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Comment by cl42 | Hacker News Reader

I was just emailing a few folks in the insurance industry about demographic decline. I can't find any good economic analyses on what will likely happen to our economies when populations start to decline. This will happen given the projections and the fact that we can't force people to have babies 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago. Has anyone come across anything good that isn't a 'popular press' book? I'm looking for deep analysis.

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This might be difficult to come by. It was only recently the zeitgeist shifted from Overpopulation to Underpopulation. As another commenter mentioned, Japan is an example of a possible future for many advanced economies.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/japanese-journal-of-...

previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34486824

Which is strange, because population momentum is still pushing us towards a much higher global total population number by end of century. What are potential reasons for the change in narrative from the media, as well as economic and political interests?

The global population may be growing, but for developed countries where we get most of our news (I assume, at least I do), they're just starting to tip over into the shrinkage and dealing with the bulge of elderly people. The narrative is right for the political and economic interests that we hear from.

I imagine if we were consuming news from India, Egypt or Nigeria it would be a very different story.

The good faith answer is that they believed their own projections. This article mentions that the UN projections just somehow assumed everybody's fertility rates would decline and then kick into a mediocre but closer to sustainable level for a slow bleed. This topic has been a pet obsession of mine for years now because these data made no sense. Why would everybody's fertility rates suddenly trend to 1.69, as per the article's numbers? The more logical path has always seemed an ongoing extrapolation of current trends, and that leads to quite terrifying outcomes on very short timeframes. And as more people seem to realize that's where we're indeed headed, it's long since past time for a sharp 180 on this topic.

On top of incorrect projections, I also think most don't understand the math of how fertility rates affect populations. It's an exponential system, so extreme outcomes are entirely possible with rates that seem 'bad' but not that bad, like e.g. a fertility rate of 1. Such a fertility rate, if shared among an entire population, would result in an exponential 50% decline in your population per 20 years. And alongside that you get social chaos, screwed up age ratios, economic chaos, and more. All on an extremely rapid timeframe.

I think this is a self correcting problem, but it's likely far wiser to fix it before it starts fixing itself.

> I think this is a self correcting problem,

My fear is the correction will involve rolling back women’s rights.

Typically the method used is to encourage immigration from countries that have high birth rates. This works for countries like Australia that are already multi-cultural, but is nearly impossible for China and Japan. In the case of China is because they’re too huge, and the language barrier is too steep a hurdle. For both China and Japan, they’re also extremely racist compared to other countries. They won’t accept foreigners, and even if that attitude changes over time, it’ll be too little too late.

Immigration won't work because of the scale of the problem. It's another concept that was probably based on the flawed UN projections this article talks about. Take a fertility rate of 1 for an easy math example. Most countries aren't this low yet, but it's fair to say that this is the trendline. Once we reach the 'equilibrium point', where your entire population has this fertility rate or, in other words, when the last high fertility rate generation dies off, this would result in your population declining by 50% every ~20 years. And this is an exponential system - you lose 50%, and then 50% of what remains indefinitely every 20 years. And this continues until you go extinct, or start having children again.

So consider what this would look do to a nation's population over just a single human lifetime - 80 years. China would go from 1.4 billion -> 0.7 -> 0.35 -> 0.175 -> 0.0875 billion. That's China going from 1.4 billion to 87.5 million, the size of Germany, in a single human lifetime. The US would go from 330 million -> 165 -> 82.5 -> 41.25 -> 20.625, the size of Chile, over the same time frame. And this process doesn't stop, it just keeps going.

You would need to essentially replace your entire population with immigrants. And of course you don't just need massive amounts of warm bodies. You need skilled, educated, sex ratio balanced (which means more women than men due to differing mortality rates - men get themselves killed far more frequently), people who are capable of speaking at least reasonable English. There simply aren't enough people in the world to fulfill this in practical terms. And this is just speaking from a technical point of view in terms of scale of the problem. I'm intentionally avoiding the more controversial social, cultural, and other aspects involved in such a process. It's all just a nonsolution. Immigration can briefly help patch a small-scale problem, but at scale it's like trying to keep a sinking boat afloat with a bucket.

I don't really think there's any reason to expect this. I'd look to the USSR - not that they are an ideal to strive for, but because they are relevant on this topic. The USSR was exceptionally over-educated to the point that Russia remains literally the most educated country in the world, at least as of 2014. [1] And the USSR was (largely excepting the Stalin era) also huge on social justice, women's rights, and so on. They even had gender quotas for various government positions. Yet they had a relatively healthy fertility rate up until about the time of their collapse.

In fact when you look at any typical modern fertility correlation explanation, they all really just fall apart under the slightest of scrutiny. Education/income stuff? Look at Thailand - extremely low education, extremely low income, extremely low fertility - even lower than Japan! So what is the real driving factor? It seems clear that if people believe 'true happiness' is just one 'thing' away, then they are motivated to continue chasing those things. Children don't really have a place in this sort of world - as they simply imperil your ability to pursue that sort of perceived happiness. And governments and companies alike have every motivation in the world to push this 'thing based' worldview, consumerism in other words, because it generates income, increases GDP, and so on.

This is the only fertility correlate that explains literally everything in a clean and consistent fashion. For instance the bell curve of income:fertility (very poor and very rich have far more children than the middle class) can be easily explained - both the very poor and very rich are unable to participate in consumerism. The former because of too little money, the latter because they have too much. Thailand? Yes, it's very poor yet there is also rampant consumerism at all levels, and it's even a place when walking into the most mainstream mall in the capitol you're immediately greeted with a literal lambo dealership. And so on for the countless other issues and counter-examples that contemporary fertility correlates fail to explain.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...

> In fact when you look at any typical modern fertility correlation explanation, they all really just fall apart under the slightest of scrutiny. Education/income stuff? Look at Thailand - extremely low education, extremely low income, extremely low fertility - even lower than Japan! So what is the real driving factor? It seems clear that if people believe 'true happiness' is just one 'thing' away, then they are motivated to continue chasing those things. Children don't really have a place in this sort of world - as they simply imperil your ability to pursue that sort of perceived happiness.

Don’t they correlate with access women’s rights and access to contraception?

I see a very strong correlation with the ability for a woman to live on her own and/or the ability for a woman to access healthcare that prevents her from having to give birth with fertility rate declines.

There is clearly a mismatch between the near term costs of pregnancy/childbirth/infant rearing and the long term benefits of having kids. Humans are unique in that they are the only species (I think) that can analyze and opt out of the mechanism by which evolution propagates the species.

I also don’t know how representative Russia is because broad availability and use of very effective and “easy” birth control (IUD/pills) took place in more recent decades. And according to Wikipedia, Russia did roll back women’s rights to only allowing abortion at 12 weeks (passed 2011):

> During the 2000s, Russia's steadily falling population (due to both negative birthrates and low life expectancy) became a major source of concern, even forcing the military to curtail conscription due to shortages of young males. On 21 October 2011, the Russian Parliament passed a law restricting abortion to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, with an exception up to 22 weeks if the pregnancy was the result of rape, and for medical necessity it can be performed at any point during pregnancy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Russia

A lot of things you're referencing are quite ambiguous so it's difficult for me to understand exactly what you mean. For instance contraceptives have been widely available in many countries with healthy birth rates for an extremely long period of time. South America is full of such examples, as well as women who have long since played a major role in the labor pool.

As for what I was talking about, Russia is not the USSR. Following the collapse of the USSR, Russia (alongside all former Soviet nations) entered into a catastrophic era. Birth rates, income, safety, and basically every other aspect of life plummeted to dangerously low levels during the 90s, which throws off absolutely all data because of something completely unrelated to anything we're discussing.

>For instance contraceptives have been widely available in many countries with healthy birth rates for an extremely long period of time. South America is full of such examples, as well as women who have long since played a major role in the labor pool.

It takes time for the knowledge and culture about birth control to spread. South America specifically had a lot of Catholic influence which probably prevented many women from choosing or obtaining birth control.

Also, modern birth control like IUDs are just a whole different beast. Whereas there were “accidental” pregnancies in previous generations, there are almost none these days unless you are aiming to become pregnant at some point.

Fair enough about Russia, but the USSR was a long time ago now, and I don’t see any modern society with replacement level birth rates outside of small religious groups or immigrants that still have the momentum of raising traditional families, which evidence says dissipates after the first generation.

Lots of uptake of permanent birth control as well recently (vasectomies and bilateral salpingectomy) in the US specifically.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...

I absolutely agree with you on almost everything here. Much of it is what led me to my hypothesis for the cause. Why would religion seem to have such a strong relationship with healthier birth rates? The obvious responses don't really work out. The Bible is surprisingly ambiguous on how many children people should have, or even if everybody should endeavor to do so. And in any case, people scarcely follow the teachings of the Bible when even moderately inconvenient.

Looking to past, in ancient times philosophy meant something different than today. Essentially everybody was expected, as a part of becoming an adult, to develop their own philosophy of life. Ancient religions offered very little in the way of life philosophy. Pre-Abrahamic religions, such as in Greek or Norse culture, had Gods which took on all human characteristics - maliciousness, greed, sadism, and more. The stories offered were metaphorical in nature, rather than something to guide your life by. So this is the era where you get people inventing everything from the Cult of Pythagoras to Zenoism (stoicism).

But in modern times we, in general, no longer have religion and we no longer have philosophy. So what have people turned to guide them in life? And the answer seems largely to be Product. Eternal happiness is always just one new Product away. And not only have many people turned to Product, but there has been an increasing trend of people denying their own mortality - whether through some sort of singularity event, the 'marvels of medicine' somehow growing exponentially to enable people to live indefinitely, or even some fringe quantum immortality views.

What alternative philosophies are emerging seem to also be death cults in any case - viewing humans as little more than machines, rejecting ones own consciousness, and so on. In all of these philosophies and world views there seems to be very little reason for children. And it just so happens that when one starts to look at things from this perspective, it somehow explains everything literally perfectly. I've yet to find a single compelling exception, while every other explanation for fertility just completely falls to pieces under the slightest of scrutiny.

doesn't this suggest that the "zeitgeist" is an overtuned PID?

The sensor feedback delays are very long - that's the main problem.

Aren't almost all advanced economies save South Korea and Japan solving this with immigration. The US, Canada, Australia, and Europe are all doing so. Immigration is difficult to impossible in Japan.

why?

Desire to preserve culture and societal norms over economic growth.

Also utter failure to build any new housing.

I'm curious how this actually plays out in the long run.

Canada is a good example, where the anti-immigration narrative has become much louder very quickly. People get nervous/upset when they see their culture or population visibly changing.

Immigration is fine but Canada and the US are actively taking steps to dissuade the majority of their population from producing offspring in favor of taking in more immigrants. That's what people are upset over - not that immigration is part of the equation.

>Canada and the US are actively taking steps to dissuade the majority of their population from producing offspring

Uh, expand?

People are angry that their economic systems arent compatible with having families either with current salaries or time committment careers require. Most people (women in primis) find themselves sacrificing basic quality of life to have 1 or 2 children. Government solution to such societal issues is to import workers in mass ("they will pay social security contributions for the elderly") which suppress wages down further increasing the cost-oppurtunity of having children. Replacement theories fit nicely, at least on an economic point of view. Businesses interests get cheap workers on one hand and childless consumers with more disposable income on the other hand. Entire societies dying is just an aftereffect

Short-termism of our leaders will lead to a systemic collapse just like in the Soviet Union.

"Solving" rather than solving. It's an IV drip for a terminal patient.

Immigrants quickly take on the fertility characteristics of the host population, because they are subject to the same pressures and incentives. So immigration has to be perpetual. In the mean time, the source countries' fertility is slowly coming down to and below replacement as well. So it can't last forever.

The only thing that is "solved" meanwhile is keeping wages depressed, which helps businesses. Allowing wages to rise might help improve native fertility.

Edit: I should note that in the last few years Japan has modified its residency laws. As well as getting hundreds of thousands of "technical trainees" (in reality, pretty much enslaved factory workers) from China and Viet Nam, it's also getting hundreds of thousands of caregivers from the Philippines, and, for some reason, Brazil.

So even Japan is accepting immigration these days, albeit very reluctantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Foreign_...

> It was only recently the zeitgeist shifted from Overpopulation to Underpopulation.

I assume this "zeitgeist" is among academics?

'Cuz I fear a common political zeitgeist in some countries is a combination: "Overpopulating-Others, Underpopulating-Us."

Japan isn't an example of a possible future, because Japan is still in its glory days as far as population goes. Here [1] is their population pyramid. You might notice it still looks kind of vaguely pyramidish. In about 30 years Japan will hit the full-on inverted pyramid, which is when their collapse will "really" begin. And this makes perfect sense. They only started having very poor fertility rates in the 80s. [2] And you only really start feeling demographic collapse once the first generation with poor fertility starts dying. So about 80 years after the 80s - ~2060, or ~30 years from now.

I can explain the math, but the result is pretty simple. If we imagine an equilibrium point where everybody has the same fertility rate (the typical case being when the final healthy fertility rate generation dies off - just leaving offspring upon offspring of comparably low fertility rate generations), then at the point your population will start changing by a factor of ~fertility_rate/2 every 20 years. So for Japan, with a current fertility rate of ~1.4, they'll be losing 30% of their population every 20 years, for an annual decline of around 1.5%.

Right now they're only losing about 0.5% per year. So they're still in their glory days relative to what's to come starting around 2060. And that future which they're headed towards is the one most Western economies are also headed towards if we don't fix this problem.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid....

[2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

Japan's population has been declining for ~15 years. It's hard to disentangle from the aftermath of their bubble collapse in 1991, but it does appear that while demographic collapse isn't great for an economy, it's also not the doomsday that many predict.

It’s not the first derivative that is usually a problem, it’s the second derivative.

The rate of decline is important to monitor for the purposes of managing expectations of supply and demand in the markets.

It’s also a decent indicator whether the economy is working well for the people. I think too often the tail wags the dog.

Do you think it's different when global growth declines, or when there's a large group of countries going throughs population stagnation or decline?

One can say that Japan's economy was still buoyed by global population growth, export growth, etc.

In demographics the units of time are generations. It takes several of them for the effects of shock to be fully felt because generations overlap, about a century.

Japan's TFR fell below replacement around 1973, iirc. So we should wait at least till 2070 before making assertions about the severity or otherwise of the issue. In the mean time, it sure looks serious.

Japan has been propping up its economy with debt. It has the highest public debt to GDP ratio in the world. Is that sustainable if interest rates climb? I don't know.

(Almost) no country is going to leave a terminal decline unchallenged. In North Dakota, new single moms can qualify for a large number of assistance (https://singlemothersgrants.org/single-mothers-assistance-in...). Imagine this for any new mom, per child. Once the economics of incentivized population growth kicks in, I think there will be rapid change. Can it be sustained? Probably not, but that's an easier problem...ie Repeat programs every X years.

No country has successfully increased fertility rates, so there are no known figures on the economics of incentives sufficient to increase fertility rates.

> No country has successfully increased fertility rates,

What's your point?

Ostensibly, modern countries have not yet suffered the predicted population crash that might incentivize more aggressive baby bonuses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_bonus). This has been a thing for awhile (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when...).

It's a likely strategy to be extensively employed in the future, if the trends are realized. It's reasonable to expect there is an economic inflection point, where the program(s) would be successful.

Paying women to have babies does not incentivize what a society wants, which is kids who are properly raised and contribute to society. That requires many years of effort, something I don’t think that can be incentivized by a cash gift or tax credit.

The only economic incentivize I can think of that might work is to remove all old age benefits and require people to depend on descendants, but that is not going to be politically palatable until there is no choice because the system fell apart.

> Paying women to have babies does not incentivize what a society wants

I'm not sure that's been proven. Granted, if you need bodies, they quality of the bodies matters a bit.

> I don’t think that can be incentivized by a cash gift or tax credit.

I guess we can agree to disagree.

Interesting, your last bit.

I was thinking, "Ha; you don't have enough money to pay first worlders to breed." No carrot is sweeter than independence.

But the stick? Now you might be on to something. It kind of doesn't work out though since you're going to suffer elder abuse at the hands of an Indonesian lady in America even if you have kids; they throw you inside a home. Maybe try taking away contraceptives.

Either way, as for the "but will the kids be raised well", that's already a lost battle.

But all of this is moot. It's false dharma. It's the lamp-lighters' union trying to outlaw bulbs and lower kerosene prices. The future is pod clones. Legacy biology and 25+ years of education suck. Grow genetically engineered adults in pods in state-run facilities. That's the only meta worth striving toward.

The primary reason that deep analysis is close to non-existent is that fertility is coded as a right-wing issue, and discussing the decline is unacceptable in today's academic social sciences.

"You want to force women to be baby-making machines", and more vitriolic rhetoric, and loss of tenure, is what happens when someone raises the issue.

I think of this as one of Iain Banks's "Outside Context Problems", something that our society cannot (allow itself to) understand or even see, so it cannot begin to solve it.

I’m very left-leaning and so is almost everyone I know, but we’re aware of the problem and concerned about the implications.

The right wing so far hasn’t provided any solutions.

I have one child. I would prefer to have two, but I can’t afford it. For reference: my income is in the top 2% for my country and the top 5% in the affluent part of the largest city. I literally cannot afford to buy a house big enough for a growing family unless my partner also works full time. That’s nuts.

Seems about right for most OECD countries.

To have kids you need a large enough house and ample financial security / schools / daycare etc.

Doesn’t make sense to have kids when both parents have to work full time to barely make it.

No one has any solutions.

The solution is to make parenthood high prestige, higher than doctor or lawyer or CEO or rapper or billionaire. Then everyone will want to do it.

A pity that despite a hundred years of marketing we are clueless about how to do that.

There are 'hygiene' actions like getting rid of credentialism, so lowering the perceived-to-be-required investment in each child, and decreasing density (which inversely correlates with number of children independently of other factors, and giving people an optimistic life plan and expectation, and changing marriage/partnering back from being a capstone (something you do once you are established) to being a cornerstone (something you do at the start of adulthood, to build your lives on).

But ultimately it's about the social prestige. Try saying "she's a soccer mom" in tones of awe and respect, out in public, and watch the funny looks you get.

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