[gwd]

> population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m

This video would beg to differ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk&pp=ygUWa3Vyemdlc...

That said, I am inclined to disagree with his take -- when women and men are both expected to work 996, when housing takes up a huge percentage of your income, when the only way you think you can assure a good life for your children is to pay exorbitant amounts for private tutoring, then yeah, 0 or 1 seems like the best option.

This may be a bit of a weird take, but I wonder if it might make sense to just explicitly make "rearing the next generation" a "public good" career choice. Some people are far more cut out, by personality and character, to raise children. Rather than trying to exhort every single family to have 2.1, find people who are good at child-rearing, give them training, and give them government support to raise 8 kids.

[pjc50]

Why have two people linked the same youtube video as if that's some kind of response to a graph? The population has (past tense) levelled out. It is roughly flat over the past few years. It is not yet falling at a significant rate. It is a long time away from "the population is 5% off its peak", and my argument is that that is the real signal (in the control theory sense) which people might respond to, the rise in empty properties and unfilled jobs.

> find people who are good at child-rearing, give them training, and give them government support to raise 8 kids.

"Mother of the Soviet Union" or "welfare queen"?

It might work, but a lot of people get really, really mad at taxpayers money subsidizing other people's children.

[gwd]

> Why have two people linked the same youtube video as if that's some kind of response to a graph?

Because the "but" in the sentence implies that leveling out means there's no problem. Filling out the missing pieces:

> South Korea is invoked [as an example of a country that is in major trouble], but it seems like the population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m [, which implies it's reached a stable and sustainable equilibrium.]

The video predicts not that it's at a stable plateau, but that it's reached the apex of its curve and is about to begin plummeting.

[ben_w]

> Rather than trying to exhort every single family to have 2.1, find people who are good at child-rearing, give them training, and give them government support to raise 8 kids.

Do you mean more like surrogacy, or more like teacher/personal tutor?

The former… I'm told is medically inadvisable over 5 births, even if humans used to have 10 in the hope of 2 surviving to adulthood. But that may be confounding variables given 5+ is unusual.

The latter is, I think, a good idea that people will object to actually paying for — "teacher" is not as highly respected a profession as it ought to be.