Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
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Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#2[dead]
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#3Good. Most of our modern problems are due to too many people. House prices, inflation, traffic, pollution, climate change, food scarcity, water, etc...
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#4The weirdest part is that I’m pretty sure women generally want a replacement rate (or more!) number of children when surveyed, but feel like they’re unable to support that number. Why can’t we address those?
Edited to ask: some replies seemed skeptical so I went to find what I based this idea off of. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility...
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#5Perhaps, instead, we can see this as a good thing and plan a graceful way back to a more sustainable population over the course of a century. Just yesterday yet another in a long line of reports talked about how humanity has not just bent but likely broken many of the Earth's ecological boundaries that humans and non-humans alike depend upon. We've known this for decades -- mountains upon mountains of studies in ecology, climate science, and many more fields. We've largely chosen to ignore it all and keep forging ahead with resource consumption and waste production.
Part of the challenge to conventional logic of what I wrote above is that the economy, in standard neoclassical economic thought, is separate from the ecosystem. The two interact, but are entirely distinct. Sometimes human society is another distinct third bubble. Instead, ecologists have long known that the ecosystem of today (and likely for the decades of concern here) contains human society which contains the human economy. So, we're better off planning a graceful descent -- one that will have less competition for resources and less harm to the global ecosystem.
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#6Wouldn't birth rate be a better word instead of fertility?
There is a difference between not wanting and not being able.
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#7Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#8As the article points out, having a choice, and not being pressured by society into having kids one doesn't want, certainly is a good thing. On the other hand, as the article notes:
> [...] cannot afford to have more children, or because of other policy failures, such as housing shortages [...]
the financial aspect is a huge blocker for those who want to have children. We live in a world where the majority of young people can't afford to live in a city center without 2+ roommates, let alone afford a lifestyle where they have any amount of disposable income, of which a lot is needed to have children.
This policy and societal failure of squeezing every bit of wealth out of the new generation and not giving them anything will eventually drain cities of young people and those cities will be left behind as times change with the newer generations. The cities will miss out on culture, societal change, modernity, eventually of sheer people. See San Francisco, New York, Seoul, etc. It doesn't seem like countries are treating this as the problem it is and I fear for the future of all these currently-popular cities.
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#9Good. Most of our modern problems are due to too many people. House prices, inflation, traffic, pollution, climate change, food scarcity, water, etc...
Overpopulation is the real inconvenient truth that no one wants to address.
Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
#10Scary part is population collapse is a slow moving train wreck that is hard to avoid. The population projection for decades from now are set in stone. Yet we are powerless to anything about it.