Fertility rates continue to plummet in the developed world. There are lots of questions about why, and what the long term effects are.
I've thought about this for years, but lately I've begun to rethink my views. Maybe the problem isn't fertility crashing, but overpopulation. The argument for maintaining a larger up-and-coming population than the existing population turns on the need to support the elderly: 8 grandkids can more readily support 2 grandparents than can 2 grandkids. But with automation and robotics, increasingly we won't need people to do the work; and if they become cheaper goods the way other sorts of durable goods do, then we won't need to tap the vast income of the 8 grandkids as much to provide caretaker robots or other things that the elderly need.
Meanwhile, overpopulation has its own set of problems. You don't have to be a crazed environmentalist to see that massive traffic jams don't contribute much to human happiness. In a way, that's not fair: each of the people in the cars in those traffic jams is going somewhere for reasons of his or her own, presumably in pursuit of some individual vision of human happiness. At the same time, any individual one of them would be happier if there were fewer of them doing it.
We should figure out why fertility is declining so rapidly, if we are able. If it's some chemical disorder or disease, that's a problem. But if it's just people making choices to have fewer children, well, maybe lower population is manageable at this moment in technological history in a way it would not have been before. That could be all right.
24 comments:
How much "overpopulation," if such a thing is indeed 1) real and 2) a problem, is only on paper? I've spoken with a number of people who say that the population numbers claimed by many countries are rather larger (or much larger) than the actual evidence on the ground suggests.
In the case of Europe's declining native-born population, the causes seem to be a lack of belief in the future, a desire for a higher standard of living than children allows (and in some cases more than one child is unaffordable), and the de-emphasis on marriage and family. I'm basing this on personal observation and conversations with friends who are German, English, Dutch, and Danes.
LittleRed1
I am unconvinced that the AI and Robotics technologies of our time represent a sharp upward break in the productivity level; more likely, they represent a continuation of long-term trends. See my first 2 posts in the "Attack of the Job-Killing Robots" series:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54252.html
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54256.html
In any event, the nature of some jobs in healthcare and related fields (much but not all of nursing, for example) is such that I think robots, however accomplished, would be a poor second to human beings.
Also, a significant decline in population could make it difficult to recover the costs of previously-built infrastructure...if water and sewer systems in a given city were built for a population of 2 million, and the population falls to 1 million, then it is going to be hard to pay off the bonds that were issued to build these facilities.
My sense is that the automation event we're looking at (including AI as well as robotics) really will render a substantial part of the population economically incapable of earning enough to sustain themselves. If that's true, one solution is something like a Universal Basic Income; another solution is, well, fewer people.
UBI has some serious problems, both conceptually and ethically. Most ways of attaining fewer people have massive ethical problems! However, people just choosing to have fewer kids doesn't, really, provided their choices are made ethically (e.g., via ethical sexual practices as opposed to abortion on demand).
The bonds don't strike me as a live issue. It seems to me that the currency in which the bonds were sold is necessarily going to undergo some significant alteration in value as a brute fact associated with generational population change. We talk about inflation in terms of more dollars chasing the same number of goods, but there's a similar issue with fewer people chasing those goods. Of all the complications associated with this kind of major demographic change, paying off bonds thus isn't the one I'd be worried about.
I'm mystified by the use of "fertility" to describe how many children couples *choose* to have. I doubt "fertility" is the problem - more likely Grim is right that people don't want as many children these days.
The only sense in which a more-than-replacement birth rate is desirable in post industrial nations is as payers-into pension systems. Otherwise, young people don't seem to be able to compete very effectively with older ones (at least in the job market). They often don't seem to be motivated to work terribly hard, either :p
I would bet that just as marriage has become more about personal fulfillment/happiness than social duty or family formation, parenting isn't as popular as it used to be in a world where the cost of raising children continues to escalate (due to inflated expectations more than anything else) and the demands on the time of working couples argue against having more than 1 or maybe 2 kids.
We'll get to observe our own future by watching Japan and Italy. Because lack of replacement has been going on for decades in both places, many children in those countries have no uncles or aunts, and certainly no cousins.
If it doesn't work, it will probably be too late for Americans to adjust.
The scariest thing (to me) about declining birth rates is that there's a big disparity in who's having kids. Recent immigrants have larger families and couples whose families have been in the US for generations have far lower birth rates.
Add to this that (according to Pew) 1 in 3 births to foreign-born women are attributable to illegal immigrants and combine that with American universities undermining the values needed to preserve our system of government and it doesn't look good.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/26/growth-in-annual-u-s-births-since-1970-driven-entirely-by-immigrant-moms/
Survival of culture is a problem, but it's not the same problem. In theory we could get control of our borders, our immigration policies, and even our universities.
(brace yourself, Grim)
I agree :)
Sorry - that was me.
Grim, I think we're far from being overpopulated- we underestimate how much of the world still has very far to go to catch up to us, firstly. Secondly, there's plenty of area and commodities to sustain us. Most of the issues you're looking at are issues of concentration of population- as in big cities- which I think we could do with less of (I guess I'm, with Jefferson on that- "I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.").
There was hope the digital revolution would make concentration of population irrelevant with the ability to teleconference and work outside the office, but so far there's been no effect in that direction. Perhaps that revolution is yet to come. We can hope.
I recognized the pen name, Cass. :)
Douglas:
It occurs to me that there's not a benchmark for 'overpopulated.' You seem to be pricing it off 'how many people could possibly be sustained by the environment?' I was thinking more about whether it was more pleasant, or healthier, or a better fit for economic conditions of the near future.
We can go really wrong on this road with eugenics or a "Logan's Run" sort of management system for population levels. I'm not suggesting any of that.
I'm just suggesting that, maybe, it could be OK if the population decreases. Maybe if that's the outcome of ordinary people's decisions, it's not the worst thing in the world. It will require some management -- cultural preservation is one huge issue, to be sure -- but it need not be viewed as a disaster.
I remember mentioning this before. The world got along just fine when there were less people once, and can do so again.
And cities, believe it or not, are not as crowded as they once were, because the sprawl of the suburbs reduced the density.
Well, people who object to traffic jams can move out of urban areas, even to rural areas. They choose to be where they are and put up with the traffic. There's plenty of space, it's just not the space they want to occupy.
I've really never seen a good argument that there are too many people. Malthus was wrong about humans (though not about non-human animal populations) because he didn't foresee the rapid technological breakthroughs in farming machinery, fertilizer, etc., that allowed humans to simply produce more food. Areas of the world that suffer from starvation have distribution problems, not production problems, and those distribution problems tend to be government greed and corruption.
In one sense, Eric Blair is right. However, much of the developed world has instituted government-managed retirement programs that were designed with historically increasing populations in mind, so an increasing number of young people were supposed to be able to pay the retirement benefits of the elderly. That hasn't happened, so there is a problem with Social Security, etc. (Of course, medical advances that have increased life expectancy have an effect as well.)
Well, people who object to traffic jams can move out of urban areas, even to rural areas.
That's the worst solution I've ever heard yet! Then we'll have traffic jams in rural areas.
If we're going to have increasing populations, I want to see giant urban sci-fi towers with nuclear reactors powering them. Let people take elevators instead of cars. The last thing they should do is come out here.
I should clarify that by "production" I am including importing food and food aid from the UN, etc. IIRC, a significant percentage of food aid tends to get sold on the black market so the regime can afford new limos or gold-plated AKs or something.
Ah. I see where this argument is going.
No apologies. Cities may be improved by more people, who import new ideas and new ways; sometimes that is how it works, and sometimes not. My whole life I've watched the cities spill over the rural areas, and I've never yet seen anything I'd call improvement.
Associated with Cass's comment,
who is gonna carry the ammo? Takes bodies to defend the realm.
True enough. I wonder how much less objection there would be if we could get everyone in the 3rd world to agree to have less children at the same time, so that we were all shrinking as populations?
Pretty basic I think. Women with careers start having children later. Older females, especially initially childless ones, have lower fertility rates (i.e, it's harder to have a first pregnancy when older). Lower family fertility rates are a product of societal & economic pressures for both parents to keep working, a pressure to have fewer children, or to have them more separated in age, thus relieving the parent logistical burden to keep it within manageable limits, while also being further negatively affected by age-diminished fertility rates (because of the mother's advancing age, a later start to childbearing, and a bigger separation between children). All these factors add up to a negative impact.
Aggie.."Pretty basic I think. Women with careers start having children later."
The obsession with advanced degrees contributes to this significantly.
Grim, how about more small towns spread out from each other- leaving plenty of space between? 100-250k population is about right. The problem you describe is that no one sets out to create a town anymore, they simply move from one to another. We need new pioneers, but modern infrastructure makes that difficult.
I think reducing populations would be fine, but for two things- First, the way our economy is based on economy of scale, and growth. Second, the third world isn't going to slow down- they do it out of actual necessity, so that's not going to change. Solve those problems, and it's a fine idea.
Aggie and David, yes- added to the fact that the leftist propaganda about 'having it all' seems to have been pretty effective. Also add in that we cultivate a short sighted society that looks about 2 years into the future (new phone cycles), and not two decades. I am personally plenty guilty on that account. A few better decisions in my misspent youth would have made it much easier for me to afford more kids (which I would have liked). The economy of the last ten years also was no help on that account.
I mean, it depends on where you want to build these things. If you want to build more small towns in Nebraska or northern Indiana, go to it and good luck. There's plenty of empty space out there, as anyone knows who's been that way.
It's not for me to cast stones, as I delayed childbearing so long that I ended up childless. But a culture that doesn't produce children rarely survives unless it's just fantastically transmissible via non-family contact. We're probably pretty rash to assume our own culture is that catchy.
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