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Japan's 18-year-olds at record-low 1.06 million on falling births (www.japantimes.co.jp)

submitted 8 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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[-] Graphy@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Is less people really such a bad thing? We’re at a point where everyone’s already complaining about housing and climate change.

We can blame the 1% and we can say the elderly will suffer but something’s gotta give. I feel we’re all buying into a pyramid scheme.

[-] ahnesampo@sopuli.xyz 37 points 8 months ago

It’s not fewer people that’s the problem, but fewer people too fast. A society needs labor to provide the goods and services people need. If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable. (The Boomers had the opposite: they had a smaller older generation and didn’t have many children, so during their prime years the working age population was much larger than dependants on both ends of the age pyramid. That’s part of the reason why they were so prosperous.)

Going by total fertility rate (children per woman):

2.1 is enough for replacement. No problems.
1.8 means every generation is 10 % smaller than the previous. We can deal with that.
1.5 means every generation is 25 % smaller than the previous. This starts to cause problems.
1.0 means generation size halves every generation. This is not sustainable.
0.8 RIP South Korea

[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable.

Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly. So having less children frees up more resources to care for the elderly. Into the next generation there are now less people which require even less resources which means you need fewer workers to produce those resources.

History provides evidence for this. After every major war there were economic booms. This is despite wars killing off the able bodied workers leaving only the sick and elderly.

The only people who suffer from a lower population are the ownership class. They live by skimming a little of the productivity off of every worker.

[-] droog_the_droog@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly.

Source on this? Doesn't sound right at all. According to my findings after a quick search, LTC (long-term care) takes a significantly higher fraction of OECD countries GDP than e.g. childcare+early education.

https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF3_1_Public_spending_on_childcare_and_early_education.pdf

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/cb584fa2-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/cb584fa2-en

[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

I'll dig up more sources but you compared public spending on childcare (which is minimal in the US) to private long term care costs.

The average cost to raise a child to age 18 is $310,000.

https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-to-save-for-college-4782579

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 6 points 8 months ago

The average cost to raise a child to age 18 is $310,000.

How many days of intensive care is that? The resources we spend trying to keep dying elderly people around just a little bit longer are insane.

[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

How many days of intensive care is that?

End of life care averages $80,000

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00176-4/fulltext

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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024

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