Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences • Hacker News Board

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#171

Post by slaw » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:20 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #146

aemreunal wrote: post #8

As 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 p…

What’s most concerning is that this might be a negative spiral. I think one reason young people these days get so squeezed financially is that proportionately more retirees/near retirees in the population means that, structurally, economic output needs to be taxed or otherwise transferred (from rents, dividends, capital gains) from those who are working to those who are retired. If this squeezing causes people to red…

One of the solutions is to tax wealth more and labor less.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#172

Post by _nalply » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:24 AM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #169

thedailymail wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan (where I live) at least it doesn't seem like a carrying capacity problem, but a general lack of desire among young people to start families.

I've thought about this, and I'm no expert, but I've come to be convinced this is how reaching carrying capacity is meant to feel. It's easy to imagine it as some sort of famine, where there isn't enough food to feed children, or overcrowding so extreme that everyone lives in slums and it's simply impossible to have kids. If it ever reached that point, a population graph would show a sharp fall, not a steady leveling…

Very thoughtful, thank you.

In other words, we are like a mouse population. If a cap is reached, fertility sinks (but for mice also mortality rises as well. We humans are lucky in a way compared to mice.)

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#173

Post by steve_taylor » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:27 AM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #135

steve_taylor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation is the real inconvenient truth that no one wants to address.

It's not. We can sustain many more, probably 10B+. The problem is everyone wants to live in the same few places. This is mainly driven by economics (workplaces). The WFH revolution will solve a lot of this if it can be sustained. Imagine if you can dig a well, get solar or any type of non-grid energy, and internet. There are no limits to where you can live, and most of the acreage in the US is cheap . You don't need…

Everyone living in megacities is better than urban sprawl, which clears forests and woodlands. More agriculture is required for more people, which means more land clearing. Renewable energy infrastructure needs energy and resources to build and needs to be replaced at EOL. Whether acreage is cheap or not only refers to money, not the environmental cost. And I haven't even said anything about the environmental costs of manufacturing and shipping goods. People won't go back to a "simpler" way of life because it's a backward step in lifestyle. People don't want to sacrifice their lifestyle to do their very small part to help stave off a catastrophe.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#174

Post by thunderbird120 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:33 AM UTC

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #144

thunderbird120 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this table, poverty is being measured as the percent of the population falling below one half of a particular country’s median household income. That is a measure of income inequality... not poverty. Here is a measure of inflation adjusted household income over time for to address the original point[1]. People are not getting poorer [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

> That is a measure of income inequality... not poverty. Same thing? What is a measure of poverty if not a measure of income inequality? The concept of poverty categorizes people who do not earn enough to live in society. How are these different?

Material poverty is an absolute measure, not a relative one.

A country in which 100% of people earn exactly $1 a day is not somehow less poor than the United States

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#175

Post by aylmao » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:41 AM UTC

DirectorKrennic wrote: post #120

aylmao wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak. - 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia. - 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan. Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a…

Unless Japan's birthrate picks up, its population is slated to fall by a lot more than 2% from its peak. Try 50% or more. A birthrate below 2.1 children per woman leads to extinction.

This is true, Japan's population pyramid [1] looks way more dire that Russia's [2]. Russia's does seem to suggest shrinkage after the big generation born in the 80's passes away, but oscillation afterwards. Japan's is an inverted pyramid.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...

[2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#176

Post by perryizgr8 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:42 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #69

perryizgr8 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah most people saying they can't afford to have children probably are in the richest 10% of the world's population. They can absolutely afford a child.

The cost they don't want to pay isn't monetary, it's time/commitment. And to avoid the time/commitment, you need lots and lots of money, and even then you still lose control of your life; suddenly there's other forces that require you to do things you don't want to do.

That's my point. It is not a monetary issue. It is a matter of priorities. People should just say that having children is not high on their priority list, instead we get a bunch of excuses (cost of living, global warming, etc.).

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#177

Post by aylmao » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:43 AM UTC

airgapstopgap wrote: post #124

aylmao wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak. - 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia. - 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan. Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a…

Russian population decline has been compensated for with a great number of immigrants from Central Asia (plus occupied Crimea; that's not recognized internationally but is obviously a factor for their economy). It'd probably be more like 138 million modulo those and their children, perhaps less.

That's an interesting point; Crimea has about 2 million people. This doesn't seem to show on the charts though, when in theory it should look like a spike around 2014, no?

[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=R...

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#178

Post by ChatGTP » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:44 AM UTC

faeriechangling wrote: post #157

ChatGTP wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO "AI" and Robotics will completely destroy any chance of this happening. Imagine armies of robots working 24/7 strip mining everything, logging everything, way faster and way smarter than people ever could. This is what we're making, this is what capitalism will absolutely love. There is no sign of any regulation here from governments, they will want it even more, "GDP! GDP! GDP!". I was really hopefully we'd actu…

Your vision is unrealistic. Society would eventually distill down to two bots trading increasingly large amounts of money between eachother until the end of time after first jettisoning themselves into space.

You think this is impossible??

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#179

Post by aylmao » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:52 AM UTC

volkl48 wrote: post #158

aylmao wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak. - 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia. - 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan. Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a…

Russia: Eh, no. That's just a temporary blip caused by a lot of the people born before 1945 not having made it that far, so the population was unnaturally skewed young. Few elderly to be dying off at the time because a large portion of those people died off 50-60 years prior. They're set for sharp decline going forward, and changes in geopolitics look likely to dry up or outright reverse their modest immigrant flows…

You're right. Japan's population pyramid is inverted [1]. Personally, I wouldn't call the rate ever more rapid— it's seems quite linear given that fertility rate has been pretty steadily around 1.3 since the 90s [2], but it is definitely still shrinking.

Russia's population pyramid does seem to suggest a big dip once the generation born in the 80s passes away, but it doesn't look like a reversed pyramid just yet. The generation born in 2021 doesn't seem considerably smaller than the one born 20 years ago [3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...

[2]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

[3]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#180

Post by theshrike79 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 5:54 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #133

There are quite a few comments here about "you need money to raise kids". There are similar statements made about housing size, cost, etc. and those end up on "but you don't need 8,000 sq ft to live!" These are, frankly IMHO, bizarre arguments that seem conditioned on socio-commercial training along the lines of "you need a diamond to propose!". Absolutely none of these are true: - People had sex and stable relations…

> I have loads of family in South Korea, a country in near terminal population decline, and the reason I've always heard is "it's expensive to raise a child". But the real reason is, it's expensive to train a child to get into a top-3 university. Raising a child to adulthood is possible even in abject poverty.

Isn't the fact that mothers are expected to drop their career and 100% focus on their children also a factor? Women instead decide not to have babies at all so they can have a career of their own.