"The challenge is that no single cause can be identified for the declining rate." Sure you can: capitalism.
So true. Over and over again in the article it says that people can’t afford children and universities. It keeps saying the cost of living is up and then says there is no single cause people won’t have children.
And you can’t discount Japan’s absurdly toxic work culture.
Exacerbated by……. Capitalism.
Oh for sure, just saying there is another extra layer in the shit cake.
Feudal-inspired work culture, ultra-liberal capitalism, and xenophobia what a combo!
I agree with capitalism being a main cause. Additionally, many people also just don't want to raise a child. They don't want the added responsibilities and lack of freedom. Even people for whom capitalism works would rather enjoy their own life.
I just don't want to go through pregnancy, personally. Love kids but not enough to risk my life and permanent bodily changes. The being poor part is secondary
My mother had to have pelvic floor surgery after having three kids. Prior to that, she had to get her gallbladder removed shortly after my brother's birth. Pregnancy is extremely unappealing to me, and I don't think the long term effects of it are talked about enough.
Even people for whom capitalism works would rather enjoy their own life.
Is that why the ruling class has no problem having kids, usually with a bunch of different people?
I guess you still have a point. They typically have these children and then go off to live their rich lives instead of being a parent.
Was going to say climate change, but really the underlying cause is capitalism there too...
Sounds great to me. Wish every country had a declining birth rate.
Honestly, if everyone woman only had 2 children that would still reduce the population without causing demographic collapse which is what Japan is undergoing. A rapid decline in population creates misery for everyone. You really what a birth rate that hovers around 2 for gentle population decline.
I've heard the claim rapid decline is terrible before. I imagine there may be some adjustments people dislike which is easier to adjust on a slower rate of decline.. but "misery", how?
Let's just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you're gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.
That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.
SoOo rather than pressuring people to have kids they don't want, maybe we can shift our attention to the absurdity of the system? At the very least tax billionaires out of existence worldwide
nonsense, let's just ban abortions and wait for the magic to happen. surely people won't resort to dangerous practices like coat hangers and poison because there's no precedent of that in history, like ever. we'll just head over for a pint and wait for all of this to blow over. the dragons demand their hoard, and by dog they shall have it!
Basically every government planned for what has been the norm over the entirety of human history. Which seemed logical up until recently. That means for decades policy and economic decisions were based on the idea that every generation would be equal to or greater in size than the previous one.
The knock on effects of these assumptions are the reason government pension programs like social security are a concern world wide. People are living longer and less people are paying into the systems. This is an issue with nearly all government programs. There are less people paying taxes, paying into social programs. Costs are not going down anytime soon. It's a recipe for instability.
Economic collapse, to a greater or lesser extant depending on how fast adjustments are made. Though in some cases adjustments cannot be made. Worst case societal collapse (think violent revolution).
Pretty much the entire world economy is based on growth. Individual countries economies for the most part are also based on growth. In either case part of the growth is in population so there are more consumers. Additional most societal institutions and jobs require having a certain number of people to function for everyone. Different countries have different critical jobs and institutions. Care for older population is a big one in most places, doctors, nurses, in home care, and people to do things for the old they can't do anymore. Too few young people means likely too few of those people to take care of older population. That in turn either means the state has to pay more to get more people in those jobs, or care falls upon family which can force them to work less (or quit completely). More money spent by government means less spent somewhere else, some of that will be critical or at least inconvenient for someone. Family working less, or quitting altogether, means they are no longer adding to the economy and become a drag. Further a ballooning older population can lead to a drastic drop in tax revenue and compound the drag on the economy they are already having. GDP can drop which can devalue a currency, then leading to increased costs for imports and borrowing. This can further discourage people who would otherwise have children to not have any. Once this gets into a positive feedback loop it can continue to get worse faster than a society can adjust.
Everything is interconnected in our economy inside any one country, but also across the entire world. A positive feedback loop (like the mortgage crisis the US) can lead to a recession, or worse a depression. Then people are out of work and might not be able to afford the means to continue living, they then can become desperate. This can lead to a crisis and even revolutions (has happened before).
Too big a drop in population guarantied to cause societal collapse? Of course not. It doesn't even guarantee economic collapse, might just be a recession where most people survive fine in the long term. It might all be fine. What the outcome is really depends on how well positive feed back loops caused by a drop in population are handled, and if they happen slow enough they can be handled. Lots of the Western world is in trouble, but a population drop might help climate change, it also might not if a positive feedback loop (permafrost methane) starts accelerating climate change.
I'm not an economist so I will take your words on this, though I still struggle to believe it's an issue and have some remarks.
I am not worried about needing enought people for jobs. Given advances in inteligence automation then we can't forever have enough jobs for all humans. If a country can impliment a universal basic income then the citizens can at least have a basic living.
Why are most countries based on growth? That appears reckless. Unless we expand into space then at least population growth caps out at some point. Doesn't every other growth have a limit?
Ah, but you're viewing it as a normal human being and not a lizard man who only cares about making himself bigger.
Re your third point - this is one of the main critiques of Capitalism, the reckless disregard for the bounds of growth.
Your remarks are spot on. They are why I've read up on some of these problems over the years, even though I'm not an economist.
Automation very well might mitigate and/or cause other issues. It is to be seen if a capitalistic system will succeed in being reasonable, especially some of the more virulently capitalistic ones like the US. People being more productive has avoided many problems in capitalism for a long time, AI is a new way for this to happen.
Universal income is an excellent idea. There have been some really convincing studies where it has been implemented on small scales (one town or village). So far it hasn't gone much farther as there are strong contingents of people unreasonably against the idea.
Basing economy on growth is problematic. Growth being key to capitalism has been a criticism for awhile. It is reckless, doesn't reflect actual reality of resource limits of growth, and sets up problems some countries are facing (declining birthrate, job displacement due to automation, etc).
The fundamental issue with declining populations - fundamental as in regardless of the economic system of the country - is decreasing standard of living.
The very simple metric is productivity-adjusted hours worked per person. This invariably falls in cases where overall population is declining, because populations age as they decline, and older people work less (retirement) than younger ones.
As this metric falls, the country's economy basically just produces less stuff per-person than it did in the past. This makes everyone effectively poorer.
In extreme cases, there can also be issues with availability of services. E.g. healthcare: Each doctor/nurse/caregiver can only effectively attend to so many patients and this number is difficult to increase with technology.
How does producing less stuff make people poorer? Less people need less stuff, and there's more unoccupied houses?
To add onto the capitalist blame: people are conditioned to think in a capitalist way, and raising a child is a definite losing venture, hence people won't invest in that shit.
If you can hardly feed and house yourself ... you can't afford to woo a wife or raise a kid :/ but that won't stop some people trying to half-ass it I guess
Quite the opposite, capitalists want more human resources, human capital. There's an entire ideology, at least centuries old, about this. You can most easily read about it as: pronatalism.
People aren't conditioned to think in a capitalist way, they're conditioned to think about their kids future not being worse than their present, since having kids can throw you into poverty.
Sigh. All right. Guess I'll have to do my part. I can impregnate them. /s
I loved when the news came out that Japan didn't have enough male porn stars and you could hear a bunch of chubby white guys considering a career change.
It's more surprising that 2/3 of Japanese women have children before they turn 19!
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