AIBU The global fertility crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced?

We have a political problem being that the 2 chief ways to address / mitigate demographic shift are for people to be productive for longer (ultimately end goal is to increase retirement age though there are positives to this for older people as well if done right) and secondly to invest in the young as a limited future resource. But, demographic shift itself results in older people having more political clout, due to their numbers, than younger working people and young families. And as a (very) broad generalisation, they understandably want to remain alive even in poor health, they don't want to continue working into old age even if able to do so, and they want to keep their resources rather than diverting them to the young. And we live in a democracy so... There doesn't seem to be any political will to rebalance this at the moment. Ironically this also then contributes to the decline in fertility.

Gosh, its like the plot on Futurama...

Fry and the Liu-bot begin dating, aided by her being programmed to like Fry. The other Planet Express employees, concerned about his relationship, show him the standard middle-school film that predicts the destruction of civilization if humans date robots. Unfortunately, Fry ignores the movie, and keeps making out with his Liu-bot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot

There is going to be couple of generations that feel real pain with too many older people. I welcome reduction and no replacement. The real issue is people in developing poor nations are still having far too many children. They may use far less resources but a decline in population overall will be a very good thing.

But unless we suddenly finding some way to massively boost the birthrate, its either big sacrifices for retirees now or much bigger ones for the next generation of retirees.

Should we only have compassion for the current generation of retirees, even at the cost of making things worse for younger generations?

My preference would be to find a way to address the birthrate but, if that isnt going to happen (and many in here are championing the idea of population decline) then we have to accept that social support is completely unsustainable.

Yes I agree, I always say on these threads or climate change threads, humans are just another species in the world, we might die out like many already have, something else will come along one day, we're just a blip. The world will continue, theres nothing that special about humans per se, we just think there is (naturally)

You seem to be unaware of how poor many of us were post war compared to how younger people lived. We haven’t had easy lives and just wish to have our last years as comfortable as possible. What exactly do you think we owe you?

Yeah, and that's a bloody nightmare - too many !!!

Someone will care, someone’s dc. It’s far better to reduce numbers and less fighting over resources.

for fucks sake you have no idea how we lived when we were younger. This is the most ignorant comment I have ever heard. People who worked on low salaries for much of their working life now have to pay for their care as they age. Where is your compassion and empathy?

I'm not sure what point you're making?

Exactly

We won't be here to care

To be fair, Bridgerton was pretty good! It would take some pretty amazing sex to make me turn it off

@MuckFusk and any others who commented on my earlier post: I think humans are more interesting than any other species. And yes, I sincerely believe that the ability to conceive ideas, progress thinking and impart knowledge up and down the generations is the highest achievement of all. If that means we lose a few toad species, I am willing to live with it.

have you any idea how we lived in the 60s?
It was not luxury I assure you.

Firstly the reasons for the falling birth rate has many factors: decreased fertility, microplastics in food products have been found to have a causal link for male infertility, the economy - if you can’t even afford to leave home buying or renting (unless shared accommodation) until you are into your 30s and working towards earning a wage that can support a child/ren that is considered stable is taking longer and longer to happen so some people just age out. Then there is the hook up culture that is so prevalent now, less and less people willing to make a long term commitment to each other, marriage rates have been in decline for a very long time. Then there is the fact that despite all this equality talk and action women are still penalised for becoming mothers, and whilst some men do share more of the load the majority of women are still in the position of carrying the majority of parenting labour, domestic labour and mental load whilst also bringing home a wage, and think the younger generation of women are thinking Fuck That and I don’t blame them! These are just some, not even all of the contributing factors.

Its all well and good to say humans are a stain on planet earth and that we are overpopulated but there are many many factors to this issue and it’s happening soon enough that our children and grandchildren will be suffering the consequences.

Many have mentioned immigration as a way to solve this issue, but population decline is happening in most all of the developed nations and is reaching ever further into others, whilst not absolutely everywhere it is worldwide.

Countries will be competing with others for people, for Human Resources quite literally! How do you see that playing out peacefully?? It won’t be peaceful and it will be far from pleasant. Wars are fought over much much less!!!

Then you have to think about what our country has to offer against others, we have an NHS in decline, not enough housing, not enough school places, services that are either non existent or difficult to access….if we can’t do these things now how will we ever better them in order to be considered an attractive to prospect to immigrants against other countries with better education, healthcare, opportunities etc not to mention the weather. Suddenly things are looking a little bit bleak aren’t they?!!

We haven’t even addressed the pensions issue yet, the way pensions are funded is in directly related to the working population, if we don’t have enough young workers to pay for the pensions of those in receipt of them, what do you think will happen then? Will the government just stop paying out? If they did this, or even if they just scaled it back do you see this happening peacefully??? Do we really think that people who have worked hard during their life will take that laying down?!

Then there will be the fight over resources, we rely so much these days on imported goods and AI and automation can only do so much, the fact is, is that a shortage of people will lead to a shortage of labour which in turn will lead to a shortage of goods. You only have look back as far as Covid and see how these shortages played out and how the government and the big corporations made a quick buck during the pandemic. Those with the resources will hoard them and sell them at massive profit, everyone and every country unlucky enough to need it will be paying the hefty price.

I am well aware I sound all doom and gloom and perhaps even a bit conspiracy theorist about it, but my point is, is that anyone who thinks that population decline is something that will just happen quietly in the background whilst celebrating it is a win for Mother Nature and planet Earth is seriously deluded! It’s often referred to as the depopulation bomb for a reason!

Nail on the head. We need more people to be more productive. We also need the "right" type of population increase, i.e. people with skills and work ethic - not just "more" people.

I think the human race deserves to become extinct and let the planet heal. Humans have had such a detrimental on Earth and maybe it’s just time to let another race/species have a go and hope they succeed better than we did.

Then I think thats fair enough. As I said, I think the view we need fewer humans is entirely valid but, unfortunately, too few seem willing to accept that it should come at even a mild inconvenience to them (or retirees, generally).

And you started off so well!

I think population decline is a fantastic thing. The world was never meant to hold 8 billion people.

We have nearly a million NEETs in the UK (young people not in employment, education or training).

UK population has gone up massively over the last 20 years. We don't need to have more children, we don't need to import more people. We just need to get our own young people into productive work, for their benefit and everyone else's.

well I guess its something else to guilt women about so that will make a change....I wonder if she has written a book? Well the RC church has tried it and so I believe did France. Honestly iIbelieve that the ship sailed with the increase of reliable birth control options for women's use including the MAP.

We need ideally to drastically reduce the human population if we are to better manage earth's resources. So population decline is a good thing so long as at some point, ideally at a much lower level, it stabilises. And that it's not so rapid/uncontrolled/unmitigated for that it collapses civilisation.

Ideally, population stabilisation at the right level would not only be through having the right number of children, by also by extending the healthy human lifespan and reducing all causes of mortality - particularly amongst the young. That's the model for an advanced utopian society really.

The challenge right now is not population decline but demographic shift. That is, how do we continue to function and possibly even continue to advance (socially, morally not just technologically) with a declining, older population. Keeping people healthier and functioning for longer (as a priority over actual life extension) and ramping up the investment in all children to maximise their lifetime health, happiness and productivity are the obvious answers but sadly don't seem to be happening.

Worst case scenario outside of a mass extinction event which includes us (which hopefully becomes less likely with population decline) - is not that we die out, but that we lose our civilisation and are unable to restore it due to no repeat of the industrial/technological revolution because we have used all of the immediately available natural resources necessary. So get stuck at pre-industrial civilisation just in a partially ruined / less nice earth. To be fair I think a lot of people don't see that as a very bad thing but I do - I see it as a wasted opportunity to meet our potential. It would be condemning humanity to a lot of unnecessary suffering when the alternative could have been so much better. But maybe humanity simply doesn't have the potential that I hope it does to manage advanced technology responsibly.

Yes, thats part of it. So we need to decrease the (exponentially increasing) tax burden of supporting an elderly population, and make life more affordable for younger generations.

It is western / developed economies where populations are in decline.
Educated women want less children for all sorts of sensible reasons.
Expectations of adult life are high. People don't want children or delay parenthood to allow for other possibilities.

It less developed economies the birth rate is still high. Logically in time it will fall if those countries can enjoy the advantages and opportunities of the west.
Lower birth rates are best for women.
The planet could do with less people in the longer term.
Perhaps immigration is not so bad after all. Whilst there is alot of hand wringing and worse about it the people coming in will stabilise numbers to an extent. And of course in this country highly educated and dedicated workers from outside of this country and entirely propping up health and social care across the NHS and private sector.