Demographic "crisis" a.k.a. best news ever
TurquoiseTastic
Kerygmania Host
This is a bit of a rant as those of you who have read me on this topic will anticipate.
I keep reading in publications of all stripes, and hearing from apparently intelligent people of all persuasions, how concerning it is that "fertility rates are falling" and that "not enough babies are being born".
I find this infuriating beyond description, because only a few years ago - I mean probably less than five years ago - many were saying - AND IN MANY CASES THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE AND PUBLICATIONS WERE SAYING - and in some cases are still simultaneously and inconsistently saying - how terrible it was that there was a "population explosion" and that "too many babies were being born" and how it was inevitable that we were all being driven towards a Malthusian catatastrophe.
But glory be! In an amazing turn-up for the books - a miracle beyond hope - the best news possible or perhaps imaginable - it turns out that population will not grow inexorably! And it's not even necessary to enact draconian, freedom-limiting regulation like the "one-child policy" to make it happen! It will happen by itself!!
And guess what is even better! This slowdown in birthrate is most pronounced in rich countries, where people consume disproportionately more resources! So from an environmental, planetary view the population will be reduced in exactly the best places!!
My point is - if I haven't made it clear - is that this is not a disaster, or bad news. Rather it is an astonishing benison that the people of the world should be going down on our knees for and thanking the Lord for an almost unbelievable deliverance.
Of course it will present difficulties of its own. But these are difficulties that we ought to have anticipated and planned for as inevitable difficulties that could only arise as a consequence of incredible success. It's almost as though we believed that exponentially-fuelled disaster was inevitable and so didn't plan for the fact that we might not all starve after all. Like saying "oh no what a disaster that we have defeated Hitler, now we will have to rebuild our peacetime economy rather than being under the Nazi jackboot".
Why oh why oh why are we so determined to see the most negative side of all developments?
I keep reading in publications of all stripes, and hearing from apparently intelligent people of all persuasions, how concerning it is that "fertility rates are falling" and that "not enough babies are being born".
I find this infuriating beyond description, because only a few years ago - I mean probably less than five years ago - many were saying - AND IN MANY CASES THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE AND PUBLICATIONS WERE SAYING - and in some cases are still simultaneously and inconsistently saying - how terrible it was that there was a "population explosion" and that "too many babies were being born" and how it was inevitable that we were all being driven towards a Malthusian catatastrophe.
But glory be! In an amazing turn-up for the books - a miracle beyond hope - the best news possible or perhaps imaginable - it turns out that population will not grow inexorably! And it's not even necessary to enact draconian, freedom-limiting regulation like the "one-child policy" to make it happen! It will happen by itself!!
And guess what is even better! This slowdown in birthrate is most pronounced in rich countries, where people consume disproportionately more resources! So from an environmental, planetary view the population will be reduced in exactly the best places!!
My point is - if I haven't made it clear - is that this is not a disaster, or bad news. Rather it is an astonishing benison that the people of the world should be going down on our knees for and thanking the Lord for an almost unbelievable deliverance.
Of course it will present difficulties of its own. But these are difficulties that we ought to have anticipated and planned for as inevitable difficulties that could only arise as a consequence of incredible success. It's almost as though we believed that exponentially-fuelled disaster was inevitable and so didn't plan for the fact that we might not all starve after all. Like saying "oh no what a disaster that we have defeated Hitler, now we will have to rebuild our peacetime economy rather than being under the Nazi jackboot".
Why oh why oh why are we so determined to see the most negative side of all developments?
Comments
Adult social care is a massive cost - adult social care aka people who retired in their 60s thirty years ago who frankly expected, and were expected, to be dead by now, in nursing and care homes - with an insufficient working age base earning the money to pay for it.
I don't have a solution particularly but it's why it's worrying people now, and why it's a time bomb as we've got a bunch of 60 somethings retiring now with a long life expectancy.
Warning for discussion of historic racist ideology and slurs-
There used to be a lot of this in the late 19th/ early 20th century where historically eugenicist elites treated poor people as something akin to a separate or inferior race ('degenerates' = thoughr not to have 'evolved' as much as their 'betters') or in the case of Irish folk, they saw them as a separate inferior race and panicked that they would 'outbreed' the eugenically 'fit' and lead to the 'degradation'/ 'degeneration' of 'the race'
In either case, the cry was 'you selfish, healthy middle-class white women need to breed for the good of the race - get back in the home and kitchen!'
So yes perfect storm of racism, misogyny and ablism.
Fully discussing it would belong in Epiphanies but that's the rough historical context.
And of course, increasing immigration is never presented as the solution to demographic stresses due to low birth rates because immigrants are "the wrong kind of people".
The good news for those who live in wealthier nations and chose to retire early is that those same nations which don't have a large unproductive population needing care also have a lot of young people looking for work. Let them come here to work, pay taxes and support our pensioners. Simples.
With regards to this specifically - I think that a lot of problems have come from cuts to training grants for healthcare professionals such as pharmacists, podiatrists, nurses etc (who are some of the health professionals that older people will see the most, especially in a care home environment) along with the "hostile environment" immigration policies. There still isn't a specialised Geriatric Nursing stream for trainee nurses despite it being (imo) a logical addition to the current roster of Learning Disability, Mental Health, Children's and Adult Nursing.
I certainly accept all this but also even many people who definitely do not take such a line are still trying to argue that we should be making more babies. Many left-wing commentators and also real people, real intelligent people whom I have heard with my own ears, say things like: "Well if we want people to have larger families we need to create the economic conditions for them to do so". But we don't want people to have larger families! If you have just quit heroin and are having detox trouble, the right question to ask is not: "how can I get some more heroin"....
It's "simples" for now but we should also consider the medium-term future when the population will be falling worldwide (reminder - this is a GOOD THING). We should be thinking about what such a worldwide society could look like and how to make it work.
* For a start, having a falling population is great news for climate.
* People have loads of skills. Maybe not so much in manufacturing, but cultural and media and business skills are also skills yes? I will even acknowledge that financial services are a thing, maybe not so awesome as City kids like to proclaim, but a thing nonetheless.
* Although there are many problems in education education could still be a lot worse. Especially university education. Lots of people still want to come to UK universities so they can't be all that terrible I would suggest. A good start would be not to stop them doing so! Even Enoch Powell specifically specified that he was totally fine with young people migrating to the UK in order to do university study!
* There are awesome things like solar power which is so much better than it was 20 years ago. To the extent that the Telegraph has had to resort to absurd headlines like "Solar panels producing too much electricity" (yes this was a real article)
* I think we can have lots of ideas about how to make a functioning society. Let us Do It! We had a thread about it a couple of years ago I think we should have another one!
I don't share your optimism about universities either - they are being dismantled by the overpaid bureaucrats put in place to run them. Not sure what will be left but it won't be doing much arts education, since there will be noone left to do it, and I'm not convinced how much primary research will be happening either.
Your wish is my command, oh my friend.
Doublethink, Admin
While I am not ready to say we are at equilibrium now, there is the perception our world is shrinking. In many industrialized nations, the cost of having babies is just getting too much for perspective parents. The tax structure is out of kilter. Time was young people pooled their resources to support the elderly. Now, the elderly have more resources than they know what to do, and the young people co not see a time when they can own their own homes. The AI revolution is taking away many entry level jobs young people had available to them as entry ways into the work force. Thanks to AI we will have trillionaires while oi poloi will have nothing.
Wish I could be more positive. I want to be realistic. I think eventually there will be a balancing out, but there is no telling how long that will last. Could be a generation could be a millennium. There are always cycles we will go through.
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On the other hand, the thesis about the “best news of all time” is also not completely neutral - because a decline in birth rates does not automatically solve all problems. It may reduce pressure on resources, but at the same time it creates challenges for pension systems, the labor market and the structure of the economy. That is, it is not a "win" or "lose" but rather a complex restructuring of the system, which always has two sides.
Doublethink, Admin
Not true. Immigration is in fact frequently presented as the solution by people who aren't promoting a sexist, racist agenda. Here are a few examples:
https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2024/11/20/immigration-as-the-only-politically-feasible-solution-to-population-collapse/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/12/immigration-reform-could-be-the-answer-to-the-falling-us-birth-rate.html
https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2025-10-29/iowa-birth-rate-declining-immigration-population
@Lamb Chopped I have the deepest respect for you but this sentence is .... inexplicable to me. Surely we should not be planning for population to grow indefinitely. I mean, maybe the Second Coming will occur but even so I do not think we are meant to pursue an unsustainable path.
OK now this I can get with. How about this Turquoise suggestion. If you have a whole load of worried young people who could form a covenanted community, perhaps a dozen or so, like the size of a moderately extended family, then they would socially support each other. And they would not have to fear child-rearing so much. And they would be in a much better position to adopt. And the adult to child ratio could still be pretty high to ensure a declining population overall.
I think there are some different things being discussed here as if they are one thing. Firstly, some people DO want larger families and there is nothing inherently wrong with this - most people, at least in the UK, would consider four kids to be a large family, which is hardly an outrageously huge family. However, a big problem at the moment is that many people want to have kids but simply can't afford to have any at all. That is a problem beyond mere population growth/decline. The economic conditions that support people having children also help people in general - things like widely available subsidised childcare and parental leave are good for society as a whole.
Having children isn't like taking a highly dangerous drug and most people who want kids wouldn't think much of the comparison.
But I don't think most young people in that position would want to form some kind of commune. They just want a society that isn't so hostile to childrearing being a state where you are less economically active.
Yes, but people who aren't promoting a racist agenda aren't the people who were being discussed. I was responding to Louise and Karl's points, which were explicitly discussing people pushing the racist angle.
I was basing using the term "geriatric" on the use of gerontology for the medical study of ageing - my local university that has a medical school has quite a specialism in gerontology so geriatric is used a fair bit by them in a biomedical sense. I only meant it in that sense, although of course you are right that individuals being nursed would not necessarily like the term (and I know how much women with "geriatric pregnancy" hate the term!). Elderly Care would be a more sensitive term, I agree.
It looks like they'll be isolated in old age and possibly lacking care, as the social supports needed for elders without children aren't really there, either.
Having children doesn't seem to me to be a guarantee of care in old age. I suspect that not having children and building up savings might be a better plan. I have a great relationship with my adult kids, and almost daily online communication, but realistically, they live three and six hours drive away respectively. I'm sure they'll do their best for me when I'm old but in practice their best might not be very much.
The general pattern amongst my friends has been that our children have left home to go to university and are now living far from home.
I feel that Scotland has been here before. In the late 1980s / early 1990s we had headline articles about our "demographic timebomb."
The population of Scotland had reached a historic high of 5 million just before 1950. There were 5 114 513 in 1950, which rose gradually to 5 213 700 in 1970, and then started dropping. Not only was our population contracting, but it was also aging. In 2000 we had 5 062 940. And then we got immigration from Eastern Europe! It solved a lot of problems. The loss of Eastern European immigrants post-Brexit has been an issue - it's one of the reasons Scotland voted Remain. Employers did not want their businesses hit by lack of staff. However, we have had an influx of immigrants from further afield and our population now stands at 5.5 million. We still have the issue that we are an aging population - our median age is 42 and over 20% are over 65. Deaths outnumber births.
I'm fairly sure that around 2000 increased immigration ("New Scots" was the term used) was presented as a solution to our demographic stresses, by our newly formed Scottish Parliament.
My suggestions would be:
* encourage more immigration (if migrants are available)
* increase pension age, encourage people to work into their 70s if they are fit and healthy
* work on health of elderly, try to increase proportion of their life over which they do not require intensive care
* more sheltered housing and similar light-touch care
* encourage community beyond nuclear/extended family
* as you suggested, training in care of elderly sounds good
Because obviously even if birth rates were to rise, that would not produce an increase in working age population for at least 20 years.
Politicians need to get real about that. The State faces hard choices and ducking those choices makes things worse for the future.
Yup.
Employers- even good ones - often drive older people into ill health or out of work and then the disability and social security system has suffered so much in the way of cuts that it's a really poor safety net. Many more people would be driven into the kind of situation I'm in now- desperately trying to hold on till my small pensions become possible to live on while my employer does what feels like their best to drive me out or make me sick by changing my job in ways I cant do.
Brexit and anti- immigrstion policies are helping to tank our economy, so not only does it worsen demographics but it makes the demographics we have harder to support because it has weakened our finances and stalled economic growth.
Meanwhile the government attacks people with disabilities as 'expensive' but doesn't reverse Brexit or its anti immigration policies.
But older people are already at increased risk of falling into poverty, that's what old-age pensions are for. Those in work are less at risk (although not zero risk) of falling into poverty for obvious reasons.
Increasing the pension age before improving older people's health seems backwards. Most of this seems very vague and none of it addresses urgent health issues such as a growing population with dementia (obviously dementia isn't exclusive to older people, but most people with dementia are older people).
An increased proportion of the population having dementia is of particular concern to me, because the nature of it means that you really can't use the same kind of light-touch care as other kinds of age-related health problems and you need a far greater ratio of staff to patients. That is obviously going to cost more money and require staff with more expertise.
I agree with increasing immigration but there are wider cultural changes that need to happen, particularly around housing and infrastructure. A decreased reliance on cars would be hugely beneficial for both an ageing population and the population in general, for instance.
I think what we need to recognize as a society is that older people tend to be slower, less physically strong, and less capable than they were in their prime, but this is a long way away from being useless. We need a pattern of working that accommodates older people slowing down and doing less, whilst still being useful.
It should be obvious that this would involve people who are currently retiring instead doing less work for less money. Working people at the same high intensity until their bodies fail them is not a sustainable practice.
Yay! Thank you...
It would be marvellous if they could be paid for the work they're already doing, but realistically that's not going to happen.
Children and older people are both some of the most vulnerable groups in society, and it makes sense to me that support for one group can benefit the other.
Insurance Contributions.
Folks who don’t have an occupational pension need the triple lock plus. Folks like me don’t. A more equitable policy would recognise that and adjust for it.
It’s worth adding that most public sector occupational pensions are not properly funded and much of the cost is paid for out of taxation. That adds to the burden on working taxpayers.
I’m not arguing in favour of my own financial interests here by pointing out that the costs of current policies do act against giving a greater priority to the needs of those in education and at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq6E9BJcs0Y
While I get that that movie was just using the eugenicist idea of inherited intelligence as a convenient device to explain how its dystopia got to be so low-intelligence, it's not something I'd really wanna bring into a discussion about population growth.
I fear you misread me. Try this version with added emphasis and explanation.
"I don't think that just ANY decline in birth rates is to be met with joy--we must first inquire as to the reasons behind it, and the probable outcomes and effects on society, before we decide it's unequivocally a Good Thing."
Although I would still suggest that a drop in birth rate is, under current world population pressure circumstances, a good thing for that reason, despite the negative consequences. A drop in birth rate seems essential - so what other sort of drop in birth rate would you consider as "the right sort of drop in birth rate"?
A precipitous drop (which is what we're getting in some places) is harder to cope with than a more gentle drop, especially when (because) it's unexpected. We've had the pundits telling us to expect more and more growth for my whole life, and it takes some people a while to get it through their heads that they need to reverse their expectations and plan for very different conditions.
Similarly, if women's education is really a major driver for this drop (and I think it is), it would be helpful if we had people with power and brains actively thinking about how to NOT end up with a local/world population where the majority of adults were people who had been raised by women WITHOUT that education. And if they are so disadvantaged, how to compensate for the disadvantage.
Just set tax brackets accordingly. Means testing creates all kinds of cliff edges, and the number of people on final salary pensions is going to shrink rapidly. Better to set in place a system that adjusts accordingly rather than rely on legislation getting around to things on time, benefits that are only aimed at the poor become poor benefits over time, because the people making legislation generally aren't poor.
FWIW public final salary pensions are also paid out of current taxation, rather than some kind of fund.
Fair point re tax brackets. To my surprise I’ve just nudged into the higher bracket, which I was never even close to when working. In my mind that means I’ve benefitted inordinately (and personally unexpectedly) from present policies.
You’re right about the reducing number of folks on inflation-protected final salary pension schemes. I haven’t got the figures to hand but increasing longevity almost certainly means we’re reducing a good deal more slowly than historical actuarial predictions. I reckon that’s still a significant factor in the current imbalance. It’s not masochistic of me to suggest that we ought to pay more towards the common good. I’m just not sure how.
I think your criticism of means testing is also right in principle but it’s also true that progressive taxation policies are not above criticism for being too broad brush. Redressing the imbalance is not an easy problem to solve.
And @Thunderbunk is also right about the differential funding of pensions within the public sector. His post is a helpful correction.
@TurquoiseTastic
I think your OP makes a very fair point. My contributions here have been to try to address the reality of the fiscal unscrambling required to ensure that the potential strategic benefits are not lost. A flat or reducing population in the more well off parts of the world brings some pretty complex challenges for those countries.
[I remember a West Wing episode (Season 5 episode 12) in which Toby tried and failed to get some bipartisan policy changes to address the long term unaffordability of social security costs in the US. By increasing the inequity in favour of the very rich and savaging the public services, Trump has made the lot of the poor even worse.]