r/behindthebastards • u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast • 2d ago
Discussion Why are people freaking out about declining birth rates?
I'm hearing a lot about declining birth rates and is that really such a bad thing?
Have any of these pearl clutchers sat in 405 traffic recently? Or seen the massive suburban sprawl or gone hiking in mount ranier on a weekend? Or are they ben Shapiros that never go outside?
223
u/StygIndigo 2d ago
It has always been a white nationalist talking point. They care about the birthrates of one particular demographic, and don't want jobs to go to immigrants who don't match that demographic.
35
77
u/macroeconprod Doctor Reverend 2d ago
This right here. Go past the surface of these birth rate panickers and you will find the white supremacy.
37
u/MoreGhostThanMachine 2d ago
For what its worth, thats a dangerous assumption. There are systemic problems with reduced birth rates that cant just be chalked up to white supremacy, and if white supremacists are the only ones who address these problems, they will for sure implement white supremacist solutions.
Some More News did a deep dive episode on this.
39
u/Sweet-Advertising798 2d ago
Simples. Stop deporting people..
1
u/StableSlight9168 1d ago
I agree for the US and the rest of the west, especially the large countries with large immigrant populations as they can get more people, but their is South Korea which geniunely has a catastophe.
Its essentially children of men with 1 child to every four adults and its getting worse. I'd argue a large part of it is the koreas somehow managed to have both a communist, and a capitalist dystopia but that is a country ending crisis, especially if a war with north korea every shows up.
Anyone in a large wealthy country with high immigration levels has very little to worry about.
Their is also an issue for smaller countries. Large countries, especially the US are cultural powerhouses so immigrants have a massive culture to assimilate into, however if a country has maybe a million people it can be a challenge to assimilate immigrants into the country to try to keep its native culture alive.
The solution in my opinion is having cultural holiday and classes for immigrants to get them invested in those smaller cultures but that requires funding and effort from the local culture, this is an issue big countries don't have.
Neither of these issues apply to the US as a whole. The problem with birthrates just seem to be trying to keep the ponzi scheme of an economy going to people getting scared about mixed race children.
-20
u/Kitchen-Owl-3401 2d ago
Shame you can't just list them instead of expecting people to spend time looking, ffs.
1
3
u/kitti-kin 2d ago
I think this is the case in America, but Japan and Korea are also pretty stressed about their birth rates.
20
u/snarkitall 2d ago
yesm sometimes, but every country that educates women and achieves an advanced level of health infrastructure is experiencing this - it's not just white nationalists.
6
14
u/mifter123 2d ago
Yeah, but it's not a real problem, it's only a "problem" to people who: 1) have an issue with people who aren't like them existing and feel threatened by the idea that their demographic is "getting smaller" (it isn't the number of every demographic is getting larger) and/or 2) people who want to enforce sexist gender roles where women stay home (and stop competing with men for jobs) and become bang-maids (exist only for men's sexual gratification and household labor).
15
u/snarkitall 2d ago
No, it legitimately is a problem when there are 4 people over 70 for every one working age person.
12
u/mifter123 2d ago
Maybe, but that's easily solved via immigration policy or changes to the economic model.
We need more workers? Just let immigrants in and let them work. Not attracting enough immigrants? Increase immigration incentives to attract more.
Not enough workers producing not enough, I wonder if there's expenses like military spending we could reduce or ways to increase taxes like increasing the tax burden on millionaires and billionaires to fund elder care? It's by its very nature, a temporary problem that costs less over time.
Declining birthrate is literally only a problem if we make it a problem by being racist or allowing billionaires to devour our resources.
It will be an issue in the US, of course, because Americans hate immigrants and would rather let granny die than tax a billionaire. But it's a very simple "problem" to solve. It's also not even really a problem, the average worker now is 2x as productive as they were 50 years ago and 4x as productive as they were 100 years ago. Our ability to support the elderly only gets better over time.
Maybe it will be a problem once the entire world has been brought to the same standards of living and education as the imperial core (maybe, that assumes no significant material or cultural changes), but that's a long way away, and frankly a slowly decreasing population will only make it easier to support that population as automation increases (assuming that billionaires aren't allowed to hoard the wealth, because no matter what we do, if we don't solve that issue, we're fucked).
13
u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago
It’s not easily solved by immigration policy when the countries where immigrants come from also suffer birthrate decline.
5
u/mifter123 2d ago edited 2d ago
Man, it would be crazy if the human population was growing rapidly with no indication of stopping, and all this birthrate nonsense was racists disappointed that their own group wasn't growing in comparison to other groups. I wonder if the populations of these countries that are experiencing birthrate decline went up or down the past few years? It's a shame there's no way to check and see if this is a real problem or just an imagined one.
3
2
u/snarkitall 2d ago
of course there are solutions, i'm just saying it's not a totally invented problem.
it does seem to be a very consistent process across cultures ... every nation that has achieved a certain level of education and development does seem to go below replacement rates pretty quickly.
1
u/thatcockneythug 2d ago
Immigration is a band aid on an arterial bleed. It's not a long term solution.
2
u/mifter123 2d ago
If you mean the potential reduction in total number of humans, that presuposes the claim that less total humans is bad. I, personally, would not make that claim.
1
1
u/plastiquearse 2d ago
*nationalist focus, innit?
More of the preferred, fewer of the ones keeping us from what we are owed and now suffering because they took it from us.
0
u/Hyphenagoodtime 2d ago
This time around they are only offering life to anyone with the white stuff. Gotta pay to play the billionaires riding your backs game
123
u/Suitable-Broccoli264 2d ago
Most country’s national pension systems including Social Security are structured based on each subsequent generation being larger.
66
u/claimstoknowpeople 2d ago
Sure but that's a problem with the design of those systems, not an argument to force an impossible, eternal exponential growth
20
u/GrecoRomanGuy Steven Seagal Historian 2d ago
True, but the people who benefit from the system being designed that way sure as shit aren't gonna want to reform it.
54
u/missed_sla Antifa shit poster 2d ago
Capitalism's most glaring flaw is the requirement for infinite growth in a finite world.
41
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago edited 2d ago
Can't they just increase taxes, more so on the rich to make up the loss of funding from fewer people?
Edit : Life expectancy is declining thanks to rising deaths from obesity, drug addiction and suicide. Late stage capitalism is burning the candle on both ends
60
13
u/capybooya 2d ago
You can improve it a lot with taxes on rich people and corporations, but that's hard without international cooperation though, Biden admin tried for a (miniscule) 15% minimum international corporate tax which got some traction but Trump has pulled out of. And the underlying problem of less economic activity and more distress (and probable unrest and protest votes) among those who have the least will still be an issue regardless.
18
u/PennCycle_Mpls Sponsored by Knife Missiles™️ 2d ago
Yes, they/we can eliminate the contribution cap and replace it with a withdrawal cap.
Financially solved.
There's another problem; labor. Japan, South Korea and I'm sure other places are starting to face this one already. There's fewer and fewer workers to care for and provide service to their aging population. Those older folks need care. And as they age further, they need more care.
In the immediate future, open movement of labor can solve this, but it's still kicking the can.
Japan is banking on robotics alleviating some of the labor shortage. Because, you know, Japan.
The financial problem is mathematically solved, but politically unfeasible currently. And the labor problem is a political problem everywhere and mathematically unsolved long term.
15
u/Ninjawombat111 2d ago
Money has to come from somewhere. If the majority of your population is old and retired while a smaller group is working and being taxed. The taxation percentages necessary are sweeping and unlivable. The young being taxed into not being able to support themselves in order to support the old, is a bad thing.
3
2d ago
[deleted]
0
u/TemuPacemaker 2d ago
I like your modest proposal, we totally should turn those people into soylent green
21
u/bretshitmanshart 2d ago
Do you want to be the monster that sits down little Reginald and tell him his Christmas vacation in the Alps will only be two weeks and not three just so some poor person gets to eat two meals a day and have their medicine?
7
2
u/SINKSHITTINGXTREME FDA SWAT TEAM 2d ago
The amount of taxes you could sustainably get from the rich (as in no one-time seizures) pales in comparison to the raw revenues from a sizeable productive workforce IIRC. Also source for the declining life expectancy?
5
u/undisclosedusername2 2d ago
Then it's an inherently unsustainable system. According to the rules of ecology, biology and physics, systems can't grow indefinitely - if they exceed their carrying capacity they collapse.
4
39
u/NoUseForAName2222 2d ago
Because it means a lack of supply of fresh workers to exploit
30
u/tragedy_strikes 2d ago
They're scared of the time after the Black Plague when workers were scarce and got to demand greater wages and better hours.
19
u/Statistactician 2d ago
A lot of it comes down to the ratio between the elderly who are too infirm to work and the younger generation tasked with taking care of them.
That is a real problem, regardless of politics. But the conservative "solution" of trying to increase birth rates just won't work. It's already too late.
54
u/shifty_new_user 2d ago
At the most basic level, Society is basically a pyramid scheme in terms of supporting the old. You need more young people at the bottom of the pyramid to take care of the old people while still having enough free to get other things done. More old people than young results in an inverted pyramid.
On a shittier reason, capitalism needs more people to expand the economy. Shrinking population equals shrinking economy.
Also, we can plug this hole with immigration, so this also tends to be a white nationalist dog whistle.
16
u/TemuPacemaker 2d ago
You also need a certain population to maintain a functional civilization and technology. You could survive as an isolated small group of hunter-gatherers or something, but if you want cancer treatments and airplanes and smartphones, you need lots of people to support that.
Also, we can plug this hole with immigration, so this also tends to be a white nationalist dog whistle.
Well you can plug this hole for a while at least, at the expense of brain drain in the origin countries.
26
u/auntieup 2d ago
I’m reading “They Thought They Were Free,” an American Jew’s mid-20th century investigation of German attitudes to fascism before, during, and after WW2. The Nazi obsession with birth rates was a major policy driver then, to the point where even the math problems taught in schools during the regime touched on themes of population.
Nothing has changed at all. MAGA is basically a copy/paste of the Nazi playbook, minus the overwhelming popular support.
16
u/iamjustaguy 2d ago
MAGA is basically a copy/paste of the Nazi playbook
That playbook was based on what the Americans did up to that point.
3
11
u/mappingthepi 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think basically every answer in this thread nailed it. Something that always baffles me about this conversation though is how it always seems based in an idyllic environmental landscape that is increasingly unlikely. It’s hard to factor in projections and undefined variables off the cuff but safe to say there’s a lot coming down the pike and I think there’s an undercurrent of a false sense of security
eta: just clarifying i’m referencing ecological climate change and the tendency to make economic predictions/full on claims that ignore environmental predictions
12
u/Strelochka 2d ago
The truth of the matter is that having kids majorly sucks for women. When there was more gendered division of labor and fewer methods of contraception, they were kinda locked into it by the societal structure where they get married and mind the household. Now when they’re expected to be equal contributors in the workplace, having a child derails your career at the most crucial time, creating gaps with men in the same career track that only grow with time. While household labor is still disproportionately on women.
Women’s health is still under-researched and often dismissed, and simultaneously there’s more information on what pregnancy does to your body. As a result, women who have agency and the education to know how to do it switch to only having children when they REALLY want them, instead of having them because that’s what you’re supposed to do, all over the world. And I don’t think that even ‘dismantling capitalism’ is gonna change it. Women in The Soviet Union were stuck with all the same problems. And the carrot methods aren’t really working - child benefits and other payouts don’t push people to have more children. So what we’ve got coming is the stick - further dismantling of women’s rights and bodily autonomy, which I don’t think is worth it to reverse the aging pyramid
6
u/Captain_Trululu 2d ago
and funny how the dumb-dumbs who are all "we should return to less technological advanced societies" are all quiet how that will imply bigger birth deaths and more pain in pregnancies.
Also, funny how someone here who commented about "leftists should breed more so that we win against fascists" are pretty much admiting they are using their children as cannon-fodder and ignore the possibilities of minorities being born from right-wing communities.
Also, it is gonna be pretty telling how many here would be against artifical wombs...
34
u/Weekly_Beautiful_603 2d ago
In Japan, where I live, the issue is more the shape of the demographic pyramid. When you have lots of elderly people but far fewer young working people, you have less tax revenue and more expenditure on healthcare (we have universal insurance coverage).
7
u/BiMonsterIntheMirror 2d ago edited 2d ago
Japan needs to increase immigration and not fuck over Kurds who build their houses.
5
u/DarkestLore696 2d ago
Ah but you see it’s okay for Japanese to be xenophobic because weebs love them and “that is their culture.”
7
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
People live a lot longer in Japan too. In the US the average American man is 5'9 200 pounds and the average American woman is 5'4 170 pounds.
Im not blaming anyone: our food is mostly heavily processed junk food, a lot of people are in food deserts and im 190 pounds myself and pretty average looking. Every time I have ever left the US for over a week I have lost weight without even trying.
We also don't have universal health care, walkable cities, high drug overdose deaths and no social safety net
1
11
u/BrianThompsonsNYCTri 2d ago
One of the paradoxes about population decline is that it tends to increase, not decrease, the population of large cities. As the population in the more remote regions fall it creates a vicious cycle where lack of services and economic opportunities push what young people remain to move to the cities which in turn pits further downward pressure on the places they left which drives more people out of those areas. Japan is an example of this, the population of the country has been falling for 15 years yet the population of Tokyo and surrounding areas continues to increase. Meanwhile there are about 9 million abandoned homes which will never be sold because nobody wants to live in a city with crumbling infrastructure and no shops/restaurants.
9
u/Buddist_stalin_2 2d ago
I think part of the freak out coming from Boomers is that the birth rate actually declined a long time ago. So there's going to be a tectonic shift in society pretty soon (arguably we're seeing the death throes of the 20th century boomers now with MAGA and the Ukraine war). It's not a "no one is having kids now", it's "no one was having kids twenty years ago and no one noticed". But like others on here have said, white people won't have a stranglehold on the suburbs anymore, no one will be buying new cars or cable TV. Also it's hard for a company that owns 100,000 rental units to keep rent from going down to maintain that illusion when 2/3 are empty.
4
u/False_Flatworm_4512 1d ago
I wish we talked about this part more. The baby boomers were an anomaly. They were an accident that was corrected for.
Before WWII, many children didn’t make it to adulthood, so people had a lot of them. After the advent of vaccines and antibiotics, coupled with the prosperity that allowed for a real childhood without dangerous labor, the majority of kids made it. After the boom, humans course corrected and factored in the assumption that their kids wouldn’t die.
In places where there is still high infant/child mortality, people still have a lot of kids. That people in those places tend to not be white is a feature, not a bug1
u/Buddist_stalin_2 17h ago
Apparently Mexico is basically poised to become the next superpower since it has a ton of young people and manufacturing capabilities. I don't know if that's somehow related to the Republicunts pushing the narrative that South American gangs are to blame for America's something something something but I'm sure there's a correlation.
12
u/Granum22 2d ago
There are legitimate concerns in parts of the world of not having enough younger people to replace the elderly in society and the workforce. When it's coming from the right it's about their fear of white people no longer being the majority.
5
u/MistressLyda 2d ago
This one is decent on the topic.
Very, very summarized? A healthy population wants to replace themselves. Individual varieties will always happen, but we are hardwired to, well, not die out. So when whole countries struggles to a point that the average person does not want, or does not dare, to have children? It is worrying.
18
u/DAngggitBooby 2d ago
In the largest sense?
Because we have umbilically tied ourselves to economic patterns requiring infinite GROWTH.
The people claiming it's all because of racism are probably Americans and in the US that is certainly the main reason. But not the only reason at all. Oversimplifying explanations is kind doing a disservice here. BUT. If we want to do a deeper dive on American fear mongering (which I'm all for on a BtB sub) let's not forget that conservatives/republicans/theologists/reactionaries also hate
- women getting an education
- sexual liberation/ birth control
- education in general
- feminism in general
- NOT having a slave labor force (they can control)
Lots of things for them to hate/sea lion about declining birthrates. Take your pick. Declining birthrates is a good thing. Conservatives fucking hate admitting that capitalism directly coincides with declining birth rates of educated whites. It's an ontological trap for them. I see it as a morbid concidence.
What's the solution?
Well, what we need most is a change in culture towards a more collective and social framework for childcare that doesn't fetishize the "biological bond," and actually incentivizes taking care of the kids (people) we've already got.
5
u/barkbarkkrabkrab 2d ago
While a dramatic shift in birth rate can be problematic, I think it's really about critisizing women. Would more middle class folks have kids if income kept up with expenses? Sure, maybe. But even in the most gender equitable, economically stable countries (nordic countries), birth rate is down. Quite simply when given the freedom, less people will prioritize having children than previous generations. For many reasons.
6
u/darlantan 2d ago
Because far too many people do not understand that "Line must go up" is not sustainable and should not be the basis for economic systems or population projections.
12
u/FaelingJester 2d ago
They mean of the people they like and by declining birth rate they mean they fear being outnumbered by the people they don't like. They can't stay in power and set the rules if their power base is smaller than the opposition.
2
u/ExtraEmu_8766 2d ago
Yes, and afraid if they're not in power they would be made slaves or treated as they treat the other people they don't like.
4
u/Visible-Garage-5802 2d ago
I've always heard people freaking out over declining birth rates as the rich going, "Oh no, we need more future workers. We need to increase birthrates somehow." And in America, at least, that means taking away abortion rights and restricting family planning resources instead of making health care affordable and our daily lives affordable, and our schools safe.
I know the answer is blood money, but I never understood why rich people decided to do everything but the obvious things that would work.
4
u/Combatical 1d ago
Its not a popular thing to talk about but I've often suggested the declining birth rate is a good thing for most of the worlds issues.
I'm doing my part!
5
u/alayeni-silvermist 2d ago
They’re only freaking out about declining “white” birth rates, so that should tell you the why.
7
u/Chemical-Plankton420 2d ago
Who is gonna wipe your ass when you’re old? ChatGPT?
2
u/OhSusannah 1d ago
It will be the people who lost their jobs/ never got hired in the first place because of AI.
The media seems to be full of stories about two different problems we will face in the future but those two problems may solve each other.
Problem 1: population will be top heavy with people too old to work who require care to some extent.
Problem 2: AI will expand and optimize to the extent that unemployment will rocket up, requiring UBI to stave off extreme crime.
These two problems can solve each other. ChatGPT can't take care of the elderly. That requires actual humans, humans who would otherwise be unemployed in an AI-saturated world.
This would require major shifts in society so we will probably just continue to tank women's rights to force increased population until climate change solves everything the hard way with increased death.
1
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
If I manage to live long enough to see assisted living, I would be fine ending it there.
I saw the final years of my grandparents and I wouldn't mind an early exit.
5
u/panini84 2d ago
You would be fine ending it there. I suppose you would be fine making that choice for others as well?
3
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
I wouldn't do that, but I do think we should have more options for older people who have a very low quality of life to exit on their own terms.
Im not suggesting that people do this for any reason other than quality of life and shouldn't be strong armed into it. But if someone is at bojacks grandma ( not his mom's) level of functioning and they can live a long time like that, well should they?
Clip for bojack reference
1
u/panini84 2d ago
I’m all for euthanasia when folks want it for themselves. But your view that you’d just end it doesn’t really answer OP’s question about “who is gonna wipe your ass?” It skirts it.
Someone has to take care of old folks and it can’t be other old folks.
3
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
True, but life expectancy is declining in the US, so there won't be as many old people either
1
u/panini84 2d ago
It’s not. There was a slight dip in 2020 for obvious reasons, but it’s back on track to be higher than ever.
11
u/snarkitall 2d ago
none of the issues are insurmountable, however, aside from capitalism, you still need a balanced population pyramid to keep society going.
historically, there are more young people than old people, which means there are plenty of people to grow food, make things, look after kids AND look after old people. If the population pyramid becomes inverted, you suddenly have lots of old people who aren't working or producing goods, and fewer young people. on a small scale, that looks like you looking after your parents or granparents in their old age, but when you are their age, you have no one younger than you to help you out. even if we don't assume that family is supposed to provide some caregiving to older generations (ie it's not a specific problem if you yourself don't have kids), if no one has kids, there's no one to staff your retirement home, to be your doctor or to produce your food. we're at below replacement levels in lots of countries, so we could have a situation where there's one working person for every 4 elderly people.
and to be clear, YOU will be one of those elderly people. the boomers aren't going to experience this; it'll be currently working generations that do.
8
u/panini84 2d ago
This is why when people shit on someone’s decision to become a parent or believe that parents don’t deserve paternity leave or other “benefits” due to being parents that I like to point out that someone’s kids are going to be taking care of you- even if you decide not to have your own.
I’m all for everyone making the choices that work best for them (kids or no kids). But it seems that it’s become more popular lately to shit on parents for deciding to have kids… which is insane when you think about the fact that your ability to function in society is entirely based on the free labor of good parents who raise their kids to choose jobs like nursing home RN or doctor, or Hell, even the door dash driver who delivers your dinner.
2
u/lady_beignet 2d ago
Anti-natalism is just doomerism with a faux ethical coating
3
u/LizardPersonMeow 2d ago
Not all people that don't want kids or don't have kids are anti-natalist though. In fact, I'd say most have either decided to make that decision for other reasons or had the decision made for them. And tbh, as a woman who doesn't have kids due to infertility, the hatred towards people (and, in particular, women) without kids is palpable. If people think "a lot" of people are hating on them for having kids, they're probably just being fed rage bait social media algorithms to keep them mad and upset - most people end up having kids. There isn't some sort of conspiracy against parenthood.
Edit to add: the only conspiracy against parenthood is capitalism tbh
2
u/lady_beignet 2d ago
I want to clarify that I am very much pro-choice, meaning that I want each person to get to decide for themselves whether to be a parent - and I’m deeply sorry that hasn’t been true for you.
When I say anti-natalism, I mean the philosophy that having children is unethical full stop. And though it’s not widespread in the larger culture, it is endemic in leftist groups. I was (swear I’m telling the truth) forced out of a mutual aid society because I chose to have 2 kids. Every time I’ve tried to get involved in organized leftism in my community, it’s very clear that parents aren’t welcome.
2
u/LizardPersonMeow 2d ago
I know what anti-natalism is as I've had my run ins with them as well. However, I think those are very niche situations. I don't find many people I encounter to be like that, even in activist/lefty circles. In fact, I find I'm more often discriminated against for NOT having children, and that's not just in activism, but at work, in my friendship circles, in daily life etc. Anti-natalists exist, I know, but they're a minority of a minority. Most people without kids did not choose to not have kids. I know because I've worked in the childless not by choice space myself and childless not by choice people are a silent majority in the people without kids category. People just assume people are childfree by choice if they don't have kids.
I think the people you're referring to suck, but they are the exception, not the rule. I don't have an issue with people choosing not to have kids for ethical reasons, but it's not ok to force ethics/beliefs/life choices on others. I hope you find organisations that aren't as out of touch with humanity as these obviously were.
1
u/panini84 2d ago
I dunno… I’ve been a woman without kids and a woman with kids and the hate feels more present since having kids.
But like anything about being a woman, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Don’t have sex? You’re a prude. Have sex? You’re a slut. Don’t have kids? You’re selfish. Have kids? You’re selfish and you’re bad at the thing society gives you zero support for - and you’re also bad for asking for support since you chose this.
8
u/Webbtrain Sponsored by Raytheon™️ 2d ago
It’s definitely a white nationalist talking point, but also if there’s a very top heavy age distribution, it can cause a lot of problems. For example, not having enough people to take care of an aging population.
Immigration is a way around this. If you shut down immigration and also have low birthrates, that’s how you get demographic collapse like what is currently happening in Japan
0
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
Japan is doing better than the US is at the moment though
6
u/PianoAndFish 2d ago
"At the moment" is the issue, you know they know it's bad when the Japanese government is actively trying to increase immigration (something Japan has historically not been keen on, to put it very mildly).
0
u/BrianThompsonsNYCTri 2d ago
Immigration isn’t infinite either. Birth rate is collapsing worldwide, this isn’t just a rich country only problem anymore. Places a lot of people still think have high birth rates don’t. For example Vietnam is below replacement, Phillipines is soon to follow. Mexico is below replacement, almost all of central and South America is below replacement, with Bolivia being the highest in the region at just 2.5 and falling. Immigration works for both rich countries and poor countries in the short term but in the coming decades(assuming climate change doesn’t make large swaths of the planet uninhabitable….) it’s going to be an increasing drag on poor countries as remittances and other support that gets sent back doesn’t compensate for the labor shortages created. The world population is set to peak around 2050, likely a lot sooner than that. We already passed peak births in 2017.
7
u/TheSelfDrivingSigma 2d ago
whenever you see people freaking out about declining birth rates, theyre talking about the white birth rate.
2
9
3
3
u/imMatt19 2d ago
Our entire economic system relies on a continuously increasing population to fuel growth.
3
u/lianodel 2d ago
The most reasonable answer is not that birth rates are inherently the important thing, but that they are an indicator for other things: a struggling working class, and little hope for at least the near future.
But I've also spoken to other natalists, and when the answer isn't just blatant racism, they just get kind of confused and angry. They never really questioned why they think a growing population is inherently good and important, so they just take it as an attack on their values.
Which, I mean, yeah, it is. But isn't that the point? I wouldn't want to hold opinions that can't hold up to basic scrutiny, but some people have a different idea of "truth."
3
u/octnoir 2d ago
So I did make a post about 4 months ago on this: Finding good faith research on the birth rate crisis and the climate crisis that ISN'T from conservative politics - found a few good points and links there. You can also refer to some of the links in this thread.
Since then, I found this great piece by Liberal Currents on "The Crisis of Gender Relations" - a piece made and tweaked specifically in response to the Male / Female gender divide in the 2024 election, the regression / backlash to the #MeToo movement, and the rise of the 'Manosphere'. And gives an alternative perspective to birth rates.
The decline in birthrates is often attributed to the cost of raising children. In the premodern world children went to work as early as six or eight, and thus constituted an economic benefit to the family; in the modern world they don't start working until they're teenagers, later if they attend college, constituting a huge upfront cost without much return for decades, if ever. "Surely this explains why birthrates are decreasing." It does not. Various countries have experimented with various degrees of income support for parenthood: paid maternity/paternity leave, childcare subsidies, direct cash payments. The effect on the birthrate of all these programs appears to be approximately zero.
What is relevant to the birthrate is how many children women want to have—shocking, I know. In countries where women want to have more children, women have more children. America and South Korea make good contrast cases. In America women want to have 2.7 children, and have 1.7. In South Korea women want to have 1.4-1.8 children, and have .8. Neither American nor Korean women have as many children as they say they want—but still, the number of children desired does seem to affect the number of children produced.
But they are. South Korea provides a useful case study. As noted earlier, each subsequent generation of South Koreans will be half the size of the previous. This will generate serious social problems. An ever-shrinking workforce will be required to support an always-larger population of retirees; as larger amounts of economic production are devoted in this direction, economic growth will slow. The prospects of the new generation will be just that much dimmer than their parents'. On top of this, South Korea shares a land border with a bellicose neighbor that even now proposes to conquer and subjugate it. Decreasing populations means decreasing military capacity, and in an era of declining population every casualty in war is irreplaceable. (It is for this very reason that Ukraine's military conscription begins at 25—and this after being lowered in 2024.)
To talk about today we must talk about the past. If our social form does not any longer reproduce itself, we must ask: how did it formerly reproduce itself? And why has that mode of reproduction broken down? The answer to the former question is simple: our society once reproduced itself according to the patriarchal bargain.
So far, so bleak. Here's the thing: the material basis of the patriarchal bargain is breaking down, and it has been for about two centuries. This was obvious in 1988, when Kandiyoti coined the term "patriarchal bargain," and that breakdown has not abated a whit in the intervening decades. The root cause of the breakdown is simple: we call it the modern world. The condition of modernity is continually increasing worker productivity as a result of technological progress—sustained long run per capita economic growth.
These are all stories about what makes for a good man. They are adapted to a certain material reality—the world of the patriarchal bargain. A world where women need men for economic or physical security. But mostly, we are not being taken hostage by elite European terrorists. We live in a safe world; indeed, the modern world has some of the lowest rates of violence (murder, assault, rape) ever recorded. More and more, women don't need men. And men haven't figured out how to adapt to that.
Declining fertility is precisely a symptom of this breakdown. As Alice Evans documents, the rise of singlehood among young people is not a result of women not wanting marriage or children—but rather women finding the bargain on offer not particularly attractive. Men think they are happier and wealthier married—and they're right. Women think they are happier and wealthier alone—and they're right. The bargain is not good for women, and more and more we are declining to make it.
I liked this essay because the biggest thing it acknowledges that there will be significant logistical hurdles to manage even if we did immediately pivot to address them, on top of acknowledging beyond economics and social welfare that women are just wanting fewer children and at the same time women are wanting to be more single than before.
I found it compelling the way this pieces weaves in the loneliness crisis, the significant and every growing wide chasm between men and women relations, gender politics, media narratives to birth rates.
3
3
u/KnoxenBox 2d ago
These are usually the same folks that justify bombing brown folks by saying the world is overpopulated. They clutch pearls because of declining WHITE birth rates.
3
u/Sad-Departure5177 1d ago
It's funny, only a few years ago the concern was "overpopulation" now it's declining birth rates.
3
5
u/Statistactician 2d ago
Kurzgesagt has a good video summarizing it for the layperson.
The gist of it is that our economic system is not prepared for declining birth rates and having far more elderly people in need of care with too small of a working-age demographic to support them.
It's a real concern and, much like climate change, we're not taking the steps we need to be taking now in order to change course. Just "have more kids" isn't the answer, but it's the one conservatives are focusing on because the alternative approaches don't fit with the "forever growth" philosophy they're stuck to.
6
u/Gavagirl23 2d ago
I would also necessitate some stiff taxation of wealth hoarders, which is why people like Elon Musk are rushing to the mic every time the subject comes up.
3
u/Statistactician 2d ago
Very much so. We need to be building social safety nets, not destroying them. But the American public at large, even many people on the left, aren't willing to stomach the measures we would need to take to avoid the disaster that's coming.
5
u/lady_beignet 2d ago
I need to start this by saying that I’m a social anarchist and I think white supremacist capitalism is the most evil thing on this planet.
That having been said… the birth rate dropping dramatically (not just getting lower, but like, imploding) is not a non-problem.
For example, do you like taking hot showers? Then your world has to have people who can source the raw materials for a shower, it needs people who can build a shower, it needs people who can build a factory for shower-building, it needs truck drivers to deliver the raw materials to the factory… and we haven’t even talked about installing the shower, repairing it, creating plumbing infrastructure to get the water to your apartment, or government to enforce fair labor practices for all the workers involved.
And that’s just for one machine we use daily. If there’s not enough working-age people to staff the supply chain, we all better get used to a lower standard of living.
-1
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
AI is going to replace a lot of jobs and the job market kinda sucks. Plus if there is a labor shortage, workers will have more bargaining power
0
u/lady_beignet 2d ago
Who exactly is programming and maintaining all this AI? And based on the currently quality of AI “art,” how do you know everything they make won’t suck and break in 2 seconds?
1
u/OhSusannah 1d ago
It takes fewer people to program and maintain AI than it does to do all the jobs previously done by AI. The current quality of AI "art" is shockingly higher than it was even 3 years ago. The current exponential increase will likely taper off in the future but that still makes it unlikely to suck and break in 2 seconds.
6
5
u/No-Appeal3220 2d ago
who will the doctors be for you? the cnas? gardeners? who will pay for road improvements?
5
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
Im assuming some of the thousands of people stuck in 405 traffic. Or the mobs of people at Costco.
Plus to live in western Washington you pretty much have to make doctor money to live there anyway.
1
u/panini84 2d ago
Those people exist today. We’re talking 20, 30, 50 years from now.
0
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
With the environment the way it's going there is not going to be a 50 years from now.
1
u/panini84 2d ago
I’m not climate denier, but I wouldn’t plan for non-existence. Just ask the Millerites how planning for the end works out.
4
u/MontbarsExterminator 2d ago
I'm looking forward to the collapse of civilization and the extinction of the species
2
u/murse_joe 2d ago
They are super racist and xenophobic. They don’t want people of color but especially immigrants. Most just stop there, but some of them do realize that’s not viable. Our economy runs on immigrants. So their new plan is to have a bunch of white babies. They are shooting themselves in the foot by making it harder for Americans to have babies. But they don’t realize it’s not just the babies. We need immigrants or America will wither.
2
2
u/RoxieRoxie0 2d ago
Because then the rich people will have less cheep labor, so they telling us all to panic about it.
2
u/RedDirtWitch 1d ago
Because they can’t keep opening new Chik-Fil-As, Walmarts, and dollar stores if all the Boomers die and we kick a bunch of people off Medicaid and there’s nobody to work them.
2
u/ServiceDragon 1d ago
in the flyover states there are areas that are emptying out because they are boring and poor. Their kids move to opportunity. It’s deeply unnerving. For everyone else? White supremacy and misogyny.
4
u/Fantastic_Position69 2d ago
As people have pointed out, there are legit reasons to be concerned about an aging population average, but the people you see freaking out about it in the US are mostly just white supremacists worried about becoming a minority of the population.
3
u/Ok-disaster2022 2d ago
Its a fear from the Great Replacement bullshit. Local populations are on the decline and immigration is resulting in overall population increase (at least on the US). the White Supremacists are upset that White people will be a minority by x date and then they'll be treated like they've been treating everyone else. Which honestly makes no sense. They should be wanting to increase rights and liberties for everyone for that one itable time when people who look like them are not the dominate group at the table of power.
2
u/SoupSpelunker 2d ago
Because it will hurt the economy, which people for some reason think is less important than the environment.
2
u/RuskiesInTheWarRoom 2d ago
White racist people are because they are racist and terrified of losing a privileged position in the society they have been robbing from.*
*Spoken as a white person
2
2
u/townandthecity 2d ago
The only people freaking out are part of the ruling class, who are completely dependent on exploiting working people to continue making the money they don't need.
2
2
u/Reptard77 1d ago
I’m not one of the crazy “white extinction” folks but population decline is an issue for economies. It throws the distribution of working people to non-working people off. If your birth rate dips below replacement rate, in 60 or so years you’ll have a massive group of old citizens that need care and can’t work anymore, and not enough young people to provide that care or to do the jobs required to make that care possible (the guy doing the plumbing at a retirement home or delivering the food or ect ect).
This causes inflation as the labor market thins and prices rise to match. Trade decreases because nations need to hold onto basic resources to feed, house, and clothe people who can’t do so themselves anymore. Selling things domestically starts to compete with selling it internationally even before government policies like tariffs are a thought.
World economies that require trade to function like China or Saudi Arabia fail slowly. China has way more people than it can feed itself, it buys food with the money it gets for cheap labor. Saudi Arabia can hardly feed anyone by itself, it trades oil for everything else. You’re starting to see the problem here.
4
u/Borigh 2d ago
Declining birth rates are a small problem from a left/liberal perspective, for two main reasons:
- Educated women (and their spouses) are more likely to be politically left. Birthrate declines with educational attainment. If educated women don't have children, it means an uphill climb every generation to convert enough brainwashed teenagers to politically win.
I'm not saying this as an attempt to shame anyone: my wife and I want kids, and we feel like raising people who are exposed to the actual best ideas about the role of government and who can be agents of change in their peer group is merely one factor to consider among the many difficulties of raising children and the complexity of bringing and properly supporting young lives in a hard world.
But I encourage the anti-natalist left to consider that it would be far easier to implement sustainability plans if the next generation started out 50/50, rather than praying our decrepit educational and cultural institutions have the cache to create freethinking young adults out of brainwashed adolescents forced to pray the gay away in their ten-commandment touting public schools.
- If we want to implement large welfare programs to care for the sick, the old, and other groups that contribute less economic output than the average working-age adult, we need an amount of working adults who generate enough output to subsidize those programs.
This is obviously not the intractable problem the right wing likes to pretend it is, but the math on entitlements gets a lot easier when the population isn't contracting noticeably. To a large extent, immigration solves this for the US, but for various reasons, that's becoming a more unreliable vector for workers, especially those sympathetic to labor-friendly political messages.
On the whole, the world would absolutely benefit from a slow contraction of the population - it would simply make a lot of the problems looming from climate change somewhat easier to solve, and perhaps even give us a chance to unfuck some environmental issues.
But if right-wing nutjobs make 75% of the babies in America, gut the welfare state, and still lower American economic output even as we start a generation of trade wars, we're not exactly in a good position, either.
1
u/juanitovaldeznuts 2d ago
Everytime someone shills about either out of control population booms or the horrors of declining birth rates, I remember the late, great, non bastard lifetime achievement winner for sure Hans Rosling and his TED talk.
He was a fabulous data story teller. All of his lectures on YouTube are worth the watch.
1
u/BryanP1968 2d ago
They’re worried about declining birth rates among whites. They’d be fine if all the brown people stopped breeding.
1
u/IAmNotYerMama 2d ago
First, this is about white birth rates, which are in decline. The US population is growing, and will continue to grow. However, in 2018, The US Census reported that in 2045 "non Hispanic Whites are projected to remain the single largest race group throughout the next 40 years. Beginning in 2045, however, they are no longer projected to make up the majority of the U.S. population."
From:
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf
IMO, the whole Project 2025 movement is a reaction to the projections in this report: feeding white supremacy, stoking racism, terrorizing immigrants, economically oppressing the working class, controlling women, promoting a white-lead christian-fascist state, etc. US Oligarchs (who are mostly white) see that to maintain their wealth they need a populace that (foolishly) identifies with them on some level - until they have complete control, that is.
1
u/Jesus_on_a_biscuit The fuckin’ Pinkertons 2d ago
Because of extinction and how difficult things will be in meeting basic expectations of society as we move closer to that event.
2
u/wombatgeneral Ben Shapiro Enthusiast 2d ago
In my lifetime the world population has grown by over 2 billion people, that's 6 Americas worth of people.
We are not running out of people anytime soon.
0
u/Jesus_on_a_biscuit The fuckin’ Pinkertons 2d ago
The End of Children https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population-implosion
1
u/hufflefox 2d ago
All the comments here are accurate but something I think we overlook is how convoluted their talking points are while being exceedingly easy to parrot.
It’s super easy to get the basic sentences of “more babies” or whatever the Thing is right now. But only deeper thinkers would ever ask why. And frankly no one seems capable of having a conversation about anything. Every “news” segment is less than 7 minutes long and has several voices yelling different things. And then the next thing comes on and does the same excerise again with different voices saying the same things.
1
u/Expensive-Finding-24 17h ago
Modern welfare states are designed in such a way that a large working population sustains a diminishing retired population through social security or similar programs. Declining birth rates means that in 20 years, there will be fewer working people to support a larger proportion of retired people, leading to worse quality of life for the elderly.
Extrapolation leads to a situation like in pre-welfare times, where the elderly must live with and rely upon relatives, which sucked for everyone.
1
u/Hyphenagoodtime 2d ago
Uh I just want health care and lower taxes. Can't even conceive and I don't know why. We tried when times were good. Sort of glad we didn't succeed. We can't even afford dental care. We just have chickens instead of kids. We would feel pretty bad if we had to eat one of our chickens..... imagine if it was a kid.
1
u/anarcholoserist 1d ago
I don't trust it at all when it comes from Republicans and such but I think there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere? As people are getting older because we have medicine now there has to be more infrastructure around taking care of them. If everyone is 80 and there aren't enough 30 year olds then all of the 80 year olds are fucked. I don't know any solutions besides just making having a kid easier and nicer of a prospect but those aren't the options that capitalists promote so 🤷♂️
1
u/Tmbaladdin 1d ago
We live in a consumption based economy predicated on endless growth… declining birth rates (because they fear immigrants) threatens the whole system.
-1
u/Throwawayconcern2023 2d ago
No idea. The people who keep pumping out kids should be worried about rhe offspring fighting for water in streets in 20 years but 🤷♂️
0
u/calls1 1d ago
Demographics, as in the study or distribution of population is important.
It’s also obviously a site of concern, anxiety and sensitivity for many. People often develop fears of the other, it’s our duty as humans who benefit from living in a developed society to work together to manage our concerns and consequences that result from our need for the things complex civilisation create. Some people prefer to ignore the complicated web of dependencies, close their eyes, and purely prioritise their in group. That’s dumb obviosuly.
But.
There is a serious point to be made about ‘birth rates’.
Fundamentally as humans we get old an unable to perform labour. We can work circa 20-65, or 25-70 ish. That’s 45years of labour, making money paying taxes, doing things for others.
We as humans have through the marvels of science learned to live for 80 or so years, maybe us youngens on this subreddit have a decent shot (especially if not Americans) of living past 85. That means 15 or so years of retirement.
We have 2 needs as retirees. Money and labour hours. Money, to retire we need at least 2/3rds of median income to support our household, because without work you don’t spend as much. If everyone is coupled up, and recieved 1/3rd median income, and there’s only 2workers for 1 retiree, we need to tax them around 16% of their wage, or for around 16% of their surplus value to enter corporate profits, cycle through the stock market and hopefully end up in our retirement investment accounts- same difference, surplus capital in the economy. 16.6% of wages as a tax that goes straight to the elderly, is … doable but it’s a little bit straining, if the ratio shifts further below 2:1 it gets really difficult, if the number of people in that 40year age bracket, is not double the people in the 15-20 year age bracket of retirement it’s gonna be hard to not have a bunch of old people in grand in poverty. Now, you’ll see there’s some fudge room, 15-20years or retirement , 40-45years of labour, there’s wiggle room there for a healthier ratio of 2.5:1, maybe if your have a very good health span so you really can work Circa 22-70, and then not need medicine till after 75, it won’t be too difficult for your society to keep functioning FINANCIALLY.
Second is labour. Old people need care, from helping go to the toilet, to washing, to standard medical care, to the standard labour to make their food on farms and factories, drive the trains etc. But old age care and medicine is very labour intensive, it’s not hard to grab a group of 100 old people, have half of them in an efficient care home, needing medicine to keep their kidneys going while they have decent life or some fancy heart medicine, and find that there’s literally 100 workers involved in keeping them alive, that’s half of all the working population dedicated to their social and health care, leaving only half of all people to keep ‘productive’ society ticking over from making TVs to doing research on volcanoes. Not to mention, supporting the elderly in living through old age is emotionally straining, a lot of people aren’t super well built for confronting death every day for 40 years.
So you can see here how a declining population where each year group is a smidgen smaller than the one before is difficult to manage. You will need really high wages/productivity to have enough spare cash to pay for the elderly who CANT work anymore. And you will need to have a really efficient labour market, where no one is ‘wasted’ being unemployed, or trained as a auto-manufacturing-engineer who should really be caring in a care home, or chemistry masters in coffees shops, or coffee baristas who are stuck as childminders. There’s no gonna be a lot of spare people we can afford to have inefficient jobs, or else you’ll get shortage of coffee, or teachering , or cars, or whatever it’s gonna be a society with very little slack, or room for maneauver. This might mean you naturally get those good/high wages, on the other hand if your society gets attacked in a war (think europe/Ukraine) you’re gonna have to make some serious sacrifices if you need to pull 5% of the population out of the economy to stand in trenches to protect the other 65% of people caring for the 20% of elderly and 10% kids among you, or 5% of people being emergency reallocated if we get hit by a pandemic or people getting roasted by a heatwave or whatever, or even a flood through a city. There’s very little “reserve army of labour” in a world where the size of each age group is shrinking.
Now that being said. Yes you have an obvious advantage to reducing aggregate demand on natural resources whether it be land, air, sea, water, rocks etc.
Long term it’s probably a good thing if humanity enters a long SLOW decline in population. But to achieve that you need a fertility rate of 1.7-1.9 that means you don’t shrink so fast that you need to take more than 20% from every worker to provide for pensions, and you don’t actually exceed 50% of the population dedicated to care. We as societies, civilisations, and humanity will struggle to thread this needle, but we can do it, I just hope that too many societies don’t go for the easy temporary solution of kill the poor, and expel the others, certainly some will but ….. I hope we can keep that to a minimum.
0
u/Important_Degree_784 22h ago
Whose taxes do you think will pay for your eventual Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid if not a younger, robust work force. You’re paying for these earned benefits for today’s retirees, of course.
539
u/RainbowBullsOnParade 2d ago
Because capitalism requires population growth to stave off its fundamental internal contradictions.
This panic dovetails with white supremacy, which ironically leads to anti-immigrant sentiment. Low birth rates + no immigration = complete implosion.
Fascism cannot solve capitalism. Instead it completes the self destruction.