To think a declining birth rate is a good (and inevitable) thing

[OptimismvsRealism]

Article in the times today about the "push for Britain to have more babies" on the basis that a declining population will cause economic shocks.

One of the proposals is "fertility checks in your 20s and education about declining fertility in biology classes".

I mean. Isn't it great that people only have babies if they really, truly want them? And isn't it good to have a smaller human burden on the planet (and fewer humans vying for declining jobs as tech replaces us at most of the things we used to do)?

I don't believe for a second that fertility checks would help anyone. Nobody is out there going "trala I'm 45 and really want five babies but just haven't felt like starting yet"!

The problem is that we do have an economic ticking time bomb. There simply won't be enough workers to pay for all the pensioners that there are going to be in the near future because we are no longer having babies at replacement rate.

And no, pensioners have not "paid into the system to cover their costs". That's not how it works. Today's workers pay for the pensions of today's pensioners, so tomorrow's workers will be paying for tomorrow's pensioners.

If we don't have enough workers to pay for all the pensioners, then we need to take some tough choices.

These are: accept more immigration, reduce pensioner benefits, austerity 2.0 which will be austerity on crack, or completely overhaul the tax system to include wealth taxes that will potentially deter the highest tax payers from settling here. None of these are particularly appealing but burying our heads in the sand and maintaining the status quo simply isn't an option.

So yes, we need more babies. But that takes time and frankly it's too late to avoid the forthcoming problems.

And no, I'm not getting at pensioners. It's not ageist to point out that there is an economic problem with an aging population who are financially dependent on the state. It's just maths.

no-one knows what the sustainable level of people is on the planet because people use vastly different levels of resources.

This is often overlooked, a family with lots of dc in certain parts of Africa with high birth rates are going to have a smaller carbon footprint than a smaller family in the west.

I would have had 1 more if we could afford it. But we live in an area where house prices to average local wages are one of the worst in the country (outside London). We couldn't afford another childcare bill, we were on the bones of our arse for 3 years when we had to pay full time childcare, we can't afford the bigger house and car that would be needed, so we stuck with what we have.

It is an issue for the government in the coming decades as taxation receipts will fall but with an ever aging population to pay for (pensions, healthcare etc....) I don't know what the answer is, but it is a 1st world worldwide problem.

I suppose from a speciesest pov we do need to have more children to keep the economy running and care for the elderly in the future.
However from a planetary pov human beings are the worst thing that happened to the earth and it will be better off without us!

Which is a very real shame.

I've advised my kids not to have children themselves. Why would you prop up the ponzi scheme that is late stage capitalism so that older generations will get the benefits that you never will?
Truly dystopian that we are being told to have more children to save the economy.

@AllIWantIsACuppa You are correct, they are the choices but cries of ageism means governments have got away with not planning for the demographic shift. Some of the inflation and issues with the NHS we are seeing now is due to the ageing population.

Nobody is out there going "trala I'm 45 and really want five babies but just haven't felt like starting yet"!

No, but there are many women who find out in their twenties and early thirties** that their ovarian reserve is that of a woman 10+ years older, and then go through many years of heartache trying to have a child.

I'm sure I wasn't the only millennial who was warned at school that you only need to have sex once and you'll get pregnant. I'd like to think sex education is much more balanced now.

You may not have meant to but your post comes across very ignorant and insensitive towards families (and there are many!) who have fertility challenges.

I agree op, I think the impacts on economy and aging population etc are all relatively short term in comparison to the impact on the planet and less people is only a good thing

Who do you think will look after the elderly 🤦‍♀️

In the long run - yes. The planet cannot support 8bn people all living a comfortable 'western' lifestyle. (At present only the wealthiest few on the planet get to do that.) If all 8bn people consumed resources at the rate of the average north American or European citizen, the planet would be in an even worse state than it currently is.

In the short term - there is going to be some serious pain as the global population shrinks and there aren't enough young people to support and care for the ageing population.

No easy answers.

It seems that the families likely most put off compared with previous generations are (1) social sciences/ humanities degrees who are most likely to care about the environment plus most affected by student loans, fewer and more precarious and lower paid jobs. So it's possible the 'missing' offspring will be bad for the planet

I never get the argument that we need more ppl on this planet. The planet is dying, a decreasing birth rate is a good thing surely.

Yes we may be screwed for one generation if there aren't enough young to pay the pensions of tomorrow, but that's a problem for one generation as it'll then even out if the birth rate stays low. Surely if we have less children, some of the spend on e.g. education would help plug the gap to pay the pensions etc.

Surely increasing the birth rate causes more problems for the planet further down the line, to fix an issue that only affects us short term.

What makes you say a humanities graduate is more likely to be environmentally conscious than e.g. a chemistry graduate?

I've never seen any info to support this.

Totally agree with this.

“accept more immigration”- I think we have quite enough already. A few hundred a month coming over in the boats should do it. If they stay and if they work that is.

Maybe the elderly should have thought about that before now and stopped voting for parties that advanced their own interests ahead of their childrens and grandchildrens.

How sad that it seems that it's only now that our society cares about children, and even then it's only in terms of what they can do for us, rather than what we do for them.

“accept more immigration”- I think we have quite enough already. A few hundred a month coming over in the boats should do it. If they stay and if they work that is.

it’s inevitable, there aren’t enough workers and we have a capitalist model

People had larger families in the distant past, but the recent falls in birth rates are due to increasing numbers of childless adults. “Unplanned childlessness” as Stephen Shaw has called it. Most women still want children but for complex reasons many more are not achieving their desired family.

Yes it’s a good thing as it will help reduce our economy, encourage us all to live simpler lives, and mean that the state pension becomes unviable in future decades which will encourage us to become more creative in how we survive

We need sufficient children to support an ageing population. In our friendship group of 8 couples only one has gone on to have a 2nd child. This is largely due to costs

No, it will never even out unless the birth rate goes back to 2.1. There will always be relatively more old people as there will be fewer and fewer babies in each generation . It is population collapse.

Until humans go extinct. The last South Korean is predicted to die in 2750. The rest of the world won’t be far behind.

unless we do something to get the birth rate back up to replacement.

It really won't "even out if the birth rate stays low". You need to look at the maths.

We've just finished riding the ripples of the births of the 1960s and 70s when the baby boomers were having more than two children each, leading to population momentum as those girls grew up and had babies of their own.

From now on, the number of births just gets lower each year. As long as the fertility rate is below 2, there will always be fewer people entering the workforce each year than retiring unless you keep raising the pension age.

Of course a declining birth rate is a good thing. Why people continue to bring children into the world knowing the horrific future they're likely to have with the climate crisis and general chaos of humanity, I'll never know.

Precisely

I think having children is a sign of optimism and hope for the future. Human beings are creative and can find a way to solve our problems together .