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Very insightful and thought-provoking. I really appreciated this insight, that governments had (quote) an understanding that if you just leave young people to

Very insightful and thought-provoking. I really appreciated this insight, that governments had (quote) an understanding that if you just leave young people to be, they will go and get married. They will have children. They will be able to have a family and there will be no problem there. You just need to let them go ahead and do that, which is a very naive way of looking at it The next 100 years is going to be very interesting for demographics. I've heard it said that China needs to grow rich before it grows old, and that saying could apply to many Asian countries right now. Fully expect to see much more support for having a family in countries across the world.

golemiprague 5y ago
Japan daycare and housing is way cheaper than most western countries and I don't see any problem in declining population, who said we need to grow population all the time. It is a country of more than 100 million on a tiny island with no resources, they don't need more people.
mooreds 5y ago
If you want to see the demographic disaster many countries are heading toward, can't recommend Peter Zeihan enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvdBRjRno8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvdBRjRno8 is a good intro Disunited Nations is his most recent published book: https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/ https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/ (a new one is coming out in June)
- pphysch 5y ago
  Frankly, Zeihan is a crackpot when it comes to geopolitics. If you rely on him for geopolitical insights, you will be massively misled on virtually every issue. In particular, it is ridiculous to talk about long-term demographics in a vacuum. We are no longer in the phase of human history where you need millions of young people to be working hard 70 hour weeks. Economic productivity is no longer a function strictly of animal (human) muscle mass. We are, just barely, in the age of automation. From Disunited Nations: "Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China..." LOL
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    Zeihan's been predicting for a decade that Russia's collapsing demographics would force it to quickly act (before it can no longer do so) to expand its borders/security zone. It's tough to call the Ukraine invasion anything else.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      If you think Russia invaded Ukraine primarily because of "demographic issues" i.e. territorial expansion for resources, I have a bridge to sell you.
    - vkou 5y ago
      Looking at Chechnya, the Georgian-Ossettian-Russian war, and observing that the entirety of Eastern Europe lurched into camp West around that time period, you don't have to be Nostradamus to imagine that Russia's desire to keep as much of the Soviet empire with it as possible will manifest sooner or later. Which has nothing to do with its demographics, and everything to do with its politics. ... Also, Ukraine is facing the exact same demographic stresses as Russia. Also, demographics don't matter as much as, broadly speaking, industrial capacity in modern wars. They aren't about throwing an entire generation of men into million-casualty-offensives over no-man's-land.
  - sanp 5y ago
    We may not need as many producers but we do need consumers...
    - kbelder 5y ago
      Maybe we can just have people consume twice as much.
  - mooreds 5y ago
    Interesting. Who would you recommend reading instead?
    - pphysch 5y ago
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
alephnan 5y ago
> I've heard it said that China needs to grow rich before it grows old, and that saying could apply to many Asian countries right now. Asian countries are quite diverse in the economics demographics. Japan's already rich, but aging. Japan is stuck in the 1980s in many regards including soft power. China's not aging yet, but it's on Japan's trajectory. Bad with soft power. South Korea is similar to China, but it's already rich. Japanese may disagree but South Korea is arguably the strongest in soft power in Asia. Vietnam has a young population, but it is still developing and might be subject to the middle income trap if automation for otherwise low cost labor ramps up. Taiwan has its silicon shield, but software engineers are paid pretty bad. There just aren't many high paying salaries there. It also has a big welfare system despite not having many job/career opportunities. Hong Kong there is an exodus of young people and white collar people. Japan probably has the most affordable housing in the list, relative to the average income. I'm currently living here. I've been looking at real estate in Taiwan, but it just makes zero sense. It makes Manhattan condos seem reasonable given how old and units in Taiwan are.
- rr808 5y ago
  The interesting thing for me with Japan and babies is in the 80s when houses were the most expensive in the world, the birth rate was much higher than now when houses are the cheapest in the developed world.
  - throwaway1777 5y ago
    Isn’t the correlation obvious? Growing population means higher demand for housing, shrinking population means less demand and prices go down as units aren’t needed. It goes to show that the cultural forces are more important than the cost when choosing whether to have kids.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      There are also confounding factors of increasing number of financially independent women and more convenient, more foolproof birth control methods.
lifthrasiir 5y ago
South Korea provides an evidence that this understanding is not only naive but also actively damaging the society. SK's fertility rate hit the record low of 0.84 in 2020 (compare with Japan's 1.36 in the same year), primarily because increasingly more people chose not to marry. There are a multitude of reasons, including pervasive misogyny which acts as a negative feedback to prevent further marriages. But regardless of the reasons, there is no reason to believe the fertility rate will recover by its own without active policies (of which SK crucially lacks).
- Ferrotin 5y ago
  South Korea just had an election which may change its direction in that regard.
  - lifthrasiir 5y ago
    You probably wouldn't have known but I watched the whole vote counting process all the night (6:50 am here). And Yoon, the president-elect, is not really known for his gender equality policies---he is a polar opposite to say the least.
    - Ferrotin 5y ago
      Yes, and because gender equality suppresses fertility [1], that would do the opposite. [1] citation needed, and given Asian fertility rates, highly questionable
      - lifthrasiir 5y ago
        Oh yeah, a forced marriage will do a great job. (Thank you for the footnote by the way, I was a bit nervous at the first!)
rr808 5y ago
Its kinda amazing to see Ukraine fighting Russia - both have rapidly shrinking populations even before the war.
rayiner 5y ago
This is a good example of culture acting in often invisible ways--a force that you don't notice at work until it's gone. There's a lot we assume to be universal about human behavior that's actually the product of cultural forces transmitted through generations. My dad spent his career on maternal health and family planning issues. He's in the group of folks that's the reason that Bangladesh's fertility rate has fallen from almost 7 per women in 1975 to just over 2 today. There was a generational effort in Asia to basically change the culture to discourage having large families. The notion that national prosperity is associated with population control was deeply impressed upon Asians--to the point where my dad thought it a little weird when my wife and I decided to have three kids. I suspect that's part of the reason why fertility rates in east asian countries have dropped not only below replacement rates, but down to under 1 in several countries.
sothatstheway 5y ago
In a class for my Masters in Public Health, we saw evidence that really nothing affected the average number of kids women had in any country or the average age they had their first child except for one factor: the education level of the women. That is, as education went up for women, the average # of children went down and the average age they had their first child went up. If this is still true, the flip of that is that as countries climb up the relative ladder and women have greater access to education, expect to see population #s dwindle without having really any levers to affect it otherwise.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  https://ifstudies.org/blog/research-debunks-myth-that-economic-factors-are-driving-falling-birth-rates https://ifstudies.org/blog/research-debunks-myth-that-econom... TLDR The opportunity cost of having children in affluent society is too damn high.
  - noneeeed 5y ago
    Really interesting to see an alternative view from the prevailing narrative that it's all about the direct costs (housing, childcare etc). It seems to be such a multi-factor problem that I don't see any governments managing to come up with "solutions" to it, especially as most that are put forward are single factor and rarely amount to much more than fiddling around the edges.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    That post misrepresents its own source. "It’s worth noting that a 2018 poll of individuals who have chosen not have children found the most frequently-cited reason for their decision was a desire for more leisure time." ... "more leisure time" is a link to a NY Times article[1]. The chart in that article shows economic reasons[2] collectively cited much more frequently than a desire for more leisure time. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-havi... 2. "Child care is too expensive", "worried about the economy", "can't afford more children", and "waited because of financial instability" all score more highly than "want more leisure time". These are all economic[3] reasons. "Want more time for the children I have" could be seen as economic also, given that the most likely reason for not spending as much time as desired is having to have employment. The list goes on: "not enough paid family leave" and "no paid family leave" are the next highest-scoring reasons. Also economic reasons. To me this chart cumulatively reads as "I/we are forced to spend more time than I/we desire in pursuit of income/financial security, with unsatisfactory results." It confirms that "economic reasons"[3] is the primary cause of low fertility. 3. "Economic" comes from oikos and noum-, "household" and "budgeting/regulation", so all of the reasons above are economic reasons.

golemiprague 5y ago

Japan daycare and housing is way cheaper than most western countries and I don't see any problem in declining population, who said we need to grow population all the time. It is a country of more than 100 million on a tiny island with no resources, they don't need more people.

mooreds 5y ago

If you want to see the demographic disaster many countries are heading toward, can't recommend Peter Zeihan enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvdBRjRno8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvdBRjRno8 is a good intro Disunited Nations is his most recent published book: https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/ https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/ (a new one is coming out in June)

pphysch 5y ago
Frankly, Zeihan is a crackpot when it comes to geopolitics. If you rely on him for geopolitical insights, you will be massively misled on virtually every issue. In particular, it is ridiculous to talk about long-term demographics in a vacuum. We are no longer in the phase of human history where you need millions of young people to be working hard 70 hour weeks. Economic productivity is no longer a function strictly of animal (human) muscle mass. We are, just barely, in the age of automation. From Disunited Nations: "Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China..." LOL
- TMWNN 5y ago
  Zeihan's been predicting for a decade that Russia's collapsing demographics would force it to quickly act (before it can no longer do so) to expand its borders/security zone. It's tough to call the Ukraine invasion anything else.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    If you think Russia invaded Ukraine primarily because of "demographic issues" i.e. territorial expansion for resources, I have a bridge to sell you.
  - vkou 5y ago
    Looking at Chechnya, the Georgian-Ossettian-Russian war, and observing that the entirety of Eastern Europe lurched into camp West around that time period, you don't have to be Nostradamus to imagine that Russia's desire to keep as much of the Soviet empire with it as possible will manifest sooner or later. Which has nothing to do with its demographics, and everything to do with its politics. ... Also, Ukraine is facing the exact same demographic stresses as Russia. Also, demographics don't matter as much as, broadly speaking, industrial capacity in modern wars. They aren't about throwing an entire generation of men into million-casualty-offensives over no-man's-land.
- sanp 5y ago
  We may not need as many producers but we do need consumers...
  - kbelder 5y ago
    Maybe we can just have people consume twice as much.
- mooreds 5y ago
  Interesting. Who would you recommend reading instead?
  - pphysch 5y ago

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

alephnan 5y ago

> I've heard it said that China needs to grow rich before it grows old, and that saying could apply to many Asian countries right now. Asian countries are quite diverse in the economics demographics. Japan's already rich, but aging. Japan is stuck in the 1980s in many regards including soft power. China's not aging yet, but it's on Japan's trajectory. Bad with soft power. South Korea is similar to China, but it's already rich. Japanese may disagree but South Korea is arguably the strongest in soft power in Asia. Vietnam has a young population, but it is still developing and might be subject to the middle income trap if automation for otherwise low cost labor ramps up. Taiwan has its silicon shield, but software engineers are paid pretty bad. There just aren't many high paying salaries there. It also has a big welfare system despite not having many job/career opportunities. Hong Kong there is an exodus of young people and white collar people. Japan probably has the most affordable housing in the list, relative to the average income. I'm currently living here. I've been looking at real estate in Taiwan, but it just makes zero sense. It makes Manhattan condos seem reasonable given how old and units in Taiwan are.

rr808 5y ago
The interesting thing for me with Japan and babies is in the 80s when houses were the most expensive in the world, the birth rate was much higher than now when houses are the cheapest in the developed world.
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  Isn’t the correlation obvious? Growing population means higher demand for housing, shrinking population means less demand and prices go down as units aren’t needed. It goes to show that the cultural forces are more important than the cost when choosing whether to have kids.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    There are also confounding factors of increasing number of financially independent women and more convenient, more foolproof birth control methods.

lifthrasiir 5y ago

South Korea provides an evidence that this understanding is not only naive but also actively damaging the society. SK's fertility rate hit the record low of 0.84 in 2020 (compare with Japan's 1.36 in the same year), primarily because increasingly more people chose not to marry. There are a multitude of reasons, including pervasive misogyny which acts as a negative feedback to prevent further marriages. But regardless of the reasons, there is no reason to believe the fertility rate will recover by its own without active policies (of which SK crucially lacks).

Ferrotin 5y ago
South Korea just had an election which may change its direction in that regard.
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  You probably wouldn't have known but I watched the whole vote counting process all the night (6:50 am here). And Yoon, the president-elect, is not really known for his gender equality policies---he is a polar opposite to say the least.
  - Ferrotin 5y ago
    Yes, and because gender equality suppresses fertility [1], that would do the opposite. [1] citation needed, and given Asian fertility rates, highly questionable
    - lifthrasiir 5y ago
      Oh yeah, a forced marriage will do a great job. (Thank you for the footnote by the way, I was a bit nervous at the first!)

rr808 5y ago

Its kinda amazing to see Ukraine fighting Russia - both have rapidly shrinking populations even before the war.

rayiner 5y ago

This is a good example of culture acting in often invisible ways--a force that you don't notice at work until it's gone. There's a lot we assume to be universal about human behavior that's actually the product of cultural forces transmitted through generations. My dad spent his career on maternal health and family planning issues. He's in the group of folks that's the reason that Bangladesh's fertility rate has fallen from almost 7 per women in 1975 to just over 2 today. There was a generational effort in Asia to basically change the culture to discourage having large families. The notion that national prosperity is associated with population control was deeply impressed upon Asians--to the point where my dad thought it a little weird when my wife and I decided to have three kids. I suspect that's part of the reason why fertility rates in east asian countries have dropped not only below replacement rates, but down to under 1 in several countries.

sothatstheway 5y ago

In a class for my Masters in Public Health, we saw evidence that really nothing affected the average number of kids women had in any country or the average age they had their first child except for one factor: the education level of the women. That is, as education went up for women, the average # of children went down and the average age they had their first child went up. If this is still true, the flip of that is that as countries climb up the relative ladder and women have greater access to education, expect to see population #s dwindle without having really any levers to affect it otherwise.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://ifstudies.org/blog/research-debunks-myth-that-economic-factors-are-driving-falling-birth-rates https://ifstudies.org/blog/research-debunks-myth-that-econom... TLDR The opportunity cost of having children in affluent society is too damn high.
- noneeeed 5y ago
  Really interesting to see an alternative view from the prevailing narrative that it's all about the direct costs (housing, childcare etc). It seems to be such a multi-factor problem that I don't see any governments managing to come up with "solutions" to it, especially as most that are put forward are single factor and rarely amount to much more than fiddling around the edges.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- tuatoru 5y ago
  That post misrepresents its own source. "It’s worth noting that a 2018 poll of individuals who have chosen not have children found the most frequently-cited reason for their decision was a desire for more leisure time." ... "more leisure time" is a link to a NY Times article[1]. The chart in that article shows economic reasons[2] collectively cited much more frequently than a desire for more leisure time. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-havi... 2. "Child care is too expensive", "worried about the economy", "can't afford more children", and "waited because of financial instability" all score more highly than "want more leisure time". These are all economic[3] reasons. "Want more time for the children I have" could be seen as economic also, given that the most likely reason for not spending as much time as desired is having to have employment. The list goes on: "not enough paid family leave" and "no paid family leave" are the next highest-scoring reasons. Also economic reasons. To me this chart cumulatively reads as "I/we are forced to spend more time than I/we desire in pursuit of income/financial security, with unsatisfactory results." It confirms that "economic reasons"[3] is the primary cause of low fertility. 3. "Economic" comes from oikos and noum-, "household" and "budgeting/regulation", so all of the reasons above are economic reasons.