First, the bad news: Global fertility is falling fast. The aging populations of rich countries are relying on ever fewer workers to support their economy, dooming those younger generations to a future of higher taxes, higher debt, or later retirement—or all three. Birth rates in middle-income countries are also plummeting, putting their economic development at risk. Practically the only countries set to continue growing are desperately poor.
By about 2084, according to the gold-standard United Nations “World Population Prospects,” the global population will officially begin its decline. Rich countries will all have become like Japan, stagnant and aging. And the rest of the world will have become old before it ever got the chance to become rich.
Sorry, did I say “bad news”? That was actually the good news, based on estimates that turn out to be far too rosy.
TL;DR - global population may peak and start falling as early as 2055, not the 2084 the UN currently projects. Which is very bad news indeed for most countries’ economies, since the proportion of working-age people to retirees is going to shift markedly.
This is why people want to slap “experts", academics, and the like. First there were gonna be too many people and that was baaaaad! Bad humans! Bad! Now, the problem is not enough people. Well, excuuuuse US! With no changes, no reasons, no explanations as to why what we were certain of 50 yrs ago is suddenly the opposite. Ya know, even a lousy night club comedian knows how to segue between jokes.
Why do people assume that things go only one way and there can be no intervening circumstances or events that might affect things, and that people can never ever develop work arounds, solutions, or acceptable trade-offs? Or that the “bad thing” turns out to be not so bad after all?
Sounds like a possible set-up to shift more wealth from The West to other people. A new “disaster” as an adjunct to global warming when people start to lose interest when they see we will all still be here and doing OK with no end in sight on 31 December 2099
Your comment isn’t helpful. 50 years is a long time for our understanding of trends / problems to shift. It wasn’t all that long ago we were told that smoking was good for us. Science changes, societies change, problems change.
I view it as a "Damned if you “do it”, damned if you don’t “do it” situation.
Overpopulation has clearly bad consequences for our planet and humanity. Scarcity of food and resources, coupled with rising conflicts for those resources seems like a self-evident conclusion. This doesn’t even include new and exciting epidemics and environmental destruction!
Plunging fertility rates are also problematic. Most societies depend on younger generations to work and support older generations. Some countries have governmental social safety nets, others rely on traditional familial collectivism. These bad consequences of fewer youngsters also seem self-evident.
I agree there are things humans could do to mitigate these problems. After all, we humans are incredibly adaptive. Given our current trajectory, I’m not optimistic. Instead of acknowledging problems and working to address them, many in our society would rather pretend problems don’t exist.
That is the conflict: people mess up just about everything they touch. Fewer people, less mess. But, if your focus is on getting more done, so you can make more money, then you need more people to get more done…even though getting more done, will tend to mess up the planet more.
I see it as a pendulum. Eventually we will come back to the right number of people for the job. It always goes to far one way to the other but in the end it always evens out. But till it does we could have some problems. But they are saying the Millenials are the biggest generation and we can’t see into the future and what it holds.
Two things. First, over the last 50 years we’ve learned things about how reproduction rates respond to economic growth. This isn’t changing with “no explanations” or “no reasons” - the reason is that we have observed over the last decade or so that birth rates fall much faster than anyone predicted would ever be possible back in the 1970’s.
Second, it is entirely possible - and indeed the case - that both a rapidly declining population and an rapidly increasing population are both bad. The latter is the classic Population Bomb scenario I alluded to in my title. But the former is also bad - a precipitous decline in population (not just rate of growth but an absolute decline in population) can also wreak havoc on a country.
Suddenly? We had a number of interesting discussions about this on the old Atheist Fools board lead by the great Loren Cobb two-plus decades ago. Over population fears were stoked by the best-seller “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich. TPB could best be described as disaster pron. Even at the time TPB was criticized by experts for over stating the problem. Basically Ehrlich made a straight line projection of population growth and concluded that humans would soon exceed the carrying capacity of the planet. But neglected other trends that like agricultural outputs increasing even faster than population.
There are a few other trends that emerged or became more apparent since TPB was published in the 1960s. One is urbanization decreases fertility rates, so as the developing world industrializes the fertility rates naturally. A biggie has been education for girls, which is becoming much more common globally. Any increase in education level leads to a decrease in fertility. And of course, family planning methods are now far widely available.
Take a look at farming over the last 200 years. Less people (per capita), wide spread use of innovative tools & mechanized irrigation and more food gets produced…by far.
We aren’t good at long term planning. But we are good at short term fixes. The idea that this planet can support endless numbers of humans is wrong in the long term. In the short term your view may depend on what kind of world you want to live in. Overcrowded? No thanks. Not that we get to choose.
Sure, at the margins there are often worker shortages
Here is what ChatGPT estimates:
Year
Workers Needed for 1M Calories
1825
12.7304
1850
7.5907
1875
4.5260
1900
2.6987
1925
1.6091
1950
0.9595
1975
0.5721
2000
0.3411
2025
0.2034
These estimates reflect the dramatic increase in agricultural productivity over the past two centuries, largely due to mechanization, improved crop varieties, fertilizers, and modern farming techniques.
That is a 64x improvement! Probably understated since this is just crops.
And one could argue that we produce too many calories today.
Extrapolation and prediction are always difficult. Especially about the future.
(ba-DUM!)
A chemistry prof once said it’s okay to do a little extrapolation, just not in public. Which got a big laugh because it sounded to the freshman college class like a different “-ation” word.
Moved from the farm to “up north” Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, etc, got a factory job.
STOPPED “working” 12/7/365.
Started working 40 to 50, 5 days, 50 weeks.
Bought a little house in the burbs, got a lawn mower n a BBQ grill.
Had TIME for weekends n vacays.
Read “A Painted House” by John Gresham. A subtext to the story contrasts 1950s US “staying on the farm”, vs the “peregrination to factory work”… And “city life”.
After WW2, there was a shift in the USA, amongst the “common masses” from a peasant serf mentality, to a more egalitarian philosophy.
Macroeconomically, “we” shifted from super-saver, down on the farm/back in the hills, hard scrabble, totally self sufficient existence to a CONSUMER population that has 1 or 2 “skills” and purchases all the other “goods n services” we want, from other society members who have those other skills that support a functional society.
China has shifted its rural, poor to the cities… But those poor didn’t (haven’t yet) shifted their “mentality” from the (farm, poor, rural) “saver” to (city) “consumer”.
US massive CONSUMERISM makes us the world’s market.
China was supposed to take over that “consumer” role, but they’ve not - yet.
Some times things become automatable only because they can’t find the workers. Progress, it’s amazing what happens when you really need something to happen.
