The Low Fertility Fallacy: Why Panic About Birthrates Is Overblown
foreignaffairs.com
foreignaffairs.com
The underlying math of population growth and replacement allows for a wide range of fertility rates that predicts only a very slight long-term decrease of population. There is more than enough time to reverse such a decline if policy makers were so inclined. And this is also offset by increasing economic productivity, longer lifespans, more per-capita wealth, and so on. Fewer people are necessary when each person can contribute and consume more.
> low-fertility countries now produce around nine-tenths of the world’s GDP
And that can also be interpreted in how they're redirecting effort that would be spent in raising the next generating, to pump up their current economy. It's basically putting the entire society in structural debt.
Like the modern environmental crisis, the demographic one is also avoidable, but only if we act in a well thought out manner. At least here there should be more incentive for each state to start first, since you'll reap a lot more of your own work later on.
- Everyone pays for their parents in their old age.
- If you want people to pay for you in your old age, invest in children of your own (by having them, raising them, etc.).
- Or, you can invest the money you would have spent on children on yourself instead, or on your own investments. You are then responsible for yourself in your old age, no matter what happens.
- Finally, we take a fixed percentage of the output of all working age people, divide it up evenly among the old people (who had children, weighted by number of kids)—and that's how much they get that year. If the children, in aggregate, earn more—old people are better off. If not, they're worse off (so do a good job raising kids, give them opportunities, etc.).
This system is inherently solvent forever, since all old people that have children benefit from them in their old age—and those that don't, don't.
It's literally impossible to have an "inverted population pyramid" or a "demographic crisis" with this scheme since all old people are accounted for.
Since solving the demographic crisis would have to involve some wealth redistribution, combined with new ways to support parents at the disadvantage of non-parents, it'll be fought hard by interest groups.