The connection between wealth and low birthrates is well established around the world. You don't need to invoke politics to account for declining family sizes: as the family need for labor declines and the options available for adults in the way they spend their time shift, then the number of kids per couple slides. The answer the US has found to its demographic challenges over its entire history is immigration. Red states and right wing politics opposed to immigration are thus directly implicated in any population based theory of decline.
If they stop it will most likely be because of one of two factors: horrific disaster, likely climate mediated, producing a population collapse particularly in parts of the world with less capital for resilience; or growing wealth in the developing world producing similar demographic shifts to we've seen in other societies that have managed to make it well past the Malthusian trap Brad DeLong writes so interestingly about in his latest book, Slouching Towards Utopia. (He's on substack too, btw.)
If the former, WASF, and while I expect the wealthy north to have some advantages in a major ecologically-driven catastrophe, this is an interconnected world and there would likely be plenty of awfulness to go around. If we do navigate a soft landing towards a more affluent and not entirely climate-change wrecked world, then my hope is that we may begin to see a less economically defined concept of happiness or a life well lived. It was a big deal to get to a 40 hour work week back in the early to middle 20th c. I wonder what society would look like if some combination of automation and computationally mediated labor made the need for an endless supply of workers and consumers less pressing.
I am no futurist (and distrust the claims of those who call themselves that), but I do take as an axiom that anything that can't go on forever won't. Exponential growth is one of those things. But that doesn't mean I have a clue about what will come after 3%/yr global GDP increase (doubling GDP every 24 years) is no longer on the bingo card.
Agreed. The issue in my mind is that work has provided people with meaning. Where do we go for meaning? AI has given me all kinds of new ideas and leveraged my primitive creativity. I also tend to think that we can innovate around climate challenges. Could be wrong. Thanks for your thoughts.
We’re working on a paper right now that looks at the correspondence between declining fertility and declining GDP per capita growth. It’s pretty clear that for advanced economies, that they are in trouble. No kids, no commitment to the future.
Gale, I think it is certainly something that we should be concerned about. Although, in a sense, I feel like a reverse Malthusian when I project doom and gloom onto a shrinking population.
I think the biggest concern is not falling birthrates, per se, but the confluence of two trends. As I wrote here: https://www.lianeon.org/p/we-dont-have-enough-people , the first trend is declining research productivity, such as we are seeing with cycles of Moore's Law, Eroom's law...etc. This trend, when combined with a shrinking or stagnant number of people, suggests some kind of technological stagnation mid century. This is, of course, absent some kind of epic technological shift. AI has the potential to change the dynamic.
The connection between wealth and low birthrates is well established around the world. You don't need to invoke politics to account for declining family sizes: as the family need for labor declines and the options available for adults in the way they spend their time shift, then the number of kids per couple slides. The answer the US has found to its demographic challenges over its entire history is immigration. Red states and right wing politics opposed to immigration are thus directly implicated in any population based theory of decline.
Tom, you make good points. The big question is what happens when those countries with high birth rates stop?
Good q.
If they stop it will most likely be because of one of two factors: horrific disaster, likely climate mediated, producing a population collapse particularly in parts of the world with less capital for resilience; or growing wealth in the developing world producing similar demographic shifts to we've seen in other societies that have managed to make it well past the Malthusian trap Brad DeLong writes so interestingly about in his latest book, Slouching Towards Utopia. (He's on substack too, btw.)
If the former, WASF, and while I expect the wealthy north to have some advantages in a major ecologically-driven catastrophe, this is an interconnected world and there would likely be plenty of awfulness to go around. If we do navigate a soft landing towards a more affluent and not entirely climate-change wrecked world, then my hope is that we may begin to see a less economically defined concept of happiness or a life well lived. It was a big deal to get to a 40 hour work week back in the early to middle 20th c. I wonder what society would look like if some combination of automation and computationally mediated labor made the need for an endless supply of workers and consumers less pressing.
I am no futurist (and distrust the claims of those who call themselves that), but I do take as an axiom that anything that can't go on forever won't. Exponential growth is one of those things. But that doesn't mean I have a clue about what will come after 3%/yr global GDP increase (doubling GDP every 24 years) is no longer on the bingo card.
Agreed. The issue in my mind is that work has provided people with meaning. Where do we go for meaning? AI has given me all kinds of new ideas and leveraged my primitive creativity. I also tend to think that we can innovate around climate challenges. Could be wrong. Thanks for your thoughts.
J.K.,
Thanks for subscribing.
We’re working on a paper right now that looks at the correspondence between declining fertility and declining GDP per capita growth. It’s pretty clear that for advanced economies, that they are in trouble. No kids, no commitment to the future.
Gale, I think it is certainly something that we should be concerned about. Although, in a sense, I feel like a reverse Malthusian when I project doom and gloom onto a shrinking population.
I think the biggest concern is not falling birthrates, per se, but the confluence of two trends. As I wrote here: https://www.lianeon.org/p/we-dont-have-enough-people , the first trend is declining research productivity, such as we are seeing with cycles of Moore's Law, Eroom's law...etc. This trend, when combined with a shrinking or stagnant number of people, suggests some kind of technological stagnation mid century. This is, of course, absent some kind of epic technological shift. AI has the potential to change the dynamic.