Is global population decline happening and is it a bad thing?

[ygolo]

I posted in my inflation thread after watching a documentary on population decline.

I do have to say the logic of the decline and problem is pretty compelling to me, and the people arguing the other side, I find pretty Malthusian.

Here is something from over a decade ago:

Population Decline Is Bad For Us

<b>Weekly Standard</b>: Innovation Would Suffer With Slackening Demand

www.cbsnews.com

To sum up the population decline side of the argument:
1) Replacement levels of birthrate are not being met in a majority of countries.
2) The population itself will continue to grow despite the childbirth rate slowing.
3) The population ages as this happens.
4) A smaller working age population will need to support more of a non working age population.
5) This situation leads to people not feeling its a good time for children even if they want them at some point, increasing the involuntarily childless rate.

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Here is someone arguing a declining population is actually a good thing:

Why a shrinking human population is a good thing

The other day I was asked to do an interview for a South Korean radio station about the declining-population “crisis”. Therein lies the rub — there is no crisis. While I think the inter…

conservationbytes.com

But given the bank failures lately, we need to keep in mind we don't keep actual prosperity in banks "squirrelled away" . Money is only numbers in databases. It's value depends on what you can actually trade it for in real terms.

Obviously, I have biases. Hopefully, someone can argue this side well.
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From more neutral sources:

Economic consequences of population decline - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

US Real GDP Per Capita by Year - Multpl

US Real GDP Per Capita table by year, historic, and current data. Current US Real GDP Per Capita is 67,538.59.

www.multpl.com

The US has had immigration keep the population productive for quite some time.

Look at Japan's real GDP per capita on figure 1-2:

https://www.yardeni.com/pub/japanpercap.pdf

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Also here is a UN source on global population"

https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/900

 

[SD45T-2]

2) The population itself will continue to grow despite the childbirth rate slowing.

Well the population will keep growing for a little while due to population momentum, but after awhile that momentum runs out and the large elderly demographic dies off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum

China's total population is already going down: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/econ...former leader Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward.

Japan's population has been dropping for years. Global population is expected to be dropping off by the end of this century IIRC.

But given the bank failures lately, we need to keep in mind we don't keep actual prosperity in banks "squirrelled away" . Money is only numbers in databases. It's value depends on what you can actually trade it for in real terms.

I can't speak for how every country does things, but in a lot of places money isn't really "squirreled away" by the government for retirees. People are entitled to such-and-such in the way of benefits, and if that exceeds what they put in during their working years the difference is made up by the contributions of the people in the workforce today. Here in the US, Social Security is on track to only be taking in something like 75 cents for every dollar they're obligated to pay out by 2035. These sorts of projections are revised periodically and can vary, but they consistently show things going in the wrong direction.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

The whole system crashes once Soc Sec becomes insolvent in the 2030's. There isn't a single developed country that will have enough workers paying into the system to fund the retirements of the huge number of retirees.

This will be the pulled jenga block that topples the tower of new deal liberalism.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Yes it's a bad thing, if you want the human race to be a going concern that is.

 

[ygolo]

I guess nobody who will take the "population decline is good" side wants to speak up (or they don't exist on this site). I apologize if it's been made too hard to discuss.

I definitely see the following cycle as problematic and exponential:
Population decline leads to economic uncertainty which leads to people being forced into choosing childlessness which leads to population decline which leads to economic uncertainty...

 

[Virtual ghost]

I guess nobody who will take the "population decline is good" side wants to speak up (or they don't exist on this site). I apologize if it's been made too hard to discuss.

Not really, however some of us have done that too many times on this site to care too much about this. The topic simply got old.
But in short: reduction is good since the environment has limited resources and too much extraction lowers the ability of the environment to replenish many of them. In other words the more people you have more you have to spread resources among them to prevent unrest. What means lower quality of life for just about everyone. After all GDP per capita is more important number than just GDP. Having a bunch of dirt poor people only adds to suffering and there just isn't enough resources that everyone in the world can live upper middle class life. Human rights have to be respected but natural population reduction is surely a good thing from logistical point of view. The only thing you have to be careful about is that the drops aren't too sudden or quite unequal around the world. Since that creates it's share of problems that aren't small.

 

[ygolo]

@Virtual ghost
I do remember we had the discussion similar to this in the housing thread, but it was in passing and in context of a source I used.

Your position is very reasonable. I would even say I'd expect it to be the majority opinion in the world right now. I think there will be plenty of people who will say population collapse won't happen. I believe we do have time for it not to keep cycling. That's the nice thing about the future. We can change it.

We certainly have to be good stewards of the environment, and need to find better ways to live.

Indeed inequality is a large source of social strife. It has been that way long before the population levels we have now.

The population collapse people do mention that there's a temporary illusionary increase in prosperity as the smaller population enjoys the fruits of those before them(though in many places those resources go at record inequality to the top).

The collapse turns bad because it cycles generationally. A nation has to rely on immigration to keep themselves going. But once all nations reach below replacement birthrates, you cannot rely on that.

The main reasons I find the resources argument against replacement level birth fallacious is that resources can renew. We can't extract faster than renewal for sure. People have come up with ways to live better repeatedly, but without a focus on the environment. We need to do that again, if people acknowledge that as the problem.

We can measure good vs bad empirically:
Ultimately, GDP per capita, like you said, is indeed the measure to judge by. You can see clear flattening in places like Japan where population decline has been happening for a while.

If we can easily manage the inflationary economic conditions leading to childlessness leading to inflation cycle and come back, I think it's not an issue.

Generations take about 25 years to show up in the working population data, and it'll take 40 to 50 years before we see the shrinking cycle affecting the economy.

It's one factor not being accounted for in the media about the inflation story. What's going to happen to labor participation when baby boomers as a whole enter retirement in the US?

Projections of population growth - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[SD45T-2]

 

[Virtual ghost]

@Virtual ghost
I do remember we had the discussion similar to this in the housing thread, but it was in passing and in context of a source I used.

Your position is very reasonable. I would even say I'd expect it to be the majority opinion in the world right now. I think there will be plenty of people who will say population collapse won't happen. I believe we do have time for it not to keep cycling. That's the nice thing about the future. We can change it.

First of all nowhere in the world there will be such a thing as natural population collapse. Even the countries with only 1.3 children per mother will still have plenty of people. Since this in the end is still billions of mothers having children. So there will be some drops in population but nowhere will be actual crash due to natural causes. Plus as we are getting more and more of automation I don't really see economic problems that can't be solved. However I do see such problems in scenarios where population is running out of control in numbers. Since situation with actual resources will go fairly bad even in cases that population starts declining. Therefore if it continues to grow the system will surely snap somewhere and you will end up in brutal regional wars over remaining resources. What is already kinda the case over the last 20 years and entire global economy wobbles even at fairly mild examples of this. Therefore once you extract resources much faster than they can replenish that is game over. No amount of economic shenanigans and changing of definitions can save you in that case. However that is basically inevitable scenario if you don't control your numbers at all.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

The population collapse has much more to do with culture than resources. We have the tech to generate all the energy we'll ever need with nuclear power, but that assumes we can reign in the regulations that make building new plants essentially impossible (just look at the numbers of new plants that have gone up in the last 40 years). We have the industrial capacity to produce the agri inputs to feed everyone (phosphate, nitrates and potassium fertilizers). The Ukr war isn't helping things on that front, and neither is the collapse of globalism but those are temp hiccups.

With the industrial revolution and the consequent urbanization we never accounted for its impacts on reproductive rates. Kids were a value add on the farm, and now they're essentially excruciatingly expensive moving furniture as Peter Zeihan likes to call them. We have the rest of this century to figure out a new civilizational arrangement that incentivizes having kids, lest we resign ourselves to merely being caretakers of a slow motion perpetual decline.

The US is well placed to weather these bumps given that our Baby Boomers had enough kids whereas by and large the rest of the world's didn't. Meaning that the mass retirement of our boomers won't completely ruin our economy because we have people coming behind them the pick up the consumptive slack. The rest of the developed world doesn't really, and are they're in for comparatively rougher times as a result.

 

[ygolo]

First of all nowhere in the world there will be such a thing as natural population collapse. Even the countries with only 1.3 children per mother will still have plenty of people. Since this in the end is still billions of mothers having children. So there will be some drops in population but nowhere will be actual crash due to natural causes. Plus as we are getting more and more of automation I don't really see economic problems that can't be solved. However I do see such problems in scenarios where population is running out of control in numbers. Since situation with actual resources will go fairly bad even in cases that population starts declining. Therefore if it continues to grow the system will surely snap somewhere and you will end up in brutal regional wars over remaining resources. What is already kinda the case over the last 20 years and entire global economy wobbles even at fairly mild examples of this. Therefore once you extract resources much faster than they can replenish that is game over. No amount of economic shenanigans and changing of definitions can save you in that case. However that is basically inevitable scenario if you don't control your numbers at all.

I want to thank you again for continuing to press your point. I actually want to be convinced of your position.

I am not sure what natural collapse is. Yes population growth will continue while birthrate slows. I think even the population collapse people agree with that fully. The models I linked showed that too. If the trend continues, then we have another set of problems. We won't see the effects of for at least a generation, however. At that point, we cannot go back in time to birth more children to make up the work force.

The cycle is childlessness growing out of economic uncertainty. Being childless which is done because it is never the "right time" is contrasted to being child-free, which is done entirely by choice.

The main place we need to look at actual population decline is Japan. There will be others Italy for instance, and perhaps Germany. At some point even China's birthrate decline could

Can frontier technology solve Japan's declining population? | World Economic Forum

Why happiness and wellbeing is key to a healthy ageing society in Japan | World Economic Forum

Certainly, AI and robotics will help, as they are required to in Japan.

The mental model of a nature being the only resource that people only take from makes some amount of intuitive sense. But it doesn't seem to track with the data.
I think the biggest disconnect we have is in our notion of "resources". The most crucial resource in almost any endeavor is human labor (either physical or mental).

More Babies | No Mercy / No Malice

Our species dates back 300,000 years. For most of that time, most humans lived to their early 30s, as a bad cut or broken bone was a death sentence. Around 1800, things changed: wealth, life expectancy, and the population all exploded. In the past two hundred years, per capita GDP has grown 15x...

www.profgalloway.com

Certainly AI and robotics will help, but one of the crucial forms of labor needed to ensure that takes a good form is the labor of steering AI. Here are just a handful of reasons why we need humans to steer AI for quite a bit longer:

Unveiling the Dark Side of AI —  4 Dangers You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Don’t say you weren’t warned

medium.com

There is also the mundane and often exploitative nature of just providing data for AI to be trained on:

The invisible workers of the AI era

A new type of blue-collar industry has emerged around labeling the data that powers Artificial Intelligence.

towardsdatascience.com

 

[ygolo]

I initially edited the previous post, but I feel like that would be confusing.
I think this is similar to what @Virtual ghost was alluding to (correct me it I am wrong). It basically posits a flattening at 11 Billion. It's an old video, but based on the most recent data seems very plausible.

Global population growth, box by box

The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).

www.ted.com

Here is the population decline position based on very similar views:

 

[Virtual ghost]

I want to thank you again for continuing to press your point. I actually want to be convinced of your position.

I am not sure what natural collapse is. Yes population growth will continue while birthrate slows. I think even the population collapse people agree with that fully. The models I linked showed that too. If the trend continues, then we have another set of problems. We won't see the effects of for at least a generation, however. At that point, we cannot go back in time to birth more children to make up the work force.

The cycle is childlessness growing out of economic uncertainty. Being childless which is done because it is never the "right time" is contrasted to being child-free, which is done entirely by choice.

Natural "collapse" is when population is dropping but people die naturally. While unnatural collapse is when government deliberately or through open mismanagement kills decent chunk of the population. Plus on top that you can add wars and making permanent refugees that will be lost of the area. As I told you from the start that for me this is kinda old topic that I already chewed and digested. The reason for this is that here on this site basically everyone have lived their whole life in US style free market Capitalism. While I haven't lived a single day in such system and therefore my basic views and life experiences are visibly different. Therefore I had serious clashes in perspective with some people here, since I have quite different cards in hand. I was born in Communism that has eventually evolved into a social market economy. While there are minimal wishes that the system turns into free market economy (people advocating that have about 1.5% in the polls). Plus I survived some war years next to the front line and now I am paying my bills with 4th currency in my life (and I never moved). Therefore my perspective on life is totally different than of average American since I am from Eastern Europe. So for me American understanding of the world is simply too static. That is how life in US actually works but at this point US is just about 4% of the global population.


Therefore in order to understand what is likely to happen you need to look the whole world as well as different socio-economic systems that exists in different parts if the world. Another reason why you have to do this is because today things are quite connected so a crisis in one part quickly spreads to other parts. In other words if plenty of 3rd world countries that do plenty of manufacturing and resource production socially fall part for some reason that will heavily disrupt supply and demand in the big picture. What then creates very open risks that US that is on top of the pyramid implodes under it's tens of trillions that it has as a debt. However that trigger could easily be local overpopulation. For example take a look at obvious examples: Bangladesh is about the size of Florida but it has 165 000 000 people. Similar is Egypt, 100 million people and 85% of the country is total desert. I mean there is a few dozen countries in this world that are basically a ticking disaster that will take out plenty with them. For example what will happen when cartels, climate change and general mismanagement push 10s of millions of Mexicans and Central Americans towards north. I am not 100% sure but it wouldn't be pretty and now wall will be able to keep it nice and clean.


So understanding this in actual detail is basically a science on it's own. You can do Peter Zeihan logic on the issue but a good chunk of that logic falls apart once you cross US borders. The rest of the world is in general much more socially and politically dynamic that you can apply one perspective and truly understand things in depth. Since different socio-economic models on top of some different history is creates totally different movie in the end. For example if you have more welfare programs and good social cohesion you can keep things together as the population slowly fades into more sustainable numbers. Therefore when you add some automation you can have fairly smooth ride. Especially since in that case you have to spread resources on less people. There are gazillion US made videos on the future of the world and just about none of them ever mention socialzed healthcare that is all over the world. Affordable education is perhaps even more rare. Countries banning cars on fossil fuels is starting to get into laws. Some places are totally non religious and that has huge impact as well. There is plenty of various local laws around the world that don't even occur to American, since such topics don't even show up in US media. However all of that has huge impact on how things will play out. Therefore the only thing that matters is that population doesn't start crashing since that can indeed creates problems. But beyond that gentle population reduction so that average person has more resources is totally doable and basically desirable. So here I will stop since this is getting too big.

 

[ygolo]

Natural "collapse" is when population is dropping but people die naturally. While unnatural collapse is when government deliberately or through open mismanagement kills decent chunk of the population. Plus on top that you can add wars and making permanent refugees that will be lost of the area. As I told you from the start that for me this is kinda old topic that I already chewed and digested. The reason for this is that here on this site basically everyone have lived their whole life in US style free market Capitalism. While I haven't lived a single day in such system and therefore my basic views and life experiences are visibly different. Therefore I had serious clashes in perspective with some people here, since I have quite different cards in hand. I was born in Communism that has eventually evolved into a social market economy. While there are minimal wishes that the system turns into free market economy (people advocating that have about 1.5% in the polls). Plus I survived some war years next to the front line and now I am paying my bills with 4th currency in my life (and I never moved). Therefore my perspective on life is totally different than of average American since I am from Eastern Europe. So for me American understanding of the world is simply too static. That is how life in US actually works but at this point US is just about 4% of the global population.


Therefore in order to understand what is likely to happen you need to look the whole world as well as different socio-economic systems that exists in different parts if the world. Another reason why you have to do this is because today things are quite connected so a crisis in one part quickly spreads to other parts. In other words if plenty of 3rd world countries that do plenty of manufacturing and resource production socially fall part for some reason that will heavily disrupt supply and demand in the big picture. What then creates very open risks that US that is on top of the pyramid implodes under it's tens of trillions that it has as a debt. However that trigger could easily be local overpopulation. For example take a look at obvious examples: Bangladesh is about the size of Florida but it has 165 000 000 people. Similar is Egypt, 100 million people and 85% of the country is total desert. I mean there is a few dozen countries in this world that are basically a ticking disaster that will take out plenty with them. For example what will happen when cartels, climate change and general mismanagement push 10s of millions of Mexicans and Central Americans towards north. I am not 100% sure but it wouldn't be pretty and now wall will be able to keep it nice and clean.


So understanding this in actual detail is basically a science on it's own. You can do Peter Zeihan logic on the issue but a good chunk of that logic falls apart once you cross US borders. The rest of the world is in general much more socially and politically dynamic that you can apply one perspective and truly understand things in depth. Since different socio-economic models on top of some different history is creates totally different movie in the end. For example if you have more welfare programs and good social cohesion you can keep things together as the population slowly fades into more sustainable numbers. Therefore when you add some automation you can have fairly smooth ride. Especially since in that case you have to spread resources on less people. There are gazillion US made videos on the future of the world and just about none of them ever mention socialzed healthcare that is all over the world. Affordable education is perhaps even more rare. Countries banning cars on fossil fuels is starting to get into laws. Some places are totally non religious and that has huge impact as well. There is plenty of various local laws around the world that don't even occur to American, since such topics don't even show up in US media. However all of that has huge impact on how things will play out. Therefore the only thing that matters is that population doesn't start crashing since that can indeed creates problems. But beyond that gentle population reduction so that average person has more resources is totally doable and basically desirable. So here I will stop since this is getting too big.

Thank you for explaining your point of view.

 

[ygolo]

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/09/us-population-decline-down-projections-data-chart

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Sorry to raise this thread from the dead @ygolo but I've had a thought for a while that I haven't included here. One that I think gets to the very heart of what we're trying to discuss.

Do we preoccupy ourselves with the concerns of the Earth, or do we prepare our way to leave it? This scene from Interstellar captures it rather poignantly.

It's why I'm bought in on Elon Musk's idea of becoming a multiplanetary species whether or not that endeavor is likely to be a success in the short or even medium term.

I think a large portion of our resource worries could be remedied by asteroid mining (and interplanetary).

If we play the human project out long enough we will exhaust our resources even if population declines.

Unless we are comfortable going back a pre-industrial standard of living something will have to be done about this.

I'm not saying that we should forgo environmental concerns and instead focus on getting to space, but I will say emphatically that I prioritize getting to space over other concerns, given that things will run out eventually.

Pre historic man, had the adventure of leaving africa.

Historic man had the adventure of crossing the oceans.

One day we can have the adventure of reaching for the stars.

 

[ygolo]

Interesting population dynamics in Europe:

Generation Z may not need mortgages, here’s why

Europe’s ageing population means that Generation Z stands to inherit huge amounts of property in the coming years, resulting in reduced demand for mortgages.

theconversation.com

 

[ygolo]

UN Projections: China’s Population to Decrease Significantly by 2075

What we’re showing Population data and forecasts for the world’s 6 largest countries.

posts.voronoiapp.com

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-populous-countries-projected-populations-2075/

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I think it is good, and I've read a few things over the years saying that fears about overpopulation were very overblown. It's possible it may already have started. Less competition for resources should yield many positive benefits. Less war, less political instability, less competition for jobs, etc. I'm sure we can figure out something with the graying of the demographic if we put our minds to it.

I'm against pro-natalism and anti-natalism as policy. I don't think the government should be stepping in with this, yet some seem chomping at the bits for precisely this to happen. I stated elsewhere on this forum a decision elsewhere on this forum not to have kids. That is my decision; I am against the state coming in and taking that from me, or anyone else.

 

[ygolo]

I think forcing people to have or not have kids is draconian.

Still, I believe that people are ultimately what drives society forward, not natural resources. We have to be good stewards of our natural resources, however.

There was a time that I thought that war was about fighting because lack of resources.

But, when I step back, I realize there's plenty for everyone. What people are fighting over is power.

That's why many hoarde while others lack.

Wanting power often does come from fear over losing resources. So the story is complicated.

Other times, people use resources to bring about the changes they want to see in the world. We can see this, possibly, as a pro-social impetus wanting power.