This post is mostly focused on whether to acknowledge population decline is a problem -- and is compelling on that score. But, as a general matter, why do we talk about the problem of population decline solely in terms of fertility? I know that sounds silly to say, because of course, increasing fertility would fix the problem. But that may come at a huge price, particularly for women. For instance, suppose a society decides one way to reverse the grave problem of population decline is to keep women out of the workplace during their most fertile years. Is that worth the trade off, given that it would solve the problems of taxation, improve national security, and allow the social welfare state to continue to function? Many people would say no. So why aren't we talking about other policy solutions aside from fertility? For instance, what if we accepted as fact that the global population decline couldn't be reversed in time. What are the best policy proposals then? Should dilapidated cities be converted into national parks? What kind of system could replace the social welfare state that doesn't depend on replacement level population? What tax scheme would be most ideal for a society with fewer workers? What other ways can we address for our national security needs? Unless I've missed it, I don't see people who acknowledge the problem of population decline discussing any solutions aside from fertility and sometimes immigration. Given that fertility comes at a high price, particularly for women's advancement, it's troubling to have the conversation so narrowly focused on this single lever.
I don't get the fear. Unless the rate of population change at a moment is zero, then you can extrapolate to a zero population or to an infinite one. The earth is not better off with 7 billion people than it was with 4 billion. U.S. cities are crowded. We continue to pave over more soil, cut down more forests and build more roads and houses.The Mississippi and the Gulf are polluted. Anything that can't go on forever, won't. That includes population growth. It's not going to work to have ever more young people to care for ever more old ones. If conditions improve, and places are les degraded and crowded, then there will be offsetting behavior, and people will have more children.
within 50 years, it will be possible for a fertilized egg to grow for 9 months in an artificial womb. I don't know what impact that will have on fertility, but it will certainly reduce a significant burden that women bear.
BTW, I think you dissected the paper well, Noah. Projecting questionable past trends into a rapidly changing future does not sound like a promising enterprise.
Final random thought: ST did not portray a world where the characters were demonstrating a replacement fertility rate. No one seemed to have more than one kid.
My suspicion is that population decline will spark dramatic societal changes that will eventually push fertility back up, either by countervailing social/economic trends (higher wage growth leading to higher birth rates, for example) or via societal collapse (in which the fertility-depressing technologies and norms of established societies are lost/forgotten). One thing I do believe is that a population that cannot reproduce itself is dysfunctional.
Fascinating read! The birth rate crisis is a fundamental issue that isn't really an "economic problem" at its core—even though the foundational economic concept of opportunity cost explains it perfectly.
Look at every single developed economy across the globe: culture, history, ideology, public policies, land size, minimum wage, or generous child subsidies make zero difference. The rule remains unbroken. Once a society becomes wealthy and people (both men and women) gain better choices in life, the vast majority simply will not choose to have many kids. Meanwhile, in developing regions with fewer economic opportunities, populations keep growing.
That brings us to immigration: the influx of people from less-developed regions to wealthy ones is a vital, self-correcting, and undeniably effective lifeline for this crisis—even if it makes certain political factions uncomfortable.
An aging, shrinking population is a massive problem. Economically, its damage hits consumer demand first (fewer buyers, stagnant businesses), and labor shortage second (hiring difficulties). AI and robotics focus almost exclusively on the latter, and whether they can actually plug the gap remains questionable—especially given the negative shocks they bring first.
In short, the demographic collapse is an existential, deeply ironic dilemma that neither economists nor politicians can solve. Just ask anyone in Singapore: they’ve tried every incentive under the sun, failed completely, and arrived at this exact conclusion. As of today, immigration is the only functional solution we have.
As for the artificial wombs mentioned in the comments? Sure, if that ever happens, it will completely overhaul thousands of years of human societal structures and render the problem obsolete altogether. But until then, we're just writing science fiction.
P.S. To clarify my point: Economics can certainly track birth trends and demographic shifts, measure their impacts, and forecast the future (and I completely agree with Noah and the consensus that population decline is overwhelmingly a net negative for the economy).
However, economics itself—along with political science or whatever any other human discipline—is entirely impotent when it comes to fixing it. We can diagnose the sickness and measure the damage with extreme precision, but we have zero working prescriptions.
The big question I have re demographic collapse is, what stops it? At a 1.5 replacement rate (which is already higher than it is in some countries), the population declines, sure, but it'd be centuries before it "disappears." But at that rate, you halve the population in only 72 years. That would catastrophic. But even then, would people magically decide to have more children? If a population is acculturated to having, say, just 1 child or none, as they appear to be now, why would they have more? There are still people around, aren't there? Even if we came up with artificial wombs, someone or something would have to raise the children. Bots, anyone? JHC.
This post is mostly focused on whether to acknowledge population decline is a problem -- and is compelling on that score. But, as a general matter, why do we talk about the problem of population decline solely in terms of fertility? I know that sounds silly to say, because of course, increasing fertility would fix the problem. But that may come at a huge price, particularly for women. For instance, suppose a society decides one way to reverse the grave problem of population decline is to keep women out of the workplace during their most fertile years. Is that worth the trade off, given that it would solve the problems of taxation, improve national security, and allow the social welfare state to continue to function? Many people would say no. So why aren't we talking about other policy solutions aside from fertility? For instance, what if we accepted as fact that the global population decline couldn't be reversed in time. What are the best policy proposals then? Should dilapidated cities be converted into national parks? What kind of system could replace the social welfare state that doesn't depend on replacement level population? What tax scheme would be most ideal for a society with fewer workers? What other ways can we address for our national security needs? Unless I've missed it, I don't see people who acknowledge the problem of population decline discussing any solutions aside from fertility and sometimes immigration. Given that fertility comes at a high price, particularly for women's advancement, it's troubling to have the conversation so narrowly focused on this single lever.
I don't get the fear. Unless the rate of population change at a moment is zero, then you can extrapolate to a zero population or to an infinite one. The earth is not better off with 7 billion people than it was with 4 billion. U.S. cities are crowded. We continue to pave over more soil, cut down more forests and build more roads and houses.The Mississippi and the Gulf are polluted. Anything that can't go on forever, won't. That includes population growth. It's not going to work to have ever more young people to care for ever more old ones. If conditions improve, and places are les degraded and crowded, then there will be offsetting behavior, and people will have more children.
within 50 years, it will be possible for a fertilized egg to grow for 9 months in an artificial womb. I don't know what impact that will have on fertility, but it will certainly reduce a significant burden that women bear.
BTW, I think you dissected the paper well, Noah. Projecting questionable past trends into a rapidly changing future does not sound like a promising enterprise.
Final random thought: ST did not portray a world where the characters were demonstrating a replacement fertility rate. No one seemed to have more than one kid.
My suspicion is that population decline will spark dramatic societal changes that will eventually push fertility back up, either by countervailing social/economic trends (higher wage growth leading to higher birth rates, for example) or via societal collapse (in which the fertility-depressing technologies and norms of established societies are lost/forgotten). One thing I do believe is that a population that cannot reproduce itself is dysfunctional.
It won’t be wages for sure. Lack of high wages are definitely not why people aren’t having kids.
Fascinating read! The birth rate crisis is a fundamental issue that isn't really an "economic problem" at its core—even though the foundational economic concept of opportunity cost explains it perfectly.
Look at every single developed economy across the globe: culture, history, ideology, public policies, land size, minimum wage, or generous child subsidies make zero difference. The rule remains unbroken. Once a society becomes wealthy and people (both men and women) gain better choices in life, the vast majority simply will not choose to have many kids. Meanwhile, in developing regions with fewer economic opportunities, populations keep growing.
That brings us to immigration: the influx of people from less-developed regions to wealthy ones is a vital, self-correcting, and undeniably effective lifeline for this crisis—even if it makes certain political factions uncomfortable.
An aging, shrinking population is a massive problem. Economically, its damage hits consumer demand first (fewer buyers, stagnant businesses), and labor shortage second (hiring difficulties). AI and robotics focus almost exclusively on the latter, and whether they can actually plug the gap remains questionable—especially given the negative shocks they bring first.
In short, the demographic collapse is an existential, deeply ironic dilemma that neither economists nor politicians can solve. Just ask anyone in Singapore: they’ve tried every incentive under the sun, failed completely, and arrived at this exact conclusion. As of today, immigration is the only functional solution we have.
As for the artificial wombs mentioned in the comments? Sure, if that ever happens, it will completely overhaul thousands of years of human societal structures and render the problem obsolete altogether. But until then, we're just writing science fiction.
P.S. To clarify my point: Economics can certainly track birth trends and demographic shifts, measure their impacts, and forecast the future (and I completely agree with Noah and the consensus that population decline is overwhelmingly a net negative for the economy).
However, economics itself—along with political science or whatever any other human discipline—is entirely impotent when it comes to fixing it. We can diagnose the sickness and measure the damage with extreme precision, but we have zero working prescriptions.
The big question I have re demographic collapse is, what stops it? At a 1.5 replacement rate (which is already higher than it is in some countries), the population declines, sure, but it'd be centuries before it "disappears." But at that rate, you halve the population in only 72 years. That would catastrophic. But even then, would people magically decide to have more children? If a population is acculturated to having, say, just 1 child or none, as they appear to be now, why would they have more? There are still people around, aren't there? Even if we came up with artificial wombs, someone or something would have to raise the children. Bots, anyone? JHC.