopulation in the developed world to continue, despite the forecasts of system collapse due to a misbalance in population age. I don't think the predicted system collapse will happen - they'll simply accept OAPs dying sooner than they would have given proper care and they'll come up with some new financial instruments to smooth over budget deficits in the meantime. After the old generation has died out, the system will stabilise and there will be a wealthier population as the wealth will have been concentrated in fewer hands. The developing world is different as they still need the manpower to build up the infrastructure. Once that's done, expect the same thing to happen there. EDIT: Coincidentally, shortly after writing this I came across a link to this wikipedia entry whilst browsing reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder