Personally I think people get the worry about demographic collapse a little backwards. Yes, population decline is plausibly bad for a variety of economic reasons. But I think that the bigger issue is that population decline is a symptom of society’s problems, rather than a source of them. I think demographic decline is probably caused by things like the economic/technological “great stagnation”, assorted cultural changes too numerous to mention, increasing sclerosis and inertia of political institutions, and the disempowerment of young people due to factors like those (plus, importantly, high housing prices and high childcare/education prices). Although of course it is hard to be sure.
I think people can sense that demographic decline is an indicator of an unhealthy society, and I think that focusing on “how do we raise birhrates” is indeed one good concrete way of identifying ways to make society healthier. But I don’t think it’s the low birthrates themselves that are the problem—it’s the stuff causing the low birthrates that is the problem.
I agree to your comment that reasons for the population decline are many and hard to parse. It is just that we never had this issue before, with the rise of alternative actions where we can derive the meaning of life now seemingly trumping the conventional or literal one—having kids (enabling life on earth).....But yeah, it is a very real concern where the decline in population will drastically alter the capacity of us to continue the growth we had since the 1950s..
Personally I think people get the worry about demographic collapse a little backwards. Yes, population decline is plausibly bad for a variety of economic reasons. But I think that the bigger issue is that population decline is a symptom of society’s problems, rather than a source of them. I think demographic decline is probably caused by things like the economic/technological “great stagnation”, assorted cultural changes too numerous to mention, increasing sclerosis and inertia of political institutions, and the disempowerment of young people due to factors like those (plus, importantly, high housing prices and high childcare/education prices). Although of course it is hard to be sure.
I think people can sense that demographic decline is an indicator of an unhealthy society, and I think that focusing on “how do we raise birhrates” is indeed one good concrete way of identifying ways to make society healthier. But I don’t think it’s the low birthrates themselves that are the problem—it’s the stuff causing the low birthrates that is the problem.
I agree to your comment that reasons for the population decline are many and hard to parse. It is just that we never had this issue before, with the rise of alternative actions where we can derive the meaning of life now seemingly trumping the conventional or literal one—having kids (enabling life on earth).....But yeah, it is a very real concern where the decline in population will drastically alter the capacity of us to continue the growth we had since the 1950s..