Population Decline: Good or Bad?
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f you’re old enough to remember 9/11, you probably remember hearing about a different kind of threat: the “population time bomb.” We were warned that soaring birth rates around the world guaranteed a future where there simply wouldn’t be enough to go around—enough food, enough shelter, enough health care.
Well, times change.
A study by the respected journal Lancet claims of the world’s 193 nations, 183 are now experiencing negative population growth—in other words, population decline. Births are way down. The Chinese government recently reversed a decades-long policy, and now will allow couples to have three children, up from the previous limit of two. Hard to believe there aren’t enough people in China.
The statistic to keep in mind here is 2.1. That’s the average number of kids all women of childbearing years must have in order to maintain current population levels. Think about all the women you know between the ages of 15 and 40; how many have two or more kids?
Here’s how the New York Times recently described the situation:
“Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.”
This might sound downright dystopian, but it’s our emerging reality. However, while this seems daunting to some, other people see the trend as a real opportunity.
THE GOOD
Environmentalism. Fewer people means less need for burning fossil fuels. It means less need to continue artificially manipulating food. Ideally, it means less toxic waste, cleaner water, and less air pollution.
Wages. It’s hard to pass by a fast-food restaurant without seeing a “help wanted” sign in the window. And that’s not just due to pandemic relocations--it’s our future. With fewer young workers available, the ones who do go job hunting will be able to demand higher pay.
Housing. If Germany is knocking down empty houses because there’s no one to live in them, is that America’s future, too? Well, we’re not there yet (just check your local rents and real estate prices). But fewer people means less need for homes. Who knows? Maybe someday we won’t need to argue about building housing for the homeless—we can just use what’s been abandoned.
THE BAD
Social Security. Let’s start with the issue the experts talk about most. You can viably view America’s retirement structure as a national Ponzi scheme. It relies on the current workforce to contribute enough to pay for the golden years of those who’ve retired. With less people contributing, what happens to Social Security? Right now, we live in a time when we believe we can print money without consequence. But if we do ever have to balance the books, this will be a defining issue for future generations.
Jobs. This is the corollary to the “wages” and “housing” points above. If there’s a significant decline in the need to build new dwellings, where do the extra carpenters, electricians and crane operators go? What about the real estate agents and mortgage lenders? In addition, with more people working at home post-Covid, how many more office towers will we need? And this considers just one sector of the economy.
The Markets. OK, now we get to a very touchy point—at least for those with any kind of investment. The holy grail of capitalism is growth. Hence the focus on “growth stocks”, “disruption” and “entrepreneurs”. But what happens to the “growth” fetish if things stop growing? Off the top of my head, I don’t see a problem for investors. Even in the worst-case scenario, there will still be analysts predicting which companies and types of businesses will shrink the slowest. Greed never goes away.
Special Alert for MAGAs:
I’ve got news for you, dear MAGAs! You’re going to want to ponder two specific aspects of the world’s population future.
First is this: the highest birth rates are currently occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Remember that 2.1 births/woman stat we mentioned above? Well, around the world, that average rate right now is 1.7. The U.S. is slightly higher, at 1.77. Both spell population decline.
Not to worry! In the African nation of Nigeria, the birth rate today is estimated at 5.18. And this is not an anomaly in that part of the world. That means chances are much higher that your descendants will have an African neighbor. Hooray diversity!
Second thought: it is widely expected that shrinking nations will attempt to adjust the young/old imbalance by inviting immigrants in. Just think about it. Trump’s wall could be decorated with huge “Welcome!” banners. Smiling ICE agents would await guests with armfuls of flowers, and fistfuls of job offers. Maybe even free bus tickets to your town. Cool, huh?
A Word on Religion
I was discussing all this with a friend, and he laughed and said, “Don’t worry—as long as we’ve got Mormons here, there’s not going to be any population drop in America!” Well, OK, “ha ha” and all that--but he does have a point. In 2014 Pew Research published a wide-ranging study on religion. One table calculated family size by religion for women aged 40 to 59—in other words, family size for them was already determined. Back then, their average number of children was 2.1—precisely the number for maintaining population. The following chart breaks that total down by religious identification. Pew did that by calculating the percentage of families with kids under 18:
OK, so my friend had a point about Mormons. But it’s a distinction without much of a difference. The Mormon population is so small in relative terms (1.6%) that it’s a long way from affecting the overall numbers.
But don’t ignore Muslim families. When expanding their impact on a global perspective (not just America), Pew says that beginning in 2035, there will be more children born to Muslim families than Christian.
ell, that seems like quite enough data. So, I’ll close with one more simple fact that seems to put this whole population decline in perspective. In Japan, more diapers are now sold for the elderly than for babies.
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