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Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

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Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#151

Post by swat535 »

rwmj wrote: post #63
subarctic wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is retirement age and what practical impact would changing it have on society? People can retire or keep working at whatever age they want as long as they can afford to

Retirement age is usually tied to various benefits. In the UK it's the age at which you can collect the state pension (currently around £12K per year, if you worked for 30-35 years). Changing the retirement age therefore affects the state's finances, quite dramatically in fact: https://obr.uk/box/the-fiscal-impact-of-increases-in-the-sta...

Denmark is already considering raising the retirement age to 70: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44088957

This is the natural consequence of declining birth rates.. it's either that or immigration right now.

Encouraging people to have more children requires drastic changes in society which is difficult to implement.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#152

Post by matchbok3 »

KPGv2 wrote: post #47
deeviant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge problem, it's just not a problem to economic model, but the ecological one.

It's a problem to the economic model, too, but of course no one cares about more than a couple fiscal quarters in the future. The looming ecological disasters will irreversibly destroy the global economy in some of our lifetimes if nothing happens to stop it pretty soon.

People have been saying the climate is going to fall apart and kill us all for the past 30 years. It's time for a new approach.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#153

Post by matchbok3 »

Razengan wrote: post #65
HappySweeney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you average it all out. The over 65 crowd does not produce more than they consume.

> The over 65 crowd does not produce more than they consume. So that's the end goal our species should aspire to? Produce™ and Consume™? Eternally without relent?

Yes, that sounds great! I love my iPhone and air conditioning. Don't you?

Will you be the first to go volunteer to back to the stone ages?

I didn't think so.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#154

Post by matchbok3 »

Razengan wrote: post #57
geye1234 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, corporations want people without children, since they have more disposable income to spend on the pointless tat they want to sell you, and are willing to work longer hours to make rich people even richer.

Ah but you're forgetting the lucrative Education™ pipeline that conveniently funnels everyone into a lifetime of debt :)

Nobody is forced to take out 200k Gender Studies degrees that don't pay anything.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#155

Post by card_zero »

baxtr wrote: post #95

Let’s consider this logically: What kind of people will not wanting children likely select for? At least two kinds come to mind: 1) People who love children and are willing to have them regardless of the impact on their financial situation. 2) People living in societies where women (and likely some men) lack a say in whether or not to have children. The first kind could be very good. The second is definitely not some…

Opinions aren't genetic, so that's not very good logic. I guess the logic depends on a culture passing on a value - by means of words, not by genetics - such as spawn furiously to the next generation, who accept it uncritically. That would be a version of (2) I guess: mindless reproduction along with hostility to thinking about it, with memes as the mechanism. This memetic condition would tend to win, you'd think, except somehow it hasn't won already, and we are still somewhat mentally capable of considering our reproductive options. Perhaps having children thoughtfully is the only effective way, and so it must necessarily be by choice.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#156

Post by cyberax »

amluto wrote: post #149
cyberax wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I can tell you that (a) is actually where the children _are_. And (b) is where the people go to die. > Sure, with big lots, kids have lots of space in their own backyards. And big cars make soccer-momming easier. But, when kids can easily and safely get somewhere else approximately on their own, the whole situation seems better. It seems better, but it's actually not better. Besides, suburbs can be improved quite…

Got data? I think any even remotely serious attempt will discover a very mixed bag. I had an LLM pull data from various places in California and New York (because doing it by hand is a pain), and there isn’t really a clear trend either way as to where the children are. Palo Alto has a surprisingly large number of children under 18 and under 5, and Palo Alto is fairly walkable as California cities go. Fresno and Baker…

Look at Houston vs. NYC.

Both have approximately similar populations but completely different approaches to city design.

NYC is at 52 and Harris County (that contains Houston) is at 67 births per year per 1000. But NYC is also diverse, with relatively sparse parts in Brooklyn and Queens, where most children live.

> In general I suspect that children in the US are mildly skewed toward more suburban areas, but not strongly.

Compare the suburban US with dense European cities. The urban damage is cumulative, and Europe started over-urbanizing earlier.

You can see the breakpoint in the US happened in 2008, as the millennials started entering the workforce. They were the first modern generation that _had_ to move to large cities to get ahead economically.

> There are plenty of children in dense areas.

Yes, in desperately poor neighborhoods. That's called an "inverted J curve".

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#157

Post by card_zero »

iamnothere wrote: post #139
pstuart wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If things don't change, those in power in the US will succeed in making the second a reality. There is a "replacement" crisis but it's being addressed by pearl clutching and those advocating for forced birth. Having children is expensive all the way around. And women's reproductive rights have enabled them to (rightfully) make their own choices about motherhood. To state the obvious: children literally are the future…

A people that will not or cannot reproduce itself must eventually step aside for a people that will. Those who govern us see us as an economic zone to exploit, so perpetuating core social values isn’t really a concern. Although even countries who recognize this problem are having trouble finding a solution. It may simply be that the future doesn’t look very much like the “developed world”. The only nations (or large…

But the next generation of "a people" are not the same people, and perhaps those people won't, and then where's your "step aside"?

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#158

Post by sublinear »

geye1234 wrote: post #42
mostertoaster wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation is not a problem. Maybe in a couple countries. But not for the world, and not for the west and definitely not for America. As the population has grown poverty has decreased.

Yep, absolutely right. Energy is very easy to produce cleanly (nuclear, and solar is looking better and better). The barriers to doing so are political and financial, not technical. They will be made worse by having an aged-heavy population, which is less innovative, less willing to invest in the future, and less willing to try new things. And it makes a poorer society, obviously. Malthus has been proved wrong at eve…

You're assuming at least two things that I disagree with.

First about behavior in old age. I'm pretty sure the majority of adults today don't want to live and think like their grandparents, so we can't say "less" anything. The circumstances are definitely changing enough that we already know it will be different.

The population decline is not happening in huge step changes. "About to bite us" is definitely hyperbole.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#159

Post by cyberax »

littlexsparkee wrote: post #147
missedthecue wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what the policy wonk idealists say, but the undeniable evidence going back hundreds of years is that dense cities are fertility shredders.

They're talking about raising kids already born, not conditions for having one in the first place. We should separate discussion of the environment from the cost which is the really the main factor for why parents decamp for the suburbs. Causality goes the other way - it's not the compact nature that reduced fertility but the fact that dense neighborhoods are rare and pricey in the US.

> Causality goes the other way - it's not the compact nature that reduced fertility but the fact that dense neighborhoods are rare and pricey in the US.

They're unfortunately not rare. And dense housing is ALWAYS pricey in the developed countries.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#160

Post by dotancohen »

dukeyukey wrote: post #78
dotancohen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation is not solved. Many African and Middle Eastern cultures continue to have half a dozen children per wife.

Not a single country has a fertility rate of 6 children per woman. And the highest middle eastern country is Yemen at 4.3. The next highest is Iraq at 3.1.

I just looked up recent numbers.

- Niger: 6.7 births per woman

- Somalia: 6.0

- Chad: 5.5

So it seems only Africa.

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