[jsnk]

The humanity must find a way to understand what is driving demographic decline around the world.

The liberal paradigm is to attribute this to financially squeezed young people who cannot buy homes and start families. I'm sure this does have some effect, but clearly it's a severely lacking explanation as people who are poorer and have gone through extreme hardship prioritize family and having children far more regardless of their financial status.

There seems to be something much more fundamental happening to civilizations around the world where it is annihilating itself peacefully. This must become the primary objective of countries around the world to figure out. Immigration will buys you time, but it won't solve the problem.

[Apocryphon]

> it's a severely lacking explanation as people who are poorer and have gone through extreme hardship prioritize family and having children far more regardless of their financial status

I think that's possibly attributable to people in lower socioeconomic conditions reacting to economic pressures in different ways from those in the middle class. Meaning, those from middle class, white collar professional, college-educated families are more driven to try to preserve the status and conditions they already have, and would optimize decisions based on that. So rather than risk financial hardship and becoming working class, they choose to optimize for education, career, financial stability, and delay starting families.

[speakfreely]

> people who are poorer and have gone through extreme hardship prioritize family and having children far more regardless of their financial status

Yep, nailed it. It's an expectations/reality gap for the developed world. Any of these people can physically have children, raise them in their financially hobbled state, and still provide more comfort on average than the majority of the families in the developing world. The difference is that in the developed world people are delaying or canceling their plans because their expectations of what parenthood should look like is radically different from what they believe they can afford.

Maybe you won't be able to send your kids to private school, or pay for their full ride to private university, or the best daycare, or live in the perfect house you grew up thinking you deserved. But you can afford to have a family. You just can't afford to do it with all of your requirements.

[Apocryphon]

> You just can't afford to do it with all of your requirements.

Yes, and as I mention upthread, to drop those requirements is essentially telling middle class youth that they have to accept a regression in living standards compared to their parents', which runs counter to the messaging they were raised on. Not only parental/cultural expectations but the developed world middle class suburban ethos of "work hard and you'll live a good life", the whole post-Cold War End of History that humanity was supposedly marching towards.

[d4mi3n]

This is part of it. I think the rise in fertility options plays a part here as well—many people are choosing to start families later in life than was realistic or possible 20 years prior. This has been a well observed trend that has been going strong since the 1980s.

If you're female and want to pursue a career, you can now do that and wait until later in life to have a family. Wasn't long ago where that choice was binary.

[debesyla]

But is demographic decline that bad? It doesn't seem like this is catastrophic (yet?). Makes me wonder...

[somenameforme]

The numbers are extremely counter-intuitive because we live far longer than we're fertile. Imagine we have a society that starts with 100 newborns with a fertility rate of 1, in a world where everybody gives birth at 20 and dies at 80. To make this 'sim' slightly more realistic, I'm also going to add in some filler population in year 0 with the assumption of a 6 fertility rate. Incidentally this is exactly the case for South Korea which went from greater than 6 to less than 1 in an incredibly brief period of time:

---

(148) Year 0: 4 sixties, 11 forties, 33 twenties, 100 newborns <=== last year of 6 fertility rate, ~3:1 youth:elder generation ratio

(194) Year 20: 11 sixties, 33 forties, 100 twenties, 50 newborns <=== start of 1 fertility rate

(208) Year 40: 33 sixties, 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns

(187) Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns <==== last high fertility elder dies, start of new 1:2 youth:elder generation ratio

(93) Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns

(46) Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns

(23) Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn

---

In spite of having an extinction level fertility rate, everything just seems perfectly peachy at first. The initial population is even seeing some very healthy increases over decades. As the high fertility group starts to die the growth sputters, but it seems less than catastrophic. But then when the generation that's failed to replace itself starts dying, it's like a bomb goes off. Suddenly the population is getting chopped in half every 20 years to say nothing of a large elder population now being supported by a smaller than ever youth population.

In South Korea (and most of the world, including the US) the key initial inflection is between 1960 and 1980 where they went from greater than 6, to less than 2 fertility, which is now less than 1. So their 'great dying' event will start sometime around 2060. So far away, yet also so predictable - and with 0 doubt of its certainty unless something changes dramatically now. And that seems unlikely.

[zdragnar]

Most social services function something like a pyramid scheme. You need more people paying in than taking out.

There are ways to tweak the balance a bit, almost all of which have to do with finding efficiencies that reduce administrative costs- replacing in person visits with doctors with video calls to nurses, moving manual-process-intensive paperwork to less-manual-intensive electronic billing, that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, there's only just so much you can do when a greater percentage of the population is drawing on benefits and not working than there are people working and paying taxes. If the balance swings too far, something has to give- rationing access by adjusting age limits, declining certain types of care, reducing benefits, that sort of thing.

[anotherman554]

Sure, but making people take social security at 75 instead of 65 or whatever is hardly the civilization annihilation event the person upthread was describing.

[zdragnar]

We need to be doing that and we are at stable population thanks to immigration.

Russia and Japan are among the countries facing a much more catastrophic demographics "time bomb".

[thatguy0900]

Every western country is taking in mass migration to try and push it back somewhat.

[thomastjeffery]

Maybe we should stop assuming that buying a home or getting married are huge contributors to sex.

And then just ask.

Don't ask them if they want to pursue your expectations. Ask them what they want.

[dfxm12]

And if you ask young Japanese women, they respond that economic factors, such as the cost of raising a child, work–family conflicts, and insufficient housing, are the most common reasons for not having as many children as desired. Maybe it is this simple/fundamental. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Japan#Marriage_and...

[thomastjeffery]

Yes, but that's answering why they don't have as many children, not why they aren't having sex.

It's also only asking women who already have one or more children.

It tells us nothing about why so many people are not having sex.

[jl6]

Still living in your parents’ house is something of a barrier to sex.

[thatguy0900]

This is the first generation with hormonal additives and steroids or pesticidal chemicals in virtually everything we eat. Testosterone levels accross the board are dropping, at least.

[brtkdotse]

We’re seeing the first generation who are worse off than their parents. The future looks bleak with climate change and multiple conflicts around the world.

[jsnk]

Not true. You are probably looking at last 70 to 80 years. Look back several millennia. Our generation is better off than 99% every generation before us. Climate change, multiple conflicts around the world are no where near a big problem compared to the struggles our ancestors have gone through.

[echelon]

I think this is wrong.

Silent Gen and Boomers lived in an unusual boom time that hasn't existed before or since. America was the world's factory and everyone else was out of commission. We had it all, and that'll never happen again. Now we're reverting to the mean, and it'll be okay. We still have great wealth.

Just look to the developing nation algorithm. Our wealth is being spent on bringing up other economies (giving us cheap stuff in exchange). That's not a bad thing.

People aren't having sex (or children) because of Internet, TV, porn, social media, modern work habits, etc. You can't unplug from it.

Furthermore, raising kids used to give you an extra farmhand or house cleaner. Now it gives you an expensive equivalent of a dog. Plenty of folks don't want the trouble.

[Apocryphon]

The drop in European and Japanese birthrates predates the modern internet, does it not?

[BlargMcLarg]

The massive drop across the globe was in the 70s, in practically every developed country.

[tenebrisalietum]

No. We're fine with half the number of people on this planet. Traffic sucks. Fix traffic instead.

[omniglottal]

Go anywhere in the populated 99.9% of the world where traffic in your densely populated urban layout of choice is a non-problem and reconsider the death of multiple billion people as a solution.

[tenebrisalietum]

Now fix pollution.

[rhn_mk1]

Annihilating? Please. Humanity grew an order of magnitude in about 300 years, and is currently hitting planetary limits. Now, the growth is slowing down, but not even in reverse yet. How can a reduction of an overblown population be equated to annihilation?

[archagon]

Civilizations cone and go.

Humanity will be fine.