Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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ll over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.

Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.

Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.

A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments.

The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older. Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation.

A center for elderly people in Washington, D.C. U.S. population growth has slowed to its lowest rate in decades.
“A paradigm shift is necessary,” said Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year. “Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline.”

The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs).

The 20th century presented a very different challenge. The global population saw its greatest increase in known history, from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000, as life spans lengthened and infant mortality declined. In some countries — representing about a third of the world’s people — those growth dynamics are still in play. By the end of the century, Nigeria could surpass China in population; across sub-Saharan Africa, families are still having four or five children.

But nearly everywhere else, the era of high fertility is ending. As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born. Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.

Families in sub-Saharan Africa are often still having four or five children. By the end of the century, Nigeria could surpass China in population.
The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff.

A village school in Gangjin County, South Korea, has enrolled illiterate older people so that it can stay open as the number of children in the area has dwindled.
“It becomes a cyclical mechanism,” said Stuart Gietel Basten, an expert on Asian demographics and a professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “It’s demographic momentum.”

Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the “demographic time bomb” that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off.

Even in countries like India that have long been associated with rapid growth, birth rates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.
South Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.92 in 2019 — less than one child per woman, the lowest rate in the developed world. Every month for the past 59 months, the total number of babies born in the country has dropped to a record depth.

A couple in Acciaroli, Italy. The population of many Italian villages has dramatically aged and shrunk in numbers.
That declining birthrate, coupled with a rapid industrialization that has pushed people from rural towns to big cities, has created what can feel like a two-tiered society. While major metropolises like Seoul continue to grow, putting intense pressure on infrastructure and housing, in regional towns it’s easy to find schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children.

Expectant mothers in many areas can no longer find obstetricians or postnatal care centers. Universities below the elite level, especially outside Seoul, find it increasingly hard to fill their ranks — the number of 18-year-olds in South Korea has fallen from about 900,000 in 1992 to 500,000 today. To attract students, some schools have offered scholarships and even iPhones.

To goose the birthrate, the government has handed out baby bonuses. It increased child allowances and medical subsidies for fertility treatments and pregnancy. Health officials have showered newborns with gifts of beef, baby clothes and toys. The government is also building kindergartens and day care centers by the hundreds. In Seoul, every bus and subway car has pink seats reserved for pregnant women.

Playing pool in a retirement community in Beijing. China’s rapid slowdown in population growth will pose economic challenges.
But this month, Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki admitted that the government — which has spent more than $178 billion over the past 15 years encouraging women to have more babies — was not making enough progress. In many families, the shift feels cultural and permanent.

“My grandparents had six children, and my parents five, because their generations believed in having multiple children,” said Kim Mi-kyung, 38, a stay-at-home parent. “I have only one child. To my and younger generations, all things considered, it just doesn’t pay to have many children.”

Children in Munich, Germany. The fertility rate in Germany has increased after the country expanded access to child care and paid parental leave, but it remains below the rate of replacement.
Thousands of miles away, in Italy, the sentiment is similar, with a different backdrop.

In Capracotta, a small town in southern Italy, a sign in red letters on an 18th-century stone building looking on to the Apennine Mountains reads “Home of School Kindergarten” — but today, the building is a nursing home.

Residents eat their evening broth on waxed tablecloths in the old theater room.

“There were so many families, so many children,” said Concetta D’Andrea, 93, who was a student and a teacher at the school and is now a resident of the nursing home. “Now there is no one.”

The population in Capracotta has dramatically aged and contracted — from about 5,000 people to 800. The town’s carpentry shops have shut down. The organizers of a soccer tournament struggled to form even one team.

About a half-hour away, in the town of Agnone, the maternity ward closed a decade ago because it had fewer than 500 births a year, the national minimum to stay open. This year, six babies were born in Agnone.

“Once you could hear the babies in the nursery cry, and it was like music,” said Enrica Sciullo, a nurse who used to help with births there and now mostly takes care of older patients. “Now there is silence and a feeling of emptiness.”

In a speech last Friday during a conference on Italy’s birthrate crisis, Pope Francis said the “demographic winter” was still “cold and dark.”

More people in more countries may soon be searching for their own metaphors. Birth projections often shift based on how governments and families respond, but according to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.

Their model shows an especially sharp decline for China, with its population expected to fall from 1.41 billion now to about 730 million in 2100. If that happens, the population pyramid would essentially flip. Instead of a base of young workers supporting a narrower band of retirees, China would have as many 85-year-olds as 18-year-olds.

China’s rust belt, in the northeast, saw its population drop by 1.2 percent in the past decade, according to census figures released on Tuesday. In 2016, Heilongjiang Province became the first in the country to have its pension system run out of money. In Hegang, a “ghost city” in the province that has lost almost 10 percent of its population since 2010, homes cost so little that people compare them to cabbage.

Many countries are beginning to accept the need to adapt, not just resist. South Korea is pushing for universities to merge. In Japan, where adult diapers now outsell ones for babies, municipalities have been consolidated as towns age and shrink. In Sweden, some cities have shifted resources from schools to elder care. And almost everywhere, older people are being asked to keep working. Germany, which previously raised its retirement age to 67, is now considering a bump to 69.

Going further than many other nations, Germany has also worked through a program of urban contraction: Demolitions have removed around 330,000 units from the housing stock since 2002.

And if the goal is revival, a few green shoots can be found. After expanding access to affordable child care and paid parental leave, Germany’s fertility rate recently increased to 1.54, up from 1.3 in 2006. Leipzig, which once was shrinking, is now growing again after reducing its housing stock and making itself more attractive with its smaller scale.

“Growth is a challenge, as is decline,” said Mr. Swiaczny, who is now a senior research fellow at the Federal Institute for Population Research in Germany.

Demographers warn against seeing population decline as simply a cause for alarm. Many women are having fewer children because that’s what they want. Smaller populations could lead to higher wages, more equal societies, lower carbon emissions and a higher quality of life for the smaller numbers of children who are born.

But, said Professor Gietel Basten, quoting Casanova: “There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”

The challenges ahead are still a cul-de-sac — no country with a serious slowdown in population growth has managed to increase its fertility rate much beyond the minor uptick that Germany accomplished. There is little sign of wage growth in shrinking countries, and there is no guarantee that a smaller population means less stress on the environment.

Many demographers argue that the current moment may look to future historians like a period of transition or gestation, when humans either did or did not figure out how to make the world more hospitable — enough for people to build the families that they want.

Surveys in many countries show that young people would like to be having more children, but face too many obstacles.

Anna Parolini tells a common story. She left her small hometown in northern Italy to find better job opportunities. Now 37, she lives with her boyfriend in Milan and has put her desire to have children on hold.

She is afraid her salary of less than 2,000 euros a month would not be enough for a family, and her parents still live where she grew up.

“I don’t have anyone here who could help me,” she said. “Thinking of having a child now would make me gasp.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/lo ... ar-AAKh95s

I can remember when zero population growth was the big thing to achieve.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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As boomers gradually retire, there will be a considerable labor shortage. It is increasingly expensive to have children as middle class wages stagnate, so fewer people do.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/ ... -ages.html

The good thing is that labor shortage typically pushes the wage up, to a point. After a certain threshold businesses will be forced to relocate to countries that still have enough labor, like India and China.
Glad that federal government is boring again.

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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I think this is the long term effect of contraception, because those are the areas where reproduction has slowed. Women have a choice now. More and more are saying no-thanks. It will take a good century to adjust to this new normal, but humanity will be better for it.

But our politicians need to be thinking about the effects this has to our economy and make the proper adjustments.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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Economists, demographers and reproductive health experts agree: The COVID-19 crisis capped a decade in which basic costs far outpaced wages, at the same time that the Affordable Care Act made birth control effectively free for most Americans. This is especially true in California, where fair market rent runs as much as a Tesla, preschool costs the same as UC Berkeley, and an IUD averages $0 with both public and private insurance.

“People imagine some ‘Children of Men’ situation, when in reality the pandemic freaked people out,” said Ponta Abadi, a reproductive health expert, referring to the 2006 apocalyptic thriller in which a pandemic leaves humanity infertile. “It caused a lot of people to lose their jobs and affected whether they wanted to have kids.”

Historical data bear this out, said Melissa Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 led to a significant baby bust despite the fact that contraception was both rudimentary and almost totally illegal at the time. During the Great Recession, the birth rate declined about 1% for every percent unemployment rose.

New survey data from the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that advocates for reproductive rights, suggest this time around the effect could be even greater. More than a third of respondents said they planned to either put off having children or have fewer because of the pandemic, which was devastating to reproductive-age women despite being far more deadly to older men. Roughly half of the 5 million women who were thrown out of work last spring had young children, and another million mothers were pushed out by the pressure of remote school in the fall and winter. Others delayed or ended pregnancies amid news that COVID-19 could be more severe and more fatal in pregnant people.

The impact was seismic: Local abortion providers were already seeing a spike in demand as early as April 2020, and clinicians across the country said they have since helped front-line healthcare workers, newly unemployed parents and working mothers-turned-teachers terminate pregnancies that, in any other year, would have ended in the delivery room.

But abortion remains at near historic lows, and there’s little evidence it was greater in California than in other states. Nor are millennials in the Golden State meaningfully different in educational attainment or family structures from their peers in other populous states where the decline has been more modest. Instead, experts say, a sharper spike in pandemic unemployment here put strong downward pressure on parents and would-be parents who were already strained under stagnant wages, rising rent and other economic strains that have been depressing birth rates for years.
Those pressures are especially acute in Los Angeles, where rents have increased at almost double the rate of wages in the last 10 years. Sending a preschooler to a home day-care facility now costs significantly more than sending a freshman to Cal State Long Beach; infant care exceeds undergraduate tuition at UCLA, where fees have gone up by 30% this past decade. Yet only 1 in every 4 children whose parents can afford day care in Los Angeles finds a spot. For those who rely on state subsidies, that number is 1 in 9.

"[Child care] is not just unaffordable, it’s unavailable,” said Jessica Chang, chief executive of WeeCare, the country’s largest home day-care network. “It’s a big factor for why people [here] have fewer children.”

Child care is now more expensive than housing in California, and housing is more expensive here than in any state except Hawaii.

“Housing prices took off after 2014, and that weighed heavily on people,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at USC. That also happens to be the year IUDs emerged as one of the most popular forms of birth control in America, after decades languishing in the shadow of a failed early model that was pulled from the market before most modern users were conceived.
In 2007, the last high watermark for American fertility, about 6% of women who were trying to prevent pregnancy used long-acting, reversible contraceptives like IUDs — already a significant jump from 2000, when about 2% did. By 2014, just three years after they became free for most patients under Obamacare, that number was close to 15%. And when access was threatened in the wake of the 2016 election, insertions surged again.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -baby-bust
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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Our son chose not to reproduce. He and his wife are DINKs--dual income no kids. They take home literally ten times what our retirement is. They travel and do all kinds of stuff. I asked, and they said they don't want to burden the planet right now. Meaning never for grand kids. Oh, well. I think it's a proper decision. As population shrinks, there will be less strain on the biosystem, and robots will server some labor positions. Humans will easily adapt to a much smaller global population.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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Anyone remember TFG saying we cannot have anymore immigrants (ie, non-white and non-Christian ones) because "America is full!"?
Of course that is nothing but racist and nativists horseshit. China has virtually the same land area as the US, but its population is 5 times larger and its economy is fast approaching equivalence with ours. America's greatest growth has ALWAYS come with massive influxes of immigrants.

How long after the "doors were closed" in the early 1920s did the greatest economic collapse in our history occur? That's a rhetorical question, of course.

In 1856, former President, Millard Fillmore, ran on the nativist, anti-immigrant ticket, winning 1 state, Maryland, and diverting enough votes from Republican John C. Frémont, who was avidly anti-slavery, to give Buchanan an electoral college win with only 45% of the popular vote. (Frémont got ZERO votes in every single Southern state--or any votes for him were simply NOT COUNTED at all--foreshadowing Stalin).

Fillmore cost Frémont California, New Jersey, and Illinois, and the election--all because of nativism. "Know-Nothing" was more apt than those idiots realized.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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Most of the people I know in their 20s and 30s are too busy trying to get into the housing market to deal with kids. Some go the kid route, but many stick to just one. I had just one with environmental load of having two being a big part of the decision, as well as financial. And some of the younger people I know are not having kids simply because they don't want to bring another life into an accelerating climate disaster.

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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lurker wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 7:57 am too damn many people already. it's not like we're an endangered species.
We are a dangerous species. The world is also a pretty dangerous place without us. Ma's no slouch when she's angry. I like to believe that we could actually fix some of her mistakes. Who needs mosquitoes? Or the GOP For that matter.

First the Trumplodytes, then the world!
This isn't going well, is it?

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 8:34 am Anyone remember TFG saying we cannot have anymore immigrants (ie, non-white and non-Christian ones) because "America is full!"?
Of course that is nothing but racist and nativists horseshit. China has virtually the same land area as the US, but its population is 5 times larger and its economy is fast approaching equivalence with ours. America's greatest growth has ALWAYS come with massive influxes of immigrants.

How long after the "doors were closed" in the early 1920s did the greatest economic collapse in our history occur? That's a rhetorical question, of course.

In 1856, former President, Millard Fillmore, ran on the nativist, anti-immigrant ticket, winning 1 state, Maryland, and diverting enough votes from Republican John C. Frémont, who was avidly anti-slavery, to give Buchanan an electoral college win with only 45% of the popular vote. (Frémont got ZERO votes in every single Southern state--or any votes for him were simply NOT COUNTED at all--foreshadowing Stalin).

Fillmore cost Frémont California, New Jersey, and Illinois, and the election--all because of nativism. "Know-Nothing" was more apt than those idiots realized.
Add it to the long list of things that are real, that the right just ignores; or actively contradicts reality.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

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The threat of overpopulation pales beside the threat of unsustainable economic inequality. Saw a graph somewhere once showing how half the world's carbon emissions were produced by the wealthiest 10%. Most people are struggling to get by on almost nothing. Remember how statistics work - you would have to take nearly everything from the 1% to bring the poorer half up to spitting distance from the median.

For some reason, they are deeply opposed to this proposition.

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