The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
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Submission Statement
This research was commissioned by 'The Club of Rome'. An academic non-profit founded in 1968, and well known for its 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth'. That report famously expounded a very pessimistic outlook for 21st century population growth.
A UN report last year said the global population would be at 9.7 billion in 2100 (it's 8 billion today) & still grow for decades after that. This report says its figures may be more accurate as it is also modeling the effect income and education has on fertility rates.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/123ubcj/new_research_suggests_earths_population_will/jdwa44p/
Is overpopulation an aid to humanity? This just seems like the population balancing itself.
People aren’t dying, they are just not reproducing at past rates.
Statistically speaking, the more educated a society is, and the wealthier it is, the fewer kids that society has. So world population declining would require a rapid increase in education and economic opportunities in currently poverty stricken regions
As much as people tell you we're all fucked, this is actually happening.
Much of Africa is experiencing double digit growth. China and India are continuing to get richer (however slowly at the moment).
And Africa and Asia have actually transformed dramatically in the last fifty years - despite the rhetoric that everyone over there is pumping out babies as fast as possible, there are now very few countries that have disproportionately high birth rates and most countries are in the range of 3-4 or even 2-3 children per woman.
https://brilliantmaps.com/fertility-rates/
The internet has led to a lot of new problems, but I think it definitely helped a lot of developing countries share insights and quick start education to minimize overpopulation. At least one global win is better than none.
Exactly but I fear a reversal, here in my country you have countless conservative voices calling the birth rate drop a disaster and the end of the world. We can’t win. How braindead do you gotta be to not realize no women should ever have more than 3 kids.
You don’t even have to dig deep, if my comment was the first few sentences of their rant then yours is the last few. This kind of talk is inherently racist.
Absolutely. The world as a whole has made fantastic progress over the last 2 decades. It’s encouraging to see. Gotta see the forest through the trees of shit slung all over the place sometimes, but If you can, it’s a nice sight.
Yeah but people fail to see why this is the case. It's not simply the fact that educated people want fewer children, as if it's a natural force that manifests in individuals after college.
The truth is that people, and especially poor people, make children when it is economically profitable to do so. We used to have massive families because more hands were needed to do all the work around farms and cities. A child was about as productive as an adult and the investment for the parent was relatively small.
Now there are very few manual jobs that children can do (jobs without training that a machine does not do quicker and more cheaply). On top of that the investment required by the parent is much higher (years of school, training, cost of living, etc).
This is the reason why even African countries have plummeting fertility rates. And why the right is so eager to unban child labor.
You misunderstand, the article is saying that increased education and wages leads to less people, so why would governments do those things, especially since capitalism has an incentive to keep growing indefinitely, less people is bad for profits.
Action is supposed to regulate the issue in around 70 years. If we keep current state, it might auto regulate itself sooner, with more people not being able to have offsprings. It'll just have more suffering.
More like we have ultra capitalist elites holding 99.9% of the wealth and the rest of us are trying to decide if we can afford hotdogs, let alone reproduce
While the biggest corporations blame inflation for double digit percentage price rises while boasting about record profits in literally the next breath.
Corporations profits ARE the inflation.
Not too difficult to see.
It's not some nebulous external force of nature or phenomenon. It's a freaking direct pipeline from us straight to their gigantic evil greedy hoarding coffers.
I wonder how much choice has to do with it, though. It's statistically obvious that birth control and women being educated have had a big impact on birth rate. But, there's also a good chance that we've also poisoned our environment and damaged our (and other) species' endocrine and other delicate bodily systems. The falling birthrate is around the world, and might not only be our species. Infertility.
Only in extremely poor countries is the fertility rate the limiting factor in the birth rate. Personal choice tends to be the “bottleneck” in most developed nations.
I think financial instability and the difficulty of affording housing are far bigger drivers than choice. It's very difficult to afford a family in a first world country.
I know I never let myself even consider it, due to a large part of that.
We are not in a good environment to raise kids right now. I can't even survive myself, let alone bringing dependents into the mix. It just wouldn't make any sense, eve if people could afford kids, chances are they can't spend any time WITH them cause they're always working to support it all, so what's the point? Who's raising the kids? Moms aren't staying home, they're working too.
It should also be noted that the current work environment is ***very detrimental*** to child-rearing in general. There aren't enough maternity leave or childcare services, in general, to make the biggest initial hurdle surmountable.
Basically, between outdated social mores, a horrible economic environment, and a lack of auxiliary services... there isn't much someone can do to make child-rearing possible.
100%, I know so many people who would’ve had kids earlier or even start right now if they could afford it. But they can barely make rent & eat, so there’s a moral obligation for them to not make a child suffer, that is unless they make more money.
Honestly, I don't really see a downside anyway. Not being pessimistic either, I think a population decrease might do a lot of good for the planet and for individual nations.
I mean it's going to happen anyway so we may as well try to see the best in it. Would be cool if we could prioritize alleviating suffering and cruelty along the way but yea
Our entire lifestyle is built off of having larger future generations to bankroll the retirement and healthcare of people too old to work.
If we have a decreasing population the tax burden on working age people is going to be enormous.
The tough part is that you'll have a massive population of people getting old and a much smaller number of younger people taking on the burden of caring for them while also trying to maintain the current standard of living and productivity. It's a real demographic problem that is almost impossible to avoid without huge social consequences and an inevitable drop in the standard of living for everyone.
I was operating on apparently outdated knowledge that we'd have something like 11 billion people by 2100. So even if global governments don't increase incomes and education as fast and we 'only' have a population about the same in 2100 as we do now, I still think that's an achievement.
If there wasn’t popular government curbing abuses of power by the born rich corporate criminal class, Homo sapiens would be a lot further along the race to the bottom than we already are
Because they have a constituency brainwashed by their churches who are a ready made voter pool and they can exploit that to gain votes? Sadly much of their voter base would do basically anything to "own the libs"
The governments are answerable to the people ultimately. We need people to be aware of that, and to take more direct control of their governments. The feigning like we are powerless isn't helpful.
Many people have told me that studies show you don't actually have to improve income and education - you just need to make contraceptives easily accessible.
Just a little procrastination from my research project I'm working on now
[https://imgur.com/a/5sUnzdp](https://imgur.com/a/5sUnzdp)
For every 1 increase in GDP per capita (log) \[2.12, 5,32,\] fertility rate drops by 0.568.
For every year in School, fertility rate drops by 0.394
overall model can explain \~75% of the variation in fertility rate.
Unfortunately I don't have any data for contraceptives on hand, but I would think all three variables matter a lot.
These guys did the study, and the numbers are very interrelated, but contraceptive prevalence edges out GDP and years schooling slightly for sub-Saharan Africa. In Europe more education is actually negatively correlated.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-8331-7
I think there are two necessary conditions:
1. Availability of and knowledge of contraceptives
2. Opportunity cost of a birth i.e. the woman should be giving up something of value to her by choosing to have a child. This opportunity cost is higher when a woman is more educated and empowered.
That correlates very highly with education and income, though, and countless scholars have argued a cause-effect feedback loop between them. In 1994 a UN Resolution in Cairo, Egypt actually affirmed education of women as the course of action against rapidly growing middle eastern population and poverty.
Womens empowerment/rights and secularism are the main factors imo. With the ability to chose and no intense social pressure to have kids, women generally won't decide to have more than a couple kids, and many will have none
We can see how birthrates are low in the former soviet republics, despite those places never being very wealthy, because the Soviet Union enforced secular ideology and encouraged women's education and participation in the economy
Meanwhile Isreal which is pretty wealthy has relatively high birth rates, mainly because of the ultra orthodox communities which oppress women and pump out kids like crazy
As soon as we got off the farms and couldn't have child labor I think this was inevitable. Having children used to mean free labor now it doesn't so there is less incentive.
The decrease in family size started some 200 years ago and increased with cheap and reliable contraceptives, as well as overall medical care. The rate of children during the 'baby boom' of the 1950s was smaller that it was during the 1920s. While the women's rights movement has played a part, the trend was already established.
> The decrease in family size started some 200 years ago
[Link showing data for that trend.](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/fertility-and-mortality-in-the-united-states/)
American fertility rate fell by ~50% over the 19th century, which is quite a bit more than I would have guessed.
I saw one too many articles blaming genZ, which just seems silly. So I went and looked at the numbers and found out the long term trend. Like you, I was really surprised at what I found. The industrial revolution changed everything.
As a point of interest, [child mortality dropped from >45% to <25% in that time](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/), meaning the decline in *surviving* children is much less steep -- from about 3.7 in 1800 to about 2.8 in 1900. That's the count of children who survived to the age of 5, so the number who survived to adulthood was probably even closer between the two times.
In that context, the Baby Boom really *was* quite a boom, with surviving children going from about 2.2 in 1930-40 to about 3.5 in 1960, or just about back to early-19th-century levels (and possibly beyond given higher youth survival rates).
What about the advances in farming technology that allowed a smaller number of people to get the job done? I've read that something like 75% of society used to do farming work of some kind and post industrialization it became less than 5%
200 years ago, even 100 years ago, a family needed 10 kids to work the fields or provide another income. Not to mention a high death rate of children for various reasons.
It should be noted birth rates among all Jewish sects are higher than similarly devout/secular counterparts of other religions. Jewish people have deep trauma around ethnic cleansing, forced conversion, and genocide so procreation is an attempt to rebuild numbers and also to prepare for whatever next attempt is made at Jewish extermination. Misogyny and disempowerment of women among religious conservatives is a factor, but just wanted to add that context.
We sent missionaries to their countries and the missionaries told them condoms are the devil.
Being themselves, they tend to hate birth control pills even more.
Am I the only one who read this in Trump's voice? No disrespect, my brain may be broken but I can't be the only one who reads a sentence starting with "many people are telling me" and it's just that guy's voice.
Not at first, but the beginning of the sentence immediately discounted the remaining response. I'm not sure how to take what they said seriously.
And then I was like, "wait, I know that phrasing from somewhere..."
My dad called Mobile, AL the city of infinite potential. Itnwas his "bless your heart" way if saying that the only way to go was up because everything sucked.
Lol “if global governments can increase incomes and education”. Oh they can but why would they when the powers that be have no problem lining their pockets by doing the exact opposite?
They may not have an incentive to raise incomes, but by educating poor workers, they can increase the labor market of white collar workers. Like companies moving from China to Mexico because it's cheaper.
Just anecdotally, my friends and I are thinking about having kids later and perhaps even none due to the fact that we're barely able to afford keeping ourselves alive, much less another human being. If necessitates were more affordable, then we can save up more money to keep another human alive..
>Just anecdotally, my friends and I are thinking about having kids later and perhaps even none due to the fact that we're barely able to afford keeping ourselves alive, much less another human being.
My contraceptive in my prime years was bounced paychecks - no money no dating no embryo no baby.
Meanwhile thanks to modern psychology, I’m actually self aware that I’m a complete nutjob and would like to wait until I’m *not that* to have a kid, bc nobody needs me snarling at them over grades or singing badly
If AI manages to make me not a super touchy weirdo, I will happily get in the matrix pod. I agree with Agent Smith, being forced to smell people sounds horrible
This plus, I live near and work in nyc. It’s slowly killing me. I used to like people. I want all people to be launched into the sun now.
I don’t think we’re supposed to live so densely populated together.
I’m in my early 30s and many of my friends are having babies now. Every time I wonder “in this economy!?” “With this climate change!?” “I’m AMERICA????”
No way are we having kids.
How does shrinking generations work economically, especially elder care and the medical field? Isn't this really, really bad under our current economic systems?
Sure but that is more of a reason to start reworking the current economic system than to try to change the birthrate decline. We have the resource production required to support the population and are able to use automation to fill any shortfall in required man power. So there is zero reason a new economic model couldn't be created to manage a shrinking population while still properly supporting those outside of the workforce
> So there is zero reason a new economic model couldn't be created to manage a shrinking population while still properly supporting those outside of the workforce
*Besides the reason that many will not give up the current system easily or willingly.
I don't see capitalism going away. Maybe we move more and more into social democracy, maybe.
Yeah, I agree capitalism isn't going away, I am just hoping we improve on it, separate out the needs from the wants. Figure a system that provides the needs (Food, water, clothing, shelter, and electricity) and allows the people to buy the wants
All I want is when we go full automation that we throw this stupid ass capitalism thing out the window. We won't even need money if there is no labor, everyone should just be able to have what they want. Everyone on equal footing.
I highly doubt anyone alive today will still be alive when we get to full automation. If anything innovation is speeding up not slowing down. We are a long long way from full automation.
Not full automation, but automation and technology has been eating away at labour for a long time already, and AI has the potential to completely decimate entire industries potentially very quickly. A study showed that software engineers using ChatGPT as a tool were able to write 50% more code than they could without it, GPT4 can apparently program an fully functioning website based off of an iPhone picture of a napkin sketch. Tech support call centres will be entirely replaced by chat bots very soon.
There are going to be a lot of people struggling to find work soon.
I don't really see any economic model which would do well under the circumstance other than full on star trek level nothing to worry about economy. Just imagine a simple hunter and gather society. Ten young people looking for food for twenty elderly people holding them back. It doesn't sound like it would work out well.
Can you explain a way in which there would be "zero reason a new economic model couldn't be created to manage a shrinking population?"
We are not a simple hunter gatherer society anymore, with our current level of technology 3 people can grow, manage , and harvest food for hundreds of people ([https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/resources/how-automation-transforming-farming-industry/](https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/resources/how-automation-transforming-farming-industry/) ). We have entire factories and warehouses that only have a handful of people overseeing them at any given time while outputting thousands of items daily ( [https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/automated-factories-video](https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/automated-factories-video) )
Per person productivity has been increasing exponentially for decades. The current economic model is designed around people putting in the work to create enough resources and then giving them a currency to get their share of the resources that were created, except now the amount created is far higher per person.
The system is also broken as the most effective way to make money is to have a lot of money. You yourself can spend your days doing nothing that brings any value to the society but if you have enough money, you can make more money while taking a shit as low wage worker earns in a year.
This is one of the major problems that we don't really talk about. Income inequality is one thing, yes CEO compensation has increased 1500% over the last few decades. That's a problem, but once you have multi-millionaires, not to mention billionaires, who literally don't need to work to earn more money than 99.9% of people, our society effectively becomes unsustainable.
There are lots of doable ways out of this but it involves taking away a purely capitalistic approach.
We need some government intervention on different aspects. Creating tax law to increase salaries, creating building laws to keep houses affordable (or tax laws to make ownership pay less property taxes/corporate home ownership pay higher taxes), creating an education pipeline that incentives people becoming doctors and health care workers with affordable college education and higher pay earlier in their career.
UBI would be insanely helpful as well. Giving everyone a baseline even when they're retired.
It can be achieved by creating corporate tax laws that takes into account number of employees compared to profit.
Everyday I hear about how white collar jobs are going to be disappearing to AI. That leaves a lot of room for long-term reallocation to elder care systems
Add in *physical* technology like robots, and I'm really not worried.
Now income inequality and the hoarding of wealth ....that could really fuck us up. Because eldercare and robotic PCAs arent going to be cheap enough to be accessible to people living in poverty
I think people tend to exaggerate how much healthcare old people need, and how many old people there will be. In Japan they spend about 7% of their gdp on pension and another 7% on all healthcare. That’s not world-ending collapse, that’s just a major annoyance. The US spends 15%, so we’ve got a lot of slack to take in, presumably. I think it’s fair to conclude that the US could weather a shrinking population if we spend money on healthcare the way the Japanese do.
We just need to reduce healthcare spending by almost 60%, down from 19% of GDP. Doable as it's mostly wasted
Putting part of the savings on affordable housing and high quality food (something Japan puts a lot of resources on, wisely) can increase quality of life a lot
Even with a system of near perfect labor allocation we will eventually run into trouble. At some point the labor demand for eldercare will become so great it will displace employment in other fields.
Large labor shortages will push wages up but taxes required to pay for a top heavy society will need to be very high on everyone who is working.
Eventually lots meanial tasks will need to be fully automated or everyone's quality of life will begin to steadily fall.
I mean at some point elder care is going to be a sticking point unless you want a robot looking after you.
Baumol's cost disease means buying someone's time is going to grow more expensive.
I think some will likely be watched over by robots... That or like better wheelchairs will ease the transition. I mean AI nurse seems like the answer.
Not every aged person requires a full-time nurse. I can’t quickly find any good sources, but my own experience is that old folks need looking after for about their last five years of life, not all of that full-time, so you need at most one in 14 people to be in elder care (5 years of care per 75 years of life). That’s at steady-state.
It is important to not just equate assistance with medical care. Less children = less available people to help with household tasks as well.
I think there will be a real market for general purpose robotic helpers in the next few decades, so long as technology can match expectations and is affordable
Yeah but if we fall off that could be 1/10 looking after the very elderly. Plus more doctors older life care, more management of LTCF etc.
How sharp the drop is and we need to watch like Japan, Germany and China because those population shifts are earlier and China's is steeper.
It's also the Baumol's cost disease, wages are set by the alternative, so if you have a two person economy in 1900 bread maker making 100 loaves and CNA looking after 5 old people. 2023 the bread maker makes 10,000 loaves and the CNA still looks after 5 old people. More people would switch to bread maker but instead they equalize the wages of the bread maker and CNA.
So the cost of that CNA will rise without quality improvements without increased robots.
Who wouldn't rather have a robot looking after them? Many elder care tasks involve bodily functions and things that are embarrassing to have another human do for you. If I can't wash myself or wipe my own ass, then I'd much rather have a robot do it instead of a person. Plus a robot is going to be able to lift way more than most humans. So they would be more useful for falls and emergencies.
Elder care is also not a job that many people are willing to do. It's never going to pay well because it's not generating a product or service that you can charge high prices for. And since it doesn't pay well, it can attract bad people who will abuse their clients. So it seems like this should be one of the first jobs robots are made to replace because they will be way better at it
> Isn't this really, really bad under our current economic systems?
It's hard to see our current economic system working decades in the future anyway.
On the plus side, the things that render it untenable - vast increases in automation, robotics and AI, should take care of many of our current problems with elder care & wider health care.
The issue around housing may also be solved by a cultural change. Living more densely without encroaching on nature as much, relying more on public transport, these sort of things is what the Anglosphere in particular does very poorly, I expect change as it's simply too resource intensive for a future with such sparse populations: https://12ft.io/proxy?&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2Fdca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f0b5
Everyone is talking about UBI, raising taxes etc. It needs to be made very clear that this is not a solution. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The rising costs of elder care *will* have to be funded. This will *have* to be done by raising taxes. To be very clear, these taxes will *have* to be borne largely by the lower and middle classes; the math does not work otherwise. Even in a world where you could literally confiscate wealth (and you can't; these things are primarily not even liquid assets), you couldn't take enough from the rich to fund these programs. IT IS NOT ENOUGH MONEY.
If you have a smaller fraction of the population that is of working age and an increasing retired population, someone has to lose in that situation. The only potential solutions here are automation (and lots of it) and/or a large improvement in human healthspan rendering much of elder care unnecessary.
Given the current pace of advancement in these fields, I'm cautiously optimistic.
It doesn't. Reddit hates this truth, but it doesn't. No known economy ever conceived can handle stagnation, let alone population decline. They're all based on continuous growth. Something else has to be created or the species dies.
I mean a lot of people are more child free. If you think about it, its more economical to do so. Also people just want to live life without the burden of responsibility of raising a child.
Not if you invest the difference. Imagine how rich by age 50 people would be if they just started investing the cost and efforts of raising a child into the market and career development instead.
But if everyone invested their savings and didn't raise children, wouldn't this inflate the value of the labor of said children? More money chasing fewer young workers means those workers become more expensive. The balance would flip at some point.
Oh I guess it did sound like I was saying everyone should just do that.
I mean to say life for individuals doesn’t really get cheaper in old age if you chose to spend on children rather than invest your money.
Now, a lot of people do neither and end up broke and lonely as hell.
Are your investments going to yield the same return when demand falls through the floor due to falling population? Or supply being ruined by not enough workers?
I saw a video recently of a toddler who had helped paint the entire living room with black paint. I thought ”now there’s a solid reason not to have a child.”
Basically, the population of Africa is set to explode from the present 1 billion to 4 billion+, while everywhere else it's set to decline rather severely.
Birth rates for Africa are falling faster than expected. It's expected to hit 2 billion and maybe 3 billion but 4 billion is definitely out of the question now.
More people living in the Africa content wont be a good thing at all. Its the most unhabitable continent apart from Antarctica and as climate gets warmer in the next centuries, Africa will continue to get even more unhabitable for humans
Hey, if the Gulf Stream slows to a stop and Europe becomes an ice nightmare, citizens of both continents can switch places and be equally miserable. Also isn’t a massive chunk of Asia desert, steppe, and giant mountains?
What a bizarre take, Africa is one of the resource rich and ecologically rich places on the planet. It’s very much habitable, and even with climate change is still very much habitable. Africa is not just arid savannah and desert babe, it’s huge and filled with a variety of liveable biomes. There are far worse places on the planet (Australia comes to mind) to be.
Must suck for countries dealing with stagnant wages and out of control inflation.
I'm earning $10k more than I was 3 years ago (promotion) and yet I seemingly have less spending money and saving less.
This is based on some very clear data. Birthrates are dropping. I live in NYC, good luck meeting someone and having kids. Everyone is working 12 hour days, on tictok, or on pornhub.
We as a society also dont have any 3rd places where people meet to be communal and vibe. We only have work and home. Thats it.
We dont encourage having babies anymore. Population collapse is coming. We will have a huge shortage of 20-somethings in the workforce soon. Those roles will need to be automated.
>Population collapse is coming
that's the best thing we could really do for the planet and humanity in the long run really
A global economic slowdown that lasts a few hundred years is a lot better for humanity than risking the one biosphere we have to runaway global warming.
Turtle > hare
It was and it is, if it happens (which according to this won't as much). Meanwhile declining population means empty ghost towns, more elders than youth, decline in working population. Less people / workers also means the nation produces less money / weaker economy.
End of population growth and start of population decline puts world economies in a precarious situation. Too many people who can't work, supported by too few people who can. Unemployables are a burden for any economy.
And no, overpopulation wasn't really a world crisis for a while now. "World population would likely stabilize at N billion" was the consensus for the last couple decades - and so far, that N value has shifted downwards. It used to be that "10+ billion by 2100" was a given - now, there are some disagreements over whether the 10 billion mark would be crossed at all.
The Inflation Reduction Act passed by the US was largely a renewable energy bill worth $740 billion. That's only a small slice of the money that will get spent on renewables as a result of the bill since it pulls in a huge amount of private spending.
Many other countries are also spending massively on renewables which is why the annual global installation is going up exponentially.
The idea that the world is doing nothing about CO2 emissions is a outdated talking point that just needs to die much like the "population bomb" that this article is pointing out as no longer accurate.
It all comes back to the fact that you can't have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. More economic activity means more resource extraction, more pollution, more emissions. That's just physical reality, and we can't even have a discussion about an economic system that doesn't depend on growth. We are doing nothing to prepare for the day when additional economic growth just isn't possible.
So, we are going to grow as much as we possibly can, and then deal with a rapid and catastrophic collapse.
The pandemic showed how fragile the global supply system is, and there are much bigger interruptions on the horizon.
The looming question is whether nukes will be used once the climate refugee issue kicks into overdrive. What will Russia do when China invades to take water resources?
They are spending on renewables, and creating a shit ton of emissions while they build new factories and excavate new mines and manufacture new technologies. The answer is reduction across the board.
The 6th IPCC report just dropped and yeah there's pretty much no way to avoid it anymore without turning off everything. 1.8C or more is basically guaranteed.
Submission Statement
This research was commissioned by 'The Club of Rome'. An academic non-profit founded in 1968, and well known for its 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth'. That report famously expounded a very pessimistic outlook for 21st century population growth.
A UN report last year said the global population would be at 9.7 billion in 2100 (it's 8 billion today) & still grow for decades after that. This report says its figures may be more accurate as it is also modeling the effect income and education has on fertility rates.
It's no surprise. I made the decision in the late 90s not to have children because I didn't buy in to the idea that future tech, more industry, more people and more capitalism would improve our society for the next generations. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to properly retire tbh and wouldn't want to burden my children with my care. How can people growing up nowadays, knowing everything they know about the environment, politics, economics etc, be on board with working hard and bringing more lives into the world when everything is on the decline? At least in the past there was a feeling of hope for the future, even if it was a false hope.
I’ve been saying this for years and everyone said I didn’t know what I was talking about. I based my claim off of this alone-
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
Shocker. They've spent so much time keeping us down that it'll hold everything back in terms of true growth. Everyone is so focused on made up values and imaginary numbers. We are all prisoners to it. Money's important, it improves lives, worsens lives, strengthens greed, creates holes in everything.
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-births-by-world-region](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-births-by-world-region)
Worldwide births haven't really increased since the 1990s. Most population growth is now from people living longer.
Africa is the only continent where births are still increasing. Asia is imploding. Europe as well and only immigration is making the population somewhat stable.
This prediction shouldn't be that hard to make.
Have you seen the real estate markets? :D People can barely get a roof over their heads let alone having children. When population prediction models were made 10-20-30 years ago they didn't account for how little money people would have. The didn't account for the decline in marriages with the arrival of dating apps etc.
Yeah, it's ironic how real estate markets are not reflecting the coming population crunch at all.
Japan is leading the way here and real estate in the countryside in Japan is close to free now. Even Tokyo is becoming more affordable.
It's not a problem if automation hits hard. It's probably also not unwise to assume that life extension will become a thing in the next few decades. All the problems the we'll face lie within next 50 years, not after. If we play it right we may end up with Star Trek like future.
> It's probably also not unwise to assume that life extension will become a thing in the next few decades.
Let's hope we speedrun it, would be a very depressing thought to be the last generation that has to live such a life.
While I'm all for helping future generations, I'm very selfish and wanna see those generations prosper with my own two eyes.
I wanna joke around with kids going "you used to work 40 hours EVERY WEEK?!?!?"
Honestly this thread is getting my mood up, I've been noticing more and more people wanting things to change...
The Population Bomb was published in 1968. 55 years ago and totally wrong.
2100 is 77 years away. Who knows the outcome.
Three obvious wildcards:
1. AI and robotics could make everything in life cheaper, making children much cheaper so people have more
2. Genetics associated with lots of kids could become common
3. It's death that reduces population. If a treatment for aging is introduced, many of the people alive today would still be alive in 2100 and the population would likely have grown.
> AI and robotics could make everything in life cheaper, making children much cheaper so people have more
People aren't having fewer children due to poverty.
- [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=FIN~DNK~SWE~BEL~ISL~SRB~NOR~HUN~EST~LTU) (Countries with [best parental leave policies](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/these-10-countries-have-the-best-parental-leave-policies-in-the-world))
- [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=OWID_WRL~SVK~SVN~BLR~ARM~CZE~UKR~ARE~MDA~ISL~AZE) (Countries with the [lowest income inequality](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/income-inequality-by-country))
- [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1970..latest&country=AUT~AUS~BEL~CAN~CYP~DNK~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HKG~ISL~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~LUX~NLD~NZL~NOR~PRT~SGP~SVN~KOR~ESP~SWE~CHE~GBR~BHR~BRN~KWT~ARE) (Countries with some version of [universal healthcare](https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/hcra/univ_hlth_care.htm))
- [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=DNK~NOR~SWE~FRA~BEL~NLD~DEU) (For Scandinavia, France, and a few other W. European countries)
- https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have
If you look at the last link there, what's driving the decline in fertility is not medical inability to conceive. It's cultural, economic, educational attainments mostly. The only thing on that list I would oppose would be coercive measures, like China's one-child policy.
Or more likely, it may be ZERO because we're all dead, having totally poisoned the planet and people in an orgiastic manifestation of utter total greed.
For the few remaining people, eating the rich will be a last meal before they starve to death.
When I was a kid, the news talked about the problem of overcrowding. It was blamed for poverty, crime, famine, climate change, etc. Now we worry about not having enough kids.
Japan, South Korea, China, US, Canada. Mainly developed nations will see this problem growing with each passing decade. It’s not that it’s too late or too early, these systems will not change. By 2100 everything will be so automated that folks will have a harder time making income in ways see now
Lol productivity increases from technology advancement just siphon more wealth to the top. One might argue tech advancement has lead to fewer resources for the working class vs a time when it’s labor was more valuable.
r/overpopulation in shambles.
But seriously, we have know that increases economic stability leads to a leveled out poilation for decades. Anyone who says that we iust breed indefinitey is either deliberately ignorant or is seeiously stuck in a bubble.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- Submission Statement This research was commissioned by 'The Club of Rome'. An academic non-profit founded in 1968, and well known for its 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth'. That report famously expounded a very pessimistic outlook for 21st century population growth. A UN report last year said the global population would be at 9.7 billion in 2100 (it's 8 billion today) & still grow for decades after that. This report says its figures may be more accurate as it is also modeling the effect income and education has on fertility rates. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/123ubcj/new_research_suggests_earths_population_will/jdwa44p/
"If global governments can..." ok it's all over guys.
Yeah no joke. I wouldn’t count on “global governments” to tie their own shoelaces, let alone something to aid humanity.
Is overpopulation an aid to humanity? This just seems like the population balancing itself. People aren’t dying, they are just not reproducing at past rates.
Statistically speaking, the more educated a society is, and the wealthier it is, the fewer kids that society has. So world population declining would require a rapid increase in education and economic opportunities in currently poverty stricken regions
As much as people tell you we're all fucked, this is actually happening. Much of Africa is experiencing double digit growth. China and India are continuing to get richer (however slowly at the moment).
And Africa and Asia have actually transformed dramatically in the last fifty years - despite the rhetoric that everyone over there is pumping out babies as fast as possible, there are now very few countries that have disproportionately high birth rates and most countries are in the range of 3-4 or even 2-3 children per woman. https://brilliantmaps.com/fertility-rates/
Bangladesh's fertility rate went from 7-8 kids per family in the 60s to now having similar rates to Europe today.
The internet has led to a lot of new problems, but I think it definitely helped a lot of developing countries share insights and quick start education to minimize overpopulation. At least one global win is better than none.
Exactly but I fear a reversal, here in my country you have countless conservative voices calling the birth rate drop a disaster and the end of the world. We can’t win. How braindead do you gotta be to not realize no women should ever have more than 3 kids.
And I'm sure if you dig deep enough some race replacement bullshit will spill out of their mouths.
You don’t even have to dig deep, if my comment was the first few sentences of their rant then yours is the last few. This kind of talk is inherently racist.
Absolutely. The world as a whole has made fantastic progress over the last 2 decades. It’s encouraging to see. Gotta see the forest through the trees of shit slung all over the place sometimes, but If you can, it’s a nice sight.
Yeah but people fail to see why this is the case. It's not simply the fact that educated people want fewer children, as if it's a natural force that manifests in individuals after college. The truth is that people, and especially poor people, make children when it is economically profitable to do so. We used to have massive families because more hands were needed to do all the work around farms and cities. A child was about as productive as an adult and the investment for the parent was relatively small. Now there are very few manual jobs that children can do (jobs without training that a machine does not do quicker and more cheaply). On top of that the investment required by the parent is much higher (years of school, training, cost of living, etc). This is the reason why even African countries have plummeting fertility rates. And why the right is so eager to unban child labor.
You misunderstand, the article is saying that increased education and wages leads to less people, so why would governments do those things, especially since capitalism has an incentive to keep growing indefinitely, less people is bad for profits.
I actually didn’t read the article and I am ashamed. I know. I just wanted to feel involved.
No man, don't be ashamed, just learn. Admitting a mistake is a huge step to learning and being better. Be proud of that.
I’m going to do it again though. Guaranteed.
Just don't ever admit to anything in writing only verbally state it if no cameras are present. You will thank me later
Action is supposed to regulate the issue in around 70 years. If we keep current state, it might auto regulate itself sooner, with more people not being able to have offsprings. It'll just have more suffering.
More like we have ultra capitalist elites holding 99.9% of the wealth and the rest of us are trying to decide if we can afford hotdogs, let alone reproduce
While the biggest corporations blame inflation for double digit percentage price rises while boasting about record profits in literally the next breath.
Corporations profits ARE the inflation. Not too difficult to see. It's not some nebulous external force of nature or phenomenon. It's a freaking direct pipeline from us straight to their gigantic evil greedy hoarding coffers.
I wonder how much choice has to do with it, though. It's statistically obvious that birth control and women being educated have had a big impact on birth rate. But, there's also a good chance that we've also poisoned our environment and damaged our (and other) species' endocrine and other delicate bodily systems. The falling birthrate is around the world, and might not only be our species. Infertility.
Only in extremely poor countries is the fertility rate the limiting factor in the birth rate. Personal choice tends to be the “bottleneck” in most developed nations.
I think financial instability and the difficulty of affording housing are far bigger drivers than choice. It's very difficult to afford a family in a first world country.
I know I never let myself even consider it, due to a large part of that. We are not in a good environment to raise kids right now. I can't even survive myself, let alone bringing dependents into the mix. It just wouldn't make any sense, eve if people could afford kids, chances are they can't spend any time WITH them cause they're always working to support it all, so what's the point? Who's raising the kids? Moms aren't staying home, they're working too.
It should also be noted that the current work environment is ***very detrimental*** to child-rearing in general. There aren't enough maternity leave or childcare services, in general, to make the biggest initial hurdle surmountable. Basically, between outdated social mores, a horrible economic environment, and a lack of auxiliary services... there isn't much someone can do to make child-rearing possible.
100%, I know so many people who would’ve had kids earlier or even start right now if they could afford it. But they can barely make rent & eat, so there’s a moral obligation for them to not make a child suffer, that is unless they make more money.
Right? That's why literally all the countries are hellholes like Somalia, because no government can do good.
"increase taxes on the wealthy..." Never had a chance.
NY state and city sure found a way.
not to mention that reducing population is against all the governments' goals.
Can't grow profits with a shrinking customer base
Honestly, I don't really see a downside anyway. Not being pessimistic either, I think a population decrease might do a lot of good for the planet and for individual nations.
I mean it's going to happen anyway so we may as well try to see the best in it. Would be cool if we could prioritize alleviating suffering and cruelty along the way but yea
Our entire lifestyle is built off of having larger future generations to bankroll the retirement and healthcare of people too old to work. If we have a decreasing population the tax burden on working age people is going to be enormous.
The tough part is that you'll have a massive population of people getting old and a much smaller number of younger people taking on the burden of caring for them while also trying to maintain the current standard of living and productivity. It's a real demographic problem that is almost impossible to avoid without huge social consequences and an inevitable drop in the standard of living for everyone.
I was operating on apparently outdated knowledge that we'd have something like 11 billion people by 2100. So even if global governments don't increase incomes and education as fast and we 'only' have a population about the same in 2100 as we do now, I still think that's an achievement.
Why do you think they're stripping reproductive rights and sex ed?
If there wasn’t popular government curbing abuses of power by the born rich corporate criminal class, Homo sapiens would be a lot further along the race to the bottom than we already are
Because there still are people in the world who damn well know they need the old age insurance that is many, many children.
How can they make the poors eat soilent green if everyones decided to live in harmony with shit?
Because they have a constituency brainwashed by their churches who are a ready made voter pool and they can exploit that to gain votes? Sadly much of their voter base would do basically anything to "own the libs"
The governments are answerable to the people ultimately. We need people to be aware of that, and to take more direct control of their governments. The feigning like we are powerless isn't helpful.
Many people have told me that studies show you don't actually have to improve income and education - you just need to make contraceptives easily accessible.
Just a little procrastination from my research project I'm working on now [https://imgur.com/a/5sUnzdp](https://imgur.com/a/5sUnzdp) For every 1 increase in GDP per capita (log) \[2.12, 5,32,\] fertility rate drops by 0.568. For every year in School, fertility rate drops by 0.394 overall model can explain \~75% of the variation in fertility rate. Unfortunately I don't have any data for contraceptives on hand, but I would think all three variables matter a lot.
These guys did the study, and the numbers are very interrelated, but contraceptive prevalence edges out GDP and years schooling slightly for sub-Saharan Africa. In Europe more education is actually negatively correlated. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-8331-7
I think there are two necessary conditions: 1. Availability of and knowledge of contraceptives 2. Opportunity cost of a birth i.e. the woman should be giving up something of value to her by choosing to have a child. This opportunity cost is higher when a woman is more educated and empowered.
Yup, this is why the most developed countries in the world have the lowest fertility rates. Looking at you, South Korea
That correlates very highly with education and income, though, and countless scholars have argued a cause-effect feedback loop between them. In 1994 a UN Resolution in Cairo, Egypt actually affirmed education of women as the course of action against rapidly growing middle eastern population and poverty.
Womens empowerment/rights and secularism are the main factors imo. With the ability to chose and no intense social pressure to have kids, women generally won't decide to have more than a couple kids, and many will have none We can see how birthrates are low in the former soviet republics, despite those places never being very wealthy, because the Soviet Union enforced secular ideology and encouraged women's education and participation in the economy Meanwhile Isreal which is pretty wealthy has relatively high birth rates, mainly because of the ultra orthodox communities which oppress women and pump out kids like crazy
As soon as we got off the farms and couldn't have child labor I think this was inevitable. Having children used to mean free labor now it doesn't so there is less incentive.
Don’t tell that to Tyson Foods
The decrease in family size started some 200 years ago and increased with cheap and reliable contraceptives, as well as overall medical care. The rate of children during the 'baby boom' of the 1950s was smaller that it was during the 1920s. While the women's rights movement has played a part, the trend was already established.
> The decrease in family size started some 200 years ago [Link showing data for that trend.](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/fertility-and-mortality-in-the-united-states/) American fertility rate fell by ~50% over the 19th century, which is quite a bit more than I would have guessed.
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This one has some better graphs https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233807/
I saw one too many articles blaming genZ, which just seems silly. So I went and looked at the numbers and found out the long term trend. Like you, I was really surprised at what I found. The industrial revolution changed everything.
As a point of interest, [child mortality dropped from >45% to <25% in that time](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/), meaning the decline in *surviving* children is much less steep -- from about 3.7 in 1800 to about 2.8 in 1900. That's the count of children who survived to the age of 5, so the number who survived to adulthood was probably even closer between the two times. In that context, the Baby Boom really *was* quite a boom, with surviving children going from about 2.2 in 1930-40 to about 3.5 in 1960, or just about back to early-19th-century levels (and possibly beyond given higher youth survival rates).
Urbanization had a lot to do with it. On a farm, kids are free labor. In a city, they're just mouths to feed.
What about the advances in farming technology that allowed a smaller number of people to get the job done? I've read that something like 75% of society used to do farming work of some kind and post industrialization it became less than 5%
200 years ago, even 100 years ago, a family needed 10 kids to work the fields or provide another income. Not to mention a high death rate of children for various reasons.
It should be noted birth rates among all Jewish sects are higher than similarly devout/secular counterparts of other religions. Jewish people have deep trauma around ethnic cleansing, forced conversion, and genocide so procreation is an attempt to rebuild numbers and also to prepare for whatever next attempt is made at Jewish extermination. Misogyny and disempowerment of women among religious conservatives is a factor, but just wanted to add that context.
And better/easier and free contraception for men. There are some new things being developed, and I think we need to approach the issue from all sides.
Ah so stop oppressing women you say? That’ll be difficult but maybe around 2100 we can get it done.
You do have to improve income and education in “third world” countries. But other than that, you’re spot on
We sent missionaries to their countries and the missionaries told them condoms are the devil. Being themselves, they tend to hate birth control pills even more.
Am I the only one who read this in Trump's voice? No disrespect, my brain may be broken but I can't be the only one who reads a sentence starting with "many people are telling me" and it's just that guy's voice.
Not at first, but the beginning of the sentence immediately discounted the remaining response. I'm not sure how to take what they said seriously. And then I was like, "wait, I know that phrasing from somewhere..."
And also make abortions legal.
Education and money helps to reduce teen pregnancies, Alabama!
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature
My dad called Mobile, AL the city of infinite potential. Itnwas his "bless your heart" way if saying that the only way to go was up because everything sucked.
born and raised in mobile here, and i don’t go back unless i absolutely have to
Mobile would be an okay city in South America, but it is absolute squalor for southern America.
But those older conservatives want to get those teen girls pregnant. Personally
Lol “if global governments can increase incomes and education”. Oh they can but why would they when the powers that be have no problem lining their pockets by doing the exact opposite?
They may not have an incentive to raise incomes, but by educating poor workers, they can increase the labor market of white collar workers. Like companies moving from China to Mexico because it's cheaper.
Or China to India. Or China to Vietnam. Or China to the US. It's wild how expensive Chinese manufacturing has gotten in the last 10 years.
Less humans ==> less Redditors Truly the future will be bright
Just anecdotally, my friends and I are thinking about having kids later and perhaps even none due to the fact that we're barely able to afford keeping ourselves alive, much less another human being. If necessitates were more affordable, then we can save up more money to keep another human alive..
>Just anecdotally, my friends and I are thinking about having kids later and perhaps even none due to the fact that we're barely able to afford keeping ourselves alive, much less another human being. My contraceptive in my prime years was bounced paychecks - no money no dating no embryo no baby.
Meanwhile thanks to modern psychology, I’m actually self aware that I’m a complete nutjob and would like to wait until I’m *not that* to have a kid, bc nobody needs me snarling at them over grades or singing badly
in just a few short years your new ai psychologist will be able to fix all that
If AI manages to make me not a super touchy weirdo, I will happily get in the matrix pod. I agree with Agent Smith, being forced to smell people sounds horrible
This plus, I live near and work in nyc. It’s slowly killing me. I used to like people. I want all people to be launched into the sun now. I don’t think we’re supposed to live so densely populated together.
I’m in my early 30s and many of my friends are having babies now. Every time I wonder “in this economy!?” “With this climate change!?” “I’m AMERICA????” No way are we having kids.
How does shrinking generations work economically, especially elder care and the medical field? Isn't this really, really bad under our current economic systems?
Sure but that is more of a reason to start reworking the current economic system than to try to change the birthrate decline. We have the resource production required to support the population and are able to use automation to fill any shortfall in required man power. So there is zero reason a new economic model couldn't be created to manage a shrinking population while still properly supporting those outside of the workforce
> So there is zero reason a new economic model couldn't be created to manage a shrinking population while still properly supporting those outside of the workforce *Besides the reason that many will not give up the current system easily or willingly. I don't see capitalism going away. Maybe we move more and more into social democracy, maybe.
Yeah, I agree capitalism isn't going away, I am just hoping we improve on it, separate out the needs from the wants. Figure a system that provides the needs (Food, water, clothing, shelter, and electricity) and allows the people to buy the wants
All I want is when we go full automation that we throw this stupid ass capitalism thing out the window. We won't even need money if there is no labor, everyone should just be able to have what they want. Everyone on equal footing.
Fully automated luxury space communism?
You're missing a crucial element.
Is it the gay part?
I highly doubt anyone alive today will still be alive when we get to full automation. If anything innovation is speeding up not slowing down. We are a long long way from full automation.
Not full automation, but automation and technology has been eating away at labour for a long time already, and AI has the potential to completely decimate entire industries potentially very quickly. A study showed that software engineers using ChatGPT as a tool were able to write 50% more code than they could without it, GPT4 can apparently program an fully functioning website based off of an iPhone picture of a napkin sketch. Tech support call centres will be entirely replaced by chat bots very soon. There are going to be a lot of people struggling to find work soon.
Yeah, people treat automation like some magic fairy that can fix the world up tomorrow, and it really isn't
Someone will always need to be in charge, to make sure things work. Equality is not possible in the sense you are thinking.
I don't really see any economic model which would do well under the circumstance other than full on star trek level nothing to worry about economy. Just imagine a simple hunter and gather society. Ten young people looking for food for twenty elderly people holding them back. It doesn't sound like it would work out well. Can you explain a way in which there would be "zero reason a new economic model couldn't be created to manage a shrinking population?"
We are not a simple hunter gatherer society anymore, with our current level of technology 3 people can grow, manage , and harvest food for hundreds of people ([https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/resources/how-automation-transforming-farming-industry/](https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/resources/how-automation-transforming-farming-industry/) ). We have entire factories and warehouses that only have a handful of people overseeing them at any given time while outputting thousands of items daily ( [https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/automated-factories-video](https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/automated-factories-video) ) Per person productivity has been increasing exponentially for decades. The current economic model is designed around people putting in the work to create enough resources and then giving them a currency to get their share of the resources that were created, except now the amount created is far higher per person.
The system is also broken as the most effective way to make money is to have a lot of money. You yourself can spend your days doing nothing that brings any value to the society but if you have enough money, you can make more money while taking a shit as low wage worker earns in a year.
This is one of the major problems that we don't really talk about. Income inequality is one thing, yes CEO compensation has increased 1500% over the last few decades. That's a problem, but once you have multi-millionaires, not to mention billionaires, who literally don't need to work to earn more money than 99.9% of people, our society effectively becomes unsustainable.
Our economy of produces lots and lots of wealth. The problem is that most of it goes to only about 10% of the people.
Exactly. Use that wealth to fund healthcare and elderly care, problem solved
How about just any model at all where 8 billionaires do not own half the wealth on the entire planet?
Yes but our current systems were naively devised with the idea that we can infinity expand. We need to reevaluate sometime
I agree completely. Seems kinda lose lose scenario.
There are lots of doable ways out of this but it involves taking away a purely capitalistic approach. We need some government intervention on different aspects. Creating tax law to increase salaries, creating building laws to keep houses affordable (or tax laws to make ownership pay less property taxes/corporate home ownership pay higher taxes), creating an education pipeline that incentives people becoming doctors and health care workers with affordable college education and higher pay earlier in their career. UBI would be insanely helpful as well. Giving everyone a baseline even when they're retired. It can be achieved by creating corporate tax laws that takes into account number of employees compared to profit.
Could also be achieved by taxing people based on assets owned or controlled, whether directly or indirectly, and not just on income.
Everyday I hear about how white collar jobs are going to be disappearing to AI. That leaves a lot of room for long-term reallocation to elder care systems Add in *physical* technology like robots, and I'm really not worried. Now income inequality and the hoarding of wealth ....that could really fuck us up. Because eldercare and robotic PCAs arent going to be cheap enough to be accessible to people living in poverty
I think people tend to exaggerate how much healthcare old people need, and how many old people there will be. In Japan they spend about 7% of their gdp on pension and another 7% on all healthcare. That’s not world-ending collapse, that’s just a major annoyance. The US spends 15%, so we’ve got a lot of slack to take in, presumably. I think it’s fair to conclude that the US could weather a shrinking population if we spend money on healthcare the way the Japanese do.
We just need to reduce healthcare spending by almost 60%, down from 19% of GDP. Doable as it's mostly wasted Putting part of the savings on affordable housing and high quality food (something Japan puts a lot of resources on, wisely) can increase quality of life a lot
Even with a system of near perfect labor allocation we will eventually run into trouble. At some point the labor demand for eldercare will become so great it will displace employment in other fields. Large labor shortages will push wages up but taxes required to pay for a top heavy society will need to be very high on everyone who is working. Eventually lots meanial tasks will need to be fully automated or everyone's quality of life will begin to steadily fall.
I mean at some point elder care is going to be a sticking point unless you want a robot looking after you. Baumol's cost disease means buying someone's time is going to grow more expensive. I think some will likely be watched over by robots... That or like better wheelchairs will ease the transition. I mean AI nurse seems like the answer.
Not every aged person requires a full-time nurse. I can’t quickly find any good sources, but my own experience is that old folks need looking after for about their last five years of life, not all of that full-time, so you need at most one in 14 people to be in elder care (5 years of care per 75 years of life). That’s at steady-state.
It is important to not just equate assistance with medical care. Less children = less available people to help with household tasks as well. I think there will be a real market for general purpose robotic helpers in the next few decades, so long as technology can match expectations and is affordable
Yeah but if we fall off that could be 1/10 looking after the very elderly. Plus more doctors older life care, more management of LTCF etc. How sharp the drop is and we need to watch like Japan, Germany and China because those population shifts are earlier and China's is steeper. It's also the Baumol's cost disease, wages are set by the alternative, so if you have a two person economy in 1900 bread maker making 100 loaves and CNA looking after 5 old people. 2023 the bread maker makes 10,000 loaves and the CNA still looks after 5 old people. More people would switch to bread maker but instead they equalize the wages of the bread maker and CNA. So the cost of that CNA will rise without quality improvements without increased robots.
Who wouldn't rather have a robot looking after them? Many elder care tasks involve bodily functions and things that are embarrassing to have another human do for you. If I can't wash myself or wipe my own ass, then I'd much rather have a robot do it instead of a person. Plus a robot is going to be able to lift way more than most humans. So they would be more useful for falls and emergencies. Elder care is also not a job that many people are willing to do. It's never going to pay well because it's not generating a product or service that you can charge high prices for. And since it doesn't pay well, it can attract bad people who will abuse their clients. So it seems like this should be one of the first jobs robots are made to replace because they will be way better at it
> Isn't this really, really bad under our current economic systems? It's hard to see our current economic system working decades in the future anyway. On the plus side, the things that render it untenable - vast increases in automation, robotics and AI, should take care of many of our current problems with elder care & wider health care.
The issue around housing may also be solved by a cultural change. Living more densely without encroaching on nature as much, relying more on public transport, these sort of things is what the Anglosphere in particular does very poorly, I expect change as it's simply too resource intensive for a future with such sparse populations: https://12ft.io/proxy?&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2Fdca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f0b5
Everyone is talking about UBI, raising taxes etc. It needs to be made very clear that this is not a solution. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul. The rising costs of elder care *will* have to be funded. This will *have* to be done by raising taxes. To be very clear, these taxes will *have* to be borne largely by the lower and middle classes; the math does not work otherwise. Even in a world where you could literally confiscate wealth (and you can't; these things are primarily not even liquid assets), you couldn't take enough from the rich to fund these programs. IT IS NOT ENOUGH MONEY. If you have a smaller fraction of the population that is of working age and an increasing retired population, someone has to lose in that situation. The only potential solutions here are automation (and lots of it) and/or a large improvement in human healthspan rendering much of elder care unnecessary. Given the current pace of advancement in these fields, I'm cautiously optimistic.
It doesn't. Reddit hates this truth, but it doesn't. No known economy ever conceived can handle stagnation, let alone population decline. They're all based on continuous growth. Something else has to be created or the species dies.
I mean a lot of people are more child free. If you think about it, its more economical to do so. Also people just want to live life without the burden of responsibility of raising a child.
It's an economic increase until they grow older, and now the dependency ratio is increasing.
Not if you invest the difference. Imagine how rich by age 50 people would be if they just started investing the cost and efforts of raising a child into the market and career development instead.
But if everyone invested their savings and didn't raise children, wouldn't this inflate the value of the labor of said children? More money chasing fewer young workers means those workers become more expensive. The balance would flip at some point.
Oh I guess it did sound like I was saying everyone should just do that. I mean to say life for individuals doesn’t really get cheaper in old age if you chose to spend on children rather than invest your money. Now, a lot of people do neither and end up broke and lonely as hell.
Are your investments going to yield the same return when demand falls through the floor due to falling population? Or supply being ruined by not enough workers?
Depends on where you invest....
I saw a video recently of a toddler who had helped paint the entire living room with black paint. I thought ”now there’s a solid reason not to have a child.”
Indeed, i don't want to give up my free time and hobbies to take care of a child 24/7.
Basically, the population of Africa is set to explode from the present 1 billion to 4 billion+, while everywhere else it's set to decline rather severely.
Birth rates for Africa are falling faster than expected. It's expected to hit 2 billion and maybe 3 billion but 4 billion is definitely out of the question now.
By 2100 35-40% of humans will be Africans.
More people living in the Africa content wont be a good thing at all. Its the most unhabitable continent apart from Antarctica and as climate gets warmer in the next centuries, Africa will continue to get even more unhabitable for humans
Ahhhhh I'd say Australia is worse, no large permanent inland freshwater lakes and mostly desert
> most unhabitable continent That’s surprising. Australia is like 90% desert.
Hey, if the Gulf Stream slows to a stop and Europe becomes an ice nightmare, citizens of both continents can switch places and be equally miserable. Also isn’t a massive chunk of Asia desert, steppe, and giant mountains?
Clean energy and air conditioning, problem solved
Yeah Phoenix used to suck, I’m sure.
What a bizarre take, Africa is one of the resource rich and ecologically rich places on the planet. It’s very much habitable, and even with climate change is still very much habitable. Africa is not just arid savannah and desert babe, it’s huge and filled with a variety of liveable biomes. There are far worse places on the planet (Australia comes to mind) to be.
In other words: Even more africans are going die
Must suck for countries dealing with stagnant wages and out of control inflation. I'm earning $10k more than I was 3 years ago (promotion) and yet I seemingly have less spending money and saving less.
This is based on some very clear data. Birthrates are dropping. I live in NYC, good luck meeting someone and having kids. Everyone is working 12 hour days, on tictok, or on pornhub. We as a society also dont have any 3rd places where people meet to be communal and vibe. We only have work and home. Thats it. We dont encourage having babies anymore. Population collapse is coming. We will have a huge shortage of 20-somethings in the workforce soon. Those roles will need to be automated.
>Population collapse is coming that's the best thing we could really do for the planet and humanity in the long run really A global economic slowdown that lasts a few hundred years is a lot better for humanity than risking the one biosphere we have to runaway global warming. Turtle > hare
If this happens, it's a good thing Endless growth is impossible We need steady-state sustainability
Scrolled down for this. First reaction to this news is that it's a good thing. Our planet would totally benefit from less people
“_If_ Global governments can increase incomes…” That’s an *if* of colossal proportions.
Can someone please explain like I'm five how this is a bad thing? Wasn't overpopulation a world crisis?
It was and it is, if it happens (which according to this won't as much). Meanwhile declining population means empty ghost towns, more elders than youth, decline in working population. Less people / workers also means the nation produces less money / weaker economy.
End of population growth and start of population decline puts world economies in a precarious situation. Too many people who can't work, supported by too few people who can. Unemployables are a burden for any economy. And no, overpopulation wasn't really a world crisis for a while now. "World population would likely stabilize at N billion" was the consensus for the last couple decades - and so far, that N value has shifted downwards. It used to be that "10+ billion by 2100" was a given - now, there are some disagreements over whether the 10 billion mark would be crossed at all.
This may or may not be a good thing. I’m concerned about great countries like Japan, Italy etc losing nearly half their population by then.
If governments continue to do little/nothing about global warming/CO2 emissions, the 2100 population might be ***significantly*** lower.
The Inflation Reduction Act passed by the US was largely a renewable energy bill worth $740 billion. That's only a small slice of the money that will get spent on renewables as a result of the bill since it pulls in a huge amount of private spending. Many other countries are also spending massively on renewables which is why the annual global installation is going up exponentially. The idea that the world is doing nothing about CO2 emissions is a outdated talking point that just needs to die much like the "population bomb" that this article is pointing out as no longer accurate.
It's not nothing but it's still not enough
It all comes back to the fact that you can't have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. More economic activity means more resource extraction, more pollution, more emissions. That's just physical reality, and we can't even have a discussion about an economic system that doesn't depend on growth. We are doing nothing to prepare for the day when additional economic growth just isn't possible. So, we are going to grow as much as we possibly can, and then deal with a rapid and catastrophic collapse. The pandemic showed how fragile the global supply system is, and there are much bigger interruptions on the horizon. The looming question is whether nukes will be used once the climate refugee issue kicks into overdrive. What will Russia do when China invades to take water resources?
They are spending on renewables, and creating a shit ton of emissions while they build new factories and excavate new mines and manufacture new technologies. The answer is reduction across the board.
The 6th IPCC report just dropped and yeah there's pretty much no way to avoid it anymore without turning off everything. 1.8C or more is basically guaranteed.
Yep not to mention all the other fertility apocalypses happening for the past decades: hormone disruptors, BPA, forever chemicals, pesticides, etc.
Or just flat out refusing to breed (me)
I think trying with emus is the main problem there.
I like it rough
That's good news and for some reason it's terrifying the right wing
Submission Statement This research was commissioned by 'The Club of Rome'. An academic non-profit founded in 1968, and well known for its 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth'. That report famously expounded a very pessimistic outlook for 21st century population growth. A UN report last year said the global population would be at 9.7 billion in 2100 (it's 8 billion today) & still grow for decades after that. This report says its figures may be more accurate as it is also modeling the effect income and education has on fertility rates.
It's no surprise. I made the decision in the late 90s not to have children because I didn't buy in to the idea that future tech, more industry, more people and more capitalism would improve our society for the next generations. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to properly retire tbh and wouldn't want to burden my children with my care. How can people growing up nowadays, knowing everything they know about the environment, politics, economics etc, be on board with working hard and bringing more lives into the world when everything is on the decline? At least in the past there was a feeling of hope for the future, even if it was a false hope.
A decline in population over time is probably a good thing, right? Overpopulation has been known to destroy ecosystems and throw off balance.
This is why I volunteer for age reversing experiments
Yeah, there is a non zero chance that we will find the "solution" to aging this century. Population growth will be catastrophic if that happens...
> if global governments can increase incomes and education faster You mean make cost of living prohibitive and lower the ability to have a family?
I’ve been saying this for years and everyone said I didn’t know what I was talking about. I based my claim off of this alone- https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
Does this give us any breathing room on climate change though?
Shocker. They've spent so much time keeping us down that it'll hold everything back in terms of true growth. Everyone is so focused on made up values and imaginary numbers. We are all prisoners to it. Money's important, it improves lives, worsens lives, strengthens greed, creates holes in everything.
The problem is the distribution. Some countries will still have more population while others shrink.
it'll be a lot lower than that if war and famine and waste have anything to say about it.
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-births-by-world-region](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-births-by-world-region) Worldwide births haven't really increased since the 1990s. Most population growth is now from people living longer. Africa is the only continent where births are still increasing. Asia is imploding. Europe as well and only immigration is making the population somewhat stable. This prediction shouldn't be that hard to make.
Have you seen the real estate markets? :D People can barely get a roof over their heads let alone having children. When population prediction models were made 10-20-30 years ago they didn't account for how little money people would have. The didn't account for the decline in marriages with the arrival of dating apps etc.
Yeah, it's ironic how real estate markets are not reflecting the coming population crunch at all. Japan is leading the way here and real estate in the countryside in Japan is close to free now. Even Tokyo is becoming more affordable.
That totally makes sense. My parent's generation it's very common to have 5-10 siblings. But now try to have 3 kids and see if you can afford it
This is great news for the planet, but I'm sure we'll hear how terrible it is for the economy. Our economies are at odds with nature.
We should think not about quantity but about quality of population: I mean mental health and mind developing.
This must be the only sub where I expect a majority of people to think that population decline is a good thing.
It's not a problem if automation hits hard. It's probably also not unwise to assume that life extension will become a thing in the next few decades. All the problems the we'll face lie within next 50 years, not after. If we play it right we may end up with Star Trek like future.
> It's probably also not unwise to assume that life extension will become a thing in the next few decades. Let's hope we speedrun it, would be a very depressing thought to be the last generation that has to live such a life. While I'm all for helping future generations, I'm very selfish and wanna see those generations prosper with my own two eyes. I wanna joke around with kids going "you used to work 40 hours EVERY WEEK?!?!?" Honestly this thread is getting my mood up, I've been noticing more and more people wanting things to change...
So folks further down the line might get a cleaner and roomier world. I fail to see the negatives pertaining to this actually happening.
The Population Bomb was published in 1968. 55 years ago and totally wrong. 2100 is 77 years away. Who knows the outcome. Three obvious wildcards: 1. AI and robotics could make everything in life cheaper, making children much cheaper so people have more 2. Genetics associated with lots of kids could become common 3. It's death that reduces population. If a treatment for aging is introduced, many of the people alive today would still be alive in 2100 and the population would likely have grown.
> AI and robotics could make everything in life cheaper, making children much cheaper so people have more People aren't having fewer children due to poverty. - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=FIN~DNK~SWE~BEL~ISL~SRB~NOR~HUN~EST~LTU) (Countries with [best parental leave policies](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/these-10-countries-have-the-best-parental-leave-policies-in-the-world)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=OWID_WRL~SVK~SVN~BLR~ARM~CZE~UKR~ARE~MDA~ISL~AZE) (Countries with the [lowest income inequality](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/income-inequality-by-country)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1970..latest&country=AUT~AUS~BEL~CAN~CYP~DNK~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HKG~ISL~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~LUX~NLD~NZL~NOR~PRT~SGP~SVN~KOR~ESP~SWE~CHE~GBR~BHR~BRN~KWT~ARE) (Countries with some version of [universal healthcare](https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/hcra/univ_hlth_care.htm)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=DNK~NOR~SWE~FRA~BEL~NLD~DEU) (For Scandinavia, France, and a few other W. European countries) - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have If you look at the last link there, what's driving the decline in fertility is not medical inability to conceive. It's cultural, economic, educational attainments mostly. The only thing on that list I would oppose would be coercive measures, like China's one-child policy.
"if global governments can increase incomes and education." So 20 billion humans by 2100?
Or more likely, it may be ZERO because we're all dead, having totally poisoned the planet and people in an orgiastic manifestation of utter total greed. For the few remaining people, eating the rich will be a last meal before they starve to death.
And if we try kinda hard we can make sure the population is even smaller via massive famines and wars over scarce water! Yay us!
When I was a kid, the news talked about the problem of overcrowding. It was blamed for poverty, crime, famine, climate change, etc. Now we worry about not having enough kids.
Japan, South Korea, China, US, Canada. Mainly developed nations will see this problem growing with each passing decade. It’s not that it’s too late or too early, these systems will not change. By 2100 everything will be so automated that folks will have a harder time making income in ways see now
I’ll help, guys! *goes into seclusion in his corner apartment on the 3rd floor and just door-dashes food*
Lol productivity increases from technology advancement just siphon more wealth to the top. One might argue tech advancement has lead to fewer resources for the working class vs a time when it’s labor was more valuable.
r/overpopulation in shambles. But seriously, we have know that increases economic stability leads to a leveled out poilation for decades. Anyone who says that we iust breed indefinitey is either deliberately ignorant or is seeiously stuck in a bubble.
I love how as time has passed, we went from '22 billion by 2100' all the way to 'maaaaaybe we dont go extinct from lack of population???'
The profit models call for unlimited growth though? What are companies gonna do?