[louwrentius]

> In general, a smaller workforce and an aging population would have negative implications for economic productivity and per capita income growth. In addition, the combination of a smaller workforce and an aging population puts fiscal pressure on social insurance programs, like Social Security, that rely on tax payments from current workers to pay the benefits of current retirees.

This is from economofact.org so I understand that they translate this to metrics like “economic productivity” yet, this kind of framing irks me. Also the implication that this impacts social security may be true for the existing system, but it may only imply that this system may need to change.

Yet I feel that the implicit message is: get policy in place to get people to make more babies.

But why isn’t the falling birth rate just a good thing from a human well-being perspective? Or: why is there even implied that there is a problem?