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Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

economist.com

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Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#181

Post by aylmao »

pyuser583 wrote: post #152
aylmao wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO calling it "population collapse" and a "train wreck" is the wrong way to describe it. This isn't so much a collapse, it's a leveling-off. A train isn't supposed to wreck, but populations are supposed to reach a maxima. The fact historical short-sightedness meant we didn't plan for it properly is an issue. The problem here should be framed around our economic system though, not fertility rates.

We aren’t really reaching a maxima. There are no constraints preventing population from growing other than people not wanting to have kids. That’s not a normal constraint. That’s … kind of bizarre.

I wrote about this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36161277

I've come to believe this is what reaching carrying capacity is supposed to feel like. A gradual desire to have fewer kids due to stress, rather than an abrupt calamity that cuts of populations all of a sudden.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#182

Post by aylmao »

Clubber wrote: post #113
aylmao wrote: post #16

An economic system that depends on an ever-growing population is by definition not a sustainable economic system. Wether shortages happen this century or N centuries from now, at some point, like any population, a cap will be reached If this is dire to the economy, we are better off thinking at once about changing the economic system, not the fertility rate.

There is no economic system that is sustainable where there are more elderly people not working / unable to work than there are young people who do work. That's the problem. Many countries are experiencing this problem. The US evaded it currently due to immigration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x64f7NxQKKk

> There is no economic system that is sustainable where there are more elderly people not working / unable to work than there are young people who do work.

I don't think this is true. At the micro-economic level, it's not outlandish to see households where a working generation sustains not only their kids, but also their parents. At a macro-economic level, we'd certainly have to adjust our expectations of profits and growth, but that's because we are used to an always-growing economy.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#183

Post by mullingitover »

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #116
mullingitover wrote: post #103

As much as Brave New World is discounted as being about a dystopian society, being able to automate fertility would be a game changer for humanity. We can’t depend on hoping people voluntarily make irresponsible financial decisions by having children in order to save the economy.

It would also be an absolute horror from an ethical standpoint

Couldn’t be worse than the ethical horror show we’re have today. There are people in positions of power who have created laws with the aim of forcing millions of people to bear pregnancies to term, against their will. This is just taking the coercion out of the equation.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#184

Post by theshrike79 »

A conversation about fertility isn't complete without a link to The Idiocracy (2006) opening scene: https://youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA (length 4:39)

It's surprisingly accurate, even if it's very exaggerated, because that's the premise of the movie.

tl;dw "Smart/Rich" people put off having kids to the Perfect Time in their life and never end up having kids or maybe just the one. "Stupid/Poor" people just keep having kids all the time.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#185

Post by slaw »

xeromal wrote: post #109
robbomacrae wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point... or more of a theory.. everyone who wants to have a child wants to be as good as, or a better parent than their own, and want to provide for their children's childhood as good as, or better than their own. I don't have references to back this up but it seems to be the case with most parents or aspiring parents I talk to. In the western world we compare ourselves to our parents who bought their 1st hou…

I think it's a valid argument, but I don't think it's particularly strong. Humans are driven to have children and have for our entire history.

Humans are driven to have sex and with easily available contraceptives, having sex and having children are no longer tightly related.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#186

Post by seydor »

xeromal wrote: post #38

Every comment I read about this is how low housing, low income, no time, etc is the cause of a global fertility drop, but I don't buy. Humans have been having boatloads of kids in horrible horrible times and they haven't been stopped until now.

Maybe,horrible times is the solution

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#187

Post by danbolt »

theshrike79 wrote: post #184

A conversation about fertility isn't complete without a link to The Idiocracy (2006) opening scene: https://youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA (length 4:39) It's surprisingly accurate, even if it's very exaggerated, because that's the premise of the movie. tl;dw "Smart/Rich" people put off having kids to the Perfect Time in their life and never end up having kids or maybe just the one. "Stupid/Poor" people just keep having kids al…

Does that mean that the smartest and richest people of the past all died out, and we’re the descendants of yesteryear’s dumb-dumbs?

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#188

Post by ramblenode »

mlsu wrote: post #54
throwaway29291 wrote: post #5

Perhaps, 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 ecol…

I've seen this take before, especially around climate and the environment. It's correct that having 20,000 humans on Earth would be more (actually indefinitely) sustainable. These "degrowth" strategies mean tremendous suffering. People have to die to make degrowth possible. Those who stick around have to suffer of curable medical complications. They have to live hard lives without the comforts of modern life. Why do…

The best "degrowth" argument I have seen is from a physicist [0]. His argument is based on hard limits to the amount of waste heat produced by energy consuming (i.e. all) activities of humanity. He shows that if the current rate of economic growth continued for the next 400 years then humanity would be consuming more energy than in all the sunlight reaching earth and would produce enough waste heat that the surface of the earth would boil.

So continuous growth is physically impossible, even alloting for nuclear fusion and miracle technologies.

That's just considering energy/electricity, which is optimistic because civilization has on the order of at least hundreds or thousands of necessary inputs that aren't fungible. Water, air, food, and other raw materials for our bodies and technologies will become scarce more quickly.

A huge amount of growth has been due to "free" value provided by ecosystems, fossil fuels, minerals, the sun, etc. If we get to the point where all the free stuff from nature is not enough and we have to fission and fusion our raw materials we will be living in a society of such profound scarcity that we could probably only subsist as rows of brains in vats.

So the degrowth argument is not that humans should voluntarily suffer to preserve a sentimental gaia aspect, but that suffering is inevitable due to unsustainability and that it would be better to spread it out over a longer time than suffer a major crash.

[0] https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#189

Post by smitty1e »

Read no these sorts of headlines and despair.

There is no literal "global fertility". There are no aggregate testicles/ovaries that produce people.

There are only reproductive organs integrated with a body near you.

Marry. Prioritize family. Enjoy the blessing of your offspring, if possible. Participate in a community of faith, a like-minded extended family, that can enjoy life with you and help you raise those blessings, whether or not they are your own, or you take the noble road of adoption.

Best wishes to all.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#190

Post by aylmao »

mdorazio wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> House prices, inflation, traffic…food scarcity NIMBYism, combination of bad monetary policy and a supply shock, and bad urban planning. Tokyo has cheaper homes and less traffic than cities with a fraction of the population in America.

Yes and no. In the US, the vast majority of Americans want to own a single family home, not a condo or apartment [1]. That brings with it the necessity of personal vehicle ownership, which then compounds urban planning and traffic issues. And of course, you can't make more land near cities where people want to live, so you end up in a scarcity situation as the population grows (US population grows by over 1 million p…

> In the US, the vast majority of Americans want to own a single family home, not a condo or apartment

IMO there's 2 points to consider regarding this though:

One can't underestimate the fact it's illegal to build densely in a lot of the USA [1], so it isn't only preferences driving the market. Even if most people prefer single-family homes, and 50% want them to be "away from it all", there's reason to believe that the population that does want to live densely isn't being met with enough supply, and thus prices are still being artificially increased.

In terms of the high preference for low density, there's the unfortunate reality that the density is better in a dense context, but that's not something many people in the USA can experience. In New York, for example, ubiquitous density has meant one can live a convenient life without owning a car. An apartment in LA has all the disadvantages of an apartment, without the advantages of a dense city. That's the perception many people who do experience apartment living might have of it.

So overall, low density in the USA isn't purely preference-driven, and there's an argument to believe if more density _were_ built, preferences would change. It's worth keeping in mind.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...

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