Population decline due to expected global crash in children being born

(ok it took me way longer than I expected but I'm done now)

I disagree with the professor, I think this is a good thing. I think the views that the population has to always be stable or growing and that we can or should continue to use our current systems of distributing resources are both shortsighted.

The reduced use of the Earth's resources hugely outweighs any pains we will have adjusting to an older society. I don't think we need to worry about the population dropping until and unless it drops below a billion or maybe even less, and at that point I can't imagine it will be difficult to get the fertility rate back up to replacement level. The way things are, the world can't support the almost eight billion people it has, let alone nine or ten. The article seems to support developed countries getting their fertility rate back up to replacement, which would add even more people.

Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?

Assuming everything stays as it is right now, not taking into account any advances in automation or going outside the current social democratic frameworks of the most developed countries, I think there are already enough financial resources to go around. I don't know where you draw the line on whether a country is developed or not, there are 36 countries that have a GDP (PPP-adjusted) per capita of at least $40,000 a year according to Wikipedia.

Most of those countries are able to give their people a decent standard of living (good education and healthcare, etc.), and to accommodate an older population that works and produces less you would have to stretch that money farther by reducing income inequality and encouraging people to live more efficiently. Probably everyone wouldn't like living a bit closer together and consuming fewer resources, but we have a lot of room for improvement. There are some economies of scale issues that would probably happen with fewer people around, but I'm skeptical that there would be much of a difference on that front between a billion people and ten billion.

At least speaking for the United States this could be handled by:

• Raising taxes on high earners
• Socializing healthcare in some fashion to reduce cost
• Reducing the cost of higher education through a combination of higher taxes and reducing bloat (expenses on administrators, etc), and reducing the amount borrowed / eliminating most student loans
• Building up instead of out: encourage 2-6 floor mixed-use development, limit sprawl, and either ban new single-family housing in places or make the maximum lot size smaller on new development

Basically, there are a lot of inefficiencies that could be fixed to cover for fewer people working. And that's not even getting into more radically changing how we live, like taking a look at how much we actually need to work to produce enough resources to go around.

I think this article misses the bigger point here: most people just can’t afford to have children.

Children are expensive. The average wage has been stagnant for so long that while my wife and I make as much as my parents did, we just can’t afford to raise a child on that budget.

"As a result, the researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century. "

Dang, I'll probably be dead before seeing any of the benefits of less people. At least I can be part of the wave of old geezers dying off!

"Prof Murray adds: "It will create enormous social change. It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter and I wonder what the world will be like.""

Who cares. The world 100 years ago was insanely different from today. People will be fine socially, especially when you consider how varied familial structures can be all over the world and in different economic situations.

"Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?"

Just brainstorming, maybe elderly people can take care of each other more? Ideally if there's less people there will also be lower costs for healthcare, and maybe healthcare will have a paradigm shift in how it is provided. I can see how conflict between the old and young would be a problem though. I've heard of communal societies of older people in other countries (specifically Israel). Maybe a system like that would work since not all old people are decrepit, and if at least a few young ones are around to help out it might be ok.

I can see some problems with this, but I don't think its insurmountable. People are comfy with the status quo, but if the thinking changes I'm sure we can adapt. If the "social changes" can be about doing with less and depending more on local tight knit community, then maybe stoking the flame of globalization as a solution can be avoided.

I'm 100% against the tech takeover, and have some views that parallel with luddism, but assuming the greed-industrial complex continues to push for more technology and automation then that could be a sort of solution to this specific problem.

This is a good thing.

Actually, not just a good thing. It's a great thing. The world is heavily overpopulated (and I know some of you are going to take issue with me issuing that claim). Why do I feel valid in stating this? Because the proof is everywhere, from wildfires in the arctic, to the mass extinction of species across the globe in the anthropocene, to cutting down forests to convert to farmland, the decline in insect biomass, the increase in temperatures, the collapse of ice shelves. The world is overpopulated in a strict sense of "we are not behaving in a sustainable manner" on this planet.

Now, you can get into a whole argument about consumption, and how we use too many resources, and that's true; but you can't look at our impact on planet Earth in a vacuum just purely based on per capita consumption. The consumption per capita is the multiplier on the multiplicand: how many people are around to surface that consumption. Unfortunately, we're on the off-scale high end of both factors. We probably need to reduce our population, and reduce our consumption. Neither one on its own is going to help.

Why can't we just reduce consumption? The common argument against overpopulation is that "we're just using resources inefficiently!". And yes, that may be true, but that doesn't change how our planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded currently, nor does it provide any path to using resources more efficiently. Even if we could use resources more efficiently, that won't drop our overall resource consumption. Why?

Because Jevon's Paradox is nearly always correct. Any efficiency gain in resource production or consumption will be absorbed to produce or use more resource, rather than ratcheting down for pure efficiency, and this boils down to our societal illusion of holding up the mantra of "growth" above all else. Anyone who can do any form of back of the envelope calculation, or infer the velocity of a line on a chart, can tell you that endless growth on a planet with finite resources and finite limits of stress is not feasible. Humanity's success function shouldn't be to maximise the presence of a number like population. It should be to provide the most healthy and fulfilling lives to as many people as is sustainable, while also acting as stewards for our planet.

As long as the globe fertility rate doesn't drop too sharply (we don't want to completely invert the pyramid), but lingers between 1 and 2.1, this is a very good thing.

^{If it wasn't already clear, this is an issue I care strongly about.}

Related thread.

One of the things I also feel was missed in that thread is... we weren't meant to live this long. According to this post, we were only supposed to live 38 years under proper physical condition. My mother is already past that, as are many people here. While we absolutely can keep going for upwards of a hundred years today with just regularly using your brain instead of putting it to rest, that needs to be a priority so an ever larger people don't have their mental faculties decline and then have those people running the show.