Couples that do not want children. Are they doing the right thing?

[millerm277]

Originally Posted by Julian658

One would think that if you live in a developed country or even South America you are not doing anything positive by avoiding children.

Sure they are.

The standard of living people in developed countries are accustomed to is vastly overstretching the resources of the planet. The typical American uses 34 times the energy of the typical person in Bangladesh.

Assuming we are not particularly inclined to make drastic changes in how we live and our society is structured, letting the population decline gradually is a great way of getting our consumption more in line with what the resources of the country and planet can support.

Originally Posted by reed067

I don't see it going down at all. From the scale above it does seem that the poorer countries are the ones having most of the kids born today. For what reason I'm not sure seeing they can barely feed, cloth & provide shelter on their own.

Lack of education, lack of contraceptives/family planning and lack of acceptance of their use by their societies.

That said, fertility rates have been falling in those regions for decades too. It's just been a slower decline and starting from a much higher baseline. There's a good graph here.

[Julian658]

Originally Posted by millerm277

The standard of living people in developed countries are accustomed to is vastly overstretching the resources of the planet. The typical American uses 34 times the energy of the typical person in Bangladesh.

Assuming we are not particularly inclined to make drastic changes in how we live and our society is structured, letting the population decline gradually is a great way of getting our consumption more in line with what the resources of the country and planet can support.

Sacrificing and dwindling the population of developed countries for the sake of the population of undeveloped countries sounds like altruistic madness.

I get the issue of too much energy consumption, but that can be fixed with advanced technology in the next 100-200 years. The automobile is quite new and will soon be part of history.

If you come from an area in the developed world where the population is declining.
If you have an education.
If you have the ability to earn enough money to live well in a developed country.
One could easily conclude that deciding not to have children because of overpopulation in the 3rd world makes zero sense.

It would make more sense to reduce the fertility rate in the 3rd world.

[AtkinsonDan]

Originally Posted by Julian658

It would make more sense to reduce the fertility rate in the 3rd world.

How do you do that? How do you convince third world people to lower their fertility if they see the first world beginning to increase its fertility? That seems like a 'do as I say not as I do' scenario.

The first world has to maintain its low fertility to set a continuing example for the third world to follow.

[Julian658]

Originally Posted by AtkinsonDan

The first world has to maintain its low fertility to set a continuing example for the third world to follow.

The fertility rate in the 3rd world has been going down as they emulate developed countries. The fertility rate remains very high in Sub Sahara Africa, but in the rest of the world it is fastly approaching the rate of developed countries.

Yes, they have followed the example of developed countries!

The other side of the issue is the shrinking of the developed world due to a very low fertility rate. And It does not make sense to commit genetic suicide just to give someone in a 3rd world country a good example. That is misplaced altruism that helps no one.

[sstsunami55]

Originally Posted by AtkinsonDan

No. Having fewer children is not the problem. China's problems are (1) the gender imbalance resulting from the one child policy and (2) the insistence on maintaining a socio-economic system dependent on population growth. China's traditional culture values boys far more than girls.

Back in the 1970s the belief in overpopulation was based on limited natural resources (food, potable water, arable land, oil, etc). Nowadays technology has alleviated some of these physical limits but we have a new overpopulation threat and that is a lack of jobs for people. The same technology that is solving some of the physical limitations is eliminating massive numbers of jobs. Without jobs what will these billions of people do? How will they support themselves?

The continued growth in automation, robotics and software will force the human race to reduce population and abandon all of the faulty "-isms" that make up the various socio-economic systems in existence in the western world today.

I don't know if you've taken macroeconomics before, but more people means cheaper labor, which means lower aggregate supply, but also higher aggregate demand, because more people means more people who can spend money and higher demand. So the effect is unclear.