"One in 20 non-college women in their 40s had never married in 1980; in 2023, it was 1 in 4."
That's simply terrifying. Marriage is one of the single greatest predictors of long term success, emotional stability, economic empowerment... a 500% rise in unmarried working class women is a disaster for both them and for society at large.
While marriage and birthrate are not necessarily correlated, successful reproduction (defined as producing and raising the next generation to be capable of doing the same) is a lot easier if you're married.
The over educated elites like Ehrlich generate almost all the really dumb ideas. Ehrlich was 100% wrong on pretty much everything but was still lauded by his peers... much like X Kendi is today.
Agree Nobby, so true. These "salon" writers write about reason, science, so forth but often overlook, ignore or completely trash a societies social and cultural particularities and reasons for being.
And what do they almost always replace this with? Science? what? nihilism, communism, socialism. Science cannot replace one's religion which equates to culture. Have to have a religion to have a culture, a must. Where did we come from? why are we here? why do I want and need to get up every day and live?
Science? never intended to replace culture or even religion. Science has been way overused and abused here. And wait, the "Big Bang Theory" where there was a big explosion and we were just created from this. Our very intricate bodies and brains and souls from this?
So, Adam and Eve and Mary and Jesus story is stupid and ridicules but this big explosion the intellectuals tell us is the answer? The God, Adam and Eve Jesus story is crazier than this Big Bang thing? what? really? Sounds like some people just needed to write a PHD paper for school and went for it. Gotta write something to get paid right? Science, you overstep too much.
Ok they are both crazy? Then what? Scientology and aliens run this place and will in the future or something like that. When I meet a real Alien and know this for sure then yes, we will then have serious discussions on this but not from watching BS alien shows from knuckleheads on YouTube trying to make a quick buck and get in the spotlight, no thanks.
And we can then ask them what their religion is and what culture do they have? Will we be having the same discussions with them on this too? lol probably.
Communism, socialism and nihilism are all tied together basically. Nothingness, a blank. Belief in nothing. Everything sucks. wow ok great way to get up every morning.
When these guys go in this direction and destroy a religion and a culture what do they want to replace it with? Often, they say nothing really? Or start spousing socialist nihilist stuff which to me is trash and emptiness and intellectually lazy nothingness.
Yes Nobby, these guys need a job, a real job doing something worthwhile. I know my area we need good roofers. Very valuable people and work. Everybody needs a good solid well-built roof system!
Well done, Patrick. Anti-human doomerism and anti-energy abundance doomerism should both be confined to the dust bin of history. Humans have shown a near unblemished history of overcoming identified threats - be it illiteracy, polio, obesity, infant mortality or financial melt downs. The Talmud says - we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. Optimism has factually prevailed over pessimism. Let's remember we will all get the world we deserve - either in this life or the next.
I have no opinion as to whether the population will go up or down, but you write as though it's necessarily bad if the birthrate goes down. But what's the downside of a smaller population?
Setting aside the territorial aspects, it's not the destination that represents a problem, it's the journey; a matter of economics.
There are two significant measures; proportional productivity within the real economy (non-financialized,) and monetary velocity at various points of the distribution curve.
These are discrete categories, albeit with a nontrivial proportion of overlap.
More concisely; populations of organisms tend to swell until they collapse suddenly. The deer on the Kaibab Plateau did not have a mandate to feed herd members incapable of grazing.
Ehrlich used such a model when calibrating his arguments. Humanity embraced increasing complexity in the effort to avoid the consequences of such a framework.
We observe the same paradigm within the historical record of the nineteenth century guano trade.
Everyone serves their self-interest, and the very supply chain complexity that
serves as rhetorical rejection of Ehrlich's framework, represents the foundation for the fear expressed about population decline (and no wonder.) No one wants to be the one "abandoned on an ice floe," which is one example of how one population dealt with finite resources and productivity constraints.
Governments are concerned with this, because they consist of individuals seeking the material gain that political power represents; a hungry mob is an angry mob.
Viewing the social consequences at a finer degree of resolution, we encounter the very real miseries of those who cannot fulfill their evolutionary mandate to reproduce, and that is categorically distinct from the purely economic factors. The old saying "happy wife is a happy life," obtains, even though it elides the fact that men are subject to the same evolutionary mandate.
Ehrlich was wrong on most measures, but the finitude of resources was not one of them.
I reckon we could sum the issue up as "man does not live by utilitarianism alone."
The most valuable resource in any economy is people. It's people who extract all the other resources, innovate new solutions to problems, and produce material wealth.
Love the bat guano reference. Nauru is a tale too few know about.
Oddly enough, AGI and robotics may alter this equation though. If we really are entering a time when most human needs can be met without human labor, it will rescind a huge number of economic "laws" and a declining population may actually be beneficial. (Note, I think AGI is likely impossible, but, if I'm wrong, I see this as a plausible outcome.)
Very detailed reply, thank you. It's odd to think about a population running short of resources because the population is smaller.
I wonder if the governments of a shrinking world could coordinate and say, for example: OK, we don't have enough people to make all these different kinds of phones. Let's just focus on the iPhone 17.
I also wonder what happens to the ratio of old people to young people as populations shrink. We have an excess of old people at the moment, but that's because people are living longer. But we won't keep living longer forever. Have we reached a peak ratio (1 in 6)?
Ehrlich extrapolated from the data that existed in 1968. Things changed after that. For one, in every culture, the birth rate falls as the standard of living rises. This started happening in the US during the 70s, so Ehrich wouldn’t have written about it in 1968. I don’t know why the birth rate falls, and there are several possible causes, but it does. Every time.
Not every time. Israel is the one modern, industrialized country which still has an above 2.5 birthrate.
I studied Ehrlich in econ in college in the 90's. Developed nation TFR has been declining since at least 1950 (as long as it's been consistently measured) and went below replacement somewhere around 1973. The data was there, but Ehrlich was a Malthusian in principle so he saw what he wanted to see.
I don't necessarily fault him for that. We're all captives to our assumptions. But I do fault him for not reassessing those assumptions despite 50 years (literally) of evidence that he was wrong: on population, on natural resources, on GDP growth, on pretty much everything.
True. On the trajectory we were on, his bomb could well have gone off. Every billion took less the half the time of the previous billion, and the pace was accelerating. Were it not for the fall in birth rate, and a very probable increase in homosexuality (something that seems to happen in mammals when population density gets too bad), Ehrlich might have been right.
As for Israel, they may be a modern industrialized country, but I’d bet money that the birth rate is not uniform, but high in the West Bank settlements (like the Frontier) and lower in the cities.
What we need is to get the middle upper middle class to breed more. That means lowering taxes on high fertility members of that class and raising them on lower fertility members of that class.
But nobody wants to hear that. It’s “judgy”. And people of that class can “afford” children. But of course if they can “afford” them but it causes a huge drop off in relative status compared to their class peers they aren’t going to have them.
There is ample evidence that reproduction is not a financial decision. Despite the "children were good labor on the farm" trope, there is little evidence it ever was.
Singapore has had cash grants and tax breaks for 25 years. TFR went from 1.4 to 1.2.
S. Korea - another decade-long failure. TFR .65 today, lowest in the world.
Hungary, Australia, Russia, France... all have temporary bumps but it doesn't last.
Estonia, Luxemburg, Belgium... all failures.
The one possible exception is Quebec, which did raise TFR for the 10 years it has a cash grant program in the 90's. It fell after the program ended, but has bounced around quite a bit since then and now stands at 1.4.
Bottom line: economic incentives don't raise TFR. How many children to have appears to be a cultural not a financial decision.
In every single one of these counties the financial incentives provided amount to say 10% of the cost of raising a child. It’s pathetic.
“We‘ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
In those few countries with better than average oecd fertility it’s a higher percentage of the cost provided, though nowhere near 100%. Israel for instance provides some very strong financial assistance for families.
I believe the reason people deny the financial angle is that they simply don’t want to pay. The fertility crisis could be solved with 10% of gdp, perhaps less so with good targeting, equivalent to what we spend in old age benefits. That’s not economically impossible, but it’s a huge political lift, and people just don’t want to go there.
10% of the cost of raising a child is pretty large. What percentage you you suggesting the state cover? 10% of GDP is absolutely enormous. To put that into perspective, American income tax revenue has fluctuated between 15-20% of GDP since WWII.
Perhaps there is a point where bribing people to have kids works. But I'm not sure that's a great strategy. I think we need to look to non-economic methods. There are lots of ways to alter behavior ("nudge" in economic terms) without just throwing money at people. Our society doesn't celebrate parenthood.
It could be asserted that this is the result of "nudging."
If the assertion is reasonably supportable, we can see the counterproductivity of its outcome, everywhere we look.
One could also speculate that the outcome, socially, highlights the difficulties attendant to avoiding the inclusion of perversity when crafting incentive structures.
What more perverse an incentive than trivializing the role and responsibilities of parenthood, in order to disincentivize adoption of the role?
To many, this may be counterintuitive, but assuming that a reduction of quantity axiomatically equates to an increase in quality, is a popular myth.
I think there's little alternative for old people. Well, I suppose we could adopt Asimov's solution from Pebble In The Sky, but I'd rather not.
Our society is structured for maximal consumption. (Huxley realized this 90 years ago.) However, there are lots of ways it could be slightly redesigned to encourage marriage and parenthood instead of production and consumption, to encourage men and women to cooperate instead of compete.
Such policies would be illiberal (bye, bye John Stuart Mill's maximal individual autonomy) and undoubtedly rub some folks the wrong way. They would also dampen economic consumption and productivity for a while. I have a hard time imagining that those losses would amount to 10% of GDP annually and permanently though.
And you wouldn't need to openly bribe people, which carries its own set of problems.
There were 132 million people in the US the year I was born and now there's 342 million. The world had 2 billion people and is now heading towards 10 billion. Allowing the world to move towards fewer people through purely voluntary decisions by couples worldwide will reduce starvation in the third world and save the wildlife habitat that is essential to protecting threatened species. When it comes to population quality is more important than quantity.
"In 1980, about 9% of college-educated women in their 40s had never married. Forty-six years later, that figure has risen only modestly, to just under 15%. "
That's a 66% increase - hardly modest. Less than the other category in the following sentences, yes, but not modest.
His methods to solve the problem aside and unworkable but it doesn’t change the reality. There are too many people on the planet. The trajectory is disastrous for the environment and people - laugh and dismiss if you like but we’re running out of planet to support all of us.
As a demographer I'm really interested to read this article and the comments. I have 2 comments:
1. Why are young women of lower social class not partnering? Because there aren't enough good sensible young men, ones who aren't misogynist or right wing zealots. As young men creep off into their incel burrows, playing video games and watching porn, young women are left alone and unloved.
2. New immigrants from whatever part of the world they come from tend to have babies soon after they arrive in their new country: that's been part of their life plan. It's not that they have more children but they have them in their new home country. This pushes up the total fertility rate significantly. It appears to me that the current US administration is doing its level best to reduce the population of the US by the following means:
- increase mortality by not supporting subsidised healthcare
- decrease fertility by giving no financial and other support for young couples
- decrease immigration, which not only decreases the number of adults coming into the country but also decreases the fertility rate (as explained above)
- increase emigration, not only forced emigration but also a hostile environment for educated people
Population forecasts already had deaths exceeding births by the year 2030 in the US, and that is pretty much baked into the equation, as the population already in the country is aging. It was forecast that net migration would stay positive for the forseeable future but it already turned negative in 2025.
I don't think the US and many other countries realise the psychological impact that a declining population will have on the people living there. But I'm afraid none of the policies proposed is going to do anything positive to raise the TFR significantly. Women are not going to have babies if they can't find a decent man to share the burden of family life fairly with.
Interesting. But given we already need more than one Planet Earth to supply the people currently here, a declining population of humans is actually going to be a good thing for the quality of life, such as putting food on the table. We don’t need a banquet when we don’t have enough for everyone right now. Yes, things will be tough in the future, but not because there are less people. Nobody wants to accept that we need to make changes in consumption and population, not to mention philosophy. In the meantime, there’s a reason people want to go into space and build new stations to support humans there. They know the time is running out. Water is more precious than food, but water is required to grow food and we’re running out of water. It’ll be desalination plants forever if we don’t work this out better.
Is the goal to get the average woman to have 2.1 children (replacement) versus the current 1.6?
There is little evidence that anyone knows how to achieve this. Financial incentives to date have not been successful. Perhaps much larger ones would be, but we have a federal budget deficit of over two trillion/year. For now, the clearest way to prevent population decline in the USA is to increase immigration! Is that what we should do?
As for Ehrlich, there has to be some limit to the amount of oil the world can burn and the amount of plastic we can discard without continuing to degrade our environment. Yet we have an administration that is actively opposing expansion of solar and wind power. Perhaps Ehrlich was just 50-60 years to early in his predictions.
"One in 20 non-college women in their 40s had never married in 1980; in 2023, it was 1 in 4."
That's simply terrifying. Marriage is one of the single greatest predictors of long term success, emotional stability, economic empowerment... a 500% rise in unmarried working class women is a disaster for both them and for society at large.
While marriage and birthrate are not necessarily correlated, successful reproduction (defined as producing and raising the next generation to be capable of doing the same) is a lot easier if you're married.
The over educated elites like Ehrlich generate almost all the really dumb ideas. Ehrlich was 100% wrong on pretty much everything but was still lauded by his peers... much like X Kendi is today.
Agree Nobby, so true. These "salon" writers write about reason, science, so forth but often overlook, ignore or completely trash a societies social and cultural particularities and reasons for being.
And what do they almost always replace this with? Science? what? nihilism, communism, socialism. Science cannot replace one's religion which equates to culture. Have to have a religion to have a culture, a must. Where did we come from? why are we here? why do I want and need to get up every day and live?
Science? never intended to replace culture or even religion. Science has been way overused and abused here. And wait, the "Big Bang Theory" where there was a big explosion and we were just created from this. Our very intricate bodies and brains and souls from this?
So, Adam and Eve and Mary and Jesus story is stupid and ridicules but this big explosion the intellectuals tell us is the answer? The God, Adam and Eve Jesus story is crazier than this Big Bang thing? what? really? Sounds like some people just needed to write a PHD paper for school and went for it. Gotta write something to get paid right? Science, you overstep too much.
Ok they are both crazy? Then what? Scientology and aliens run this place and will in the future or something like that. When I meet a real Alien and know this for sure then yes, we will then have serious discussions on this but not from watching BS alien shows from knuckleheads on YouTube trying to make a quick buck and get in the spotlight, no thanks.
And we can then ask them what their religion is and what culture do they have? Will we be having the same discussions with them on this too? lol probably.
Communism, socialism and nihilism are all tied together basically. Nothingness, a blank. Belief in nothing. Everything sucks. wow ok great way to get up every morning.
When these guys go in this direction and destroy a religion and a culture what do they want to replace it with? Often, they say nothing really? Or start spousing socialist nihilist stuff which to me is trash and emptiness and intellectually lazy nothingness.
Yes Nobby, these guys need a job, a real job doing something worthwhile. I know my area we need good roofers. Very valuable people and work. Everybody needs a good solid well-built roof system!
Well done, Patrick. Anti-human doomerism and anti-energy abundance doomerism should both be confined to the dust bin of history. Humans have shown a near unblemished history of overcoming identified threats - be it illiteracy, polio, obesity, infant mortality or financial melt downs. The Talmud says - we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. Optimism has factually prevailed over pessimism. Let's remember we will all get the world we deserve - either in this life or the next.
Agreed. It's amazing how someone can be so wrong for so long and still command respect in some circles.
I have no opinion as to whether the population will go up or down, but you write as though it's necessarily bad if the birthrate goes down. But what's the downside of a smaller population?
"what's the downside of a smaller population?"
Setting aside the territorial aspects, it's not the destination that represents a problem, it's the journey; a matter of economics.
There are two significant measures; proportional productivity within the real economy (non-financialized,) and monetary velocity at various points of the distribution curve.
These are discrete categories, albeit with a nontrivial proportion of overlap.
More concisely; populations of organisms tend to swell until they collapse suddenly. The deer on the Kaibab Plateau did not have a mandate to feed herd members incapable of grazing.
Ehrlich used such a model when calibrating his arguments. Humanity embraced increasing complexity in the effort to avoid the consequences of such a framework.
We observe the same paradigm within the historical record of the nineteenth century guano trade.
Everyone serves their self-interest, and the very supply chain complexity that
serves as rhetorical rejection of Ehrlich's framework, represents the foundation for the fear expressed about population decline (and no wonder.) No one wants to be the one "abandoned on an ice floe," which is one example of how one population dealt with finite resources and productivity constraints.
Governments are concerned with this, because they consist of individuals seeking the material gain that political power represents; a hungry mob is an angry mob.
Viewing the social consequences at a finer degree of resolution, we encounter the very real miseries of those who cannot fulfill their evolutionary mandate to reproduce, and that is categorically distinct from the purely economic factors. The old saying "happy wife is a happy life," obtains, even though it elides the fact that men are subject to the same evolutionary mandate.
Ehrlich was wrong on most measures, but the finitude of resources was not one of them.
I reckon we could sum the issue up as "man does not live by utilitarianism alone."
The most valuable resource in any economy is people. It's people who extract all the other resources, innovate new solutions to problems, and produce material wealth.
Love the bat guano reference. Nauru is a tale too few know about.
Oddly enough, AGI and robotics may alter this equation though. If we really are entering a time when most human needs can be met without human labor, it will rescind a huge number of economic "laws" and a declining population may actually be beneficial. (Note, I think AGI is likely impossible, but, if I'm wrong, I see this as a plausible outcome.)
Very detailed reply, thank you. It's odd to think about a population running short of resources because the population is smaller.
I wonder if the governments of a shrinking world could coordinate and say, for example: OK, we don't have enough people to make all these different kinds of phones. Let's just focus on the iPhone 17.
I also wonder what happens to the ratio of old people to young people as populations shrink. We have an excess of old people at the moment, but that's because people are living longer. But we won't keep living longer forever. Have we reached a peak ratio (1 in 6)?
Ehrlich extrapolated from the data that existed in 1968. Things changed after that. For one, in every culture, the birth rate falls as the standard of living rises. This started happening in the US during the 70s, so Ehrich wouldn’t have written about it in 1968. I don’t know why the birth rate falls, and there are several possible causes, but it does. Every time.
Funny you didn’t mention that.
Not every time. Israel is the one modern, industrialized country which still has an above 2.5 birthrate.
I studied Ehrlich in econ in college in the 90's. Developed nation TFR has been declining since at least 1950 (as long as it's been consistently measured) and went below replacement somewhere around 1973. The data was there, but Ehrlich was a Malthusian in principle so he saw what he wanted to see.
I don't necessarily fault him for that. We're all captives to our assumptions. But I do fault him for not reassessing those assumptions despite 50 years (literally) of evidence that he was wrong: on population, on natural resources, on GDP growth, on pretty much everything.
True. On the trajectory we were on, his bomb could well have gone off. Every billion took less the half the time of the previous billion, and the pace was accelerating. Were it not for the fall in birth rate, and a very probable increase in homosexuality (something that seems to happen in mammals when population density gets too bad), Ehrlich might have been right.
As for Israel, they may be a modern industrialized country, but I’d bet money that the birth rate is not uniform, but high in the West Bank settlements (like the Frontier) and lower in the cities.
You're pretty much correct. Courtesy ChatGPT (I didn't verify this, so take it with a grain of salt):
TFR within the Jewish population:
Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi): ~6.4–6.6
Religious / National-Orthodox: ~3–4 (varies)
Secular / non-Haredi Jews: ~2.0–2.5
Within the Arab population:
Muslim: ~3.1
Druze: ~2.0
Christian: ~1.7
----------------
What relevance to this discussion? Religion precedes reproduction. At least in the modern world where reproduction is generally a conscious choice.
What we need is to get the middle upper middle class to breed more. That means lowering taxes on high fertility members of that class and raising them on lower fertility members of that class.
But nobody wants to hear that. It’s “judgy”. And people of that class can “afford” children. But of course if they can “afford” them but it causes a huge drop off in relative status compared to their class peers they aren’t going to have them.
There is ample evidence that reproduction is not a financial decision. Despite the "children were good labor on the farm" trope, there is little evidence it ever was.
Singapore has had cash grants and tax breaks for 25 years. TFR went from 1.4 to 1.2.
S. Korea - another decade-long failure. TFR .65 today, lowest in the world.
Hungary, Australia, Russia, France... all have temporary bumps but it doesn't last.
Estonia, Luxemburg, Belgium... all failures.
The one possible exception is Quebec, which did raise TFR for the 10 years it has a cash grant program in the 90's. It fell after the program ended, but has bounced around quite a bit since then and now stands at 1.4.
Bottom line: economic incentives don't raise TFR. How many children to have appears to be a cultural not a financial decision.
In every single one of these counties the financial incentives provided amount to say 10% of the cost of raising a child. It’s pathetic.
“We‘ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
In those few countries with better than average oecd fertility it’s a higher percentage of the cost provided, though nowhere near 100%. Israel for instance provides some very strong financial assistance for families.
I believe the reason people deny the financial angle is that they simply don’t want to pay. The fertility crisis could be solved with 10% of gdp, perhaps less so with good targeting, equivalent to what we spend in old age benefits. That’s not economically impossible, but it’s a huge political lift, and people just don’t want to go there.
10% of the cost of raising a child is pretty large. What percentage you you suggesting the state cover? 10% of GDP is absolutely enormous. To put that into perspective, American income tax revenue has fluctuated between 15-20% of GDP since WWII.
Perhaps there is a point where bribing people to have kids works. But I'm not sure that's a great strategy. I think we need to look to non-economic methods. There are lots of ways to alter behavior ("nudge" in economic terms) without just throwing money at people. Our society doesn't celebrate parenthood.
"Our society doesn't celebrate parenthood."
It could be asserted that this is the result of "nudging."
If the assertion is reasonably supportable, we can see the counterproductivity of its outcome, everywhere we look.
One could also speculate that the outcome, socially, highlights the difficulties attendant to avoiding the inclusion of perversity when crafting incentive structures.
What more perverse an incentive than trivializing the role and responsibilities of parenthood, in order to disincentivize adoption of the role?
To many, this may be counterintuitive, but assuming that a reduction of quantity axiomatically equates to an increase in quality, is a popular myth.
Government spending is 40% of gdp. I don’t think it’s crazy. We currently pay 10% of gdp for old people. Do you believe that’s a better use of funds?
I think there's little alternative for old people. Well, I suppose we could adopt Asimov's solution from Pebble In The Sky, but I'd rather not.
Our society is structured for maximal consumption. (Huxley realized this 90 years ago.) However, there are lots of ways it could be slightly redesigned to encourage marriage and parenthood instead of production and consumption, to encourage men and women to cooperate instead of compete.
Such policies would be illiberal (bye, bye John Stuart Mill's maximal individual autonomy) and undoubtedly rub some folks the wrong way. They would also dampen economic consumption and productivity for a while. I have a hard time imagining that those losses would amount to 10% of GDP annually and permanently though.
And you wouldn't need to openly bribe people, which carries its own set of problems.
Fair points, but when has anything ever failed to be taken to its ultimate level of absurdity (or malice?)
Decontextualizing Mill, can be cognitively hazardous. It's a question of civil unrest.
We run full-tilt into Hobbes; there is little tolerance for a life that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
There are innate, structural difficulties in substituting biological markers of association with outwardly-imposed collaborative social structures.
The reproductive dilemma speaks to that "solitary" part.
Is it even possible to avoid the "Azimov solution" without simply "allowing nature to take its course?"
There were 132 million people in the US the year I was born and now there's 342 million. The world had 2 billion people and is now heading towards 10 billion. Allowing the world to move towards fewer people through purely voluntary decisions by couples worldwide will reduce starvation in the third world and save the wildlife habitat that is essential to protecting threatened species. When it comes to population quality is more important than quantity.
"In 1980, about 9% of college-educated women in their 40s had never married. Forty-six years later, that figure has risen only modestly, to just under 15%. "
That's a 66% increase - hardly modest. Less than the other category in the following sentences, yes, but not modest.
His methods to solve the problem aside and unworkable but it doesn’t change the reality. There are too many people on the planet. The trajectory is disastrous for the environment and people - laugh and dismiss if you like but we’re running out of planet to support all of us.
As a demographer I'm really interested to read this article and the comments. I have 2 comments:
1. Why are young women of lower social class not partnering? Because there aren't enough good sensible young men, ones who aren't misogynist or right wing zealots. As young men creep off into their incel burrows, playing video games and watching porn, young women are left alone and unloved.
2. New immigrants from whatever part of the world they come from tend to have babies soon after they arrive in their new country: that's been part of their life plan. It's not that they have more children but they have them in their new home country. This pushes up the total fertility rate significantly. It appears to me that the current US administration is doing its level best to reduce the population of the US by the following means:
- increase mortality by not supporting subsidised healthcare
- decrease fertility by giving no financial and other support for young couples
- decrease immigration, which not only decreases the number of adults coming into the country but also decreases the fertility rate (as explained above)
- increase emigration, not only forced emigration but also a hostile environment for educated people
Population forecasts already had deaths exceeding births by the year 2030 in the US, and that is pretty much baked into the equation, as the population already in the country is aging. It was forecast that net migration would stay positive for the forseeable future but it already turned negative in 2025.
I don't think the US and many other countries realise the psychological impact that a declining population will have on the people living there. But I'm afraid none of the policies proposed is going to do anything positive to raise the TFR significantly. Women are not going to have babies if they can't find a decent man to share the burden of family life fairly with.
You can listen to a podcast I made from the perspective of New Zealand: https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/podcasts/podcast-new-zealands-falling-fertility-and-the-limits-of-immigration/
Thanks, Marion -- I have similar concerns about declining partnership and laid them out in a different (though related) article: https://thedispatch.com/article/marriage-rates-socioeconomics-men-trailing/?gift_key=db5875debd7f3ee9&gift_ref=dc24904f-7bc3-42a5-96d0-fe916fd59cf0&utm_source=giftlink&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=membergift
At least he lived long enough to know what an idiot he was.
Interesting. But given we already need more than one Planet Earth to supply the people currently here, a declining population of humans is actually going to be a good thing for the quality of life, such as putting food on the table. We don’t need a banquet when we don’t have enough for everyone right now. Yes, things will be tough in the future, but not because there are less people. Nobody wants to accept that we need to make changes in consumption and population, not to mention philosophy. In the meantime, there’s a reason people want to go into space and build new stations to support humans there. They know the time is running out. Water is more precious than food, but water is required to grow food and we’re running out of water. It’ll be desalination plants forever if we don’t work this out better.
Is the goal to get the average woman to have 2.1 children (replacement) versus the current 1.6?
There is little evidence that anyone knows how to achieve this. Financial incentives to date have not been successful. Perhaps much larger ones would be, but we have a federal budget deficit of over two trillion/year. For now, the clearest way to prevent population decline in the USA is to increase immigration! Is that what we should do?
As for Ehrlich, there has to be some limit to the amount of oil the world can burn and the amount of plastic we can discard without continuing to degrade our environment. Yet we have an administration that is actively opposing expansion of solar and wind power. Perhaps Ehrlich was just 50-60 years to early in his predictions.