The Wrongologist

The Daily Escape:

Avila Beach, CA – March 2024 photo by Slocoastpix

Wrongo’s back! What did he miss? Nothing? Let’s take a look at global demographics. You’re saying, what, no discussion of Trump’s latest falsehood, or about Biden’s age? Nope, not today.

The facts are that the nation (and the world) need on average, a total fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman to maintain its population at any given level. This is called the replacement rate. The additional .1 accounts for children who die before they reach reproductive age, or who never reproduce.

Live Science reports:

“Population growth could grind to a halt by 2050, before decreasing to as little as 6 billion humans on Earth in 2100, a new analysis of birth trends has revealed. The study…predicts that if current trends continue, the world’s population, which is currently 7.96 billion, will peak at 8.6 billion in the middle of the century before declining by nearly 2 billion before the century’s end. “

In 1970 the world’s total fertility rate was well above 5 live births per woman; now, it’s about 2.3 and is continuing to fall. Africa’s total fertility rate is 4.1, down nearly half that in the mid-20th century, while Asia and Latin America both have fertility rates of 2.0. North America (including Mexico) is at 1.8, and Europe is down to 1.6 live births per woman.

India, the world’s most populous nation, is at 2.0; China, second most populous, is at a stunningly low 1.1 despite efforts by its government to encourage births. Last year, China reported that its population was 2 million people lower than the year before. The US, third most populous, is at 1.7, and Indonesia, fourth, is at 2.1.

Only when you get to the fifth most populous, Pakistan, does the fertility rate sustain population growth (3.3). The sixth, Nigeria, has a fertility rate similar to what the entire world had half a century ago, 5.1. Only six countries on the planet have higher fertility rates than Nigeria does, while 187 have a lower rate.  At the very bottom is South Korea, with a 0.8 fertility rate; if that stays unchanged, it will leave each Korean generation at a little more than a third the size of the generation before it.

Demographers say that sometime in the next two decades, the world will reach its all-time peak human population and begin to see sustained year-over-year contractions.

This will raise serious political issues. First, it means that economic growth will slow in any country experiencing a population decline. Lower growth means incomes will fall. Second, we’re already seeing the effects of illegal mass migration from high-growth/low income countries to the lower growth/high income countries in the developed world. Third, falling populations and better healthcare will make humanity older as a whole and lower the proportion of working-age people, placing an even greater burden on the young to finance health care and pensions.

But this isn’t all bad. Many authors have written about how continued population growth would strain, and if unchecked, ultimately damage the environment and reduce resources required to sustain human life as we know it today. Whenever the dwindling resources discussion takes place, (e.g. America is using up its ground water) or similar, someone says not to worry. They insist that technological progress would soon eliminate our reliance on oil, water (or oxygen). That an even cheaper and more abundant resource will be found to replace the ones we’re wasting. But there isn’t much evidence for that viewpoint.

Think about the equation: In most years the economy grows. Why does the economy grow?  Ultimately, because population increases. With every passing year, there are more people joining the workforce, buying assets, making investments, and purchasing goods and services. Population growth is the engine behind economic growth. The smaller the population, the smaller the economy.

To see this more clearly, imagine that a population contraction was happening in the US. There are fewer people who need to buy or rent a home this year than last year; there are fewer people shopping at the neighborhood stores, or working at the shops and factories, and so on. From Nature Magazine:

“Using population projections, we found that, by 2100, close to half of the nearly 30,000 cities in the United States will face some sort of population decline, representing 12–23% of the population of these 30,000 cities…”

What happens to housing prices, rents, business profits, local tax revenues, in that scenario? They go down. And if it weren’t for immigration, western Europe, the US, and other countries would fall into population contraction. And the entire structure of business, power and wealth that depends on economic growth would slowly come apart.

The most potent issue is that birth rates are falling in some countries that until now have produced most of the immigrants. Mexico’s fertility rate right now is around 2.0 per woman, below replacement level. As a result, these days, Mexico sends fewer migrants to the US. Most are migrants that are passing through Mexico from countries that still have a population surplus.

These consequences are already being felt in some countries. And when the world transitions from an economy based on growth to a new economy based on contraction, expect to see rapid political change.

From Scientific American:

“We’re at a crossroads—and we decide what happens next. We can maintain the economic status quo and continue to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet. Or we can heed the warning signs of a planet pushed to its limits, put the brakes on environmental catastrophe, and choose a different way to define prosperity that’s grounded in equity and a thriving natural world.”

The Right-wing nativist movement in the US rallies around an anti-immigration platform. At the same time, they attack women’s reproductive rights. But we’re not going to reproduce our way out of the coming depopulation trend.

The canary in the coal mine is birth rates.

We’re entering an unfamiliar world, one that Wrongo certainly won’t be around long enough to see. But since demographics is destiny, we can be pretty sure depopulation is in our future.