Ghost cities and abandoned areas with a declining population

Also a lot of pressure is being put on being a child in SK so no wonder people refuse to have children and put them through a torturous schooling system.

Although I have no issue with the gist of what you wrote, I wouldn't classify South Korea as a developing country.

I do not think it is money. My parents were much poorer but decided to have three children. This global utopia where there is so much to do, experience visit and see. For many millennials and Z gen Netflix is more interesting that having a child. It does not help that there are extremely high expectation for being an parent.

South Korea has tremendous structural and social challenges regarding having children. Regardless of what those are it's resulted in the lowest female participation rate in the OECD and among the highest child rearing costs. On top of it, being a child in South Korea is no picnic, with absolutely crushing educational requirements that would probably be illegal in the U.S.

My prediction is that as the population shrinks, the existing physical educational infrastructure, especially in the larger cities, will help somewhat as the competition for educational resources won't be as intense.

But there's still lots of cultural challenges in terms of the approach to education and in particular college admissions (as well as college acceptance in the workforce).

>most prospective parents would rather delay having children until they can achieve career stability and afford a reasonably-sized house, which is happening very late in life (if at all) compared to previous generations.

I think this was the premise of _Idiocracy_.

> cash awards for having children being paid by developed countries are laughably far too little, too late in their intention

The developed world urgently needs far less people, not more. Either you think CO2 emissions in the developing world aren't going to keep rising as living standards improve or live in a fantasyland where first world governments worldwide are meeting conservative 4 degree warming targets quick enough.

We need far less children, this is provably the easiest solution with the greatest impact compared to every other measure combined in tackling climate change.

> instead doing everything we can to ensure couples live in a world where they WANT to bring another life into it.

Neither of those suggestions actually increased birth rates, individually or in aggregate. Pretty sure many Scandinavian countries tried all of those, and it had little to no impact on their birth rate.

Do you have any source to show improvements to birth rate?

None of those things have prevented people from having kids before. In fact they are mostly inversely correlated.

You would think that wealth/security is what matters but the stats show otherwise. People in poorer countries have more kids than in rich countries. And within developed countries, the poor have more than the middle class which in turn have more than millionaires.

I remember when the big tech companies started offering an egg freezing benefit in addition to IVF. I hope they also offer flexible work for new moms and dads as well.

But the US as a whole needs to do better, we are way behind the curve.

“ being a wealthy country often means: nuclear families”

nah, thats usually the case in poor countries. nuclear, religious, and and obedient wife.

No reason knowledge workers can't or shouldn't unionize!

>However, this model ultimately ends up treating children and sometimes marriage (And even romantic relationships to an extent) as shackles and hurdles on the road to success.

And not just shackles in the traditional sense. Having children compounds matters because wealth and competitive advantage is largely about relative values.

If it becomes the norm that, defying economic pressures, everyone has children, culture in a democracy can force societal change in policy and business to make these conditions reasonable. On the other hand, in a highly competitive labor market, it's a chosen competitive disadvantage to have a child. Less time to devote to work, higher comp needed to support them and the family, etc. You're at a disadvantage to your peers that can sacrifice their personal lives more easily than a responsible parent can.

Case in point, I've done a large amount of contractual work. I have a friend who works in the same ecosystem and they've had to pass up on opportunities to work a bit of overtime that helped me solidify a future business relationship and contract by being there to deliver when they needed it. My friend on the other hand has a family and simply couldn't put in the extra hours in the short turnaround requested. The bias went towards me, the one with flexibility (no children but relationship with working professional who understands) to grasp these opportunities. That person shortly after had difficulty finding a new contract while I had a solid portfolio to work from. I don't like the idea because I'd like to have kids in the near future but it's quite clear you suffer a huge blow economically, in ways often seen and unseen, at least in the US.

A 25% decline in the human population is completely irrelevant compared to the economic growth which is raising 6 billion people from a near-subsistence existence into the middle class. Losing a few million British people is completely irrelevant as Nigeria and its 150mm people enter the developed, high-energy, economy.

The solution to climate change is a technological restructuring of human carbon usage patterns. Not fewer humans.

Things can be good on net but still have severe downsides you can't just ignore, and I think that's the case here. You're brushing a whole lot under the carpet with "will cause problems": falling populations mean that everything which relies on a demographic pyramid-- pensions, socialized health care, saving for retirement via the stock market, spending on municipal infrastructure-- falls apart. You can't just brush that off.

I have one friend who has a PhD in Future Studies. He said there are benefits to a slow population decline and the downsides are completely manageable.

It's very hard to convince leaders of that though. You'll notice the conclusory comment in the FA, 'Falling fertility rates have been a problem in the world’s wealthiest nations – notably in Japan and Germany – for some time.' Most will skip right past that nodding their head despite the author providing zero evidence or support for that.

I think part of that is people associate population decline with places that suffered some economic insult and lost sustainability. Mill closed everyone scattered to the winds kind of thing. That's not the same thing as declining fertility.

No, it’s not a good thing. Humans are apparently the only species capable of observing itself or the universe. The more people, the better, we just need to ramp up space exploration.

Some people like living in nature. With utilities already built out or alternatives like solar power for electricity and starlink for internet, people could untether themselves from urban areas all together.

Dark skies, peace, quiet. All these make me enjoy being away from conurbations. I especially dislike the lack of darkness in winter.

A future rural home will have off-grid power (solar + power wall), off-grid internet (starlink) and off-grid water is already solved. Why again do I need to be packed and stacked?

And why do we keep talking about urban life as aspirational? Many of those currently leaving SF and NYC are wealthy enough to move on a whim. These aren't flights of desperation. Why are wealthy people leaving?

Prolonged forest fires in Europe??? Is that a thing? I’ve heard of Australia having insanely massive fires (easily bigger than all of Southern Europe) and west coast US having smaller but more intense fires. Where are the fires in Southern Europe?

Jackson Wyoming gets a lot of tourists in the summer, probably way more than they have residents, and most come by car...

Agreed.

Dispassionately, we have to accept that we cannot bring the entire planet up to western standards of living and life expectancy.

The planet cant support it, based on our current technology and practive. Unless something changes in how we manage the planet, we'll end up destroying it.

100%, what is even crazier to me is that (at least before covid) the US rates of families moving had declining and was at the lowest point it had been for over 100 years. The modern style of home ownership (30 year mortgage, house in the suburbs, local control of land use) has really deeply screwed up many economic feedback mechanisms that in previous generations powered the economic engine of the US. The economic history of our nation is a history of people moving east to west to new opportunity (both 100s of years ago to farm the land, extract resource and displace native peoples, and today to move to high productivity jobs near low cost housing in sunbelt cities), as well as people moving south to north to flee the Jim Crow south and a rentier economy based on the dispossession of black farmers. It should be easier to move, we should reintroduce the modern equivalent of "boarding houses", and the lowest tier of housing in urban centers should be much less expensive.

Well there are two ways to move. One is to move businesses to the people or two, pay people to move.

Cities are no panacea either. Expensive and lots of competition for jobs. If you have multi-generational land bought and paid for then your expense can be quite low.

Now America has a unique suburban landscape that could be leveraged to great effect. Essentially pull people closer to the cities. Then you can develop a central village in each of the suburbs.

That and high speed internet for remote work.

It isn't a lack of incentive to move it is a lack of ability. Think about what it realistically costs to move to NYC right now, first months rent, last months rent, deposit, and even then most rentals aren't even on the market unless you pay a broker several thousand. The majority of people in rural america surveys can't handle a 400 dollar emergency let alone the cost to move to a large metro.

And before you say "well they can get the money to attempt a move by selling their family property", realise what you are saying. Sell dilapidated rural property to whom exactly? How does that happen?

Unless you have grants of approx 15-30k to bring people to cities I don't think it is even possible. And what cities would even want this to happen enough to participate? Probably places like Cleveland? Detroit? Out of the frying pan into the fire I suppose.

I'm going to post this even though there is a large chance that it's going to be poorly received:

This is simply an extension of what happened to urban poor (particularly blacks) in the latter half of the last century, and our failure to solve those issues adequately is simply allowing the dynamic to self-replicate.

It happened with drugs (crack cocaine vs opioids), it happened with housing (contract housing and gentrification vs subprime loans and asset inflation), on and on. See also Native Americans on reservations, essentially abandoned by the state for having the audacity to want some measure of self-determination. Whatever we allow to happen to the least of us, will eventually happen to most of us.

I come from the perspective of a military brat, a descendent of slaves, born overseas. My ancestral home is either unknown or a town built on the site of a plantation, depending on your perspective; my childhood home is an abstract idea shattered across 5 states and a dozen physical buildings; I have no memory of my place of birth and would have to get a visa to see it. I have a strong predilection towards dismissing sentiments concerning "home" because the society I live in has ruthlessly ground out any sentimentality I might have had towards it.

However, I also know what the break-up of community has done to black people in the US, the ignoble gift of desperation that the dissolution and rot of family and economic opportunity leaves to people. That's now playing out for American whites, and as we've seen, it carries with it a very serious and threatening sense of aggrievement, rooted in the kind of entitlement minorities could never claim without putting their lives on the line against their fellow countrymen. Therefore, even in my own grievance, I see the necessity of compassion and action.

I don't think a modern Homestead Act is necessarily the answer, though, because it doesn't get to the crux of the issue, which is our willingness as a country to let despair fester in one pocket or another, as long as it's not too close to home. I don't know what fixing that is going to take. Giving people money to move might be a part of it, but I don't think it's the be-all-end-all. There needs to be a more fundamental shift in how we view the right of people to secure shelter and build community, and perhaps of our responsibility to sacrifice and provide for this when it comes to people who aren't our own, may not live or look like us, may vote differently or work different jobs or have different dreams. We're all tied together.

Californians don't want these people to move. They shout gentrification and would prefer that these people stay out.

With the rise of fracking the oil extraction industry has returned in some of those places. But that's probably only temporary.

> Both parties don't want this because this means a massive transformation in the politics of the urban/rural divide.

I think it's rather simpler than that. People won't elect someone who tells them their coal town is doomed when the coal runs out. They'll vote for the guy who makes unrealistic promises instead.

See endless stream of politicians promising to save dying mining towns, dying factory towns, etc.

while the developed world shrinks, the developing world and esp. africa are exploding. These events do not balance each other as dev. world is much less productive and going to face extreme economic problems.

The vast majority of fertile-age, opposite-sex couples can conceive fairly quickly if they try, and people in the upper half of the global income distribution now have access to medical care if they run into any issues. Infant mortality is also way down compared to past centuries.

https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/trying-to-conceive/...

> On the bright side, the threat of overpopulation is lessened

That's a significant bright side. Personally, as someone who enjoys spending time in nature, I would much rather deal with the problems of underpopulation than overpopulation.

So you discount the idea that when people have the choice not to have large numbers of children (good healthcare to provide for old age, easily accessible contraception) they prefer to have fewer children?

Also, the central premise of the article seems to be in dispute:

Professor David Coleman from the University of Oxford said: 'Much has been written about the 'Death of the West', with its threatened demise reportedly due to the low level of reproduction in Western countries. We show that this so-called decline has been exaggerated and trends in European fertility have been misunderstood.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427211644.h...

>We don’t know why. If I were to guesss, due to the use of plastics with our food.

What evidence do you have to dismiss the (IMO much, much more plausible) idea that it's just men becoming more sedentary, moving and exercising less?

Also... I agree w/ one of the other commenters that declining testosterone does not appear to be an obstacle to couples intentionally trying to conceive, so I would be very hesitant to (essentially) blame plastic in food for declining population.

I think issues are a lot less complex than you think.

From anecdata, it simply looks like the burden of government, extended family, and increasing QOL costs, is much greater than ever on childbearing age men & women, for those living in developed countries. For example, men and women only started to take 10-30 year debt to buy a house, or to become a nurse...in the last 50 or so years.

Thus, there are far fewer resources (including testosterone!) for child-rearing.

Take for example what psychologists say about males being less fertile when they make less money than their partners, for example.

Not having an opinion on whether this is good or bad. It just seems to be true.

This is a popular theory but, plastics and other hormone disrupters are everywhere, including places with high birth rates and strong machismo cultures. The controlling variable is women’s rights and their ability to control their bodies. The sooner we can internalize that fewer women are choosing to have children, and when they do they choose to have fewer, the sooner we can start to make social and policy changes to address it.

>testosterone keeps falling consecutively every year in developed countries. We don’t know why.

the more developed the society is the less valuable are the testosterone benefits like the ability for heavy physical work in harsh conditions, etc. and the less tolerance the society has for the testosterone driven behavior - thus natural selection drives testosterone down. For example when you have a car accident, display of rage would put you in a losing position in US where you just need to exchange insurance info, and your higher muscle mass and hand-to-hand combat skills decide nothing, whereis for example in Russia the rage is a synergetic addition to the metal tire tool in you hand displayed as a credible threat. Another correlation which would suggest why testosterone would be selected out from government and management positions in developed societies:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/kykl.12169

" To measure testosterone exposure, we apply the facial width‐to‐height metric (fWHR) – a standard proxy widely used in the psychological literature – and look at a sample of Russian regional governors. We find a positive relationship between the fWHR of the governor and the level of repression in his region. "

This is false. Birth rates are down because people are choosing to have fewer children, not because something is preventing them from having children they want.

Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are probably bigger factors in declining testosterone levels.

That would only move the problem of “there are too many houses” to cities or suburbs, not solve it.

Also, I don’t think empty houses are the main problem. An older population costs more and pays less taxes.

So, if one keeps current infrastructure spending, budget deficits will increase, and government debt will go up.

And if the population shrinks, government debt per capita will go up even more.

If their population really halves, I think many countries will have to make hard choices as to which villages or even cities, and roads leading into them, to abandon.

I can’t find it now, but I remember some people arguing Japan should do that with Fukushima after the tsunami.

> and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion.

According to who? Hans Rosling famously[1] didn't think so.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E