Quote: (02-03-2013 07:11 PM)speakeasy Wrote:
Is a declining fertility rate for the world a bad thing? We went from our first billion to 7 billion in the span of 100 years. I'm frankly happy to see a stop to Malthusian population growth. Fewer people to compete with for oil, food, water, arable land, clean air and jobs.
It isn't a bad thing...to a point.
Sub-replacement fertility causes problems in the longterm. I'll be explaining this to Lemmo in a bit.
Quote: (02-03-2013 06:49 PM)Lemmo Wrote:
People have been ringing this alarmist bell for at least a decade. Population aging and decline is only a problem if you allow immigration since it will lead to the native population being overwhelmed. Japan is an extreme case and even it hasn't yet felt significant economic effects as a result of population aging and decline.
Yet.
The problems that are inherent to japan's current demographic situation have been gone over a million times by economists and political commentators alike. Everyone who is anyone in Japan, from finance ministers to the Emperor himself, has acknowledged the seriousness of the issue. The same has been done in Korea, Singapore, and gradually some of that thinking is coming to China as well. Russia and other European nations with similar fertility issues have also acknowledged the issue, and have been spending to deal with it.
Japan's chickens are going to come home to roost. Some might argue that they're already beginning to do so, but the notion that this might not happen is wishful thinking at best.
This is not a problem that societies are going to be able to run away from. The notion that allowing less immigration could allow an escape from the consequences of low fertility is even more faulty-Japan's lack of immigrants might actually create an even bigger fall later on by exacerbating the consequences of the demographic decline and the aging workforce.
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The effects of immigration on the West have been far more devastating.
I don't agree, Japan is in a much more precarious position than the majority of Western nations, the USA included. Those few western nations that manage to keep their fertility at or above replacement level are going to be in a much stronger position later this century than those who fail to do so.
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I agree it may be a problem for a country if its birth rate falls off a cliff, but I haven't seen anything to lead me to believe a birth rate of 1.8+ and gradual population decline isn't a good thing.
Sub-replacement fertility is never a good thing in the long term. The goal should be to maintain a fertility rate that ensures sustainable growth-2.0 to 2.5, approximately. High enough to stave off population decline and keep a steady number of productive, working age citizens, low enough to avoid the issues tied to rampant growth.
Population decline will cause serious long term problems unless that society is able to draw on masses of migrants to make up the short fall, and even then problems remain serious.
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China's one child policy and soon-to-be declining population has probably had more positive effects than any government policy of the last 50 years (where are the environmentalists applauding hundreds of million fewer Chinese?).
You're alluding to the
Demographic Dividend.
To summarize this, nations benefit from sudden declines in fertility in the short term because these declines reduce the dependency ratio-the number of dependents (children in this case) goes down relative to the number of productive, working age citizens. This is good at first, because suddenly you're left with masses of working age people (product of the last high fertility generation) who have fewer dependents. They can be highly productive and spend more as a result.
This is great...for a while. The problem is that eventually these people age, and leave the working age demographic. Their productivity declines, and now they themselves become dependents. The fact that they had few kids now begins to work against them, as there are not enough working age citizens to pick up the slack and maintain the productivity they once had.
The dependency ratio climbs back up again, and the nation is right back where it started (read: not a great place). Productivity declines, economic growth stalls, and other issues (ex high social welfare expenditures, low tax revenues, etc) creep up.
This is where China is going. China was able to take advantage of the demographic dividend for the past 40/50 years. That dividend is about to run out, and it will do so before China is able to catch the west's level of economic prosperity. The same will happen to Brazil and other nations that have seen fertility declines and are beginning to take advantage of the demographic dividend.
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And of course this article comes from the WSJ, which is as bad as any liberal publication when it comes to advocating a society based on endless immigration and population growth.
Hate them or love them, they're not wrong to point out the importance of growth and immigration to the sustainability to our societies.
There is a reason why so many low-fertility western nations are courting immigrants and allowing hundreds of thousands of them through the door annually.
They aren't doing it because they love diversity and want to build glorious rainbow nations. They're doing it because they understand the fact that sub-replacement fertility will bite them very badly, and they want to mitigate its consequences as best they can.
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If the south Asian and African countries get their birth rate down below 2, especially if south asian birth rates falls off a cliff like in east Asia, we could be looking at a new golden age.
...for about 50 years, maybe.
Our grand children would have some very serious problems once the demographic dividend from that decline wares off and those nations are left with massive dependency ratios and old, unproductive populations.
Either way, I doubt this will happen. I expect declines in Asian and African fertility, but I don't expect them to reach East Asian levels. Their culture and lack of money will prevent this, and declines that take place will eventually stall as they have in places like Pakistan.
This disparity in fertility rates will create other problems, and I haven't even mentioned the potential for Idiocracy to come true.