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Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

nytimes.com

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Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#51

Post by maratd »

RyanZAG wrote: post #33

Feels like the article misses the obvious while actually stating it. The reason for Japan's declining birth rate: "Although Japanese couples consistently say in surveys that they would like to have more than two children, they don’t. Part of the problem is Japan’s prolonged economic malaise. Years of stagnant (or declining) incomes have made Japanese men less attractive as potential partners. And economic uncertainty…

This is wrong on a profound level. GDP is Gross Domestic Product. In other words, all the goods and services produced. The price level and quantity are deeply tied to demand and for most goods/services, demand is tied to the population. More people means more goods/services sold at a higher quantity and price. Economic growth is largely population growth. The Japanese economic stagnation is largely caused by their population stagnation and will certainly not be fixed by it.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#52

Post by hudibras »

altcognito wrote: post #40
hudibras wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the current birthrate/deathrate, Japan's population will be 60 million by 2100. That's the same population as in the 1920s. So the same population but with almost 180 years of technologic and productivity advances? I think most people would like that. Tokyo literally employees people to shove commuters into rush-hour trains. Who wouldn't want to live in a Tokyo with the same infrastructure but with 40% fewer peopl…

As someone who lives in the Detroit area, I find your comments amusing. In fairness, comparing Detroit to Tokyo is like comparing night and day. This isn't to say there wouldn't be adjustment issues though.

If by "Detroit area" you mean the Detroit metropolitan area, it's only lost 3% of its population between the last two censuses, not exactly a huge exodus. Around 15,000 net loss each year out of 4M+.

If you mean just the city of Detroit, then the comparison with rural Japan is not too far off: young people moving away from their homes because there are no jobs, leaving behind their parents and grandparents. Detroit is the rural Japanese fishing village with 1 grade-school kid in this analogy.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#53

Post by philwelch »

RyanZAG wrote: post #49
philwelch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP per capita doesn't go up when population goes down, because there are fewer people working to produce goods and services. There's no economy genie producing wealth that has to be divided among the population.

A large portion of country wealth is often tied up in land and infrastructure. Wealth generally creates more wealth (through interest and similar), so the same wealth spread across a smaller number of people will push GDP per capita upwards. Higher incomes are also closely associated with better education. If you keep the number of universities and schools constant while decreasing the population, you give a larger p…

There's no interest genie either. If no one can invest and earn returns on borrowed money, there's nothing to sustain interest.

Inherited wealth isn't enough to sustain anyone but the rich. GDP only measures new wealth anyway, not preexisting wealth. You have to continue producing goods and services. In fact, most forms of accumulated wealth (currency, securities, real estate) are really just shares of these goods and services as they're produced, but you need at least some actual labor for that to work.

If you selectively culled unproductive people, per capita GDP would go up. It's not clear that low birth rates accomplish this.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#54

Post by rayiner »

Nux wrote: post #14

It's almost incredible to have this kind of problem today when the global population is growing uncontrollably.

It's not. Current projections are that global population will peak under 10 billion then start declining. China is going to peak in 2026 then start shrinking. Overpopulation is a solved problem for now. The big problem is that now all those people want to live like Americans.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#55

Post by eriksank »

tomjen3 wrote: post #47
eriksank wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem won't be for just one generation. If the birthrate remains the same, the same problem will repeat itself generation after generation. One child per woman means: 32 - 16 - 8 - 4 - 2 - 1. Furthermore, it seems no problem to cut the birthrate, but virtually impossible to push it up again.

Virtually impossible? Hardly. One generation where the average is 10 children per woman will boost the economy and permanently change the demographics; it may sound completely unrealistic, but it was the norm only a few generations ago. And no, it didn't end when a lot of the children stopped dying in childbirth, as my grandfather had something like 8 brothers, and all of them made it into adulthood just fine.

The entire infrastructure for this kind of endeavour -- that is, having lots of children -- has gone and not only in Japan. Biology does not work by restoring the birthrate, I suspect. I guess it rather works by exponentially growing the sub-populations who still have these high birthrates: 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16. In other words, I strongly suspect that most of the current Japanese population will have no descendants in a few generations, while a small, distinct subgroup will produce all of the population. So, all Japanese in a hundred years or so will descend from the few Japanese that tend to make ten children today.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#56

Post by powertower »

seunosewa wrote: post #11

I think immigration is the best solution. There's no shortage of babies and young people in the world. The article notes that liberal immigration policies are not popular. Well, maybe that's the problem. I suspect that immigration will gain popularity when the problems caused by the ageing population become sufficiently severe. The problem will solve itself at the right time.

That might be the best solution to maintaining head-counts in a more immediate manner.

But it gets a bit more complicated.

How would you solve the issue of no-go zones, crime and violence, incompatibility and intolerance, and lack of unity?

Because those are all the things that increase in a non-marginal way when you mass immigrate a society and start replacing its identity, culture, and people with another.

Would you build more prisons? Would you make excuses for the new people? What would you do exactly when that same society starts breaking apart?

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#57

Post by RyanZAG »

philwelch wrote: post #53
RyanZAG wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large portion of country wealth is often tied up in land and infrastructure. Wealth generally creates more wealth (through interest and similar), so the same wealth spread across a smaller number of people will push GDP per capita upwards. Higher incomes are also closely associated with better education. If you keep the number of universities and schools constant while decreasing the population, you give a larger p…

There's no interest genie either. If no one can invest and earn returns on borrowed money, there's nothing to sustain interest. Inherited wealth isn't enough to sustain anyone but the rich. GDP only measures new wealth anyway, not preexisting wealth. You have to continue producing goods and services. In fact, most forms of accumulated wealth (currency, securities, real estate) are really just shares of these goods an…

I guess I wasn't clear enough. Lets break down the working population into categories:

  [unique skills - ceos, etc]
  X people
  [highly demanded skills - top class engineers, specialty surgeons, etc]
  Y people
  [regular required jobs - doctors, pharmacists, designers,   etc]
  Z people
  [unskilled jobs]
  A people
  [unemployed]
As the population decreases, the demand for each of the sets should decrease in proportion if per capita GDP would remain the same (ignoring wealth effects). However, this isn't the case. If Sony needs 10,000 engineers to create their phones for export to USA, they will still need 10,000 engineers regardless of decreasing population. In addition, a medical school that takes 50 students per year will continue to take 50 students per year even if populations fall, as the number of applicants is far in excess of 50.

This is just a few examples, but you could easily find far more. The root cause of this is the existing wealth of the country will enable more people to succeed as the population decreases. A further indication of this effect is that GDP per capita is strongly related to wealth.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#58

Post by guard-of-terra »

tomjen3 wrote: post #50
guard-of-terra wrote: post #42

I've modelled a society with 1.0 birth rate and everyone died. And it's not like died in a million years; no, the last "person" was born something like 150 years from the start. Having said that, why would anyone live in the remote countryside? In a rural town? We can't bring modern standards of entertainment and culture to the countryside. Museums, clubs with modern live music, theatres, circuses - you can't have th…

Please don't make the mistake of assuming that any kind of growth is constant -- people respond to incentives and if the price of having a child goes up, people naturally respond by having fewer children. And yes, the price of child is the highest it has even been. Just to satisfy my curiousity, how many people were in your society to begin with? At what age did they reproduce? Was the reproduction constant or did it…

Of course society can heal, 'm just saying it's possible to get a badly incentivized society to crash itself and it won't be easy to fix the setup given the negative momentum.

10000. They reproduced between 25 and 35. You could tune the birth rate but it was constant for the simulation. People lived for 80 years. This kind of setup gave you a temporary boost and then a surprisingly hard landing.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#59

Post by yummyfajitas »

sridhar_vembu wrote: post #39
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just religious fundamentalists - it's also people with low conscientiousness. They have no moral aversion to birth control, they just don't think too hard about the consequences of unprotected sex (it feels nicer, and condoms are at the drugstore three blocks away). And while Mormon's rapid breeding might prevent demographic malaise, the rapid breeding of low conscientiousness people won't - the very trait t…

I have to call bullshit on this one. Most of us here, supposedly "conscientious" people, can trace our being here (in the existential sense of "being") to some ancestor with "low consciousness". Birthrates are falling rapidly around the world, yes, including in places you may think are populated with "low conscious" people. The reason is very prosaic: urbanization. As people get crammed into smaller areas, they natur…

Both zeteo and myself are discussing differential birthrates between populations.

If population A (e.g. mormons, people of low conscientiousness) has a birthrate of X, and B (everyone else) has a birthrate of Y, with X > Y, then population A will eventually become the entire population. The eventual birthrate will be X.

Even if both birthrates are reduced by some exogenous factor K (e.g. urbanization, reducing from X -> K x X, Y -> K x Y), this fact doesn't change.

Re: Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

#60

Post by yummyfajitas »

maratd wrote: post #51
RyanZAG wrote: post #33

Feels like the article misses the obvious while actually stating it. The reason for Japan's declining birth rate: "Although Japanese couples consistently say in surveys that they would like to have more than two children, they don’t. Part of the problem is Japan’s prolonged economic malaise. Years of stagnant (or declining) incomes have made Japanese men less attractive as potential partners. And economic uncertainty…

This is wrong on a profound level. GDP is Gross Domestic Product. In other words, all the goods and services produced. The price level and quantity are deeply tied to demand and for most goods/services, demand is tied to the population. More people means more goods/services sold at a higher quantity and price. Economic growth is largely population growth. The Japanese economic stagnation is largely caused by their po…

More people means more goods/services sold at a higher quantity and price.

Can you explain why more people causes price to go up?

Quantity will certainly go up, but only in proportion to population, thus having no net effect on GDP per capita.

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