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Comment by kredd | Hacker News Reader

There is some discussion about population decrease trends, and I actually had a question about it yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38207457#38212649)!

I guess, I’ll ask here again — is there anyone working on preparing for a potential bad case scenario in developed world? As in, we would end up with extremely high average age, and not enough young people to support the elderly or the economy in 30-40 years. That’s, obviously, if we fail to reverse the trend of falling birth rates.

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> That’s, obviously, if we fail to reverse the trend of falling birth rates.

Make it cheaper to have babies and people will have babies. Of course, that hits everyone's bottom lines by a little or a lot, including the healthcare industry, daycare industry, baby food and supply industries. Make housing more affordable, nobody wants to live in a 1 bedroom apartment that doesn't even accept pets and raise a newborn. The list goes on and on. We won't address all that in time, and it's going to hit us where it hurts later.

From what I've read so far, the data doesn't really support that argument. Even in my circles, the richer the couple, the less likely they have kids and so on. I don't think it's just "if you have money you'll have babies" scenario anymore. All the countries that have tried to be super-pro-baby, so far, have failed to reverse the trend as well.

"The data" doesn't really mean much to me, especially without context. By all metrics, I'm pretty well off now. 3 bedroom house, stable job with better income than anyone in my family ever dreamt of. But I spent the last 10-12 years digging myself out of poverty from homelessness. My wife and I don't have kids because we see them as a potential anchor back into poverty and the scare of going back literally haunts us. So I'm curious about your data, but I'm an anecdotal example of someone with money that is not having kids due to the cost.

Besides that, haven't you ever heard before that the richer you get, the more parsimonious you become?

Fair enough. My point was, in developed world, if you’re poor you might not have kids because of its costs. If you’re rich, why would you have a kid if they might experience extreme problems in the near future? And it’s also hard for me to imagine to have ~3 kids, even though that’s needed to sustain the population.

But yeah, might be a big problem in the future, appreciate your input.

Because there are no countries super pro-baby. Some countries have better policies, but still babies are really expensive to rise. Of course if you want them to grow in decent environment, with separate room for each child, good school, hobbies etc.

Year or two of maternity leave helps, but parents will struggle untill school starts.

Few hundred euro per month will help, but not too much, will not cover the difference in rent of bigger apartment.

Career? Forget about promotions for few years.

France has had some success and while they're still below replacement, it's going to be a glide to population decline, not a hard crash like it's going to be with some other European countries.

I mean, they had protests against increasing the age of retirement to 62 from 60, while in countries like the Netherlands the same figure will be 67 starting next year.

Here in the UK my retirement age (can claim state pension) is currently 68. Work and personal pension age still seems to be 55.

UK folks can find theirs here https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age

As for the on-topic I doubt I'll be able to afford a family in this lifetime haha, given up on that one as a goal a while back along with getting on the property ladder. Maybe if a relative or two leave an inheritence I can reconsider.

From what I've read, it's a vaguely U shaped curve. The poor and the very rich have more babies than the middle class. That jives with my experience. Surgeon friends of my wife are both more likely to have 4+ kids and to have 0 kids than middle and upper-middle class friends who almost invariably stop at 2 unless the second baby turns out to be twins.

The uptick in the rich is very small and insignificant but it is interesting. It's not enough to have any real impact on the birth rate, but it does provide evidence that people will have more kids if financial circumstances are favorable.

This is 2018 but it states that women on average want to have 2.7 children.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility...

As far as I know, the biggest correlation to fertility is religion, which makes some sense to me as a non-religious person; I'm not willing to put children through this existence.

Polls have shown that people want more children than they're having. People can't afford the children they wish they could have.

Median housing was smaller 50 years ago and people had more kids then.

Poor people have smaller houses than rich people yet have more kids.

Very few people are dying to have a baby but they just need a little more money or a state stipend before they can afford it. The problem isn't money although it makes for a convenient excuse. The fact is that for young people today, there are too many competing interests. All of the 26 year olds I know want to go to Italy next summer not change a diaper. The average age of average and first time motherhood is higher than it's been in the history of the human race. It really is uncharted territories.

> Median housing was smaller 50 years ago and people had more kids then.

Adjusting for inflation and the average household income, do you think things, in general, were way cheaper 50 years ago, or way _way_ cheaper? By trying to argue against my 1 bedroom apartment portion of my comment, I almost feel like you've bolstered the rest of it.

> Poor people have smaller houses than rich people yet have more kids.

Are we accounting for other factors like are poor people typically using (or even have belief systems that allow for the use of) contraception? Do poor people, speaking potentially overly broadly, tend to plan their financial arrangements as cautiously as people that are more well off? I've been well off, and I've been homeless, and I can personally tell you that I never thought more about planning for retirement as I did once I started having a disposable income.

IIRC, poor people have a lot of kids, but rich people have the most kids.

I'm well above median salaries in my state, but actually somewhat below median salary when you consider that I'm the sole earner for a household of four people. And I'm here to tell you that life isn't so hard here slightly below the middle.

The problem isn't primarily the cost of babies, it's primarily creeping credentialism.

Women are fertile from 18 to 40 (legally and safely). If the years to 28 are taken up with getting credentials (degrees and post-grad quals) and then from 28 to 34 or so establishing a career and forming a household, the're isn't much time left to have babies. And the thirties are much lower fertility than the teens and twenties biologically speaking.

Credentialism and housing costs. Not direct childcare costs.

Housing is a zero-sum Red Queen race. Increase someone's income, they'll want to live in a "better" neighborhood so the time taken to form a household is the same or longer.

TLDR: the problem is not lack of money but lack of time.

> Housing is a zero-sum Red Queen race

Only because we don’t build more. Remember, even the desirable areas like Atherton or San Francisco had near zero populations a few hundred years ago. New places can be built if we allow it.

Would the new places be handy to good schools (primary, secondary, teertiary)? And good enrichment activities for the kids?

The housing problem is not just houses. Although that'd be a great place to start.

There were no great schools in Atherton or SF 300 years ago.

It's less about affordability itself and more about the time young people need to figure out and take control of their lives. The longer that takes, the fewer children people will have on the average.

If experienced professionals make more money than fresh graduates, things that are affordable to the average person may be unaffordable to the average young person.

If people accumulate wealth over their careers, young people are at a disadvantage when they try to buy a home.

If young people can't find stable jobs with good career prospects near their friends and family, they need more financial stability before they feel comfortable having children away from their support networks.

Some of these issues can be alleviated by redistributing wealth from middle-aged people to young people. For others, it may be necessary to tune down the competitive meritocracy and expectations economic efficiency.

> It's less about affordability itself and more about the time young people need to figure out and take control of their lives.

> If young people can't find stable jobs with good career prospects near their friends and family, they need more financial stability before they feel comfortable having children away from their support networks.

And it's such a big financial decision that requires having a perception of complete financial stability because...

I posit that it's because it's such a huge financial burden. Lessen that burden, and you lessen young adults' apprehension to accept that burden.

I made this point in another comment but you have to also fix the current trend that having kids is some how "less than" grinding at a job. I'm a man and so not totally qualified to make this statement but I know from experiences my wife has had that women are especially vicious to other women choosing a family over career and status.

I think there's another dynamic at play which makes you both right in some ways. My mom and both of my sisters began having kids in their teens. Despite my family always struggling with money I don't ever recall it being seen through an economic lens. My girlfriends family on the other hand is very comfortably middle class, and when her brother had a baby a year or two shy of 30 there were a lot of economic concerns from her parents, they were almost upset at first. It seemed odd to me since him and his wife both had decent jobs and were doing way better than any of my siblings with children, but I realized it's because they weren't going to be able to raise their kids the same way they were raised. It seems like a big problem is that if you're from a middle-class background and want to have a family you'll likely have to come to terms with being worse off than your parents.

I think it's much more a problem for middle class families because unlike poorer families they seem more cognizant of what they have to lose, or at least the perception of what they have to lose, and maybe there's also an aspect where it's more ingrained that they should do better than their parents. I don't know maybe that's obvious to everyone but it was something that got me thinking.

It doesn't work, people don't want kids because of the culture. They're trained to become "sexually liberated" wage slaves and the few kids get sent to kindergarden at 6m.

Before trying I was also scared to death to have kids and thought it would ruin my life - spoiler it didn't.

I agree, choosing to have a family over a career or ambition is social suicide to many young people. High wage earning women are especially vulnerable to this. "you're just giving up to have a basic life in a basic city..", my wife heard this from many of her supposed friends when she decided to leave the workforce to raise our two boys. Ironic, my wife has grown her career leaps and bounds since returning to the workforce yet her former friends, so sure they were destined for greatness, are doing the exact same thing they were doing 15 years ago. It's really them who hit the "stop" button on life.

If women want to be sexually liberated wage slaves, we have to respect that as well. I guess, I am sexually liberated guy who is a wage slave, there’s no difference.

We should definitely make it more possible for women to have an easy life even when they have children though. Dunkin on others’ choices isn’t cool. That being said, the choice is less attractive nowadays for myriad of reasons.

All developed nations got there by exploiting cheap/free labor from immigrants, slaves, and oppressed minorities. There's plenty of extremely poor people left in the world, so I don't see that stopping anytime soon. Already, Japan depends primarily on foreign seasonal labor for their agricultural industry. I predict the same will continue for hundreds of years to come (if we survive that long.

Robotics will be ready well before then

We just have to put underpaid workers in fancy StarTrek knock-off spandex costumes, like Tesla did.

The answer is simple, but rather unpopular: immigration.

Unfortunately this answer is not simple... Or I should say, it's only a short term solution.

What happens when the places that are making lots of people now, stop?

Us: "Hey India, send me some more people"

India: "Sorry dude, we're out"

India currently is at 2.05 fertility rate, which is replacement rate. Now for quite some time they will have excess population in relation to their wealth, but I don't expect that to last forever.

Most immigrant groups don't generate engineers and scientists at the same rate that western countries.

If there aren't enough young people to take care of the old, this is directly the fault of the prior generations. Importing labor to take care of them (indirectly) would be a ridiculous overvaluation of their interests over the younger generations' interests. Permanent change to solve a fundamentally temporary problem.

When push comes to shove, developed countries without enough workers will open up immigration and open their wallets.

But when every country (we are going towards it right now) is going below replacement birth rates, what is the solution then? It's just hard to imagine how the society and infrastructure would function when any countries median age is around 50s/60s, making it physically unfit for a significant amount of mission-critical jobs.

That will be a problem only for poor countries with old people.

Rich countries could easily import people from all over the world.

The solution is still what I said above: spend money and change policies. Birth rates can be changed given the political and economic will to do so. If things really become bad, people will demand it.

Very few countries have positive birth rates anymore. Literally all of South East Asia was below replacement in terms of birth rates in 2022. All of Latin America was below replacement in 2022. For the first time, there are countries in Africa that have now fallen below replacement.

Automation of most jobs basically solves the problem with progressive UBI or social welfare policies.

>we would end up with extremely high average age, and not enough young people to support the elderly or the economy in 30-40 years.

Thats the best case scenario, because economies would dictate massive adoption of AI assisted technologies.

At which point you won't have issues like kids being born out of selfishness because you need someone to take care of you in later years.

AI can't pour concrete

AI can control robots which can pour concrete. There are 3d printed houses already available.

"What is PALM-2 Robot model"

> At which point you won't have issues like kids being born out of selfishness because you need someone to take care of you in later years.

I want humans to exist 200 years from now, 1000 years from now. This means it's selfish if I have them for that reason too.

If people (on average) can't have children for that reason, then humanity will become extinct. It's not as if people have them for the reason of "aren't you supposed to have them!?" anymore.

Which, if you think about it, makes the "you're selfish to have kids" a sort of species-wide suicidal ideation. But then, non-suicidal people are sort of selfish, wanting to continue to keep living.

>Which, if you think about it, makes the "you're selfish to have kids" a sort of species-wide suicidal ideation. But then, non-suicidal people are sort of selfish, wanting to continue to keep living.

You do know that you will continue living if you don't have kids, right?

I'm glad to hear you're not selfish, however you do seem inappropriately judgy.

What have you done to ensure "humans exist 200 years from now?" Have you done anything to minimize your carbon footprint? Do you walk/bike/take the bus to work instead of drive a petrol/diesel vehicle? Have you petitioned your government to stop using fossil fuels and demand they spend money on green infrastructure and science to improve current technology?

What have you done to stop senseless wars? Do you help out at food banks? Do you support government programs to ensure that children get adequate nutrition, you know, programs like SNAP, WIC, or free school lunches/breakfasts? Since you are so invested in the species, I'm sure you're also in favor of national health service to ensure every person, documented or not, receives adequate health care.

I applaud your efforts supporting these things and am curious what other things you think will ensure the human species is not endangered by climate change, natural disasters, wars, infertility, and so forth.

> You do know that you will continue living if you don't have kids, right?

This might supposed to be some snarky gotcha, but it's just dumb. I know with absolute certainty I won't continue to live, for every human dies eventually.

You could replace the "continue" with "temporarily", but it takes the bite out of it.

> I'm glad to hear you're not selfish, however you do seem inappropriately judgy.

People should judge. The 20th century experiment of non-judgementalness has been an abject failure. If one cannot analyze and determine what does and does not work (the act of judging), then one will continue to do things that don't work.

The "let's not reproduce" thing isn't working. And it's slightly disturbing that we had to run the experiment to foresee the results.

> What have you done to ensure "humans exist 200 years from now?" Have you done anything to minimize your carbon footprint?

Non sequitur nonsense.

One rhetorical about something that an individual can't actually do (though I've done my part), followed up with environmentalist propaganda that is commonly used to instill the proper behavioral sterility that you've spayed the zoomers with.

> What have you done to stop senseless wars?

If I could, why would I? Do you believe that they're serious extinction threats?

> What have you done to ensure "humans exist 200 years from now?"

Drive by comment. The only way humans cease to exist in 200 years is if something horribly catastrophic happens. Which is much more like to happen if the population grows exponentially. And much less likely if the population declines steadily over the next 200 years.

Eh, this in itself involves quite a bit of handwaving too...

Humanity went from just under a billion to 8 billion in 120 years. Between us and our livestock we have have completely dominated the surface of the earth, wild animals are not even close.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/total-biomass-weight-...

In most mammal populations there can be wild swings in total population without extinction. Humans, at least at this point could reduce the total population by multiple times and be just fine.

I wonder, what percent of plants are agriculture ?

By count or biomass? Biomass is low, doubt it goes past fractional one percent. Count might be interesting, row crops can be really dense.

i guess its around 2% by biomass. But 38% of earth land surface is devoted to agriculture. https://www.fao.org/sustainability/news/detail/en/c/1274219/....

Just trying to guess at carrying capacity of the earth.

> In most mammal populations there can be wild swings in total population without extinction. Humans, at least at this point could reduce the total population by multiple times and be just fine.

In all of those examples, the fertility rate remains constant. In every single one. When the moose all die off, it's not because they all decided that they enjoyed double income households with no offspring. Or that their parents kept nagging them for grandmoose.

It's "all the vegetation on the island was stripped" and they all starved but a few.

If their fertility rate dropped, we wouldn't see it swing back and forth. The only way they even survive is that the fertility rate doesn't drop.

This will become apparent even to the current naysayers... but not nearly soon enough.

I mean, if population gets 'too low' then we'll likely just fall into some kind of authoritarianism where forced breeding occurs. I'm not saying this is a good outcome, I'm just saying it's the most likely one.

Also, UNIVERSE 25.

I don't think forced breeding works, or doesn't work well for those unprepared to do it well. That said, I can definitely see China managing the attempt efficiently.

What horrors await.

No one is working on this in a serious way. Some are aware of it, the terms "demographic implosion" and "demographic time bomb" are used when discussing it.

It's generally considered a right-wing talking point, and those who discuss it are lumped in with white supremacists and other similar kooks and villains.

Inasmuch there is a solution, some say that we can replace the missing citizens with immigrants. The trouble there being that they too will soon stop showing up (Africa's fertility rates are dropping too).

It is unlikely that the trend is reversible. The social environment of low fertility normalizes the idea of low fertility in children and young people, who then not only practice and reinforce it in their generation, but amplify it for the next.

Wait, "generally considered a right-wing talking point" is this real? Like it's even a bigger problem in Asia than in North America. Looking at demographics, as you mentioned, it's going to be a problem in Africa as well.

I'm fairly pro-immigration, but I assumed everyone understands it's a bandaid solution that won't last once everyone experiences population decrease? I think I mentioned it in my other comments as well, that I could see a case where they start limiting emigration from countries where young people would be fleeing to other developed countries.

Regarding normalizing low fertility - I mean, it's not my place to tell anyone whether to have kids or not. I am not planning to have one anytime soon either for myriad of reasons, but this reverse "tragedy of commons" problem itself is also one of the reasons.

But yeah, was hoping I could find more reading where real work is being done to see how we will sustain ourselves with aged population.

> Wait, "generally considered a right-wing talking point" is this real?

Yes, at least within the US and the UK. In the US, it's definitely an issue that, if talked about at all, is 100% within the realm of the GOP, and in the UK (as far as I can follow its politics) a Tory thing. The issue is big in Japan and South Korea (China too), and I don't know how it maps to their politics. Would be easier to tell in places like Germany where they have a well-defined "right-wing", but language barriers make it difficult for me to determine.

> but I assumed everyone understands it's a bandaid solution that won't last once everyone experiences population decrease?

Have a conversation about it sometime. Here on Hackernews, elsewhere. Everyone is in either some strange form of denial or maybe ignorance about it, and refuse to acknowledge it. Apparently there is this magical, infinite well of people that we can just import to make up the difference that will never, ever go away, and if it does go away... aw well shucks, that's not so bad. And if it is bad, I'm glad the human race is going extinct anyway, they've harmed the planet.

> Regarding normalizing low fertility - I mean, it's not my place to tell anyone whether to have kids or not.

I'm a father. It is my place to say this, and I have. Since the very first day, well before they understood what the words were saying.

I don't just love my children, I like them. I want them to go out and make little half-clones of themselves someday. And anyone telling them they shouldn't is a monster.

> But yeah, was hoping I could find more reading where real work is being done

There are some instinctive reactions to this at the collective level. Various groups are withdrawing from society as much as possible to (in my hypothesis) quarantine their families from the contagion of these ideas. Homeschoolers, those trying to get away from cities and run off to the wilderness. I do not think they'll find much success. The biggest culprit, electronics, can't be easily taken away from children without crippling their economic success in adulthood, which is necessary if they are to become particularly fertile.

This is a complete shitshow. It's a slow motion train wreck that is, somehow, still too fast to escape. I do not know if it is a human extinction thing, or if we just end up reverting to some pre-tehchnological subsistence thing, but if they're still around your descendants 1000 years from now might look like cavemen.

For top 10 wealthiest counties immigration pool will not drop.

But poor countries are doomed. With increased population decline they will be even poorer, more people will want to emigrate.

Not just poor countries, but poor areas inside rich countries. The demographics of the small rural town I grew up in are getting older and poorer every year, as young people move out into the cities where there is opportunity.

Just reinforcing NoMoreNicksLeft, this is definitely considered a right wing talking point in the US. On hearing about this leftists immediately jump to "you want to roll back the gains of feminism, keep women in the home, blah blah".

What we need is to rearrange culture and institutions so that women wish to have children young, and so that they are valorized or at least not penalized in terms of career prospects or lifetime earnings for doing so. In relation to men, but even more so in relation to women who choose not to have children.

I have no idea how to go about doing that.

I think I am miswording the question — I don’t care about fixing the trends. My worry us to be prepared for the case if we can’t fix the problem. Basically “how we can prepare society to live with less younger population?”.

like - what is italy today?

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