[londons_explore]

I think China could easily fix their demographics if they wanted to.

They have sufficient control of their population that if they said "everyone of child bearing age must try for a child this year and next", they'd probably double their population within 2 years.

The 'demographic problem' is only a problem because they don't see it as an issue worth fixing.

[zztop44]

I think this is wildly off base.

Lots of them don’t want to have kids. The government has many ways to influence the public. But I don’t think it’s true to say that they have so much control over their populace that they could do anything like double their population in 20 years, let alone 2.

People in China are just people, right? Many of them don’t want to have kids. What’s the government gonna do?

Of course, hypothetically, the government blocks people from leaving the country and literally forces them to procreate but that’s getting a bit imaginative (it would be turning the China that exists today into something very different).

Realistically I think the government is worried about their demographic problem and is using every reasonable tool in their arsenal to attempt to address it.

[epicureanideal]

> People in China are just people, right? Many of them don’t want to have kids. What’s the government gonna do?

See the Cultural Revolution and Great Famine etc for examples of what it can do. Basically anything.

[CogitoCogito]

> See the Cultural Revolution and Great Famine etc for examples of what it can do. Basically anything.

Even assuming China is all powerful and can achieve "anything" here, the policies would still have a latency of an entire generation. Unless you include time-travel as part of "anything".

[hnfong]

Killing people is much easier than making people raise babies.

[ClumsyPilot]

Any developed country could fix its demographics problem with a stroke of a pen - provide housing to young family.

We've studied this, n1 reason peolle dont have kids is housing.

The housing crisis has done more damage to western economy than the black plague.

> they'd probably double their population within 2 years.

you are conveniently forgetting that children take 20 years before they can work??

[adventured]

There's nothing that needs solved. It's ideal to shrink the global population while boosting per capita quality of life. The focus should be on improving per capita, not on expanding the overall economic size or population numbers.

Providing housing to young families will not make a meaningful dent to declining demographics in the affluent world. People do not want to have so many children (3-5 or more) and it's not due to lack of housing. That's a cultural change and no amount of housing is going to reverse it. And even in the financial scenario, the housing aspect is only one chunk of the huge cost of raising several children.

[epicureanideal]

> There's nothing that needs solved. It's ideal to shrink the global population while boosting per capita quality of life. The focus should be on improving per capita, not on expanding the overall economic size or population numbers.

Then why do we simultaneously import millions of workers each year to make up for the supposed shortage of natural population growth (caused by policy)?

[Retric]

In part because importing people without paying for 12 years of public education is an economic bargain.

[epicureanideal]

But many of those coming here are not well educated. Hard working maybe, adventurous certainly, but often economically deprived and undereducated as a result, or so I’ve read.

[Retric]

There is a real illegal vs legal split here, legal immigrants tend to be quite well educated. The majority of illegal immigrants have a high school degree but they are definitely less educated than the average American.

That said, while undocumented immigrants tend to be less educated being able to work when we didn’t pay for any of their education is still a boon. It’s something of a waste to pay for 12 years of education and then have someone doing manual labor.

[ClumsyPilot]

If you immigrated to the west as a working proffesional, then you have to have job offer, education and usually you have to be somewhat well off to be able to afford lawyers and get through the visa process.

[ClumsyPilot]

> boosting per capita quality of life

The per capita quality of life has been stagnant for like 20 years. Housing crisis does not boost quality of life at all

> People do not want to have so many children (3-5 or more) and it's not due to lack of housing.

We've conducted polling and studied the issue. You don't need 5 kids, you need 2.1 for replacement rate

"The stress of housing problems is preventing almost 2m people from having children, the Affordable Housing Commission has claimed"

https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/news/housing-stress-preve...

[bee_rider]

I don't think you can fix population issues in 2 years. Takes ~20 to make an adult (unless you have a liberal, multi-cultural society -- American adult citizens could be made in an afternoon if we shifted some laws around).