The BBC reports that there's a "Jaw-dropping global crash in children being born".
The world is ill-prepared for the global crash in children being born which is set to have a "jaw-dropping" impact on societies, say researchers.
Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century.
And 23 nations - including Spain and Japan - are expected to see their populations halve by 2100.
Countries will also age dramatically, with as many people turning 80 as there are being born.
. . .
As a result, the researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century.
"That's a pretty big thing; most of the world is transitioning into natural population decline," researcher Prof Christopher Murray told the BBC.
"I think it's incredibly hard to think this through and recognise how big a thing this is; it's extraordinary, we'll have to reorganise societies."
. . .
Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?
"We need a soft landing," argues Prof Murray.
Countries, including the UK, have used migration to boost their population and compensate for falling fertility rates.
However, this stops being the answer once nearly every country's population is shrinking.
"We will go from the period where it's a choice to open borders, or not, to frank competition for migrants, as there won't be enough," argues Prof Murray.
There's more at the link, including a forecast that Africa will swell to 3 billion people by 2100, with "many more people of African descent in many more countries as we go through this".
However, the study makes no mention of three stark realities. These are visible on the streets of many European cities right now, and in US society as well.
- Immigrants - particularly illegal aliens - are more likely than citizens to require social benefits and entitlement programs, rather than work for a living.
- Immigrants from rigidly stratified backgrounds - racial, ethnic, religious, or any other sort - are less likely to assimilate into the society and culture of their new national homes.
- In the absence of sufficient (and sufficiently willing) labor, business and commerce are developing robots and other automated solutions to meet their needs. This applies even to health care and care for the aged. Automated solutions don't get tired or sick or hungry, don't need time off, don't go on strike, and - after their initial capital cost is covered - are usually a lot cheaper to operate than paying wages and salaries.
For all those reasons, I think immigration will not be the preferred solution to a shortage of "own" babies. Instead, I think technologically advanced societies (e.g. Japan) will develop automated solutions to their worker shortage - and they'll export them to other technologically advanced societies, as a cheaper and better way to cope with the challenges that all such societies are now facing.
Immigrants from Third World nations aren't likely to as welcome in most other countries as they have been in the past, because they're already turning out to be more of a burden on those societies than they're contributing to them. There are exceptions, of course, and very honorable ones: but they can't offset the crushing weight of sheer numbers of "Gimme! Gimme!" immigrants, who are moving for their benefit rather than that of their new host nations. So desperate are they for improved living conditions that they're willing to endure natural and man-made hazards to reach a more accommodating destination. War, famine, wind and weather, even the threat of rape and being enslaved - none of them deter the desperate. They just keep coming, despite efforts to stop them. (Read about the numbers fleeing Africa through Libya and/or Somalia/Eritrea, and the accounts they give of the dangers of the journey. They're eye-opening.)
This is going to lead to ongoing (and probably worsening) conflict over the next years and decades, because voters will demand that their taxes are used for their benefit rather than that of outsiders streaming (usually illegally) across their borders.
Peter
9 comments:
Worth noting is that very few people immigrate because they want to make their new home better, they do so because they want to make their own lives better--this has always been the case.
However, the incentive structures have usually been such that if said immigrants wanted to make their lives better, they needed to make their new home better. Said incentives have been weakened, badly.
Also worth noting is that the declining birthrate is the acceleration of a long-established trend--the rate of population growth has been declining since the '70s, and as early as 2010 researchers were predicting zero population growth by 2100.
I wouldn’t be to concerned. Muslins won’t stop having tons of babies. Just part of the plan to take over the world.
Japan is already having problems with the 'aging' population and not enough money/caretakers...
One of my concerns that's not mentioned is the macro-economics of a shrinking population. Our whole world economic model assumes an increasing population. More consumers for products, more taxpayers to contribute to the pool, more homebuyers to purchase new homes.... what happens when there are fewer consumers and fewer taxpayers over time? Debts cant be paid, fewer workers to fund SSI and other entitlements. We see local cases where small towns have more people leaving than arriving. Houses go unsold. Businesses die due to lack of customers. Makes for some interesting speculation.
Texas Mike: That is in fact one of the more powerful motives for importing millions of people from the Third World to the First. And it's not only major corporations selling consumer goods who are behind it. Landlords, social workers, the list goes on.
Of course the same corporations will give at least lip service to "combating climate change". Even though everyone knows that just moving from Trashcanistan to a modern industrialized society multiplies your carbon footprint instantly.
The alternative would have been to keep trading and investing in the Third World. This was already working and raised their standard of living. Apparently, though, not quickly enough to satisfy the interest groups panicking about flagging domestic demand.
I find it ironic that academicians have been beating on the first world to stop having children since around 1960 (or whenever "the pill" became the social hotness) and now that it's happening, they're in full tilt anguish mode.
When did ZPG (Zero Population Growth) get started? Did anyone stop to think there's an infinite number of growing population curves and an infinite number of shrinking population curves, and the odds of hitting exactly what they want, zero, is 1 out of infinity?
Do they ever think about things before they start screaming about them?
For me, the question is less a matter of the origin of an infant American - birth or immigration - than of whether he or she will be trained up to perform a service or produce a good that any free person would willingly spend a dollar for.
It's time for people to recover the percept that productive children will provide a better quality retirement than any government.
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Wow. Have feminists and their abortion rights empowered us all or been good for the nation or what? Even China is set to cave in on itself.
There are two major factors driving down the birthrate in Western Civilization.
One: birth control technology. The Pill, along with IUD's, and abortion. Lots of marriages began with the bride pregnant at the alter. No longer.
Two: Huge increases in taxes to pay for the socialist dream list of government programs. When the wife has to work to pay the family taxes, you can kiss off children in early marriage. You end up with fewer, or no children, in a marriage. In addition, with the wife having to work, the kids are raised in childcare facilities.
Add in feminist thinking, and less marriages happen to begin with.
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