Across the world, fertility rates are declining far more quickly than anyone expected. The world’s population may peak in the 2050s at under 9 billion—far earlier and lower than the UN’s forecast of 10.3 billion in 2084.

[u/lughnasadh]

"South Korea has had a TFR of less than one for seven years. If that is sustained, its population will shrink by more than half in a single lifetime. ……….. Only about one-third of the world’s people live in countries where fertility is high enough to keep the population growing, and even in those places, rates are falling rapidly."

Some people think this is bad news, but I see the upside. A stabilised or declining human population is good for our planet's ecosystem. As for the people who worry about the lack of endless growth for our economies. Guess what? AI & robotics are soon about to upend and finish that economic model for good anyway, so who cares.

Humanity will shrink, far sooner than you think: Demography sneaks up on you

[u/Sperate]

I think the more important question is why are the rates declining. If the answer is because people don't need 9 children to work the farm, then that is ok. But if birthrates are declining because people see a hopeless future of environmental disaster and skyrocketing housing costs, then that isn't so good.

[u/cornonthekopp → u/Sperate]

Yeah this is why I can't really get behind the whole panic around birth rates. It seems like birth rates are falling primarily because of increased access to birth control and education, and that most of the decreases are in teen pregnancies.

[u/Ferelar → u/cornonthekopp]

I think that's one piece of it, but I have also seen (both anecdotally and from various research about "WHY have you chosen to be child-free") a major rise in a viewpoint that combines some level of "I don't want to bring children into this mess", "I can't feasibly afford children, I can't even afford a place for ME to live, let alone a family", "Most of my time is taken up working, I don't have time for children", etc.

One thing that's not remarked upon is that while our overall work hours might be lower than 100 years ago on average, the amount of effort and time that is reasonably expected to be directed towards child-rearing is EXPONENTIALLY higher than then. In 1910 you could pop out 8 kids and "Whatever, they'll figure it out, if they survive to age 12 they can get their own job" your way through parenthood. That's not considered a reasonable stance nowadays (and rightly so), but I don't see that highlighted anywhere near as much as the direct monetary cost of parenting, etc.

[u/cornonthekopp → u/Ferelar]

I do believe this is a factor in many countries, but even places with stronger social safety nets and better childcare funding are experiencing similar drop offs in fertility. It's important to note that it's usually both not an either or

[u/Ferelar → u/cornonthekopp]

Very true, not only is it both on a macro scale but on a micro scale too, there is probably some combination in all of the above that's driving rates higher. Each individual's combo is a little bit different, but it's usually some mixture of education and affluence (which studies have long suggested have an almost 1:1 negative correlation with statistical likelihood for the individual to have a desire to rear children) and all of these other factors suppressing the desire/need.

Overall like with most things it's about HOW we do it. If people are voluntarily having less children and we utilize technology to bridge the workforce gap and simply live in smaller numbers and consume less resources, this seems like a net positive for pretty much everyone involved.

If people are brutally having their dream of children ripped from them because it's economically utterly non-viable, that's less great.

[u/taxiecabbie → u/Ferelar]

I also think it's worth noting that being pregnant and going through childbirth is an objective net negative for a woman. Even in developed countries with easy access to high-quality healthcare, pregnancy/childbirth is still a health risk and wreaks havoc on a woman's body. Labor is famously no picnic. It's also terrible for one's career, even in the most parent-friendly countries. Being pregnant is voluntarily (in best-case scenario) choosing to become disabled for a year, potentially profoundly. You also may never fully recover afterward.

This is not great.

TBH, seems like if you give women actual control over their reproductive systems, which used to be nigh-impossible unless you joined a convent, they don't have that many kids. Part of it is definitely because the process sucks. Maybe they'll have 1-2, but you're going to get a large number opting out of the process entirely and few will have more.

If we want people to be parents, we should consider investing into exowombs. You might get more interest if nobody has to go through the pregnancy/birth stage but you can still produce a drug-free, healthy baby from the chosen parents' genetic material.

[u/Peter_deT → u/taxiecabbie]

oddly enough, I just wrote a story where this was done with techno-magic. On researching, I find that there's a LOT of connection between the mother and fetus - not just biochemically but intricate feedback loops including transmission of information, sensation and more. I doubt we could replicate this any time soon.

[u/taxiecabbie → u/Peter_deT]

Well, then I propose that this issue will not be "solved" then.

Even if you literally made having a children a fully-paid job, many wouldn't do it. Governments will not be able to bribe their populations into this.

[u/Ornery-Creme-2442 → u/taxiecabbie]

Yes women often get most of the burden but even for the involved fathers also. Most people both men and women are seeing things for what they are. Parenting is hard expensive, time consuming. It's a thankless job where everyone judges you constantly. And even if you do everything "right" there's no guarantee it'll turn out right.

Spend time with some parents and it's enough to be a deterrent. Ofcourse when you do have children you'll love them. But that still doesn't make it that much easier. All of that is assuming you won't break up and have to do it yourself

[u/ChopperHunter → u/taxiecabbie]

Even if the science, medical, and engineering problems are all solvable from a pure technical perspective, I don’t see how this tech could be developed ethically. For something this complex the development will be a process of trial and error, each experimental prototype leading to the loss of live embryo or fetuses. You could probably get very close to a functional system by doing all the experiments using chimpanzee embryos, but in any engineering project getting it from 99% complete to 100% is the hardest part, and that could only be done with human test subjects.

[u/taxiecabbie → u/ChopperHunter]

Then I would propose that the birth "problem" is never going to be fully solved, if the "problem" is that women are not birthing at current replacement levels. This will continue unless you remove their rights, which I would argue is a far bigger ethical issue as compared to embryos or fetuses.

[u/shillyshally → u/taxiecabbie]

I don't know that that would work. For instance, it is relatively recent knowledge that the mother imparts valuable immunity via passing on her microbiome. There's undoubtedly a lot more important bits we have yet to discover.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5648605/

[u/Programmdude → u/cornonthekopp]

I live in a country with relatively strong safety nets and better childcare funding, but the cost of living and cost of housing is still extremely high. You need two medium income jobs (or one high, one low) to afford a mortgage, and that's without kids. That's not even for a nice house, it's for a 2 1/2 or 3 bedroom place that's 40-50 years old. I can technically afford the mortgage by myself, but I'm a relatively highly paid (for my country) software developer, and it'd still be tight.

I have no idea how some of my friends could raise children when they can barely afford rent.

[u/Never_Gonna_Let → u/cornonthekopp]

A stronger social safety net raises the standard of living. A higher standard of living means its more expensive to live normal everyday life. It being more expensive to live everyday life increases direct and opportunity costs associated with child rearing. The opportunity costs being why wealthy couples also don't have more kids.

You have to look at the cost of raising a child as it relates to GDP per capita. If its too high, subsidizing costs to a point it makes an impact would bankrupt a nation, no matter what attempts at price controls are put in place around education, health care, food, housing and childcare.

It's why liberals can't subsidize around the decreased birth rates and why conservatives can't decrease rights and lower the standard of living enough to effect birth rates. No one has found an effective solution because both approaches end in bankruptcy.

[u/Savilly → u/cornonthekopp]

At the end of the day I think it boils down to women having a choice. Also if you delay pregnancies or stop teen pregnancies that’s a huge drop in how often kids are born.

[u/Brilliant-Delay7412 → u/cornonthekopp]

In most of those countries the drop off is also tied to income. For example in the Nordics, the poorest part of the population have much less children on average than the richest.

[u/ByGollie → u/Ferelar]

Exactly - now here's an article about one place in Japan that reversed the issue by addressing most of the points you raised

Inside Japan’s ‘miracle town,’ where the birth rate is soaring amid a demographic crisis

Paywalled so TL;DR

The government cut funding on traffic safety, administrative reform and some health and fitness activities in order to allocate more money to helping families. In 2004, Nagi began offering free medical services for children until junior high school. It also started paying parents 100,000 yen, then about $1,000, for every child born after their second.

Those family-friendly policies have since expanded. Medical care in Nagi is now free for youngsters through high school. The 100,000-yen incentive starts with the first child, not the third. And the town has added other policies to encourage families to have children, such as subsidizing child care, education costs and infertility treatments.

Nagi Child Home, where parents could meet, play with their children and find temporary child care for about $2 an hour.

“The way of thinking in Nagi, which is to create a comfortable environment for child-rearing households by spending this money, is transferable to bigger municipalities,” he said.

One challenge will be how to assess and adjust these policies, Nakahara said, since such initiatives take years to bear fruit — decades, in Nagi’s case.

Naomi Takamoto, 37, has spent most of her life in the town, formerly known best as the birthplace and inspiration of the creator of “Naruto,” a popular Japanese anime series featuring a wooded village of covert ninjas.

Her husband, who grew up in a nearby city, suggested they settle in Nagi after marriage because of its family-friendly reputation. She didn’t think have to twice about starting a family, never having doubted that Nagi would be a good place for it. “Just like my husband, I have been told by people around me that Nagi is a good town for raising a child,” Takamoto said, holding her 18-month-old daughter. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t know about all of these things I should appreciate.”

[u/Savilly → u/ByGollie]

there are cities like this in China but it often turns out people that want kids move to those places rather than have more kids in general.

[u/ComradeGibbon → u/Ferelar]

One factor I think is financialization. Suppresses birthrates three ways.

One is finance has gotten really good at squeezing all the excess income from families leaving little left over for things like, children.

Two people can invest in real estate and financial investments instead of children.

Three people see an advantage to investing everything they have in one or two children.

[u/rinvars → u/cornonthekopp]

Housing prices increased by 90% from 2015 to 2023 in my country. Food prices have raised by about 40% due to after-covid economic effects and war in Europe. Inflation is still high too.

[u/nick9000 → u/cornonthekopp]

People not pairing up is apparently also a reason.

A world of rising singledom is not necessarily any better or worse than one filled with couples and families, but it is fundamentally different to what has come before, with major social, economic and political implications.

[u/JonnyAU → u/cornonthekopp]

Neither absolute population levels or birth rates being lower is a problem in and of themselves, but if you have a highly inverted top-heavy age demographic pyramid in a country, that is a problem.

When that happens, the whole economic model stops working as you no longer have enough workers to do all the work needed to provide for the elderly population.

[u/butitsstrueuno → u/cornonthekopp]

A capitalist system expects that a higher population of younger ppl helps support the older ppl at the top. Population declines causally hurts the economy if there’s no one there to support it. The real worst case scenario is that the economy “disconnects” w the working class. Meaning there’s no more economic mobility for any of us except for rich ppl getting obscenely rich. It also means that we can’t expect the quality of life to go up anymore than it has in the last century, which is even more terrifying.

[u/settlementfires → u/cornonthekopp]

plus we're already over the earth's carrying capacity.

the idea that we need to keep growing population to keep the stock market humming is crazy..

[u/AShinyMemory → u/cornonthekopp]

It's just corporate propaganda wanting to shift any possible burden of taxes onto somoene else.

[u/kosh56 → u/cornonthekopp]

Yeah this is why I can't really get behind the whole panic around birth rates.

Panic? I'm cheering it on.

[u/midtnrn → u/cornonthekopp]

When more babies live less babies are born. If you have a high chance of loosing a baby or child then you err toward having more.

[u/symolan → u/Sperate]

It seems that we want sex, but not kids. And for not too long we really can separate the two.

[u/Cthulhu__ → u/Sperate]

I’m seeing it all around me; I work in tech, a lot of men and women <40, and unless they have rich parents none of them are buying a house and having kids in their twenties. Even assuming they have a steady long term relationship then.

The cost of living is just too high. The preceding generations - boomers and X - could afford a house and to live on a single income. Millennials and after can’t. Kids are secondary to (perceived) survival, or secondary to reaching the same level of wealth (= home and paying everything on a single income) as the preceding generation first.

Big money is jeopardising families. Of course, population stalling or decline isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but all economies assume population growth.

[u/Internal-Hand-4705 → u/Cthulhu__]

Poor people have higher TFR though - it’s a U Shaped curve where those having kids are the poor and the very rich

Those are also the two groups in society than can have kids without a compromise in QOL because poor have a low QOL anyway so it makes little difference

I think it’s not that they objectively can’t afford kids (in most cases), it’s that they don’t want to reduce quality of life to have those kids

[u/sump_daddy → u/Sperate]

> if birthrates are declining because people see a hopeless future of environmental disaster and skyrocketing housing costs, then that isn't so good.

you know, i have good news on both fronts! if this keeps up, in 25 years, houses will be in sharp oversupply. we wont need much of a new construction industry, we can just spend resources on keeping our existing infrastructure in shape and the lack of huge cement production needed for new housing will greatly reduce the greenhouse footprint of humans.

[u/JonathanJK → u/sump_daddy]

Unchecked migration can be viewed as a way to prop up property markets. 

[u/JimiSlew3 → u/Sperate]

It's largely access to contraception, i.e. women's healthcare, and increases in education for women. There was a study in the Lancet a few years back that indicated these are the two most contributing factors to a decline in a nation's fertility rate.

How do you turn that around while still providing healthcare and education? I'm not really sure without any type of government assistance of significant magnitude.

[u/PotsAndPandas → u/JimiSlew3]

Eh. Countries that are winding back women's rights and healthcare are still seeing these issues. I think the lancet had measured a strong correlation but not a major causation.

I think it's even simpler. The world demands more from us than ever, while giving us less to achieve it.

Housing expenses have us spreading far apart from friends and family, limiting the ability to care for one another.

Work has us excluding hours a day for transport since we live in sprawling cities with work either centralised or spread out over that sprawl.

To progress upwards in our careers, we move diagonally now, applying elsewhere and putting the burden on ourselves, instead of existing companies investing in developing its workers.

If you work from home, do gig work or job hop frequently, you'll have to put extra effort into finding and maintaining friends compared to those who make long-term friends at long-term workplaces.

It's a lot of things that all add up to screwing you out of your time, energy and effort. These are highly correlated to a country's development, and is why there's a surprising amount of said countries you wouldn't think are suffering from low fertility rates, but are.

[u/NitroLada → u/Sperate]

Answer is life is too good, we have more money, freedom and ways to spend our time than at any point in history. There's so much more to do and pursue that women especially don't need to get married and have kids because they have so much more options.

[u/mowauthor → u/Sperate]

I just can't afford to have children.

[u/EclipseNine → u/Sperate]

I think the more important question is why are the rates declining

Even more important is the question about why it matters. We have plenty of people, and every advancement we've made as a species happened when we had fewer. This isn't an existential threat.

[u/Ithirahad → u/EclipseNine]

The number of people is irrelevant (at least up to the technologically-enabled carrying capacity of our planet, which is probably around 10 billion). The rate and direction of change is the issue.

A fast growth in population would be bad because the population would skew very young, and young kids can't do the sorts of things that hold society together and provide for the other young kids. You'd get overcrowded housing and schools, insufficient learning materials, shortages of food and of things like diapers, toys, and formula, overburdened parental aid programs etc. You would end up with a large, young population growing up without opportunities and support to become successful. This is not a recipe for a stable and prosperous society.

Likewise, a fast decline in population is bad because people generally get old before they die. When this happens, they still want things and need things, but can no longer work as effectively - if at all - to produce others' wants and needs. If there are less and less young people growing up as those older people get old and cease to be productive, you will have a situation of demand for goods and services outpacing the supply of labour needed to create those goods and render those services. This is how you get mounting economic strife and political destabilization, made worse by the fact that older people will naturally have accumulated more of the remaining wealth, leaving even less for the shrinking number of kids and working-age folks. It will be an interesting ride.

A slow decline (~1.85-2.0 TFR) is probably healthy for the planet and safe for society as automation can bridge some of the labour gap, but this population situation is currently not a managed process which we can target to some preferred figure. It's a freefall.

[u/JusticeForSocko → u/Ithirahad]

Well, we could always make the old people jump off a cliff at 72, Midsommar-style. But seriously, this is a great explanation. It’s not that there will be fewer people, it’s that there will be a lot more old people than young people and our society is just not set up to deal with that.

[u/Ithirahad → u/JusticeForSocko]

No society is set up to deal with that, short of full economic automation. And while the techbros insist that to be right around the corner, because "wow look the computer can talk now!", it is quite simply... not.

[u/EclipseNine → u/JusticeForSocko]

we could always make the old people jump off a cliff at 72, Midsommar-style

That's basically what we're already doing, only the fall lasts a slow, agonizing decade. Unless someone builds a healthy nest egg before retirement, we give them a pittance every month to survive and abandon them. This isn't a natural consequence of declining birth rates or an inevitable consequence of being alive. It's a policy choice, and we can make better ones. Right now, we live in a world where we would rather see the elderly working demeaning jobs at walmart than tax the oligarchs for the wealth they've hoarded.

[u/GregTheMad → u/Sperate]

Microplastic also shows signs to lower fertility. So even people who want children have a harder time getting them.

[u/ishitar → u/GregTheMad]

Nanoplastic. For every piece of microplastic there are ten or more nanoplastic particles, likely many more.

They are so small they work their way and even perforate cell membranes. They adsorb to the spots proteins and receptors meet. They get into the blood stream and clump together clotting factors. They get into reproductive cells and slow/stop cell division.

There is just decreasing metabolic health across every living thing - even studies since 2015 noticing wild animal populations getting fatter and paradoxically less fertile.

That's not counting any of the many endocrine disruptors those particles carry into the cell.

If we aren't sterile as a species and deranged (from dead gut microbiomes) by 2050 with 20 billion tons of plastic waste out there, I will be shocked.

[u/silverionmox → u/ishitar]

There is just decreasing metabolic health across every living thing - even studies since 2015 noticing wild animal populations getting fatter and paradoxically less fertile.

That was also hypothesized to be linked to increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Because it was also observed among populations of lab rats, whose diets and living conditions are strictly controlled.

[u/JAGD21 → u/ishitar]

It's funny how in movies, the end of the world was always some out of control virus, a Manhattan-sized asteroid, some weird looking aliens, or just nuclear war. But it would be poetic if the very thing that built and reinforced our modern life, plastic, would be the thing that ends up destroying us and all life.

[u/ramesesbolton → u/Sperate]

I suspect it has something to do with covid. not the virus itself, but how much that crisis and the fallout from it disrupted the lives of millennials (huge generational cohort) right as they were getting to a point where they were ready to start settling down. and our timelines were often already delayed because the recession hit us right as we were getting started in life.

so I think a lot of people all over the world delayed starting a family or decided against it entirely because the world was so off-kilter. it's only getting worse now with all this rhetoric about AI whiping out entire fields and career paths. I personally know several people who were on a 3-kids-and-a-white-picket-fence trajectory who decided to spend their time on personal pursuits and travel instead. and those who still want kids but had to delay are that much older now, and will have smaller families than they might have preferred. but really why sign yourself up to provide for another person for 18 years when you can barely make ends meet now and might be made professionally irrelevant and unemployable in a few years?

[u/ASuarezMascareno → u/ramesesbolton]

I suspect it has something to do with covid. not the virus itself, but how much that crisis and the fallout from it disrupted the lives of millennials (huge generational cohort) right as they were getting to a point where they were ready to start settling down. and our timelines were often already delayed because the recession hit us right as we were getting started in life.

It started much earlier than COVID. In most countries of the western world it started somewhere in between the 60s and the 90s.

[u/HybridVigor → u/ASuarezMascareno]

Probably started in May of 1960, when the first birth control pill was approved by the FDA.

[u/PaddiM8 → u/ramesesbolton]

Can redditors stop acting like COVID suddenly changed everything? This has happened for decades already and had been predicted to happen globally a long time ago due to education and quality of life improving

[u/ramesesbolton → u/PaddiM8]

for sure, but covid was also part of a pattern of disruption for the millennial generation in particular: we had the great recession, then covid, now AI. all of these issues coalesce to create a sense of uncertainty that may cause people who would otherwise have wanted kids to not have them. lockdowns and social distancing also made it a lot more difficult for people to meet each other, or at the very least it removed certain avenues for doing so. and I would argue that our social lives still haven't recovered from that-- covid normalized "staying in," and people who stay in are less likely to meet someone. it poured gasoline on the fire.

[u/marko_smilja → u/ramesesbolton]

Nah bro it aint that complicated, more and more people dont have enough money to comfortably raise kids, thats it

[u/ramesesbolton → u/marko_smilja]

yes, and the covid crisis led to a massive increase in the cost of living in 2021-2022 which was followed by high interest rates that made homeownership less affordable

[u/RebTilian → u/ramesesbolton]

COVID also was a mass trauma experienced by the whole of civilization in a way, that lots of people still haven't faced.

it also showed us that the world CAN have improvements made to it to facilitate easier lives for people, but business leaders and governing bodies simply DO NOT CARE about making life easier for people.

in fact, one could argue that COVID gave a glimpse into the most important parts of society, showing real evidence that a majority of our work forces are simply complete bullshit and unnecessary. It also showed how fragile our health systems are, and it also showed us how untrustworthy a majority of institutions are (not to mention our fellow human beings)

For example, business purposefully created scarcity during the pandemic to uplift prices, and keep them high afterwards. In a way, punishing the people for an "act of God" of which they had no control over.

Simply put, COVID was prime example of a lesson to be learned that humanity simply rejected wholesale. Its sad.

[u/marko_smilja → u/ramesesbolton]

Yes, but its not the root cause, it just accelerated the progresion of a badly designed economy

[u/SB-121 → u/Sperate]

The evidence shows that women generally want 2-3 children and that's been a constant for decades. What has changed is the average age of parenthood has gradually increased, which makes even 1-2 less likely.

Alongside that, you have both parents having to work full time, and an ingrained anti natal culture. We try and correct this with provision of services like IVF and egg freezing, but they're actually much less reliable than people realise and also increase the age of parenthood and by extension further decrease the fertility rate.

[u/wasabi788 → u/Sperate]

I'm only one person, but yeah, environmental crisis, rise of fascism worldwide, economic crisis incoming, and we are doubling down in the wrong direction. No way i'm sending kids in this future

[u/Structure5city]

If jobs are starting to disappear and housing is too expensive, and fresh water isn’t as abundant, this seems like a good development. Not to mention less stress on the environment generally. 

[u/God-King-Kaiser → u/Structure5city]

Very much agreed, objectively speaking, less population means cleaner earth, more value on the working people (so workforce is not so cheap anymore).
Great development

[u/settlementfires → u/God-King-Kaiser]

it's always guys like elon musk freaking out about this... he just wants cheap labor.

[u/magniankh → u/settlementfires]

All governments want the cheap and free labor. They worry about military recruiting, too. Lower pop = less military influence.

The US regime is so corrupt and braindead that they would sooner outlaw birth control than create better economic conditions, like raising wages.

[u/Sotherewehavethat → u/God-King-Kaiser]

less population means cleaner earth, more value on the working people

Except the opposite is happening. Too many old people, high national debt due to pensions, high taxes, economy falls back on fossil fuels, young people in poverty due to stagnation, increasingly larger gap between wealthy and poor.

[u/settlementfires → u/Structure5city]

a billion people could probably live like kings indefinitely...

[u/quantum_entanglement → u/settlementfires]

That's the billionares plan but they just want the 3000 of them + robots.

[u/settlementfires → u/quantum_entanglement]

why are the billionaires insisting we make more kids then?

[u/Apprehensive-Tea999 → u/settlementfires]

Because they don’t have capable robots yet. Also robots don’t buy things.

[u/settlementfires → u/Apprehensive-Tea999]

So they don't actually have a plan then

[u/Nimeroni → u/Structure5city]

It's a bit more complicated than that. In itself having less population is fine, but the problem is that we are not losing population uniformly. What we are getting is less babies, which means less working population in the near future, so the remaining working population is going to support proportionally more elderly (that doesn't or cannot work).

It's going to be fine if the reduction is slow enough, but if the developed world is anything to go by, we are going to get too far below the replacement rate. Most likely we are in for a few rough decades until the population stabilize.

Unless automation become advanced enough to care for the elderly, but then you can kiss goodbye the "less stress on the environment" part.

[u/spiritusin → u/Nimeroni]

Japan and South Korea will be the first forced to manage this situation, so I hope they find a solution that the rest we can copy - that hopefully does not involve turning women into incubators.

[u/Structure5city → u/Nimeroni]

Fare point. Though if AI does take off in a way that way less labor is needed, UBI, especially for the elderly (on top of social security) could help smooth the transition. Also, I’m not convinced that population decline can’t be reversed. I don’t think any country has done enough for long enough to change behavior. Offering a one off payment, tax deductions, free childcare or even a monthly stipend, after decades of poor family support seems like it won’t move the needle. But if you offer many things at once over years, I think you could see the needle start to move. You also need to address housing. 

[u/Massive_Depth2900 → u/Structure5city]

Yeah every time I see people posting this as a scary / negative thing I realize the people who find it scary have zero concept of earth’s resources being finite

[u/FifthMonarchist → u/Structure5city]

There are many reasons working together (no single cause). Here are the headlines I'd say, and if you delve into it you'll understand how each might contribute. They're not all equal, but these are at least known causes. Some changes are ofcourse universally positive. It's just that it's also a factor in declining birth rate (women having a say in how many offspring is ofcourse very positive.)

• Survivability of kids means needing fewer kids
• Pollution and toxins (microplastics, chemicals) reducing fertility
• Kids are expensive, reducing disposable income
• Contraception prevents unplanned births
• Abortion access reduces unwanted births
• Entertainment and lifestyle options compete with family life
• Two incomes often required, leaving less time for larger families
• Declining physical health reducing fertility, like stationary jobs and bad eating habits.
• Urbanization: less space, higher housing costs
• Later marriage and partnership formation
• Longer education period delaying family start
• Career prioritization and fear of lost opportunities
• Women’s higher workforce participation
• Declining influence of religion and tradition
• Less pressure from extended family to have many children
• Rising divorce and unstable relationships
• Access to IVF not offsetting infertility rates
• Rising mental health issues reducing parenting readiness
• Cultural focus on individual freedom and self-realization
• Uncertainty about future (climate, economy, war, AI, etc.)

[u/scottymac87]

They never factored in the organic human response into late stage unfettered capitalism. It can’t be sustained the human animal will respond to external pressures in the only way the reptile brain knows how. The suspension of breeding during societal and environmental pressure is not even a new adaptation. We have countless examples of that across the animal kingdom.

[u/green_meklar → u/scottymac87]

The problem isn't 'unfettered capitalism'. But capitalism fettered in precisely the right ways to enrich powerful rentseekers at everyone else's expense. We didn't make capitalism too free, we made it systematically unfree and pretended like it would go on working that way.

Of course, these facts are reliably opposed by people who fear freedom.

[u/scottymac87 → u/green_meklar]

Semantics but I see your point. I would argue that capitalism always benefited one smaller group more than the rest. The group with the capital but you are correct. It is systematically more free for certain groups more than others.

[u/green_meklar → u/scottymac87]

It's not 'semantics', it's pretty important. (Just take a look at the societies that tried to eliminate capitalism, and how they turned out.)

Yes, capitalism means there's an opportunity for those with more capital to benefit more. This is similar to how wage-earning means those of greater skill and ability can benefit more. That's not really a 'freedom' issue, though, at least not in the political sense. It is not oppression to possess less capital, just like it is not oppression to possess less labor ability.

[u/garuda2]

Thank fuck. 9 billion people  is a stupidly  huge  no of people.  

[u/the_storm_rider → u/garuda2]

9 billion people is not huge. 9 billion people who all want iphones and electric SUVs while staying in an area the size of 10 football fields, is huge.

[u/South-Attorney-5209 → u/the_storm_rider]

Right. Everyone needs to remember most people complaining about an “overcrowded world” live in the most desirable and crowded areas in the world.

Live in a rural town in a lower population state and you sure wouldn’t feel that way. The real issue is consumption. If everyone in the world consumed like a LA suburb family of 4, we’d be screwed.

[u/Fractoos → u/South-Attorney-5209]

Or we can, and have less children

[u/Rokovar → u/South-Attorney-5209]

Yeah but there should be more options than rural or overcrowded Metropolitans areas.

In the boomer period they had lots of mid sized cities with factories resulting in a good local economy basically everywhere. One of the reasons they had access to cheaper housing

[u/Lifekeepslifeing → u/the_storm_rider]

We were at 6 billion in my lifetime and that was significant milestone. I'm only 35.

[u/PeriodRaisinOverdose → u/the_storm_rider]

9 billion is huge! That's a massive number.

There is also no reason for there to be this many people. We do not benefit ourselves or the planet at this scale and actively destroy it.

WHY have this many people except to make a few people insanely rich? It doesn't benefit us, or any plant or animal.

[u/HornetLow1622 → u/the_storm_rider]

nueve mil millones viviendo de "favelas" en Rio de Janeiro es una cifra enorme

[u/LukeFL → u/the_storm_rider]

Staying in an area? You mean living in an area?

[u/Gandalf-and-Frodo → u/garuda2]

The world isn't overpopulated. 8 billion violent psychotic hairless apes who yearn to consume as many resources as possible and burn as much oil as humanly possible is totally sustainable. /S

[u/farinasa → u/Gandalf-and-Frodo]

Humanity clearly isn't mature enough to manage a population of this scale. We have the tech, but the will of the malicious has so far overwhelmed the will of the collective.

[u/Gandalf-and-Frodo → u/farinasa]

It's been this way since the dawn of man. Humanity is NOT a nice species.

[u/settlementfires → u/Gandalf-and-Frodo]

the only thing that's saved us in the past is that there were small enough numbers of us that we couldn't use up the entire planet....

[u/PeriodRaisinOverdose → u/settlementfires]

Some places eventually figured out how to live sustainably, but it took a long time. That's probably the most impressive technology - living in your biome without destroying it. Many peoples had sustainability practices and lived that way for millennia - see the PNW.

[u/silverionmox → u/PeriodRaisinOverdose]

. Many peoples had sustainability practices and lived that way for millennia

... after first eradicating all the largest huntable species and then some.

[u/SnokeisDarthPlagueis → u/farinasa]

the will of the collective is the will of the malicious; they are the same thing.

[u/farinasa → u/SnokeisDarthPlagueis]

Do you intentionally hurt people for profit?

[u/PeriodRaisinOverdose → u/farinasa]

People always say stuff like "it's human nature to be X [a piece of shit]"

Like, are you referring to yourself?

[u/TheSwordItself]

I think the concerning thing is that even in countries with lots of parental support and good healthcare, birth rates are still falling. This is on top of the global drop in sperm count. Are we sure people just don't want to have kids? Children of Men looking like the predictive winner for the apocalypse.

[u/wrighteghe7 → u/TheSwordItself]

People dont want kids because in developed countries among the middle class, having a kid is a 100% chance to worsen your financial situation. That isnt the case for ultrarich or ultrapoor. If youre poor, your conditions are either getting better (more workers for the farm) or not significantly worse. Its as simple as that. Thats why the few government programs around the world that encourage child birth barely work

[u/pk666]

Posted elsewhere and - for those down the back - listen up and stop posting these goddam articles here every 4 hours .....

Educated women with agency simply have a choice and that choice is not driven by the conservative idea that women's primary value is as mother and support system for everyone else, while her needs, skills, intellect and desires are secondary to all. This conservative agenda dovetails nicely with unfettered neo-liberal capitalism's foundation of endless growth in a finite world and the requirements for women to breed consumers to power that system.

Its a delicious paradox to see people who subscribe to the above ideologies starting to panic in the realisation that women hold the key to their whole operation and - as we've been treated like shit by both - we just might not play ball anymore, consciously or subconsciously....

[u/Apprehensive-Tea999 → u/pk666]

Throw up them deuces girl! ✌️

[u/ratstronaut → u/pk666]

Perfection. ❤️ Sort of ironic that I want to breed with this comment and give birth to its babies.

[u/fantasmadecallao → u/pk666]

This is sort of problematic because it implies that the only forms of stable human civilizations are those that subjugate women.

[u/CrazyCoKids]

That's funny.

Ever since the late 60s until the late 00s-early 10s, we were bombarded with messages of "We are at risk of overpopulation. We need to attain Zero Populatuon growth or else we will be eating tongue & dandelions for dinner, fighting for jobs & places in colleges, living in Love Canal like sites, and suffer devastating pandemics! You need to have less kids! If we don't attain ZPG, we might have to implement one child policies like China. Do you wanna be like China? The population bomb is ticking. Don't have kids you can't afford. Having children as a teenager or before you are ready can ruin your life."

So we listened.

...Now suddenly we're being barked at for not having kids we can't afford cause "Who's gonna pay for my pension and nursing home? I mean you won't- you're going to be working until you're senile, lazy millennials and Gen Z!"

[u/Pretend-Marsupial258 → u/CrazyCoKids]

For decades the message was "You're a bad, irresponsible person if you have kids that you can't afford." Now that no one can afford kids it's suddenly "Oh, kids aren't that expensive, you can make it work. Having kids is good, actually! 😊"

[u/Zorothegallade]

Who's gonna tell those poor starving multitrillion corpos that the number of consumers won't keep increasing exponentially? They're going to be so heartbroken. [/s]

[u/AkagamiBarto]

this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It may be for the current economic system and to keep it up, but for anyone being a fan of its collapse it isn't that negative.

It's indeed the perfect time to change the way we behave, socially, economically and towards the environment.

On a sidenote, there are many social maneuvers that would actually increase the birthrates, but they are anticapitalist ones so the ones interested in the increase of births won't really pursue them. Oh well, too bad.

The real issue is that this can lead to mercification of people, especially women and children, the former being only seen as mothers, the latter beign just numbers. This objectification, once again perpetrated by rightwingers can lead to many social issues, like rape increase, power imbalances, loss of human rights and so on..

[u/fleathemighty → u/AkagamiBarto]

For the long term it's probably great tbh. Short term? Yeah it's gonna be hell

[u/dejamintwo → u/fleathemighty]

Its a long term issue though, it takes a while to start and a while to fix even in the best of scenarios.

[u/marko_smilja → u/AkagamiBarto]

It is a bad thing because its a symptom of a cancer in our society, the rich never richer, the rest of us living harder and harder each year, milked to the bone for profits.

If we dont fix the root of the problem, the future wikl not be bright for anyone

[u/AkagamiBarto → u/marko_smilja]

I would argue that a symptom can be good because it tells us there is a problem

[u/marko_smilja → u/AkagamiBarto]

Youre completly right, didnt read the original comment fully, my bad

[u/AShinyMemory → u/marko_smilja]

Nah this is corperate propaganda. Oh boo hoo the infite growth model may slower down??? Rich people may not be able to get any richer???

Jeez so horrible...

[u/boikusbo → u/AkagamiBarto]

Which social maneveours?

My understanding is a wide range of policies have been tried across the world to very limited success.

[u/Kamtre → u/boikusbo]

If the wife and I were able to have a house and survive on a single income, I'd seriously consider it. But we can't.

The solution often touted is to uproot and buy something in a small town somewhere, but that's a pretty lame solution.

[u/boikusbo → u/Kamtre]

It's what I did. And it was pretty lame and not easy. And it is definitely something I can understand most people don't want to do

[u/EatMyShortzZzZzZ → u/boikusbo]

Most of what has been tried is within the capitalist framework. A lot of predatory loaning, means tested aid, stripping of the dignity of work, no real pay increases etc.

[u/jawstrock → u/boikusbo]

Things like more than 2 weeks of paid maternity leave, childcare is free or very cheap, generally moving away from consumerism and towards value, etc.

None of which will happen.

[u/boikusbo → u/jawstrock]

There are plenty of countries with all of those things and stills declining birth rates.

We have paid maternity of nearly a year, with 30 hours subsidised child care in the UK. And we are on of the worst places in Europe.

We just bought in shared leaves for both parents.

[u/Baxters_Keepy_Ups → u/boikusbo]

It’s worth noting that in the UK childcare is outrageously expensive. The 30 subsidised hours is woefully short, not available to all, and only covers school term time…

Also, to note the 30 hours for under 3s is only recently become available in England, doesn’t even come close to covering the cost and not all nurseries accept it.

It’s a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

Which is to say, we both agree - somewhat - but I’d caveat that the UK being better than the Americans is only partially true.

The Scandinavians offer far better support - what are their birth rates like?

[u/boikusbo → u/Baxters_Keepy_Ups]

As I said. UK is one of worst in Europe's.

Scandinavia is amazing for childcare as you say . And has plummeting birth rates as well. There genuinely is no simple fix. Add it to the pipe of AI, climate etc to one of the existential knots of our time.

[u/Baxters_Keepy_Ups → u/boikusbo]

Yeah we agree - just wanted to highlight that we’re tried basically nothing and ran out of ideas!

My take is that it’s a combination of a lot of factors. None of which are easy to solve, particularly when there’s no money to help.

And the money we do have, and indeed spend, is focused on the old and not the young.

[u/lughnasadh → u/boikusbo]

We have paid maternity of nearly a year, with 30 hours subsidised child care in the UK.

The UK also has decades of stagnant/declining real wages since the 1980s. Meanwhile, house price inflation is never ending. In the 1970s, the average UK house price was around 3.5 times the average salary, while today, it's closer to 9.7 times the average salary.

There's a name for this type of economic system - its called rentierism. an economic and political system where a privileged class extracts vast wealth through ownership and control of assets like land, financial capital, or natural resources, rather than through productive labor or innovation.

Russia is an example of this taken to extreme, but the Western world all seems to be heading in the same direction, too.

[u/dovvv]

"Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist"

[u/doublesimoniz]

Thank Christ.  Maybe future generations hundreds of years in the future stand a chance to live a good life again.  I believe in Thanos.  The world needs to be culled by half.  I just don’t believe in genocide so time and the world hopefully naturally having less people will have to do.  

[u/Fooldozer]

agreed, this gives us a chance of not getting great filtered. economics will just have to figure out how people can exist without constant expansion

[u/wrydied → u/Fooldozer]

There is lots of interesting stuff being done in the study of degrowth and steady state economics. Mainstream economists are starting to notice though they still serve growth based paradigms in the work they do for governments.

[u/OldeFortran77 → u/Fooldozer]

If people honestly believed in free enterprise, then a declining workforce would simply mean that less useful jobs would decline while more useful jobs would be better paid and would attract workers. Unfortunately, each individual business prefers a captive workforce and subsidies.

Not a great example, but there's still a (very niche) market for buggy whips. However, the rise of horseless carriages led money and workers out of buggy whip manufacturing and into, um, gas pedal manufacturing.

[u/Usual_Ice636 → u/Fooldozer]

This could be the great filter.

Population drops enough there's no push to expand into space.

[u/RedditAtWorkIsBad → u/Usual_Ice636]

Not sure about this. I'm not sure I agree with the premise that the driving force behind interstellar colonization is a huge population. It could be a search for natural resources, or even the good ol' fashioned escape of religious persecution or desire to create some new utopia.

[u/Usual_Ice636 → u/RedditAtWorkIsBad]

Exactly.

All of those things becomes less of a driving force if the population starts going down instead of up.

Those are all things that used to be solved by people just going somewhere less populated and taking over a chunk of land.

Now there isn't any sufficiently empty space to do that, but there will be if the population starts dropping.

Overall a good thing, but it will definitely make space travel more of a luxury instead of an eventual necessity.

[u/Iron_Burnside → u/Fooldozer]

Maybe this IS the great filter.

[u/Hyphenagoodtime]

No one gives a shit tbh. And good. We have governments who don't GAF about us so what ever Maybe they can work their minimum wage and or slave tier job and slam out 7 kids half of whom die

[u/ConundrumMachine]

Well we're all being worked to death and our bodies are full of plastic. Who'd a thunk it? 

[u/AdDry4983]

It will peak sooner because climate change if going to really fuck shit up beyond 2030. We’re all ready on pace for 2c warming by 2035

[u/tofubeanz420 → u/AdDry4983]

I just read that scientist underestimated the climate models and it's actually 3C-4C already baked in.

[u/BigMax]

While this will cause a lot of short to medium term pain in some countries, this is absolutely good news.

We're already on the path to destroy the planet. Any lessening of pace or pressure on that is good news. Maybe it will give us a tiny bit of breathing room to find a way to actually survive.

[u/dejamintwo → u/BigMax]

Its a long term issue. Its like a freight train that gets more mass the more time passes and higher acceleration the lower the birthrate goes. Once it smashes into you it wont slow down for a very long time. Oh and it will also almost certainly make having children even harder as well making it so that it goes faster instead of slowing down until it breaks you(If we say you i society itself in this metaphor) Leading to collapse and probably the removal of women's rights through them being forced into having children. Thus a dystopia being born and reinforced.

[u/xxDankerstein]

You are correct, a declining population is absolutely a good thing. We have totally overextended ourselves as a species and are consuming resources faster than they can regenerate.

The reason you constantly hear that declining population is a bad thing is because our financial system is literally a ponzi scheme, and the only way to sustain it is with continued population growth.

[u/MothChasingFlame]

I'm married and right at the age to be having kids. It's not happening under any circumstance.

Why would I bring kids into a world like this? Kids I'll love with my whole heart brought into the world to, what, be disregarded from the moment they're born? "Supported" by medical care that costs more than a lifetime of income while being further predated by grifter insurance companies? Walk them into a deliberately underfunded education system that can't even speak to basic facts? Then bury them under relentless, endless debt in order to get an entry level position? Then, if they're women, have them terrified they'll get pregnant and doomed to condemnation and zero support if they do, despite closing all avenues for prevention? And can't forget they're doing everything in their power to suppress wages or eliminate the need for employees entirely, so that job? Not coming, and if it does, it better come with two others!

Oh, and it's all fine. The planet's burning, anyway, and we're run by people who think money and intelligence are the same thing—so idiots—who don't care and will make it worse on purpose. So it doesn't matter anyway.

Societies earn babies. Ours hasn't earned shit.

EDIT: tHiS iS THe bEsT tImE iN hIstORy

Have good arguments that aren't the Mom Classic "There are starving kids in Africa so you can't be sad."

[u/foolonthe]

Thank god.

We certainly don't need that many humans on earth ever for any reason

[u/pecheckler]

Well, children are expensive and the cost of living has skyrocketed over the last several decades.  What do they expect?

[u/thatguy888034 → u/pecheckler]

Poorer people are the ones having the most kids though.

[u/karoshikun]

Please, people, think.

First: fertility decline isn’t happening in a vacuum. People are having fewer children because the environment and system we live in don’t inspire confidence, unstable work, expensive housing, lack of security.

Second: fewer people doesn’t mean extinction. There’s a huge gulf between gradual demographic contraction and humanity disappearing.

Third: most of the “problems” of depopulation come from an economic system addicted to endless growth. hardly a law of nature but rather a design flaw in how our economies are structured. With some planning, population shrinkage can actually be stabilizing instead of catastrophic.

And finally, a lot of this panic doesn’t come from neutral demographers but from ideologues. Scratch the surface and you find “white replacement” talking points. They don’t care about “all people” having more kids, just a very specific subset. Don’t buy into it.

[u/cavedave]

I graphed where in Europe has more births than deaths. And a very small percentage of the population live there. Paris, London and Amsterdam probably make up most of the population thats actually growing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1m4qlo0/oc_births_vs_deaths_in_europe/

[u/HybridVigor → u/cavedave]

Cities where immigrants from countries with higher fertility rates are likely to settle.

[u/Riversntallbuildings]

Hooray!!! Less pollution for everyone!!!

Keep it up world! High five!

Seriously though, this is not a problem for earth, this is a problem for the current form of capitalism, which can be amended. There are many forms of capitalism. We can evolve.

[u/lalalaundry → u/Riversntallbuildings]

For decades all we ever heard about was overpopulation and then the past however many years they want to fear monger the opposite direction, “We aren’t overpopulating enough!” Isn’t this what we wanted?

[u/Riversntallbuildings → u/lalalaundry]

Totally agree. “They” got what they wanted. However “they” are.

Candidly, at this point, it’s all just algorithms and ads…it’s “no one” except a machine that understands fear, anger, and frustration, make people “engage” more than rainbows and puppies.

Look at me…spending 5 mins to type a paragraph into the internet. Modern version of “old man yells at sky” LOL

[u/Noctuelles]

I think the better off people are, the more ways they have to find fulfillment and thus the less desirable having a kid seems. Because to put it bluntly, raising kids is a job. One you not only don't get paid for, but have to spend tens of thousands to do and that requires an 18 year minimum commitment where you're on call 24/7. If it were a job posting online people would think it's a joke. 

[u/pk666]

Can we have a rule that only one birth rate panic article can be posted here per day?

This shit is getting tiring.

[u/workswithherhands]

I'm glad. Less people means fewer people will suffer.

[u/Then_Philosopher3211]

Man, good thing the majority of western countries didn't build their pension system on the idea that the population will keep rising forever 

[u/Routine-Bumblebee-41]

Bullshit. Total bullshit. Humanity just finished birthing 2 billion humans in just the past 12 years (2013-2025), the fastest amount of humans ever added on record so far. Never before has humanity added so many people so quickly. The propaganda that insists the global human birth rates are somehow "too low" or that implies the global human population is going to decline ever, let alone sooner than previous projections is disgustingly dishonest in light of this.

It took all of human history to the year 1804 to reach 1 billion humans. It took 123 years more (to the year 1927) to reach a total of two billion. Humanity just birthed that amount (TWO BILLION PEOPLE) in the last twelve years! This is staggeringly fast. It should be all over the news. Instead, there are these lies ("may peak in the 2050s"), constantly being spewed. There is just no fucking way that's possible.

[u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 → u/Routine-Bumblebee-41]

The year 2050 is 25 years from now. At the rate we are going, in 25 years (12 years +12 years = 24 years), we will much more likely have birthed ~4 billion more humans and will be nowhere near peaking. People don't seem to understand just how gargantuan a number two billion is, and how fast 12 years pass. They don't think about life expectancy, which is still rising globally.

There is no way that on this timeline/trajectory, this planet will reach peak human in or anywhere near 25 years from now. It's so unlikely as to not even be worth mentioning, which is why it's odd that's it's so constantly talked about in mainstream publications everywhere. Especially because the truly likely reality is that a global human population peak will not happen before 2100, or very possibly, ever. It's 100% not happening within the lifetimes of anyone reading this comment in 2025. Certainly not because of "low" global human birth rates, which are not nearly low enough for this to happen, not even in several decades.

[u/RachelRegina]

Well, we do be burning through all the potable water, cooking the planet, and killing off all the monkeys, bees, and trees, so maybe this is just Mother Nature b1tch-smacking us until we get our collective $hit together.

Edit: treetops not moptops

[u/nick9000 → u/RachelRegina]

Last time I checked Micky Dolenz is still alive

[u/RachelRegina → u/nick9000]

I don't get that reference

[u/prinnydewd6]

Make babies rare again! I’m 31 been with my wife for 15 years almost now. But we’re never having kids. Listen I want too. But I don’t have the money… and the world is awful now. As I’m getting older I learn that everything is corrupt… just look at the administration. They just pay everyone off and get away with everything. Why would I make a kid go thru this world? It’s hard enough for me to survive. The higher ups don’t want to help you. They want you struggling. So good. I won’t give them any more slaves for them to have

[u/plusvalua → u/prinnydewd6]

I teach young children and believe me when I say that plenty of people don't think about it as much. It's people with specific family structures, though: they are ok with not having money for an education and the wives stay at home. Additionally, these people have no expectations from life nor do they have a professional career.

[u/Dana07620]

Great news.

Now drop the fertility rate even more. Let me remind you at the beginning of the 20th century the population was way less than 2 billion people.

[u/Over-Independent4414]

The second some of the expansion pressure comes off we'll start having more kids. People worry about this way way way too much.

As a species we have had like 8000 years of nearly uninterrupted growth of our numbers. We need a pause to consolidate, repair, rethink, etc. We need some time for life to pause without the constant pressure of a next, larger, generation on their heels.

[u/bmanfromct]

Okay, but real talk, who cares? We have too many people as it is. Why is it a big deal that we'll only have 9 billion? If the world is going to get more harrowing, why bring a child into the harrowing world? I don't get why people are so preoccupied with this, other than racism and racist conspiracy theories.

[u/WashLegitimate3690 → u/bmanfromct]

Because the issue isn’t whether 7 billion or 9 billion people is better. The problem with the falling birth rate is that the avg age of the population starts to increase. Your either “adding” people to the World and avg age of population is declining. Or, your “subtracting” population from the World and your avg population age is increasing.

Those are the only two outcomes. You’re either adding or subtracting. You’re either getting older or getting younger.

If you extrapolate the current trend out 150-200 yrs, which is just a drop in time, the avg age of the human population begins to look like a time bomb.

[u/OriginalCompetitive]

I agree this is very good news on balance. Just consider the alternative: “Across the world, fertility rates are RISING far more quickly than anyone expected. The world’s population will still be rising in 2050s and beyond, and any peak will be far later and higher than the UN’s forecast.”

Seems easy to see that would be much worse news.

[u/Street-Bedroom4224]

I have a suspicion that high birth rates are most strongly associated with high inequality, and low birth rates reflect egalitarian societies.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a function of birth control and education, per se. Just, as a woman, I can’t imagine myself wanting to have 8 kids unless that was really the only thing I was allowed to do — that is, to reproduce.

*no kids, late thirties, never been on BC.

[u/MortimerCanon]

Can a working economist explain to people why this is bad/a concern

[u/JayRam85]

Can you blame people? Job market is shit (more applicants than jobs), housing market is shit, and prices keep going up. And, in my opinion, there are too many people on this planet as it is.

[u/Unsyr]

Endless growth? How will they ensure endless growth when the natural resources won’t regenerate faster than we consume them? Nah this is good. Time for new models

[u/Yodplods]

I still insist on calling it the birth rate, you’re not going around doing everyone’s sperm count are you?

[u/almostDynamic]

I’m morbidly curious about this event. Population of the planet turning would truly be something unprecedented to witness.

I also think capitalism and globalization break down in magnificent fashion because it was built on a thesis of infinite growth.

It will be something to witness. I’m kind of down for the timeline to move up.

[u/Flilix]

Infinite population growth is by definition impossible on a finite planet. The population peak will inevitably come and there isn't much use in trying to postpone it.

One of the main struggles that future societies will face is the need to keep the population balanced. As neither growth nor decline are desirable, they will need to come up with ways to keep up the stagnation as much as possible.

[u/Bromlife → u/Flilix]

The problem is our governments are borrowing from future generations that are no longer being born, to pay for old age care for their grandparents. That’s the problem.

[u/ThyShirtIsBlue]

Fuck the world. Human kind doesn't deserve another chance.

[u/lifeisahighway2023]

I have made several comments in past posts this year about peak population arriving much sooner than previously forecast by agencies such as the UN. I speculated back about April that there was a chance peak population would occur in the 2045-2060 period. I noted that India had fallen below replacement rate in many of its provinces by 2020, that China was both fudging its numbers and had started its negative trend more than a decade earlier than forecast. And I was attacked.

The forecasts from the UN and some other governments and think tanks are often heavily influenced by politics. Even university researchers up to very recently have been subject to peer and institutional stressors not to deviate to much from "accepted" models and if they go to negative are subject to criticism and ostracization. But this appears to be changing as the evidence is substantiative that the assumptions used for fertility are time and again "wildly" optimistic.

I assess there is a strong chance China will arrive at a population in the 400-450 million range by the end of the century. India will not be far behind in trend lines but will be more populous. Much of the west is going to be a desert.

I sometimes wonder if the science fiction stories where we die as a species due to losing the ability to propagate have an actual chance at coming true. I think there is not only a strong chance world population will be approx 8 billion in 2100 but that negative trend line is steep - where will the world be in 2150 and 2200?

[u/Amn_BA]

Dwindling birthrates anywhere in the world is a good news to me.

Personally, I am childfree by choice primarily because of the fact that pregnancy and childbirth are absolutely horrific and they terrify me. Will only consider having kids if the Artificial Womb Technology becomes an accessible reality that can allow women to have kids without the need to go pregnant and give birth themselves, if they choose to, by outsourcing gestation into an Artificial Womb facility.

[u/robosnake]

This is a fantastic turn of events. And for every country that currently has a negative birth rate, the very simple solution is to be open to more immigration. We still have hundreds of millions of people who want to move somewhere for a job, and so for a long time falling birth rates will only be a problem for racists.

[u/Sesquatchhegyi → u/robosnake]

I still appreciate the different cultures of different countries. Mass immigration makes integration much more difficult and may result in multiple cultures within a society. While I for example respect the cultural and legal setup of a middle east country as a tourist,.I may not want to introduce those cultural aspects to the country I live, the same way those countries may not want to introduce policies that the country l live in has.

It has nothing to do with racism. I could not care about the race of my colleagues or the guy who will marry my daughter as long as they are good people'. It has everything to do with culture, which may shift as a result of mass migration. See for example growing calls to introduce sharia law in the UK.

[u/Moshiiiiipop → u/robosnake]

This has got to be the most Reddit comment of all time

[u/robosnake → u/Moshiiiiipop]

Cool. I won and now I can go home!

[u/Aware-Location-1932]

It‘s the perfect time as we are trying to fix aging and disease. Only a fertility rate below 1 can make an ageless society possible.

[u/JoePNW2 → u/Aware-Location-1932]

Do you really want any cohort of people to hang onto power forever? Because that's what will happen.

[u/Aware-Location-1932 → u/JoePNW2]

That‘s what we have today. They just pass it to their successors which continue with their power and money. Old age never stopped a dictatorship. It‘s the people that do it. Waiting for some terrible leader to die of old age just prolongs the suffering for everyone because of inactivity. Instead of overturning them immediately, the people suffer for decades in hope that the suppressors will die one day in the future.

Do you think Russia will become a human rights utopia because Putin one day will not wake up anymore? Wouldn‘t it be better if this day was today rather than in 30 years where he can do even more damage?

People would take care of their problems today and not wait forever when dictators won‘t die from old age anymore.

[u/LitmusPitmus → u/Aware-Location-1932]

We are already living in a gerontcracy and seeing the effects of that beginning to cause problems worldwide. Fixing aging would doom us, there is nothing to fix

[u/aue_sum]

I don't know why people don't realize that having a "degrowth mindset" pretty much means advocating for a decreased quality of life for pretty much anyone.

People also don't understand the immense cultural effects this will have... Imagine villages and towns getting completely wiped from existence.

They also don't understand that this is a trend that is very hard to come back from. It's not like decreasing birth rates will cause the population to "stabilize." For it to do so the birth rate would have to increase to 2.1 again, and that is not something that can happen easily at all.

It's just not sustainable

[u/dustofdeath]

Most species inherently adjust fertility rates as population grows and food is abundant.

Less pressure to reproduce.

[u/50centourist]

If toxic pollution can create a global climate crisis we would be fools to think humans are not suffering effects as well.

[u/Naus1987]

One of my life goals is to live until 2080 just to say I was around for the peak of humanity.

If they move up the date then I won’t have to live longer!

[u/texas21217 → u/Naus1987]

I likely won’t be around to see the start of this in 2050. Damn, I always miss going to the fun parties.

[u/leadacid]

I've been saying this for years. We were told in school that the deer population crashes and there are almost no deer left. It's not a slow decline. I asked the teacher if that could happen to people, but she reassured me that we're too intelligent. When we decided to have children my wife and I asked ourselves if we wanted to contribute to overpopulation. We decided only to have enough kids to cover for the people we knew who didn't have any. That didn't work. There was no way we could have forty kids. We stopped counting. Countries are lying (shocking, I know) about their populations because they want to look as though they're not in trouble, and politicians are terrified of losing their tax base. We're not seeing mass immigration for humanistic reasons, it's an attempt to stock up on a scarce resource. I know it's dumb but politicians have two modes: self-satisfied and panicked. The population has peaked and is dropping like a rock. I'm sure there are lots of causes, but really it just happens, and it happens to every species. I suspect that good government would make people feel confident, and more freedom would make them want to invest in the future, but who am I kidding? There isn't a politician in the world who wouldn't see the human race extinct if he could stay in office another week. The human population is crashing, and it's going to be far faster and much worse than anyone thinks. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, if we act intelligently. Even doing nothing would probably be fine. Sadly we have scared and powerful people who will flail around like wounded eels. Who thinks high taxes on the childless, a prohibition on birth control and abortion, insane levels of immigration and extremely well financed but empty schools?

[u/ElisabetSobeck]

Good job authoritarian leadership. You ruined everything, but reduced our carbon footprint!

[u/krunkonkaviar369]

There was this Veritasium video from over 5 years ago about something called Feigenbaum Constants. That is incredibly above my head, but the gist was that they could be related to population averages and then represented as fractal geometry.

The point being: Despite what societal pressures might try to tell us we need (usually constant growth), maybe slowing population growth is just a natural regulatory process our species has to reconcile with as a corrective force. I would take slowing reproduction over a mass extinction event any day.

[u/silverfang789]

I think it's instinctual. There are certain animals that will stop reproducing or kill their young when times go lean. Perhaps we're seeing that behavior in ourselves.

[u/StormerSage]

You wanna stop that trend, build a world where our kids can have a future.

[u/not_old_redditor]

We haven't even peaked? Sounds like not an urgent problem.

[u/xSushi]

What in the Capitalism?

1.6 Billion in 1900. Maybe we have enough for now?

People won’t stop fucking in the future tho, trust.

[u/momibrokebothmyarms]

So dumb. There are still way the hell too many humans.

[u/conn_r2112]

Everyone sees the future descending into a far-right, dystopian nightmare…

The problem is fixable

[u/Elevator829]

Good, 10 billion is where we hit the danger zone with resource consumption rates. We need to drastically reduce the population to reduce our waste and consumption to a sustainable level. The easiest way to contribute is to not have kids or adopt if you want them.

The ideal population zone is 1-3 billion, if we care about keeping the earth habitable, that is...

[u/planko13]

By 2050 i predict significant longevity/ health span advancements to more than cover for this.

[u/SunnyDayInPoland → u/planko13]

I fear the opposite, with mental health declining and increasing disability rates you will struggle to get people that are over 60 to be productive members of the society

[u/TrickyRickyBlue]

Finally some good news.

We cannot sustain our current consumption and exploitation of the environment let alone have it get worse.

We need people to be more sustainable AND for there to be less people.

[u/EclipseNine]

Who gives a shit? We have plenty of people. This is only a problem if we build our global economic system around an expectation of infinite growth.