The global economy runs on growth. If the population starts noticeably declining, it’ll take the economy down with it.
You need to be able to have electricity, infrastructure, food, and an educated population. That's a tall order in many places, and it's going to be taller moving forward.
And I'm not even mentioning computers. They're not going to get more affordable without China, but the opposite. Software development will adapt? Sure, things will move to the cloud as they've been moving for years already, but that puts a heavier load on having the right infrastructure for it.
Assuming they don't keep doing what they are doing and raise the retirement age.
I doubt I'll live to whatever the retirement age is, by then.
All retirement models are like that. Doesn't matter how many millions of dollars the old people have, if you are on an island with 10 workers and 50 old people, the old people are screwed.
e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-vs-hum...
Increasing birthrates has a long lead time, it takes at least a generation from when incentives begin to when you start seeing an increase in the number of economically active tax paying adults. And due to population momentum and cultural inertia, it is likely to take much longer than that still.
Immigrants on the other hand can change the shape of a population pyramid on the timescale of a political administration and they start contributing to the economy immediately. Further immigrants tend to come from higher birthrate regions and will likely continue those practices for at least a generation after arrival, leading to long term improvements in population growth. Not every country is a desirable destination for immigrants, and some cultures have stronger barriers than others to assimilation of foreigners, but for many nations growth should easily be possible so long as there are people looking for a higher quality of life, which presumably will still be the case even decades after the world's population levels off.
Massive tax rebates(not credits against tax owed, but rebates for each child).
The true issue is, likely due to something environmental, humans are not driven to reproduce. You may say, "More people aee choosing not to...". Wrong.
Reproduction is a greater drive than eating. It is more important than anything, biologically. And as an example, many cancer patients literally waste away.
They know they should eat. They know that 1/2 their problem is lack of healthy food, it makes them weak, keeps them bedridden, but they cannot even force themselves to eat.
Reproduction not sex, reproduction is a core, base drive beyond our control.
And no, sex isn't reproduction. Biology is smarter than that.
My point is, birthrates are not falling due to cost, or any other assumptions, because governments have tried to eliminate that, and it makes no difference.
And it is not cultural, for whether Canada, the EU, Russia, or Japan, anywhere which adopts a modern lifestyle, birth rate plummet.
Japan 20 years ago had a plummeting birthrate, yet their culture is quite different than the rest, and 20 years ago, a lot less forgiving to female rights.
Whether climate, geography, war or peace, culture, language, religion, schooling, support by the state, cost of raising children, birth control or not, birth rates are plummeting world wide.
And it is because something is blocking .. something, which causes reproductive drive.
If you look at die offs of species on graphs, it typically slowly decreases, then takes a crazy plummet.
If this is accurate for humans, by 2100 we will have 2b, by 2150 500M, by 2200 100M, and this presumes no massive war, plague, etc.
With what money? Babies are seen as a liability more than a investment among young people. No amount of money the government can afford will change that. It's a consequence of ultra-individualism driven by mass market societies and the disintegration of the nuclear family in western societies. The other extreme is of course gender imbalance where females are deemed worthless, you can't fix that with money either.
After the lifestyle has changed, the economy has different impact, and its population is already older, it might not be recoverable anymore.
There will be fewer people available in child-having age, despite the incentives, and those that are wont suddenly start having 3-4 children to compensate.
Our collective failure summarized in one sentence.
Automation leads to higher productivity, so those fewer people can earn more and spend more.
The economy will do just fine.
I think it'll be a rocky time though, we're facing a new Industrial Revolution - where the existing capitalists would prefer to drive down wages and destroy trade unions via mass immigration, and ordinary workers want to reverse their worsening standard of living. Brexit was just the start of this, but I think we'll see more radical movements until this is resolved.
> Automation leads to higher productivity, so those fewer people can earn more and spend more.
I can't believe people use that outdated 1900s era argument despite it being proved completely wrong time and time over.
It was true at some point but has been wrong since sometime after ww2
The West is betting that immigrants will keep magically appearing whenever needed. The problem is that outside of a few countries torn apart by civil wars _nowhere_ are birth rates constant or let alone increasing. To put it in perspective: Bangladesh is below replacement fertility levels today. 40 years ago it had 8 children born per woman. Let me repeat that: Bangladesh today has fewer children born per woman than the US did in 2009.
Congo 3.2%
Pakistan 2%