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Rapidly shrinking populations as a result of low birth rates do the exact opposite of increasing average quality of life. You end up with an entire country full

Rapidly shrinking populations as a result of low birth rates do the exact opposite of increasing average quality of life. You end up with an entire country full of old people who can't work and an increasingly small number of young people who need to support them, unless you're willing to just throw grandma out on the streets. This concept is known as the dependency ratio, the ratio of dependents to working individuals. Economic output is a result of work done. In a country with a high dependency ratio, the relatively smaller number of workers need to end up doing much more work to to support the large number of non-working dependents. Essentially, you can either tax your workers to death or let grandma subsist off of cat food. Neither option is really great and the whole situation tends to be stressful and depressing on a societal level.

aylmao 4y ago
Is this "rapidly shrinking" though, if it's happening at the timescale of human lives? It does seem like something we should be able to plan for, doesn't it?
huijzer 4y ago
> Economic output is a result of work done. As a counterexample, an skilled American white collar worker who earns about 200k per year could buy about ten thousand avocado's per month. But does the skilled, say, programmer do more "work" than multiple Avocado farmers? So, economic output is not a result of work done, it's a matter of value created (US industry creates lots of value) and how much of that is captured. So on the one hand, a shrinking population might reduce purchasing power by producing less work. On the other hand, as long as the value of the produced work increases, the implosion might not be so bad.
- twelve40 4y ago
  today, there are 64 million social security beneficiaries and 164 million working people in the US. Who is going to pay for social security, when these numbers are reversed? how can a country such as South Korea, when it gets to over 50% retirement-age people, produce "high value", let alone "increasing value"? who will be taking care of their health and doing physical labor? > long as the value of the produced work increases Assuming that this is only a problem for "high-value" societies is incorrect - Indonesia, for example, while still not as bad, is almost below replacement rate, so who is going to take care of 273 million non-high-value people there once they get old?

aylmao 4y ago

Is this "rapidly shrinking" though, if it's happening at the timescale of human lives? It does seem like something we should be able to plan for, doesn't it?

huijzer 4y ago

> Economic output is a result of work done. As a counterexample, an skilled American white collar worker who earns about 200k per year could buy about ten thousand avocado's per month. But does the skilled, say, programmer do more "work" than multiple Avocado farmers? So, economic output is not a result of work done, it's a matter of value created (US industry creates lots of value) and how much of that is captured. So on the one hand, a shrinking population might reduce purchasing power by producing less work. On the other hand, as long as the value of the produced work increases, the implosion might not be so bad.

twelve40 4y ago
today, there are 64 million social security beneficiaries and 164 million working people in the US. Who is going to pay for social security, when these numbers are reversed? how can a country such as South Korea, when it gets to over 50% retirement-age people, produce "high value", let alone "increasing value"? who will be taking care of their health and doing physical labor? > long as the value of the produced work increases Assuming that this is only a problem for "high-value" societies is incorrect - Indonesia, for example, while still not as bad, is almost below replacement rate, so who is going to take care of 273 million non-high-value people there once they get old?