I Don't Worry about Population Decline, and So Can You

I generally write in order to get ideas out of my head, making room for new ones in the process. It's a way of reassembling my data points, validating my conclusions, throwing in supporting research, and making a comprehensive argument to myself (and any readers) about something before shelving it entirely until (and unless) it needs to be reassessed.

This is no different, though admittedly thinner on research than I would like.

The favorite phrase of far-right populists and demographic researchers alike at the moment is Population Decline. It's the very real problem of humanity simply not pumping out enough children to replace ageing adults in the workforce.

Sorry, did I say humanity? I meant predominantly rich, developed nations. No wonder everyone's talking about it, since the rich are impacted by it as well as the rest of humanity.

Author's Update: Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde over at UPenn has an excellent presentation showing this is NOT limited to rich developed nations, and in fact is now a global issue when we adjust some of the figures toward more realistic/conservative estimates.

Snark aside, this does pose a very real problem for the post-industrial revolution economic and governance structures of the modern world. Our predecessors built grand empires on a singular truth they felt was inviolable: population will only ever increase, forever. Healthcare, education, retirement schemes, housing, transit, employment patterns, tax policies, consumer goods, all of it is built on the understanding that population is a pyramid, with far more young people than old to drive economic growth and provide surplus to support older humans. And like all modern crises, despite decades of warning of this inevitability, the ruling classes chose to ignore its symptoms out of convenience until the problem became insurmountably difficult to solve quickly.

Yet despite the implications of such a decline - collapse of social safety nets, of policy, of cities, of institutions, even of whole countries - I'm not worried about it. Not one bit. In fact, nobody in my particular social circles seems concerned about this, despite our being in peak child-rearing years.

Our rationale? These systems were already broken, long before we had the opportunity to engage with them. We're already living in the post-decline world of sorts, and don't see much of an issue with it from our perspectives.

Population Decline is a Rich, Old Person Problem

A lot of safety nets only kick-in for older adults in society. Social Security, Pension Funds, Medicare, housing subsidies, commerce discounts, all of these and more are generally only available to those above a certain age. If you want to buy brand-new affordable housing in cities and don't have kids, just wait until you're 55 to slide into a below-market condo or home restricted to such a demographic. If you were born before 1954, you can collect full social security benefits at 66 - or reduced benefits at 62, provided your pension funds and and 401k's can make up the difference. Medicare kicks in at 65 for Hospital and Medical insurance, and until recently meant everything was handled by the Government instead of private insurers.

Now to be clear, I'm not denigrating these programs. There's a dearth of senior housing in major cities, and older people should be supported by the government to some degree if they cannot take care of themselves. I am certainly not opposed to Medicare or Social Security.

To young people, however, the data has been stark for decades: Social Security is unsustainable in its present form, as is Medicare. There aren't enough young people making enough money to support these programs as currently structured, and absent significant reform, the programs are expected to collapse spectacularly in the next decade or so. Unsurprisingly, private equity vultures have been chomping at the bit to pick at the carcasses and gut these programs wholesale.

So it shouldn't be surprising that young people overwhelmingly believe we'll never retire. We view the road ahead as one of trial and struggle, without the comfy vacation at the end many of our parents are currently enjoying in some form or another. We can't even get our current employers to pay fair wages relative to the cost of living today; why would we bother fantasizing about being paid to do fuck all in old age, when we should be paid to do that now (at least part-time) given the rates of productivity versus wage growth?

For old people, though? This is a dire problem. The insolvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare are primed to hit right as seniors hit the peak of retirement. Having spent their entire lives banking on the existence and support of these programs for cushy retirements, they lack the savings to close the gaps left behind by their collapse and are now staring down the same gloom and doom their children have long since accepted. Making matters worse is that their own policies of ageism in the workplace have come back to bite them in the ass, making it nigh impossible to find good work opportunities - provided their own sense of entitlement and belated technological adoption don't hamstring them further.

That's not to say young people are ageist towards our elders - we're broadly not, or at least my circles aren't - but the leaders our elders continue to insist on installing in government and corporate governance definitively are. Despite our snide insult of "OK Boomer" sounding ageist, it's more a denigration of a generational cohort from a specific era and their policies rather than discrimination on the basis of a biological number. If anything, there's a pattern of research investigating if ageism isn't just affecting seniors, but deliberately targeting young people. Ageism remains an unaddressed issue, eating away at civilization like a cancer from both ends of the spectrum and justified with similar rationale.

Population decline is also a problem for rich people, though. While the rich aren't remotely dependent on social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare, they are dependent upon the stock market constantly going up in order to support their complex tax avoidance schemes. One of the largest expenditures of any company is labor, which is why modern American seniors spent much of their lives loudly pushing a "greed is good" narrative to outsource jobs, depress wages, and juice corporate profit margins through monopolistic behaviors. This in turn led to record stock market growth in the United States, along with a toxic fixation on "automation" and "productivity" to try and not just reduce labor costs, but eliminate them entirely. Should their current investments in AI not pay off, the rich will be staring down a global population decline that will make it far harder to outsource jobs abroad or maintain consumer spending at home, which will result in wage gains for workers - and higher labor costs for companies. Considering that the richest 10% of Americans own 93% of the cumulative stock market, it's why the far-right is so obsessed with people having kids, fast: the wealth of their leadership and donor class is dependent upon the exploitation of cheap labor, a supply that is rapidly contracting.

It's the Economy, Doomer

For all the hand-wringing about population decline and its detriment to civilization writ large (something something climate change), the actual discussions seem to be the same old hyper-specific and narrow arguments, rather than a comprehensive view of the problem and its contributors. Some point to child care subsidies as solving the issue, others want to give money to new parents to promote childrearing, others still want to promote a return to traditional gender roles. A handful of experts (rightly) point out that all of the above could be needed, and still not be enough.

That's because the root of population decline is itself the decline of a healthy civilization.

Author's Note: Fuck traditional gender roles, though I do think a return to single-income households and a celebration of the work and role of homemakers - male, female, or otherwise - would be a huge net positive in many ways. Another article for another time.

Having a child is one of the riskiest activities a human can willfully engage in because of the long tail of effects associated with it. Sex can be risky, as can pregnancy. Childbirth is still dangerous, even in developed countries like the United States. Provided the pregnancy and childbirth go off flawlessly, there's still the expense of baby supplies, raising the child, nurturing it through life and fostering its growth until it reaches adulthood and, hopefully, can take care of itself. This rosy view doesn't include the very real possibility of childhood illnesses, disabilities, and accidents, or even culture-specific issues like gun violence or motor vehicle accidents. Rearing a single child is essentially gambling that everything will go well for you and the child for a good twenty years, or at least be solvable without significantly affecting life outcomes for the parent or child; having a second or third child merely extends that wager another three to five years per pregnancy.

In developed countries, that's no longer the case. The cost of necessities like shelter or childcare now assume both parents are working full-time to afford it - leaving vanishingly little time for either parent to be meaningfully involved in raising said child. Governments continue slashing support for children by gutting school meal programs, Medicaid, and SNAP. Employers demand longer hours for less pay and more precarity, making it nigh impossible for working-class parents to adhere to beneficial schedules or create structure for their children, nevermind engaging in long-term planning. The death of safe third places for children to congregate within means youth are spending more time indoors and behind screens, fostering the present loneliness epidemic. It has never been harder, riskier, and more expensive to have a child in modern history, and that doesn't even get into the grim future of accelerating climate change, resource depletion, nationalism, authoritarianism, and war that our children will have to deal with.

That's not to say young people aren't trying to find ways of having children. The rise of remote work during COVID led many of my cohort to believe this would be the shift needed for them to have and raise children at home while also still having a career; businesses have killed that dream dead with arbitrary RTO mandates, though young people have responded by skipping out early as a form of rebellion. Many more left expensive cities in favor of cheaper pastures during COVID to coincide with remote work, and that trend isn't likely to abate in the midst of a housing crisis where the choice might be between having your dream family in a smaller town or working 9-9-6 downtown in NYC or Silicon Valley just to make rent in a shared flat with strangers. Those who can afford the risks of childrearing are having kids.

The problem is, simply put, we have built a society and economy where most people simply cannot afford to have a single child, let alone two or three. In the effort to satiate their greed of yesteryear immediately, the seniors and rich people of today have effectively sacrificed their prosperity in the future.

Here Comes The Bill

Unfortunately for the current crop of fascists in government, there is no "quick fix" to this problem. Birth rates have been declining for decades, and nobody has cared enough to fix it. In fact, we're still so far away from solving this problem that more American seniors are simply saying "fuck it" and retiring abroad rather than knuckle down and solve the very problems they created. For all their bitching about a lack of grandkids and birth rates, our elderly don't seem to actually give enough of a fuck to help address the issue, let alone sacrifice their personal gains for the benefit of their children. They're not even leaving their kids their paid-off homes, opting for schemes that cash out home equity to supplement their retirement.

So the bill will come, and young people will be left paying the tab of their predecessors. This is why even Progressive Leftists like myself are having serious discussions about dismantling Social Security and Medicare in favor of alternative, universal programs funded through defined contributions (government retirement/pension accounts) or taxation (healthcare). The present system is broken, and we'd rather replace it with something that works now, instead of allowing its benefactors to continue reaping rewards and comforts at our expense; if that means Grammy and Pap-pap have to get jobs working at Wal-Mart, so be it.

That's the real tragedy of all this, though: we had systems that could've seen mild reforms over time to ensure their continued availability for everyone indefinitely. We could have ensured availability of affordable child care, affordable housing, nutritious foods, affordable healthcare, high quality education. All of this was within reach of impoverished countries, and many poorer countries than the United States managed to meet these needs in part or in whole.

Finding Contentment in Decline

It's not all doom and gloom, however, at least for the young people and our children slogging through these difficult times. The errors of our parents and grandparents do at least promise a weakening demand on housing stock as they age and die, along with a loosening of their death-grip on neighborhood ordinances and laws that prohibit the sort of facilities and places children need to thrive. While we'll never be house rich like our parents, I believe we'll find contentment in the housing and services we build for ourselves.

There's also direct benefits of a shrinking population in the damage done to our only home, the Earth. Fewer people means our existing technological advances will be able to feed, shelter, and employ everyone to a thriving degree, provided we build the government and economic structures to mandate such outcomes. It means less emissions, especially on speculative projects like real estate or wasteful infrastructure like widening highways. Suburban sprawl is likely to wither and possibly recede, as lonely humans seek more connections and serendipity in denser neighborhoods or cities. A shrinking population gives us critical breathing room to solve longstanding crises that impact fellow humans generations after we die, leaving a truly better planet behind for those after us - provided we don't give into the weakness of nostalgia in old age like our parents have and elect convicted felons and sexual predators who associate with child sex traffickers into political office.

In the immediate, though, I'm not worried about population decline because it doesn't harm me or much of my cohort. Things are already turbofucked eight ways to Sunday, scraping by on a boiling rock while those in positions of power to improve literally anything squander their opportunity by enriching themselves and their friends. This decline harms them, their goals, their agendas, and their systems - none of which benefits me, my friends, or my peers.

To fret over population decline is to fear you will lose luxuries you did not earn, whose costs you have forcibly burdened others with.

Which is why I'm not worried.