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Ask HN: Is anyone working on problems surrounding population decline?

3 points by kredd ↗ HN
A bit of a generic question to ask, but it has been in my mind for the past few months because of different reasons.

I understand that there's a chance we might reverse the current trend of the population decline and figure out a way out of it. However, to my understanding, in 20-30 years things might not be pleasant for aging generation especially if we don't have enough younger people - both economically and socially.

My question is, other than some countries making policy decisions (increased immigration, trying to reverse the trends and etc.), is there anyone working on solutions? The vague questions I have - how would a nation with mostly elder population maintain the infrastructure, deal with increased need for palliative care, coverage of labour intensive jobs?

Google-ing around only results in very generic responses from policy side, usual discussions of how we have this problem and some company X working on robots for elderly.

10 comments

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billconan
In China, there's a saying that roughly translates to "raise kids so that when you get older, you can have someone taking care of you." However, I find this to be an unethical reason for having children.

As someone who doesn't currently have children and is uncertain about having them in the future, I've been pondering this issue.

I'm thinking that there should be an establishment of a non-profit where individuals could join during their early retirement years, typically in their 50s or 60s, when they still possess the capability to care for those older than themselves. This would be done under the supervision of professional caregivers.

The time they contribute would be documented as a form of currency. This way, when these individuals reach their 80s, they could use this accumulated "time" to receive care and support in return.

kredd
That sounds like an idea, but you still need more people "younger than yourself" to help you out, no?

But I agree about "having kids so they can take care of you" being a very selfish reason to have kids. Due to multiple reasons, I am not currently planning to have kids, so I guess in some way I am contributing to the problem. However an argument can be made, if I think this will be a problem down the route, why would I make my kids suffer through it? Some sort of inverse "tragedy of commons" problem that I have a problem with.

t-3
> The vague questions I have - how would a nation with mostly elder population maintain the infrastructure, deal with increased need for palliative care, coverage of labour intensive jobs?

It would work just like now; old people keep working until they die and younger people can't get jobs because old people are taking all the work. The infrastructure doesn't get maintained, just like now, the palliative care is given only to the rich, just like now, hard labor is done with tools, just like now.

kredd
I would say that's not really how things work nowadays in developed countries? Hard labour physically cannot be done by older people, caregivers cannot be the ones who also be other elder people, and infrastructure maintenance somewhat happens. I guess everything depends on where you live. I might be wrong from the casual observations and reads I've done, happy to be corrected.
t-3
Hard labor barely exists as a job, it's all done with machines. Go to a nursing home, the workers are sub-minimum wage high-school students, illegal immigrants, and... old people. Infrastructure maintenance is all done with machines. Also, not all old people are fragile grandmas who break their hips in a slight breeze, plenty are perfectly capable of doing any kind of work.
beardyw
"The world’s population is expected to increase by nearly 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from the current 8 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050" (UN)

Is there a problem?

kredd
The problem is despite global population increasing, the local population in most of the countries are on the route to decline. The average age in these countries also increasing as well, changing the lifestyle and requirements of the population.

Sure, immigration helps here and there, but I don't think it's going to be a solution in 20 years and more. I could even see the case where countries with younger population start experiencing problems due to emigration, and try to avoid that as well. Speaking of which, birth rates are decreasing in those countries as well, as they develop and have better prospects for their own children.

I hope we can somehow reverse this trend, but so far not a single country was able to achieve this despite growing pains.

tuatoru
To reverse below-replacement fertility one must first understand what its causes are. Governments (and most others) have mostly skipped this step and/or choose to live with major causes for human freedom reasons and for political stability reasons.

The primary cause is wasting women's time. Statistically speaking, biological fertility declines secularly from menarche to menopause--roughly 15 to 45 years of age. We discourage women having children below 18 and the risks of bad outcomes for mother and child go up a lot after 40. So realistically there are 22 years in which women can have children. In that time they have to find a good partner and establish a household and enough security to raise the children.

Creeping credentialism is a major problem in developed countries. In the 1960s a career could be started with high-school education; now a degree and preferably a higher degree is required. These take four to ten years out of that 22 year window.

Following the credential, time is required to establish an income stream and some savings for household formation: a career. This takes longer than it did in the 1960s when manufacturing jobs were "good jobs".

Establishing a household takes longer than it did in the past too. Having got education, people are choosier about where to live and where they want to school their future children. So that can take another five years before they start having children.

With credential, career, and housing, you only have 7 to 12 years left. In that time, mathematically you are overwhelmingly likely to have fewer children than if you started with 22 years available. And these 7 to 12 years are those with lowest fertility and highest risk of complications.

(Women have been sold egg-freezing and such as workarounds; the reality is that these don't have good chances of success and are very expensive besides.)

Both credentialism and housing/schooling are zero-sum Red Queen races, but they are very deeply embedded and will be very difficult to uproot and replace. To reverse fertility decline we need to arrange things so that women can have children young and start their careers later without feeling penalized--especially compared to women who choose not to have children. There is your problem, I guess.

kredd
I totally get this, but my question was not about trying to reverse the trend, but how are we preparing to handle it if we fail to reverse it. Since no country has been able to reverse it so far, it doesn’t give me much hope that we can get there, and I think we should prepare for the worst.
tuatoru
Oh, sorry, I should have read your question more thoroughly.

Like everyone else I haven't given as much thought to "how to cope" as to "what's going on and why"?

Increased immigration is not really a solution because immigrant fertility falls to match native in two or three generations (or your culture and institutions change to match the source countries'). Sustained mass immigration from relatively high fertility countries means that by 2140 your population will be majority of African descent. 2100 - 2200 will be the African century.

My guess is that overall the situation (permanently declining population) will be handled with hand-wringing and token gestures, or silence. It seems like an "outside context problem" for capitalism.