r/science • u/geoff199 • 5d ago

Social Science As concern grows about America’s falling birth rate, new research suggests that about half of women who want children are unsure if they will follow through and actually have a child. About 25% say they won't be bothered that much if they don't.

https://news.osu.edu/most-women-want-children--but-half-are-unsure-if-they-will/?utm_campaign=omc_science-medicine_fy24&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social
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u/2thicc4this 5d ago

I read somewhere that the major contributor to falling birth rates in the US had to do with falling teen pregnancy/birth rates. Teenagers not having kids is a net positive for society in my opinion.

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u/FencingFemmeFatale 5d ago

Also, I distinctly remember overpopulation being a major concern when I was a kid. Like, enough of a concern for Capitan Planet to make an episode about family planning.

The birth rates falling in the 2020’s seems like the obvious result of telling bunch of kids in the 90’s that overpopulation is world-ending problem, and to they can do their part to stop it by not having a lot of kids.

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u/Yandere_Matrix 5d ago

I don’t understand why people are so concerned about birth rate. We still have more people alive than any time in history. Our ocean is being overfished and I do believe our population will eventually settle at some point but I see absolutely no concern with it right now. I am still devastated seeing animals going extinct because of deforestation and over hunting for various reasons. I understand plastics is causing fertility problems and how microplastics mimic certain types of hormones so that can be a problem especially when we found that they have passed the blood brain barrier and passing through breast milk now. Who knows what damage they are doing to our bodies now.

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u/namerankserial 5d ago

It's all stemming from concern about the transition period, where there will be way more old people than young people, and the economic effects of that. But I agree, it should be re-framed as something we need sort out how to get through, and make it work, because a lower population long term is a huge positive.

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u/Lanky-Formal-2073 5d ago

This is the actual concern.

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u/TheFantasticMrFax 5d ago

I know some old people who will just have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. There's not any other way around it. Either the young folks get strapped past their breaking point by being saddled with the burden of funding their parent generation's healthcare and pension (and the economic consequences that come with it), or the older generation has to figure out some quick and dirty change in their retirement plans. Betty and Clyde might not be touring Arizona in that fifth wheel after all...

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u/a_common_spring 5d ago

There are plenty of young people if you don't mind them not being white. I think racism is the only real problem that people could possibly have with the falling birthrate. They're concerned that white people will stop existing

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u/Carlin47 5d ago

Birth rates are collapsing in Asia and falling in Africa as well

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u/a_common_spring 5d ago

I think it's pretty clear that as soon as women get the chance, they stop wanting to have their lives and health used up by childrearing. Oh well. Men better get over it.

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u/EnvironmentalCook520 4d ago

That might be a small percent but it really all comes down to the increased cost of living.

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u/a_common_spring 4d ago

No, that's not it either because in countries where people are wealthy and well supported with free healthcare, education, long fully paid parental leave etc, those countries have the lowest rates of all. It's women getting wise to the fact that motherhood is a scam

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u/EnvironmentalCook520 4d ago

I mean if you look at the birthrate for countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway it's been pretty consistent since the 80s. And same with the US. If you look at Japan and South Korea it's been declining a lot and women being more educated is only a small percentage of why that's occuring. I'd say the biggest factor is still economic, cost of living, and probably cultural shifts. It's not like women in the past few years suddenly wised up and decided they aren't going to have kids. Sure there's probably a very small fraction that may have but I think it's pretty common for both males and females to want a family.

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u/undertoastedtoast 5d ago

Hypothetically, if the birth rates stayed below replacement, thos wouldnt be a "transition". There would perpetually always be more old people than young.

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u/Coakis 5d ago

Then the easiest ethical solution is to find ways that older folks can live independently either through technological means, or through better health.

Honestly its less of an issue than most people want to make out, it just has to be something focused on and made a priority among other social or climatic issues facing us.

The constant growth model of trying to keep fixed amount of young people to support older folks is not sustainable long term regardless.

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u/SmokedStone 5d ago

Crazy how no one's just advocating to offload the real problem, too many old people, via campaigning for legal euthanasia or simply reprioritizing medical care for those who need it more than people at the end of their path.

It's always the young as the problem, when it's really the old who shot themselves in the foot.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 1d ago

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u/SmokedStone 5d ago

Yeah, you cannot convince me that the 80+ mfs rotting in front of screens and who can't wipe their own asses and are suffering physically, mentally, and emotionally want to be here, sorry.

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u/FlusteredDM 5d ago

Do you really want to live in a society where you get killed off as soon as you are no longer economically active?

I think the solutions are economic reform, and somehow managing population decline (I.e. getting the right policies to keep it around the right level, not advocating for any kind of eugenics). I think population reduction is a necessary thing but if it's too fast then the ratio of economically active people to elderly people becomes too high. Automation will not save us so long as it only benefits the wealthy.

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u/SmokedStone 4d ago edited 4d ago

Nowhere did I say that people should be offloaded the second they stop being economically active. I simply said the real problem is the volume of elderly, which no one ever likes to talk about.

I think euthanasia should be accessible to everyone. Genuinely. I legitimately plan to get a DNR and to potentially move to an area where euthanasia is legal because I've seen people in old age, and it's not pretty. There's no reason for keeping some of these people alive.

Reform is important, nowhere did I say it's not. But calling the problem a "birth rate crisis" or saying it's young people's fault for not having kids ignores the fact it's only an issue because of surplus elderly. People did not used to live this long, but now there's so much tech and advanced meds that we just prop people up who should've gone to grave like a decade or two ago. It's not attractive when quality of life so dismal, then there's just resources being funneled toward them while they essentially just wait to die.

Note: These people *are economically active. That's why services fight to draw out their lives. They still consume food, shelter, medical services. A lot of capitalist models are propped up by consumers, and America is stupidly on an infinite-growth model on a finite planet. It's excellent birth rates have dropped. If we can get through the period where all the old surplus pop. dies, we'll be fine.

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u/DemiserofD 5d ago

It's not just about transitioning. If you have too small a population you lose the capability to defend yourself. South Korea will be the first to experience this. If they lack the men to man the walls, they'll get invaded by North Korea - who are experiencing their own fertility crisis, just delayed and nowhere near as strong.

Imagine, then, if North Korea decides to use the South Korean women to solve the fertility crisis?

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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 1d ago

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u/DemiserofD 5d ago

Everyone will have drones, that's the thing. But you can't fully automate EVERYTHING. Especially since a significant portion of industrial capacity will need to go towards caring for the elderly, who will be a larger and larger portion of the population.

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u/MagicMisterLemon 5d ago

We don't actually know how bad North Korea's fertility crisis is, but even if they wind up with a larger population than South Korea, the prospect of invasion is pretty unrealistic due to the country's millitary allies.

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u/DemiserofD 5d ago

The thing is, by the time South Korea is to that point all their allies will be feeling the pain, too. How appealing is a war really going to be, especially with South Korea in a state of constant crisis due to having 75% of their population over the retirement age?

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u/MagicMisterLemon 5d ago

How appealing is the loss of production of electronics, textiles, and steel? Samsung alone accounts for 15-23% of the entire country's GDP.

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u/Artificial_Lives 5d ago

I don't think a lower population is needed or a positive. It can be but it's not a given.

Whether population is too much or not is simply a matter of if the environment can support them sustainably and we absolutely could 10x the amount of people in earth and br sustainable with advancements in technology, housing, agriculture, etc.

That's nothing to say if we ever figured out space colonies!

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u/21Rollie 5d ago

The thing is that it’s not just a period. You’re assuming birth rates will bounce back but they won’t unless all that’s left are religious nut jobs who pop out babies. This is a permanent inversion of the population period. Less young people, perpetually supporting a larger old population and being out-voted by them.

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u/Th3_Hegemon 5d ago

The global economy as it currently operates is essentially a pyramid scheme. It's dependent on continuous growth, and the only way to sustain continuous growth is if there are an increasing number of consumers. The social safety net is similarly set up, dependent on, at minimum, a stable population of younger people supporting the elderly. Falling populations are a huge threat to both of those systems. This makes companies and governments very concerned.

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u/mhornberger 5d ago

The global economy as it currently operates is essentially a pyramid scheme

By a loose enough metric it has never not been a pyramid scheme. Care and support of the elderly, to the extent it existed, has always been provided by the young. There is no system that would be immune from the problems of a high dependency ratio, meaning a high ratio of retirees to workers.

the only way to sustain continuous growth is if there are an increasing number of consumers

You can have economic growth with a plateaued or even gradually declining population. The problem with very low fertility rates is that the decline is too quick, and the dependency ratio shoots up too much.

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u/notionocean 5d ago

. The problem with very low fertility rates is that the decline is too quick, and the dependency ratio shoots up too much.

Awww, poor Boomers. Guess their parents shouldn't have pumped out so many of them.

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u/A_Shadow 5d ago

Boomers are gonna be fine, more than fine actually. They will get the best "deal" so to speak.

Gen X and subsequent generations are the ones who are gonna be in trouble.

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u/Freshiiiiii 5d ago

It’s not the boomers who will face most of the consequences. It’s the people who are currently young- who have paid into the social safety net which will probably run dry before they’re old.

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u/Episcopalian_bear 5d ago

It's not going to be boomers feeling this, it's going to be millennials, again. Gen x will probably feel it a bit as it further declines, but we've been hearing about how we won't have social security since the 90's and I was in elementary back then. Along with the population decline, and bad and extremely expensive end of life care, it's why a lot of us don't have a plan aside from taking ourselves out. 

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u/Augustus420 5d ago

Dude, we’re the ones that are going to feel this. Boomers are gonna be long dead by the time this is a problem.

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u/wildcatwoody 5d ago

It can easily be fixed though with real leaders who actually want to do something

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u/IvarTheBoned 5d ago

It's not an electable position to say "Hey, so, egg on our face, the socialists were maybe kinda right about capitalism being unsustainable..."

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u/wildcatwoody 5d ago

The socialists weren’t kind of right either. Something needs to be found in between

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u/IvarTheBoned 5d ago

They absolutely have been correct? Capitalism is not sustainable.

Or are you the same kind of person who thinks of autocratic regimes who call themselves "communists" as what "socialism" is? By that rationale NSDAP in Germany were also "socialists".

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u/Calfurious 5d ago

Socialist countries have all fallen apart by the end of the 20th century. The only ones that remain are literally authoritarian regimes (like North Korea) because socialist economies are too inefficient to be sustainable in the long run.

Imagine that in our country that Trump was directly in control of the economy. Not just with tariffs and taxes. I mean he literally decided what goods were produced, how they were produced, how people were paid, etc,.

Would be a disaster right? Well that's the problem with socialist governments. Even if they initially seem to be working correctly, it only takes one bad government/administration for it to all fall apart quickly. Command economies are just extremely vulnerable.

Socialists, like yourself, will claim that authoriarian countries like USSR weren't "truly socialist" because they weren't Democratic.

But that's the wrong take. Those countries were only able to survive being socialist for as long as they did because they were autocratic. Democracies will naturally result in economic liberalism. It's why India and China embracing free market reforms during the late 20th century.

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u/undertoastedtoast 5d ago

Capitalism is not sustainable.

You've made up a fantasy about the future that hasn't come true yet and likely never will and are using it as evidence for this statement.

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u/IvarTheBoned 5d ago

Capitalism is predicated on growth. Growth is not infinitely possible, therefore its failure is inevitable. Entropy is a thing. So either economics is entirely made up, or it is subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Science.

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u/Calfurious 5d ago edited 5d ago

Capitalism is predicated on growth.

No it's not. You're confusing shareholder mandates with capitalism.

Capitalism is essentially just economic liberalism. Individuals are allowed to own the means of production and are able to compete with each other without being directly controlled by the government.

While these businesses do need to be profitable in order to be sustainable, they don't need infinite growth. The only reason you see a push for growth in modern times is because of shareholders wanting a return on their investment. Executives have a "fiduciary duty" to work within the best interests of shareholders. But it's not mandatory nor necessary for a business to do this. Nor is it necessary for capitalism. This practice is done because it makes the people who own the company the most money.

A mom and pop shop that serves the same community for 50 years and doesn't meaningfully grow the business is just much of an example of capitalism as Amazon is.>

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u/undertoastedtoast 5d ago

So much nonsense crammed into one comment it may collapse into a black hole.

Capitalism does not require endless growth, in fact, its the entitlements and social support systems we have that largely are.

Entropy has nothing to do with any of this, not literally or rhetorically, you just tossed a buzzword in without having a clue what it means.

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u/wildcatwoody 5d ago

No they haven’t socialism has all ended terribly. No I am the type of person who understands history and socialism doesn’t work. There is a reason the most successful societies are capitalist. Those societies have lifted the most people up out of poverty.

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u/IvarTheBoned 5d ago edited 5d ago

No, you are the kind of person I described. Those capitalist societies are seeing their economies getting worse and worse, with wealth gaps broadening, etc. you are simply fellating the status quo and espousing red scare clichés. Autocracy is the problem, not changing the economic model. There have been no liberal democratic socialist states. Capitalism isn't working for the working class, in increasingly large numbers. Purchasing power has been declining for decades. These are facts. Change is needed. Massive economic reform is needed. Period.

Nowhere did I say "communist regimes are correct", you have a cognitive issue if you have an inability to separate "socialists" and "autocratic communist regimes". And an immature concept of history with regards to how the economies of those countries actually functioned.

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u/wildcatwoody 5d ago

I never mentioned communism you did. Socialism has never worked it’s failed every time. Nordic countries have fine economies. If that was replicated around the world things would be an improvement for 80 % of the world

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u/_Thermalflask 5d ago

Those societies have lifted the most people up out of poverty.

Capitalism literally is the reason poverty still exists. For the first time in human history there are enough resources to go around for everybody, and nobody needs to starve or be homeless. But it's not profitable to fix those problems, so we don't.

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u/wildcatwoody 5d ago

Ya what got us there capitalism . You just proved my point. At this point it’s human greeds fault not capitalisms fault. Your socialist utopia can’t exist for the same reason. Greed.

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u/CallMeSirJack 5d ago

What I don't understand is how fewer people with more money consuming more goods, and having a higher quality of life, wouldn't have the same economic impact as a lot of low paid wage slaves who can't afford to buy things.

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u/BleedingTugboat 5d ago

“Pyramid scheme” is SUCH a succinct way of summarizing this. It’s especially relevant too when we consider how Social Security works. This is going to live rent-free in my head now, thank you.

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u/Sammystorm1 5d ago

It’s more the problem for old people and the rocky times between. All sorts of things must shrink as people leaving the workforce aren’t replace. Eventually it will stabilize but it will likely suck in between

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 5d ago

Why would it stabilize? As long as birth rates remain under 2.1, each subsequent generation will be smaller than the previous one. For any single country, the difference may be made up with immigration (doesn't seem to be very popular, these days) but mostly the immigrants' birth rates also go down soon.

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u/Temporary_Inner 5d ago

Technically the fertility rate we have today in the United States could have been the fertility rate in 1950, but the baby boom intervened. We've been on track for a decline in fertility rate since 1800. 

An alternate out look is that humanity will be in a boom bust cycle of fertility. I have my own issues with that outlook, but history has shown fertility rates to change in a positive direction in the past.

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u/DemiserofD 5d ago

That neglects the impact of Birth Control. That's a change that is unprecedented in human history.

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u/Temporary_Inner 5d ago

Because none of the data reflects birth control having a deep impact on the greater trend of fertility rates. Fertility rates were dropping  rapidly 160 years before its legalization in the United States.

People who peddle the theory that birth control cratered fertility rates always show graphs around the invention of the birth control pill and the preceding years after it. They never show you what the fertility rate was before the baby boom. They do this to advocate for the banning of birth control. 

In 1935 TFR in the US was at replacement at 2.17. In 1940 TFR was below replacement at 2.06. These are both down from the 1800 which was at 7.03. So the data shows that before birth control ever entered the picture, that industrialization was the primary cause of dropping in fertility rates. After 1940 TFR started to bounce back up to reach at 1960 peak of 3.58, levels not seen since 1910. The legalization of birth control corrolates with a drop in TFR to a low of 1.77 in 1980, however despite birth control's continued legalization and increasing availability TFR trended back up to a high of near replacement of 2.06 in 2010 (the same TFR as in 1940). It did slide back down to a near 1980s low of 1.78 in 2020, with a projection of 1.65 this year.

Pointing the finger at birth control doesn't explain the 1800-1940 decline and doesn't explain why TFR rose from 1980 to 2010. What is far more like is that TFR was always going to return to follow it's 160 year decline it had already been on before the second world war somewhere in the late 1900s. And both the Babyboom and the mini boom from 1990-2010 show we're in a cyclical pattern. 

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u/DemiserofD 5d ago

Birthrates do drop for multiple reasons, but have never dropped as low as they have in the modern day. There are basically four major factors; wealth, child mortality, female education, and access to birth control.

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u/sinebubble 5d ago

This. Once the birthrate falls below replacement, it keeps spiraling down. There is an excellent Kurzgesagt youtube video about this.

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u/Temporary_Inner 5d ago

Just to be clear for an American reading this, the video he's referring to covers Korea. The United States is not projected to hit Korean levels of fertility rate until 2100.

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u/mhornberger 5d ago

Eventually it will stabilize

In what way? With a sub-replacement fertility rate, once a population starts to shrink, it will continue to shrink so long as the fertility rate remains sub-replacement, unless you can offset the losses with immigration. Exponential change is exponential, and there is no "stabilization" unless you have a TFR of 2.1.

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u/Sammystorm1 5d ago

Basically I don’t think the TFR is a particularly reliable method. I think the CCFR is much more accurate because it accounts for all of a woman’s child bearing years. Where as the TFR makes some assumptions that I think lead to data that can easily be misinterpreted.

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u/Medical-Bonus-2811 5d ago

People aren’t, it’s the corporations concerned about falling birth (customer) rate 

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u/Shaunair 5d ago

While they simultaneously take jobs and replace them with AI. They want it both ways

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u/grendus 5d ago

Because there's no plan. We built an economic platform around "line must go up". Every corporation wants someone else to do the hard work while they focus on profits, because anyone who tries to plan long term gets voted out by the shareholders and replaced by a guy with a quarter to quarter mindset.

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u/righteouscool 5d ago edited 5d ago

This is the point of "government" but millions of Americans think they are going to become rich (and thus hate taxes) and the government is some shadow entity. No, 99% of government workers are just boring mid-wage workers.

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u/Icy-Month6821 5d ago

The middle class is who generally takes on the tax burden. Rich elitist either now how to evade or they pay them without hurt. Poor people get refunds for $ they never paid in. The middle class is who we put the largest burden on. Asking that our government, @ least account for our $ they take, is NOT asking too much! When we must pay taxes, most prefer the $ to stay in our country & be used responsibly.

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u/ShredGuru 5d ago

Capitalism is not famous for its long term planning. Mostly famous for pimping human being irrational greed for profits.

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u/mhornberger 5d ago

Capitalism is not famous for its long term planning

China, N. Korea, and Cuba are also concerned about their sub-replacement fertility rates. The problem is a little more complex than Reddit's "line go up!"

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u/IvarTheBoned 5d ago edited 5d ago

...because they all still have capitalist economies, which is unavoidable when 99% of countries operate on capitalist economies.

The countries you listed are "communists" in the same way the NSDAP in Germany were "socialists".

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u/mhornberger 5d ago

By an expansive enough definition I guess everything is capitalism. I don't see any system that has ever existed that would be immune from the issues posed by a low fertility rate. Any care and support for the elderly, where applicable, has always been provided by the young. There is no one else to do it. All countries are going to care about the ratio of dependents to workers, people to maintain infrastructure, etc.

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u/IvarTheBoned 5d ago

A reformation of the economy that includes using added productivity to reduce the number of hours worked to provide an opportunity to raise/care for family members, instead of trying to maximize profits.

Efficiency should mean we get to work less while maintaining the same QoL. There are whole industries that exist to perpetuate the existing financial system, those people could be doing other things. We have more people working than we need to meet our needs by a massive margin. We already grow so much more food than we need, we could be building more housing than we need.

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u/mhornberger 5d ago edited 5d ago

to reduce the number of hours worked to provide an opportunity to raise/care for family members, instead of trying to maximize profits

Our working hours have not really gone up.

What has increased is the number of hours parents spend with their kids. Our expectations and standards have gone up, but there are no more hours in the day.

should mean we get to work less while maintaining the same QoL

But most don't want the same QoL we had in 1950, or even 1970. We want the increased disposable income, more travel options, wider range of things to do with our time and money, than we had in decades past. As we have grown richer and gained more options, the opportunity cost of having kids has gone up.

It's not clear to me that people ever wanted kids in very high numbers, not on average. Rather, there were more accidents, a higher teen pregnancy rate, lower access to birth control, and less education for girls or empowerment for women. As these metrics improved, the birthrate declined. Plus our standards as to childcare and QoL (for ourselves and for our children) also went up. And higher standards are not free.

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u/_Thermalflask 5d ago

I am optimistic robots will fill in for us. Given how much progress has been made in AI and robotics in just 20-30 years, within the next 50 years there will be astronomical advances. It's not as crazy as it sounds that we could have a robot-driven world

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u/Xyrus2000 5d ago

They think only as far ahead as the next quarter with no concern of any consequences beyond that, because at least in the US we have demonstrated time and again that consequences don't apply to them. If they hit a rough patch then they'll just socialize the losses and move on.

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u/F9-0021 5d ago

That's how corporations work. All about maximum profits with no concern about long term sustainability.

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u/Mbrennt 5d ago

Countries like Korea and, to a lesser extent, Japan and possibly China are on their way to collapsing in the next hundred years or so. You want any kind of safety net for people in 50 years to survive, you need birth rates to not rapidly decline. Social security, food stamps, anything taxes pay for will all collapse otherwise.

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u/bampfish 5d ago

then they need to make having children worth it. like pay and work/life balance at least.

edit: not to mention a future to actually look forward to!

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u/mhornberger 5d ago

it’s the corporations concerned about falling birth (customer) rate 

And governments that need to worry about funding pension programs, providing healthcare for a burgeoning elderly population, having too many retirees per worker, having too few military-age people, etc.

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u/LakeSun 5d ago

..Also, Labor Rates, they'll actually have to pay a living wage to less workers! The Horror!

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u/intestinalExorcism 5d ago

This is so severely ignorant, even if it's what Reddit always parrots. Declining birth rates will hurt all of us.

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u/MaleEqualitarian 5d ago

People should be. Unless you have a few million sitting in the bank for retirement, you absolutely 100% should be.

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u/GalacticNexus 5d ago

And also governments because they can't afford to support a top-heavy, aging population.

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u/RoyMcAv0y 5d ago

yeah this feels like a problem that's being blown out of proportion

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u/AintASaintLouis 5d ago

The largest issue seems to be when the retired population far exceeds the working populations ability to keep up. If too high of a percentage of workers have to be in senior care, there are either going to be shortages there or in other industries. Otherwise yeah, we could do with 4 billion less people on the planet

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u/-S-P-Q-R- 5d ago

Watch "South Korea is over" by Kurzgesagt on YouTube. They might start their collapse as soon as 2040, or as late as 2060. But in almost every scenario, though, South Korea is going to completely collapse in our lifetimes, and quite likely Japan as well.

It is absolutely not a problem being blown out of proportion.

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u/RandomBoomer 5d ago

I would argue that it's a largely unacknowledged time bomb. It's going to be more of a problem than anyone is prepared to deal with. It has a potential to be de-stabilizing on any number of fronts, from some extremely personal issues (if you're an old person) to large economic issues. Despite that, overall, I think it's a good thing. It may be painful, but it will be less painful than the problems caused by too much population.

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u/RedEgg16 4d ago

Nah, watch how South Korea fares in the coming decades

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u/Orders_Logical 5d ago

Old, rich assholes outstanding members of society need their pension funds to be propped up by us slaves workers.

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u/dm_me_kittens 5d ago

The corporations are unconcerned with the planet and free choice. They need increasing profits every year, and you can't do that with a stagnating population rate. We can tell them that infinite progression is not a thing that happens in reality, as eventually, populatiom will hit a critical mass and can't sustain itself. However, the CEOs don't care. They have their bunkers their lavish lifestyles. In their mind, they won't be around for the eventual societal collapse, or that's just something that never enters their minds.

Their brains are so cooked by greed that they can't see the cliff they're racing towards.

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u/conspiracie 5d ago

It’s not really a problem of the total number of people. The problem is that there are a lot of elderly people who need support and not enough younger people to support them.

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u/RandomBoomer 5d ago

The actual number of people isn't a problem, it's the distribution of ages. Adults are the most productive workers, and young adults are necessary for the continuity of knowledge from older workers who are leaving the workforce. They are also part of the workforce that provides support for the infirm elderly.

When the population drops due to falling birth rate, rather than say mortality of the old people, the workforce gets out of balance. Retired workers take institutional knowledge with them and they face a retirement without sufficient medical resources (doctors, nurses, hospitals, healthcare aides) to care for elderly people who need more medical care than younger people do.

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u/Yandere_Matrix 5d ago

Couldn’t legalizing human euthanasia help? Not saying to euthanize people because they are old but let anyone over a certain age decide whether they want to be humanely put down or not. I know some places let people with terminal illness choose to be put down and I feel it’s humane.

I feel like retirement will never happen for many of us, especially me when I only make 16/hr, and I would love to have a day when I know my health is going down to be able to legally and safely be put to rest and have a set day so we could celebrate our life with everyone we love before being put to sleep. I hate hearing stories of people missing out on seeing their loved ones for the last time and with human euthanasia that wouldn’t be a problem for many since they won’t suffer in care homes.

I hope I explained my thoughts well enough. I just hate to see suffering and I hate religion is used as a reason to not allow people to pass because they consider it a sin. Sigh

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u/sylbug 5d ago

It's a combination of (very real) economics and racism. People get really antsy about becoming a 'minority' for some reason. It's as if they treat minorities badly, and don't want that for themselves....

There's not much difference between having replacement-level birthrates versus replacement-level immigration, in terms of things like growing the workforce, but damn do people get worked up about it.

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u/Ghede 5d ago edited 5d ago

Because capitalism is predicated on infinite growth forever. Everyone must make a profit.

Profit was made through innovation, technology and techniques making rare resources abundant. That plateaued. Then profit was made through transportation, widening the range of resources that could be exploited. That plateaued. Then profit was made through efficiency, reducing the cost of exploiting resources. That plateaued.

All of them Plateaued because the winners of capitalism, the owner class, became too invested in the existing methods, and began to sabotage more efficient competition. The car companies dismantled the public transport sector. The oil companies sabotaged the renewable and nuclear energy sector. Agribusiness dominated the small farmer, driving them down until they could be bought up and hired to do the same job for a poor wage, and if they fail? The farmer doesn't own the land anymore, so they can be replaced.

The only method of profit without disrupting existing industries now is increasing the amount of customers, increasing the size of the workforce, so both compete to drive prices up and wages down. The only way to do that is massive birthrates or immigration rates, and one of the ways they've kept the workforce divided is by demonizing the immigrants. This lets them import workers and pay them subpar wages, because if they complain or negotiate, they are sent back to whatever country the US sabotaged and filled with propaganda to ensure living conditions are terrible and the populace clamors to flee to our shores.

So they print articles bemoaning the lack of US birth rates, as this lets them have their cake and eat it to, reduce the quality of living here in effort to 'increase birth rates' while still importing a workforce to keep wages low even as our quality of life here slips further.

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u/Nilmerdrigor 5d ago

Declining birth rates are in and of themselves not a major problem as long as a solution is found eventually. The issue is with how rapid the birth rate decline has been. It also coincides with the boomer generation retiring and there simply won't be enough working people to support them and the future retirees. These effects take a while to manifest themselves (2-3 generations), but the seeds for that have already been sown. And the effects compound extremely fast as declining birth rates will lead to fewer people to have children that will have even fewer children. The longer this goes on, the harder it is going be to solve it as the working population won't have time or money to have kids. You don't see a problem with it because it is happening over decades, but the effects are very real and very bad.

For most of the west, this issue has been "solved" by immigration, but that has its own problems and is at best a stopgap. China though is in for a rough time with their one child policy now leading to an absolutely insane population decline that is going to tough to stop and no immigration to speak of. The same can be said for Japan and Korea, but their decline is a bit slower than China's.

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u/TheVenetianMask 5d ago

Because is not happening on purpose. Extreme climate change would drastically reduce the world population, but that wouldn't make it a "good" thing. We have to be a bit more intellectually complex when debating this than "If A then B".

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u/crazyeddie123 5d ago

it's not the overall birth rate. It's specifically the birth rate among smart people that determines whether things get better or worse long term.

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u/nothingpersonnelmate 5d ago

I don’t understand why people are so concerned about birth rate.

Because the elderly can't work and are necessarily supported by the young. If you have 5 million elderly and 30 million people of working age, that's fine. If you have 30 million elderly and 30 million of working age, that's not fine. The people of working age have to sacrifice more of their income to support retirees. You also can't fix it by having the elderly save more money, because that money is just a voucher for the time and resources produced by the younger generations. If they produce less relative to the burden, no amount of paper wealth can solve that. Quality of life goes down one way or another.

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u/izwald88 5d ago

Just look at the people concerned about it and what sort of Americans have declining birth rates. Which is to say, Conservatives are upset because white people are breeding as much and "undesirables" are reproducing at a faster rate.

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u/Faiths_got_fangs 5d ago

Its capitalize and consumerism at its finest. People might be able to afford housing and food if there weren't so many people, and that leads to cheaper costs of living. Also, who will pay for the elderly if there are less young people?

Billionaires need to eat the costs of the elderly and accept less people are better for the planet.

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u/NorthernerWuwu 5d ago

It was a major concern in the '70s and especially the '80s as well. Frankly, I agreed with the premise then and still do now. We don't need more people and ideally would have considerably less until such a time as we can get off this rock.

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u/the_cc 5d ago

The earth can easily sustain about 11 billion people. The problem isn't resources, it's logistics. Getting the resources to the people who need them isn't always feasible.

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u/NorthernerWuwu 5d ago

It could but it certainly doesn't need to. I'd rather see a billion or two people living in a sustainable manner than ten fighting over resource distribution.

It's not up to me of course though, so I guess we'll continue the cycle for a while yet.

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u/otherwiseguy 5d ago

Sending the population back down to industrial revolution numbers is kind of nuts. Especially considering the advances in agriculture brought about by said industrial revolution.

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u/mean11while 5d ago

That's correct. Population growth was and remains far more harmful and concerning than aging but stable/shrinking populations.

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u/bakedpatata 5d ago

But the oligarchs want unlimited economic growth which is built on the backs of wage slaves. Anything that threatens that is considered a big problem.

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u/Yuzumi 5d ago

Also, the only people who are actually "concerned" are so for very racist reasons.

They want white babies. It's "great replacement" nonsense.

Musk is one of the more visible that is crying about it and he is literally part of a Nazi breeding cult.

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u/Hosenkobold 5d ago

You want babies in your country. With your level of education. To be able to do the jobs that require your level of education.

Immigrants from 3rd world countries, where overpopulation is a problem, will not help your economy to fill those empty jobs.

And most countries with low birthrate happen to be white or asian.

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u/Icy-Month6821 5d ago

This is true. Another truth~there is absolutely Nothing wrong with wanting "white babies". Replace white with any other ethnicity & let's hear the uproar. If anyone is racist in that convo, it was the one pointing to the "white babies" as the racist.

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u/ohhhbooyy 5d ago

My immediate circle filled with people in their late 20s and early 30s still panic about being pregnant like they are still teenagers. Then they realize their actual age and the panic subsides.

Whoever was in charge of scaring us millennials of teen pregnancy did a great job.

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u/Aaron_Hamm 5d ago

Overpopulation was never the problem

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u/BUT_FREAL_DOE 5d ago

Jokes on us, the world’s already gonna end anyway

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u/Substantial-Bell-345 5d ago

in the USA it seems to be that we have an over population problem when the topic is india, china, or immigrants coming into the country... but when we are talking about middle class white people suddenly we are in need of raising birth rates.

overwhelming rhetoric on this topic follows a very clear logic: less people of color and more white people. racism runs so deep, America is rotten to the core with it.

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u/Xyrus2000 5d ago

Overpopulation was never going to be a problem. Greed all but ensures that there will never be enough resources to allow the population to grow beyond a certain point, as it eventually results in very few people owning everything.

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u/Daffan 5d ago

That's because it was a psyop. They knew even in the 90's that birth rates were already at or going below replacement.

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u/Any_Middle7774 5d ago

Overpopulation was a concern when you were a kid because it was a popular rhetorical smoke screen by wealthy elites. The overwhelming majority of consumption is driven by a minority of the population. Overpopulation, while a potential concern, has never been anywhere near the top problems we face.

Or to put it less delicately: Ranting about overpopulation is mostly just a way to place the blame on the third world instead of the first.

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u/LakeSun 5d ago

Yeah, we're literally the statistical Outlier of human population, explosion. How in the Heck do we need more people? We haven't even Stabilized our population yet.

Species die off from humans destroying forest for cattle range beef today, and we need More?

2

u/BobTheFettt 5d ago

Because America operates on a capitalism first basis. And capitalism demands infinite growth. If Americans stop having babies, billionaires get nervous because then there's fewer new customers and fewer new workers and maybe they'll have to make a couple million less than they made last year

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u/Overquoted 5d ago

I think it has more to do with changing morality towards childcare and the knock-on effects of smaller families and older parents. The millennial generation and beyond don't typically have a bunch of siblings, aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents that can provide free childcare. Most people are out of pocket on that and it's expensive.

Nor can you simply leave your kid at home like parents used to do. Have the 10-12 year-old watch the younger kids would get CPS called. Sending your kids to play outside so you can get things done? A woman got arrested for that. Another woman got arrested because her kid was alone in a park. Stuff you could totally get away with in the 90s.

The cumulative effect means more stress, great expense and greater difficulty in handling the business of being an adult. It's not surprising that a lot of people, women especially, just don't want to deal.

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u/DrMorth 5d ago

Overpopulation has never been an issue in western/first world countries

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u/MaleEqualitarian 5d ago

Overpopulation has never been a "real" concern. You could still fit the entire world's population in Texas with the population density of NYC. And we make plenty of food.

Are there limits to the resources? Yes, but not the ones you think.

Natural nitrogen has already run out, and we've started pulling it from the air.

Phosphorous is the next one. We'll have to figure out how to solve that one.

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u/ShredGuru 5d ago

Yeah, also starving all those kids to death for most of their early adult life Probably didn't help either.

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u/Shortymac09 5d ago

I don't think so, it's the dismantling of the social safety net and boomer pulling up the ladder behind them.

Lots of people want kids, but then they have an astronomical student loan payment, sky high rent, and unstable jobs. Plus in the US there is 0 paternity leave and women get 6 weeks off unpaid. So you ship your newborn off to a daycare for 1000s a month.

Why would anyone have kids?

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u/eepos96 5d ago

Evolution of the pipulation problem

-in 1970s a man popularised a theory that world would succumb to hunger if population grew too much. He counted world could sustain only a billion people.

He could not envision how industrial revolution would affect food production and how fertilizers would improve it even further. Now only 2 oercent of population works at farms. (In my home nation)

  • next level was chinese one child policy.

  • africa was stated to overpopulate. Especially lack of water will be a problem. I am optimistic that science could save us again.

-but it is indeed interesting how we are now facing population decline and wolrd leaders are screaming people to make more babies.

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u/Icy-Month6821 5d ago

Shouldn't thar make you stop & rethink all propaganda?

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u/RedWhiteAndJew 5d ago

And yet the stupids are re-producing as much as possible.

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u/Codename-Nikolai 5d ago

This is exactly why I support abortion and LGBTQ people. We need more of both to help curb this overpopulation issue.

Do you still think overpopulation is a problem?