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I don't worry about a declining population causing some sort of economic collapse. I do wonder about societal implications. In the next 30 - 40 years we will witness an event that has never been seen in the history of humanity as far as know. A large class of old women with no descendants. Everyone declines with age. Historically women live longer than men. They must be supported by their children or grandchildren in their last years to some degree. Without children or grandchildren who will provide this care. Appears nursing homes are going to have to pick up the slack. I suspect society is going to have to subsidize many of these facilities via taxes since not all will be able to afford it.
I don't worry about a declining population causing some sort of economic collapse. I do wonder about societal implications. In the next 30 - 40 years we will witness an event that has never been seen in the history of humanity as far as know. A large class of old women with no descendants. Everyone declines with age. Historically women live longer than men. They must be supported by their children or grandchildren in their last years to some degree. Without children or grandchildren who will provide this care. Appears nursing homes are going to have to pick up the slack. I suspect society is going to have to subsidize many of these facilities via taxes since not all will be able to afford it.
That is the problem in a nutshell, and you're right that the shrinking pool of workers will be required to support the expanding pool of retirees. The problem with this is that it's a positive feedback loop, where the more the elderly tax the young, the fewer children the young can afford to have. This makes the problem worse with every generation.
Having children can mean many things to different people, but I think everyone can agree it's a lot of work. And historically that was an investment in the parents' futures since children were expected to care for their parents. We had a short transitional period where these costs were socialized via taxes and transfers, but that has had the unanticipated (?) side effect of decoupling child rearing from elder care in most people's minds. I've said this before but unless you have paid a LOT of taxes over the course of your career, if you don't raise taxpaying children you are a free rider in your later years as you depend on taxes for your survival. Like a classic tragedy of the commons, the pool of workers is being abused by the elderly who have no other options.
There's a limit to this sort of strategy once the taxes become so onerous that the young emigrate. This happened in eastern Europe during the 90s and 00s. Once your tax payers emigrate, the elderly are left high and dry and society crumbles. Eastern Europe was a bad case, because the elderly were raised under a different system promising cradle to grave benefits and they were unable to compete in market economies. It doesn't have to be that bad, and you can head off economic collapse with farsighted reform.
The situation of global depopulation makes it harder for the emigration strategy to work. We are already seeing the beginnings of the endgame for this trend, which is that a few countries become safe havens for workers and attract emigrants from all over. The US and Canada are in this group, and to a lesser extent the UK. Most of continental Europe is economically DOA in the future because of terrible demographics and political systems that maintain elder benefits with an iron fist.
I agree that the repercussions of this trend will seem muted because older societies are not as restive as young societies. Most of the protesting will be in the form of the young voting with their feet.
Well, an aside on the subject of "who will take care of old women with no children"... That contract is already kind of broken in a lot of families anyways. Not by the basic question of whether there are children who exist, but by the fact that a lot of said adult children refuse to participate. And given how raising kids is nowadays, I don't blame them.
I don't expect any kind of support or help from my kids when I am old. One of them, I don't expect to survive into his 30s...it grieves me, and I'd love to be wrong, but he cannot even take care of himself. No way he could care for me. He'd love me enough to want to, but I don't see it. My other son will want nothing to do with it. He still loves me and talks to me but he's made it clear that he wants to put some serious distance between himself and his family of origin. I don't hold it against him, since I have done the same with mine.
I won't be caring for my parents, either. I have moved quite far from any of my own family. Though I have instead married an older man and I am also helping him with his father, now. There's always somebody who needs help. I'm choosing people who don't make me feel like it's a thankless job, at least.
Anyhow. Doesn't mean that old women necessarily have to die alone, though. There are other people in this world than family and some of us are good at finding and engaging with them. My Great Aunt had no kids, but she had a neighbor she made close friends with, who was a generation younger than her, and who was willing to look in on her and had the proper POAs and rights to step in when my Aunt developed dementia, to get her placed into a home and handle her estate matters. I keep my eye open for any possible young protegee types, who might appreciate an inheritance. Never know!
But yeah if you are an old person and have no family and no friends and no money...you might just die alone or in one of the low end facilities on Uncle Sam's dime. Happens all the time. But let's not act like one's kids are obligated to care for us...no one is gonna make them do it, and a lot of them won't.
But let's not act like one's kids are obligated to care for us...no one is gonna make them do it, and a lot of them won't.
In aggregate children are legally obligated to care for their parents' generation via Social Security and Medicare. You are right that at the family level this dynamic has broken down. That was one reason social insurance was created in the first place.
There will be plenty of work for everyone, including senior citizens. They can do lighter chores while the middle generation of a large household works full or part time. Seniors without kids can try to join other households, or plan to die when they can't work anymore. Idle retirement is a temporary luxury of some nations with tremendous wealth.
It constantly amazes me, and quite a lot of other U.S. women, that those in power with a very strong desire to increase US population do NOT give women any incentives or support to do so.
Instead they are punitive in eliminating abortion rights while not having day care as a tax credit or having day care and school hours the same as work hours so women can support themselves as mothers.
I grew up in a single parent house-hold and saw how hard it was to support children economically when there was no outside support. I don't have children.
My belief is that there will be a very large drop in childbearing among educated women in this generation. And men in power should look at themselves and point fingers in that direction. If you want higher birthrate start giving incentives not beatdowns.
It constantly amazes me, and quite a lot of other U.S. women, that those in power with a very strong desire to increase US population do NOT give women any incentives or support to do so.
Instead they are punitive in eliminating abortion rights while not having day care as a tax credit or having day care and school hours the same as work hours so women can support themselves as mothers.
I grew up in a single parent house-hold and saw how hard it was to support children economically when there was no outside support. I don't have children.
My belief is that there will be a very large drop in childbearing among educated women in this generation. And men in power should look at themselves and point fingers in that direction. If you want higher birthrate start giving incentives not beatdowns.
The data supports your belief. There will be fewer and fewer children born as the future unfolds.
But the data is not limited to America. All developed countries are releasing the same data. And some countries - like Singapore and South Korea - have seriously tried to incentivize childbearing, but all attempts have failed.
South Korea, you will note, has closed well over 3000 schools because of lack of children.
Many other countries have tried. Nothing has worked, beyond moving the needle very little - and not enough.
For me, the die is cast. I believe human population is destined to drop very quickly. Populations will gather in the temperate zones while the total count continue to shrink, and shrink further.
But I honestly have no idea where it will end.
I am pretty sure of this: We are not going to the stars to find new planets to live on after we overpopulate this one. This planet will be fine.
The data supports your belief. There will be fewer and fewer children born as the future unfolds.
But the data is not limited to America. All developed countries are releasing the same data. And some countries - like Singapore and South Korea - have seriously tried to incentivize childbearing, but all attempts have failed.
South Korea, you will note, has closed well over 3000 schools because of lack of children.
Many other countries have tried. Nothing has worked, beyond moving the needle very little - and not enough.
For me, the die is cast. I believe human population is destined to drop very quickly. Populations will gather in the temperate zones while the total count continue to shrink, and shrink further.
But I honestly have no idea where it will end.
I am pretty sure of this: We are not going to the stars to find new planets to live on after we overpopulate this one. This planet will be fine.
Well. The way I'd put it, is that I don't know if this planet will ultimately be fine or for how long it will be fine, but it's not going to be overpopulation that does us in. It will be short-sighted greed, in my opinion, driving the decisions of powerful people, rather than wise and sustainable but less immediately profitable paths.
We need not overpopulate the Earth to destroy it, or at least to destroy ourselves.
As promised I’m posting on the “baby bust” that has been in the news the past few years, and indeed for many years off and on as prominent voices provide occasional articles or books on demographic topics.
NY Times (NYT) and Washington Post (WaPo) are paywall sites but may allow a few free articles per month. Else both have an initial subscription cost of $4 every four weeks for the first year with freedom to cancel at any time. Both papers have a wide variety of writers on the left and right. On the NYT only a few articles are allowed to have comments with all comments pre-reviewed to allow only cogent posts to appear which results in comments that often are as good as the articles. The WaPo allows comments on most articles with many being snarky one liners but by selecting on “most liked” one may read the best comments and avoid the nonsense.
Here are just a few articles I’ve found, listed in chronological sequence. Many of these articles have links to even more articles.
In March 2021 Ross Douthat in the NYT wrote "How Does a Baby Bust End?” The author is a religious patriarchal white male (strong Catholic) who moans about how the dreaded liberals and progressives have wrought a baby bust that is a danger to funding Social Security, etc. He refers to lower birth rates as “demographic decadence” and provides 3 scenarios to raise the birth rate to at least replacement levels. In his mind anything not supporting Catholic doctrine is decadence. 1506 comments.
Excerpts: "The declining American birthrate is a frequent preoccupation of this column, and over the years that I’ve been writing about the problem it’s only gotten worse, with the apparent Covid-19 baby bust a punctuation mark. … So what would it take for our demographic decadence to end...”
In May 2021 the Claremont Institute wrote “Baby Bust, Declining American Fertility Signals a Psychological Cost for Women” by Rebecca L. Heinrichs who is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Both of these “institutes” are iffy, especially Hudson. For space limitation I’ll let readers check the wikipedia articles on their own but expect many to agree that these are organizations aren’t worth following. The gist is that women should be mothers since having zero or few children will seal off the primary source of their happiness, but doesn’t prove it. I consider the article a crock; it’s little more than fear mongering about “have babies or you won’t be happy.” This is the pap I hear from right wing types and televangelists who want women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. No comments on this site.
In May 2021 the NYT wrote “Women Who Said No to Motherhood” which I found spot on in its direct honesty. I do hope people read this article, it really is great reading and is lushly photographed. There are 511 comments along the lines that it is striking that in this day and age that women are still judged for the choices they make regarding their own bodies and futures. Excerpt: “Until very recently, it was assumed that if you didn’t have children it was a tragedy, because you were unable to,” Meghan Daum, editor of “Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed,” a book that reframes the idea of mandatory motherhood, said. “Or there was something wrong with you psychologically — you were selfish. … Ms. Daum looks at it differently. “What’s selfish is having children that you don’t want or can’t properly care for, … ”
In June 2021 a team of 4 authors in NYT wrote "Why American Women Everywhere are Delaying Motherhood."
Excerpt: “...over the past decade, as more women of all social classes have prioritized education and career, delaying childbearing has become a broad pattern among American women almost everywhere. … Since 2007, the birthrate for women in their 20s has fallen by 28% … “All of a sudden, in the last 10 years, there’s this tremendous transformation.”
That remark about “the last 10 years” coincides with the Great Recession with the realization that poor job security and a lack of family support are here to stay. 1889 comments.
In June 2021 the WaPo wrote “The Unreasonable Expectations of American Motherhood” Excerpts: "I’ll offer a personal framework for “solving” the “problem”: My family values are fine. The country’s are not. For many years I did not have children because, in policies and practices, the United States is hell for mothers. … while other countries determined that investing in child care — making it free or inexpensive — is the easiest way to encourage motherhood, the United States has determined that what’s easiest is simply berating families who can’t make it work, telling them that they should have budgeted better, or saved more, or arranged for Grandma to watch the baby … they are among the many American women for whom motherhood is not a practical choice. It’s not because they are entitled, or weak, or dysfunctional. It’s because their country is.”
That last line is an indictment of our dysfunctional Congress, mostly the GOP, who won’t pass any legislation to help families while mouthing another of their big lies about being the party of ‘family values.’ No comments on this story.
That’s enough of a listing, those seeking more just need to google “baby bust” which will return a long list that includes articles by a number of well respected organizations and sources.
Suffice to say that “the times they are a-changing” and have been for over 60 years. There will be challenges ahead on caring for the elderly in an era with fewer workers supporting safety net programs, but we’ll figure it out. Our nation is not alone with this issue . . .
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This is just a phase of the human story we are living through. I don't think there's any policy that could boost birthrates. This is bigger than that, and is mostly due to economic and scientific advances such as the declining need for human labor relative to machine labor, birth control, and improvements in infant mortality.
I'd like to think we could use policy to compensate for us overshooting the birth rate correction, but empirically it doesn't work.
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Baby Bust
