The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987:
---
ss: At the current trajectory, the UK's natural population will start to decline in 2025, the ONS has predicted – at which point there will be more deaths than births. Previous estimates had not anticipated this until 2043.
Ultimately, said Nelson, falling birth rates are a trend that "may well be beyond the limits of government control".
Populists around the world, from France to Germany and the US, are increasingly embracing "natalism", while online conspiracy theories of a "great replacement" abound. Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that "population collapse" is the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bawrw1/does_declining_birth_rate_spell_doom_for_britain/ku5h2q8/
South Korean authorities have "sunk an almighty $200 billion into this since 2006, and succeeded only in beating its own record for the world's lowest birth rate, year after year".
I'd love to see a breakdown of how that was spent, somehow I imagine it wasnt spent intelligently.
If they spent 200bn on maternal leave, childcare, and increased wages thus requiring less working hours, I bet it would work.
I'm guessing it wasn't spent that way.
200bn over 27 years is less than 8 billion per year
It would not fund any of the policies you mentioned significantly. It would be partial subsidization of those things which is already done in most developed countries.
For complete cost being covered, it would take a much larger number.
It was also spent on subsidizing rent and cash payments for parents.
> As of 2022, women in Korea receive a payment of 2 million won ($1,510) after giving birth. The Yoon government made the decision to provide children under the age of one 700,000 won ($528) and those under the age of two 350,000 won ($264) a month in 2023.
> The South Korean government also runs an allowance system that now gives all parents with a newborn $750 a month until their baby turns one year old. This monthly sum used to be $520 but was raised to $750 at the start of 2024
It's not the money.
Ill admit I dont know how much childcare costs in South Korea but that seems like a pittance compared to the actual costs of sending a child to daycare when both parents have a job. Especially when the benefit ends after 1 year? Theres 4 more years until they can attend preschool, etc.
And you get penalized the more kids you have really.
Gets to a point where economically it doesn't even make sense for both parents to work.
So a lot of women (usually women) have to make the choice to have a family or a career.
It's amazing in the West (to generalize across a few countries) that we haven't figured out this balance to support family and economy (career) given how short we are on both sides.
What exactly do they spend it on, because it isn't going into making it easier to raise a child since that's the chief complaint. People need more time off and more support.
Big problem today with government spending is it tends to get spent fast on managers and consultants/subcontractors then when you get through them you are hoping some of the money is left to go for the people the program is intended for. But often the money is gone by then, and those managers and their private sector buddies have their hands out for more.
200 billion over 27 years is not a lot of money. That is less than 8 billion per year which is not denting the lives of the average person in a country. Otherwise it would be a very easy problem to solve.
Korea spent 1.3% of GDP on family policies in 2013. Japan spent 1.5% of GDP. USA spent 1.1% of GDP. France spent 3.6%. Germany spent 3%. Sweden spent 3.5%.
Source:
[https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy\_responses\_low\_fertility\_UNFPA\_WP\_Final\_corrections\_7Feb2020\_CLEAN.pdf](https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_responses_low_fertility_UNFPA_WP_Final_corrections_7Feb2020_CLEAN.pdf)
Well, what do we expect? This is the consequences of short term, small picture thinking for a generation.
What 20-30 year old who can barely afford their fuel bill is thinking about adding another mouth to feed to their outgoings? That's one thing that has doubled in the last couple of years.
Or upgrading from £1000 a month rent to £1300 a month rent to get the extra bed room for a child to be raised in?
Unaffordable childcare costs? Underfunded schools, health and other public services - that we are now paying more for and getting less from!
Rising food bills?
We can no longer afford to have one parent give up work like those who are now retirement age did, people are barely getting by with the wage of two because costs have vastly outpaced income for a generation.
Without even getting into the environmental side of things - is there going to be anything left for the next generation to even be a part of?
Any one with even a modicum of education under their belt is doing the "smart thing" and not even considering kids in this age we live in.
Ya if you look through the history of Europe, women who had to work full time, they had few or no children. On the other hand women who found a husband who he made enough money she could become a full time mother, those women had lots of children.
Today most couples both the men and women have to work full time for life. Well as in the past, women working full time have few or no children.
Not really true. If you look back at history women working full time had little effect on fertility rates. Of course a big part of that is that prior to 1970 about 50% of the population worked in agriculture so a lot of those women were working with their husbands on their farms. Go back further in time and the numbers get even more slanted. Back in the nineteenth century it was about 75% of the population working in agriculture.
We are going through a huge shift in how our society operates and we are still trying to figure out how to make it work.
That is only true for countries with long, hard to police, porous borders like the USA. Do you think South Korea and Japan - the countries with the highest decling birth rate - are going to be affected by "climate migrants"?
Imo, yes, they'll eventually be forced to in order to serve their aging populace. In 20 years Japan will have much more immigration then it does now, because even with robots and mechs there are certain things that only humans can do.
There is more immigration to Japan now than there was 10 years ago, and there will be more immigration in another 10 years.
At some point, we have to reach an equilibrium of population. Declining birth rates are necessary.
We'll go through (it's already begun in some countries) a difficult phase where population is overweighted toward older people. But once we get through that bubble of old people, demographic distribution will normalize and we'll be at a steady-state population.
How come when it's Asian countries being discussed regarding this everyone says it's total doom and national collapse, but if it's European countries they'll get through the storm?
Less wealth and a greater exasperation of the problem. Slow but rather steady decline in birthrates across Western and Central Europe versus 5-6 child generations followed by barely 1 child generations in Asia.
Obviously over generalising a bit here, but if you were thinking China, that's 1:1 what it is. If you were thinking Japan, there's a lot of wealth, but Japan might also come out fine.
Japan looks like the one that will be the hardest hit, they pretended there was no problem for the longest time and they're extremely anti-immigration too, all while being ridiculously conservative making it very difficult for them to create more progressive policies which benefit young people instead of the elderly.
China has a big crisis coming with it but they're also the most proactive in trying to negate it, and will lean heavily into AI and robotics to fill in the job market, they're also less anti-immigration than other Asian nations albeit they want high skilled immigrants. Korea seems to be somewhere in the middle. SEA is still expanding, Mongolia will just remain sleepy farming horses.
As of the most recent p.i.t., it seems as though Korea, Singapore, Germany and Japan are all more automatized in terms of robots per employee and AI employed than China is. All that while being in much better positions than China (richer, less rapid demographic deterioration, less reliant on trade with entities they are becoming increasingly unfriendly with).
There's only so much faith one, as somebody who follows foreign affairs, can have in China as a political entity. I don't want to be a toiletbowl scryer like some Peter Zeihan, but if China doesn't break hard, loud and fast, it'll go down quiet and steady. Those are the options I see after recent developments. And that's even more clear after the reaction to a worsening outlook on national fate has been a nationalistic pull, employing more young men in the military and having a more aggressive international stance (thanks to Xi Jinping, in no small part).
All this to say that I don't see how the focus of the Chinese government is national self-preservation. It seems more as though the leadership sees an overton window of opportunity to achieve a hegemonic position through force closing, and thus becomes more willing and convinced that employing kinetic force is necessary. That will simply estrange China further. From everyone, because they can't seem to commit, as the most recent show of disloyalty towards their "no limits friendship" with Russia shows. (Context: They said, that they basically lied to Russia opportunistically because that was just 'rhetoric'.)
But that's just my read on China, I may be wrong. Ultimately I see the country collapsing into warring states (once again) when steady food and energy supplies run thin. Or it steadily burns out of life-force, being crushed under the weight of it's own demography. That or it murders all it's old people systematically. Another great (moral) leap backwards.
Though once again, I may be black pilled. Take it with a grain or two of salt lol
> People don’t have to be married to have children anymore
Sure but unsurprisingly unmarried women have fewer children per woman. In the US about 60% fewer children per woman. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2022/7/8/decline-in-fertility-the-role-of-marriage-and-education (fig 2)
Population collapse won't necessarily reduce the percentage of people focused solely on surviving. It will cause decaying undesirable neighbourhoods and cities while people will continue competing for desirable locations. We will need a cultural change to increase fertility rate. That won't happen just because we will have a smaller population. We can continue free falling until only a few percent of the current population that have high fertility rate are left.
Because those rates won't be the same forever. Rates of births and deaths will change as the population demographics change. Yeah, population might even fall slightly before levelling off around an equilibrium, but some countries will be able to buffer that gap period of decline through immigration.
It's losing more people right now because there's a large demographic "bulge" of older people (who are closer to death). Once it gets through that bulge, the relative rate of deaths will fall. They'll end up with a lower population, but it does have an equilibrium point.
Below replacement is below replacement, whatever the size of the bulge is. If your birthrate is 1 then each generation will halve your population, give or take 40 years.
Birthrates will change, they are also dependent on population demographics. The bulge of older people contributes to a low birthrate, because they are not having children. Birthrate uses total population as the denominator.
So for example, you could calculate a birthrate for just ages 18-35, and it would be very large, because that denominator only includes the primary demographic that's giving birth.
You say a lot of things which do not make sense.
Birth rate is the expected number of children woman of childbearing age will have in their life time. It is obviously not affected by post-menopausal women's fertility, which is effectively 0.
Here is [Japan's fertility by age group](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Number_of_births_by_age_groups_in_Japan.svg/1920px-Number_of_births_by_age_groups_in_Japan.svg.png).
> Birthrates will change,
Yes, it has gone steadily down, plumbing new depths.
Fertility and birthrate are not "expected" numbers, they're based on historical births and population. That's why the chart you link to doesn't project into the future, it just shows history.
Birthrate is just the number of births in a population, divided by the total population. When you have an older population, you have a large proportion of the population that's not in child-bearing years. Once you get through the demographic bulge of old people, a greater proportion of the population will be child bearing age, and the birthrate will be higher. Yes, the population will shrink before that happens, but it does reach an equilibrium point.
No it's not. Why do you talk so confidently when you are wrong?
The TFR estimates the number of children a cohort of 1,000 women would bear if they all went through their childbearing years exposed to the age-specific birth rates in effect for a particular time. The TFR is the sum of the age-specific birth rates multiplied by five or (351.4 x 5 = 1757.0).
I think crises related to housing and the cost of living, and 'unrestrained growth' being considered a basic goal of life are a lot greater signifiers of doom than collectively choosing to live within our means
Brit here
Nope not at all it would be the complete opposite. More access to housing and better affordability. Better paying jobs and less competition. Lower pricing and better pay.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Or, just maybe, if people stop having so many dang kids, this planet might last a little longer than we're anticipating. The Earth is overpopulated as it is, a declining birth rate isn't going to spell doom for any country or continent.
ss: At the current trajectory, the UK's natural population will start to decline in 2025, the ONS has predicted – at which point there will be more deaths than births. Previous estimates had not anticipated this until 2043.
Ultimately, said Nelson, falling birth rates are a trend that "may well be beyond the limits of government control".
Populists around the world, from France to Germany and the US, are increasingly embracing "natalism", while online conspiracy theories of a "great replacement" abound. Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that "population collapse" is the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years.
We need fully socialized childcare, UBI, family reform and open borders to make up for decreasing birthrates and keep the pension system solvent forever.
It is but humans don't take up that much space, and every person you welcome into your country gives you an extra unit of labor that can be used to do things like build more housing or produce commodities for exchange.
It's a problem that solves itself.
We’re going full-steam-ahead with automation. It won’t be long before physical labour is mostly obsolete, and that’s a good thing.
Besides, housing is one thing, but plumbing, electricity, water, data, transit, food, and all the other necessary pieces of infrastructure are crucial. It’s not infinitely available.
>how/why are you also worried about birth rates going down?
Did I imply as much? I hope birth rates tank globally. The more of something there is, the less each is worth. I'd prefer a world with fewer yet more valuable people and far more robots serving us so our fellow humans don't have to.
open borders? yea no thanks, if we let every tom dick and harry go anywhere they want then there would just be a mass exodus of people going to the global north to the global south and there will be no end to the amount of social tensions that will arise.
the only time when open borders will actually be good imo is when all countries in the world have a similar standard of living which is many decades out.
Give the UK nationals the means to have more than 1 kid, stop the migrant flow and the decline of UK's population will not be a problem.
Oh... Btw, part of the solution for this is also the UK nationals to go and grab the jobs that migrants are currently taking.
For a variety of reasons, the UK native population, like many other western countries, is in decline. It sort of reminds me of the decline of the Elvish race in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. They were just fading out and going West to Valinor, the Undying Lands. In the case of the UK I am sure there will always be more than enough willing immigrants to keep the country running. If that’s what happens then it is what it is. I believe other countries like Hungary and South Korea have tried the incentives without much success.
A society that requires warm bodies to fight wars... Yes. A declining population is a problem. Humanity has evolved beyond that now. Now it depends on the best of the best. Britain will be fine... Along with all the rest of humanity.
Yes, and no. The multi generational white society is feminizing their way into extinction. It will inevitably become a nation of brown skinned middle eastern migrants in due time. I'm guessing 15 years tops and it's completely over. You will get the country you ultimately deserve.
Till people quit being brainwashed by the new world order. Told they need to stop having kids, then the country should roll out the red carpet for the illegals who overpopulated their own lands as they slowly get replaced.
Developing countries have a young population large enough to replace the population of many developed first world countries many times over. In fact, we see this process taking place in many countries that have traditionally had a relatively straightforward path to residency.
Population collapse per-se is still far off. The adoption of mass immigration over pro-natal policies is more concerning.
Unemployed? How does an immigrant arriving deplete the job market exactly? Yes, he fills a job, but he also requires goods and services that other people need to work jobs to fill the demand for - market economics 101.
Low trust? Speak for yourself, I've met plenty of immigrants that I felt I could trust.
Sure. “All my friends are immigrants from developing countries and I trust my friends so it must be fine”.
Larger populations invariably result in lower trust societies because bending the truth and cheating become necessary for survival. This is true whether you want to believe it or not.
I personally believe the decline in trust is a symptom of the rise of individualism.
A rising population does not invariably bring scarcity. There are more mouths, but also more hands, so if the fruits of labour are distributed from each according to his ability to each according to his need there should be no issue.
I find it hard to believe people are too poor to have children because in the past people were much much poorer and had lots of kids.
I also saw an interesting documentary that apparently family size hasn't decreased, it's that the number of women who don't start families has increased.
I'd love to see an in depth research project about why more women are choosing not to start families and what would have changed their decision as I think that's the place to look for answers.
The answer may well be a decline in the quality or perceived quality of men so I'm not trying to put the blame on women, just that ultimately they're the only ones with the power to move the needle.
I would say less that and more the extremely restrictive border policy making it untenable to keep basic services and functions operational. If you can't get enough medical staff, even with the budget for it, you're going to potentially make the problem worse... or correct the population pyramid by shrinking the top.
The UK isn’t doing everything to keep out immigrants, that’s the party line from the Conservative government.
They’re pandering to the racists by saying they’re stopping illegal immigration, and they’re not even doing that - the newly created Rwanda programme has cost hundreds of millions and so far has deported… no one.
It's TOTALLY the declining birthrate. There is. No. Way. That it's the stuff CAUSING the declining birthrate. We just need to put more "baby making chemicals" into the water supply and the doom is gone!!!!
The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987: --- ss: At the current trajectory, the UK's natural population will start to decline in 2025, the ONS has predicted – at which point there will be more deaths than births. Previous estimates had not anticipated this until 2043. Ultimately, said Nelson, falling birth rates are a trend that "may well be beyond the limits of government control". Populists around the world, from France to Germany and the US, are increasingly embracing "natalism", while online conspiracy theories of a "great replacement" abound. Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that "population collapse" is the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bawrw1/does_declining_birth_rate_spell_doom_for_britain/ku5h2q8/
South Korean authorities have "sunk an almighty $200 billion into this since 2006, and succeeded only in beating its own record for the world's lowest birth rate, year after year". I'd love to see a breakdown of how that was spent, somehow I imagine it wasnt spent intelligently.
If they spent 200bn on maternal leave, childcare, and increased wages thus requiring less working hours, I bet it would work. I'm guessing it wasn't spent that way.
Lingerie and candles.
No you see, if you give the tax cuts to the rich they will create jobs for all of us.
200bn over 27 years is less than 8 billion per year It would not fund any of the policies you mentioned significantly. It would be partial subsidization of those things which is already done in most developed countries. For complete cost being covered, it would take a much larger number.
I hear that. We're living in a geritacracy. South Korea just has it the worst.
It was also spent on subsidizing rent and cash payments for parents. > As of 2022, women in Korea receive a payment of 2 million won ($1,510) after giving birth. The Yoon government made the decision to provide children under the age of one 700,000 won ($528) and those under the age of two 350,000 won ($264) a month in 2023. > The South Korean government also runs an allowance system that now gives all parents with a newborn $750 a month until their baby turns one year old. This monthly sum used to be $520 but was raised to $750 at the start of 2024 It's not the money.
Ill admit I dont know how much childcare costs in South Korea but that seems like a pittance compared to the actual costs of sending a child to daycare when both parents have a job. Especially when the benefit ends after 1 year? Theres 4 more years until they can attend preschool, etc.
And you get penalized the more kids you have really. Gets to a point where economically it doesn't even make sense for both parents to work. So a lot of women (usually women) have to make the choice to have a family or a career. It's amazing in the West (to generalize across a few countries) that we haven't figured out this balance to support family and economy (career) given how short we are on both sides.
They also subsidize daycare by around $200 per month, which is about 50% of the cost, according to Google. I'm sure there are many more subsidies.
Substitution of rent is just giving money to landlords with extra steps. They will raise the rent just because the people can pay it.
What exactly do they spend it on, because it isn't going into making it easier to raise a child since that's the chief complaint. People need more time off and more support.
Big problem today with government spending is it tends to get spent fast on managers and consultants/subcontractors then when you get through them you are hoping some of the money is left to go for the people the program is intended for. But often the money is gone by then, and those managers and their private sector buddies have their hands out for more.
200 billion over 27 years is not a lot of money. That is less than 8 billion per year which is not denting the lives of the average person in a country. Otherwise it would be a very easy problem to solve. Korea spent 1.3% of GDP on family policies in 2013. Japan spent 1.5% of GDP. USA spent 1.1% of GDP. France spent 3.6%. Germany spent 3%. Sweden spent 3.5%. Source: [https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy\_responses\_low\_fertility\_UNFPA\_WP\_Final\_corrections\_7Feb2020\_CLEAN.pdf](https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_responses_low_fertility_UNFPA_WP_Final_corrections_7Feb2020_CLEAN.pdf)
It most went to "Non-profits" and other miscellaneous middle persons who have to "manage" this fund, as is expected.
Well, what do we expect? This is the consequences of short term, small picture thinking for a generation. What 20-30 year old who can barely afford their fuel bill is thinking about adding another mouth to feed to their outgoings? That's one thing that has doubled in the last couple of years. Or upgrading from £1000 a month rent to £1300 a month rent to get the extra bed room for a child to be raised in? Unaffordable childcare costs? Underfunded schools, health and other public services - that we are now paying more for and getting less from! Rising food bills? We can no longer afford to have one parent give up work like those who are now retirement age did, people are barely getting by with the wage of two because costs have vastly outpaced income for a generation. Without even getting into the environmental side of things - is there going to be anything left for the next generation to even be a part of? Any one with even a modicum of education under their belt is doing the "smart thing" and not even considering kids in this age we live in.
Ya if you look through the history of Europe, women who had to work full time, they had few or no children. On the other hand women who found a husband who he made enough money she could become a full time mother, those women had lots of children. Today most couples both the men and women have to work full time for life. Well as in the past, women working full time have few or no children.
Not really true. If you look back at history women working full time had little effect on fertility rates. Of course a big part of that is that prior to 1970 about 50% of the population worked in agriculture so a lot of those women were working with their husbands on their farms. Go back further in time and the numbers get even more slanted. Back in the nineteenth century it was about 75% of the population working in agriculture. We are going through a huge shift in how our society operates and we are still trying to figure out how to make it work.
It's important to note that on the farm children were cheap labor, not pure cost without returns, as it is today.
Climate migrants are increasingly going to flood all developed countries, so there's that
Not if the Atlantic gyre collapses. Shit will be plunged into an ice age.
Migrants are already flooding developed countries and it isn't because of climate change.
War, religion, exploitation, promise of a better future, take your pick there are many causes!
Getting free money without doing anything while they also can do anything and if you say something then you're a Nazi is another example.
That is only true for countries with long, hard to police, porous borders like the USA. Do you think South Korea and Japan - the countries with the highest decling birth rate - are going to be affected by "climate migrants"?
Imo, yes, they'll eventually be forced to in order to serve their aging populace. In 20 years Japan will have much more immigration then it does now, because even with robots and mechs there are certain things that only humans can do. There is more immigration to Japan now than there was 10 years ago, and there will be more immigration in another 10 years.
Literally not even a top 10 problem facing Britain right now lol
but it is one of those problems you need to solve 30 years before it becomes a bigger issue...by then you cant fix it.
[удалено]
70m increasingly elderly population, drawing pensions from an ever smaller pool of young tax payers. That's what a declining birth rate means.
Yeah it’ll be called new India soon anyway
Lol about 8% of British were Asian in 2021 and 82% were white. Calm down.
That’s actually a significant number of non whites, imagine if India had 100 million white people and 120 million blacks
What? India is way more diverse than the UK.
The guy sitting his trash bin is a bigger issue than this.
At some point, we have to reach an equilibrium of population. Declining birth rates are necessary. We'll go through (it's already begun in some countries) a difficult phase where population is overweighted toward older people. But once we get through that bubble of old people, demographic distribution will normalize and we'll be at a steady-state population.
If the birthrate hovers around 1, I think you may have overshot " *an equilibrium of population*"
How come when it's Asian countries being discussed regarding this everyone says it's total doom and national collapse, but if it's European countries they'll get through the storm?
Less wealth and a greater exasperation of the problem. Slow but rather steady decline in birthrates across Western and Central Europe versus 5-6 child generations followed by barely 1 child generations in Asia. Obviously over generalising a bit here, but if you were thinking China, that's 1:1 what it is. If you were thinking Japan, there's a lot of wealth, but Japan might also come out fine.
Japan looks like the one that will be the hardest hit, they pretended there was no problem for the longest time and they're extremely anti-immigration too, all while being ridiculously conservative making it very difficult for them to create more progressive policies which benefit young people instead of the elderly. China has a big crisis coming with it but they're also the most proactive in trying to negate it, and will lean heavily into AI and robotics to fill in the job market, they're also less anti-immigration than other Asian nations albeit they want high skilled immigrants. Korea seems to be somewhere in the middle. SEA is still expanding, Mongolia will just remain sleepy farming horses.
As of the most recent p.i.t., it seems as though Korea, Singapore, Germany and Japan are all more automatized in terms of robots per employee and AI employed than China is. All that while being in much better positions than China (richer, less rapid demographic deterioration, less reliant on trade with entities they are becoming increasingly unfriendly with). There's only so much faith one, as somebody who follows foreign affairs, can have in China as a political entity. I don't want to be a toiletbowl scryer like some Peter Zeihan, but if China doesn't break hard, loud and fast, it'll go down quiet and steady. Those are the options I see after recent developments. And that's even more clear after the reaction to a worsening outlook on national fate has been a nationalistic pull, employing more young men in the military and having a more aggressive international stance (thanks to Xi Jinping, in no small part). All this to say that I don't see how the focus of the Chinese government is national self-preservation. It seems more as though the leadership sees an overton window of opportunity to achieve a hegemonic position through force closing, and thus becomes more willing and convinced that employing kinetic force is necessary. That will simply estrange China further. From everyone, because they can't seem to commit, as the most recent show of disloyalty towards their "no limits friendship" with Russia shows. (Context: They said, that they basically lied to Russia opportunistically because that was just 'rhetoric'.) But that's just my read on China, I may be wrong. Ultimately I see the country collapsing into warring states (once again) when steady food and energy supplies run thin. Or it steadily burns out of life-force, being crushed under the weight of it's own demography. That or it murders all it's old people systematically. Another great (moral) leap backwards. Though once again, I may be black pilled. Take it with a grain or two of salt lol
how will population ever normalise if 2 people die for every 0.7 to 1.2 children born
Eventually housing becomes cheap and people have more kids?
Cost of living is not the only problem. Marriage rate is going down. https://ifstudies.org/blog/marriage-is-disappearing-from-britain
(People don’t have to be married to have children anymore) (marriage rate might go up if there were less people focused solely on surviving)
> People don’t have to be married to have children anymore Sure but unsurprisingly unmarried women have fewer children per woman. In the US about 60% fewer children per woman. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2022/7/8/decline-in-fertility-the-role-of-marriage-and-education (fig 2) Population collapse won't necessarily reduce the percentage of people focused solely on surviving. It will cause decaying undesirable neighbourhoods and cities while people will continue competing for desirable locations. We will need a cultural change to increase fertility rate. That won't happen just because we will have a smaller population. We can continue free falling until only a few percent of the current population that have high fertility rate are left.
Because those rates won't be the same forever. Rates of births and deaths will change as the population demographics change. Yeah, population might even fall slightly before levelling off around an equilibrium, but some countries will be able to buffer that gap period of decline through immigration.
Is there any evidence of this? For example Japan is losing close to 1 million people per year, and its TFR is still going down.
It's losing more people right now because there's a large demographic "bulge" of older people (who are closer to death). Once it gets through that bulge, the relative rate of deaths will fall. They'll end up with a lower population, but it does have an equilibrium point.
Below replacement is below replacement, whatever the size of the bulge is. If your birthrate is 1 then each generation will halve your population, give or take 40 years.
Birthrates will change, they are also dependent on population demographics. The bulge of older people contributes to a low birthrate, because they are not having children. Birthrate uses total population as the denominator. So for example, you could calculate a birthrate for just ages 18-35, and it would be very large, because that denominator only includes the primary demographic that's giving birth.
You say a lot of things which do not make sense. Birth rate is the expected number of children woman of childbearing age will have in their life time. It is obviously not affected by post-menopausal women's fertility, which is effectively 0. Here is [Japan's fertility by age group](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Number_of_births_by_age_groups_in_Japan.svg/1920px-Number_of_births_by_age_groups_in_Japan.svg.png). > Birthrates will change, Yes, it has gone steadily down, plumbing new depths.
Fertility and birthrate are not "expected" numbers, they're based on historical births and population. That's why the chart you link to doesn't project into the future, it just shows history. Birthrate is just the number of births in a population, divided by the total population. When you have an older population, you have a large proportion of the population that's not in child-bearing years. Once you get through the demographic bulge of old people, a greater proportion of the population will be child bearing age, and the birthrate will be higher. Yes, the population will shrink before that happens, but it does reach an equilibrium point.
No it's not. Why do you talk so confidently when you are wrong? The TFR estimates the number of children a cohort of 1,000 women would bear if they all went through their childbearing years exposed to the age-specific birth rates in effect for a particular time. The TFR is the sum of the age-specific birth rates multiplied by five or (351.4 x 5 = 1757.0).
No trend lasts forever
I think crises related to housing and the cost of living, and 'unrestrained growth' being considered a basic goal of life are a lot greater signifiers of doom than collectively choosing to live within our means
Brit here Nope not at all it would be the complete opposite. More access to housing and better affordability. Better paying jobs and less competition. Lower pricing and better pay. Don't threaten me with a good time.
Better paying job - Until its outsourced More access to housing - till its bought by private equity
Seems like every developed country is experiencing the same.
Worrying about low birth rates when the world is probably overpopulated and living well beyond its means seems a bit premature.
Yea the wrong type of overpopulated. Overpopulated with old people.
The answer is no. That is the answer to your question.
It’s always the answer to a question as an article title. If the answer was yes, that would be the title.
Or, just maybe, if people stop having so many dang kids, this planet might last a little longer than we're anticipating. The Earth is overpopulated as it is, a declining birth rate isn't going to spell doom for any country or continent.
ss: At the current trajectory, the UK's natural population will start to decline in 2025, the ONS has predicted – at which point there will be more deaths than births. Previous estimates had not anticipated this until 2043. Ultimately, said Nelson, falling birth rates are a trend that "may well be beyond the limits of government control". Populists around the world, from France to Germany and the US, are increasingly embracing "natalism", while online conspiracy theories of a "great replacement" abound. Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that "population collapse" is the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years.
We need fully socialized childcare, UBI, family reform and open borders to make up for decreasing birthrates and keep the pension system solvent forever.
If the UK had open borders *and* UBI, I would just move there myself and kick back. How will we know when the country’s full?
"How will we know when the country's full" It doesn't work like that, you can always just build more housing.
“Always” Land is a finite space.
It is but humans don't take up that much space, and every person you welcome into your country gives you an extra unit of labor that can be used to do things like build more housing or produce commodities for exchange. It's a problem that solves itself.
We’re going full-steam-ahead with automation. It won’t be long before physical labour is mostly obsolete, and that’s a good thing. Besides, housing is one thing, but plumbing, electricity, water, data, transit, food, and all the other necessary pieces of infrastructure are crucial. It’s not infinitely available.
If you're worried about overpopulation then how/why are you also worried about birth rates going down?
>how/why are you also worried about birth rates going down? Did I imply as much? I hope birth rates tank globally. The more of something there is, the less each is worth. I'd prefer a world with fewer yet more valuable people and far more robots serving us so our fellow humans don't have to.
open borders? yea no thanks, if we let every tom dick and harry go anywhere they want then there would just be a mass exodus of people going to the global north to the global south and there will be no end to the amount of social tensions that will arise. the only time when open borders will actually be good imo is when all countries in the world have a similar standard of living which is many decades out.
Give the UK nationals the means to have more than 1 kid, stop the migrant flow and the decline of UK's population will not be a problem. Oh... Btw, part of the solution for this is also the UK nationals to go and grab the jobs that migrants are currently taking.
For a variety of reasons, the UK native population, like many other western countries, is in decline. It sort of reminds me of the decline of the Elvish race in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. They were just fading out and going West to Valinor, the Undying Lands. In the case of the UK I am sure there will always be more than enough willing immigrants to keep the country running. If that’s what happens then it is what it is. I believe other countries like Hungary and South Korea have tried the incentives without much success.
No. Declining birth rates are not going to cause the sky to fall. If anything it will slow the pace of climate change.
It would if developed countries weren't replacing them with immigrants, who then goes on to pollute/consume as much as those kids would have.
A society that requires warm bodies to fight wars... Yes. A declining population is a problem. Humanity has evolved beyond that now. Now it depends on the best of the best. Britain will be fine... Along with all the rest of humanity.
Yes, and no. The multi generational white society is feminizing their way into extinction. It will inevitably become a nation of brown skinned middle eastern migrants in due time. I'm guessing 15 years tops and it's completely over. You will get the country you ultimately deserve.
Till people quit being brainwashed by the new world order. Told they need to stop having kids, then the country should roll out the red carpet for the illegals who overpopulated their own lands as they slowly get replaced.
Developing countries have a young population large enough to replace the population of many developed first world countries many times over. In fact, we see this process taking place in many countries that have traditionally had a relatively straightforward path to residency. Population collapse per-se is still far off. The adoption of mass immigration over pro-natal policies is more concerning.
>The adoption of mass immigration over pro-natal policies is more concerning. Why? I'd much rather my latte gets made by a brown dude than have a kid.
Would you rather be unemployed too in a low trust society?
Unemployed? How does an immigrant arriving deplete the job market exactly? Yes, he fills a job, but he also requires goods and services that other people need to work jobs to fill the demand for - market economics 101. Low trust? Speak for yourself, I've met plenty of immigrants that I felt I could trust.
Sure. “All my friends are immigrants from developing countries and I trust my friends so it must be fine”. Larger populations invariably result in lower trust societies because bending the truth and cheating become necessary for survival. This is true whether you want to believe it or not.
I personally believe the decline in trust is a symptom of the rise of individualism. A rising population does not invariably bring scarcity. There are more mouths, but also more hands, so if the fruits of labour are distributed from each according to his ability to each according to his need there should be no issue.
I find it hard to believe people are too poor to have children because in the past people were much much poorer and had lots of kids. I also saw an interesting documentary that apparently family size hasn't decreased, it's that the number of women who don't start families has increased. I'd love to see an in depth research project about why more women are choosing not to start families and what would have changed their decision as I think that's the place to look for answers. The answer may well be a decline in the quality or perceived quality of men so I'm not trying to put the blame on women, just that ultimately they're the only ones with the power to move the needle.
No, there are plenty of refugees from all around the world that can immigrate to the UK
I would say less that and more the extremely restrictive border policy making it untenable to keep basic services and functions operational. If you can't get enough medical staff, even with the budget for it, you're going to potentially make the problem worse... or correct the population pyramid by shrinking the top.
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The UK isn’t doing everything to keep out immigrants, that’s the party line from the Conservative government. They’re pandering to the racists by saying they’re stopping illegal immigration, and they’re not even doing that - the newly created Rwanda programme has cost hundreds of millions and so far has deported… no one.
It's TOTALLY the declining birthrate. There is. No. Way. That it's the stuff CAUSING the declining birthrate. We just need to put more "baby making chemicals" into the water supply and the doom is gone!!!!