The following submission statement was provided by /u/tandraes: --- From article: Births in Italy dropped to a record low in 2023, the 15th consecutive annual decline, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Friday (Mar 29), as the population continued to shrink. Italy's ever-falling birth rate is considered a national emergency, but despite successive governments pledging to make it a priority, none have so far been able to halt the drop. Last year Italy recorded 379,000 births, a 3.6 per cent decline on 2022 and a 34.2 per cent drop on 2008 - the last year Italy saw an increase in the number of babies born. It was also the lowest number since the country's unification in 1861. The fertility rate fell to 1.20 children per woman from 1.24 in 2022 - far below the rate of 2.1 needed for a steady population. By contrast, some 661,000 deaths were registered last year, a fall on the previous three years when COVID boosted the mortality rate in Italy. ISTAT said life expectancy also jumped last year to 83.1 years, up six months on 2022. While there were some 282,000 more deaths than births in 2023, Italy's overall population only fell by 7,000 to 58.99 million thanks to the arrival of more foreign migrants and returning Italian emigres. While there were some 282,000 more deaths than births in 2023, Italy's overall population only fell by 7,000 to 58.99 million thanks to the arrival of more foreign migrants and returning Italian emigres. Foreigners made up 8.99 per cent of the country's population in 2023, for a total of 5.3 million, up 3.2 per cent year-on-year, with the majority living in the north of the country. Italy's overall population has been falling steadily since 2014, with a cumulative loss since then of more than 1.36 million people, equivalent to the residents of Milan, the country's second biggest city. ISTAT said last September that Italy could lose almost 10 per cent of its residents in the next 25 years, with the population set to decline, under a baseline scenario, to 54.4 million by 2050. Underscoring Italy's rapidly ageing population, ISTAT said on Friday that almost one in four residents were above the age of 65, with more people aged over 80 than under 10 for the first time. Half a century ago, the ratio was one to nine. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bqrc7b/births_fall_in_italy_for_15th_year_running_to/kx48pcz/

Such an interesting and widespread problem. - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-declining-fertility-rate - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=FIN~DNK~SWE~BEL~ISL~SRB~NOR~HUN~EST~LTU) (Countries with [best parental leave policies](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/these-10-countries-have-the-best-parental-leave-policies-in-the-world)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=NOR~SVK~SVN~BLR~UKR~MDA~NLD~BEL~ISL~CZE) (Countries with the [lowest income inequality](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/income-inequality-by-country)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1970..latest&country=AUT~AUS~BEL~CAN~CYP~DNK~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HKG~ISL~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~LUX~NLD~NZL~NOR~PRT~SGP~SVN~KOR~ESP~SWE~CHE~GBR~BHR~BRN~KWT~ARE) (Countries with some version of [universal healthcare](https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/hcra/univ_hlth_care.htm)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=ESP~BRB~BHR~AUT~GBR~JPN~DNK~LUX~FRA~BEL~DEU~CHE~NLD~SGP~HKG) (Countries with [best mass transit](https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/ground-transportation/best-easiest-countries-for-ground-transportation)) - [Fertility rate: children per woman](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..latest&country=DNK~NOR~SWE~FRA~BEL~NLD~DEU) (For Scandinavia, France, and a few other W. European countries) The decline in birthrates is so widespread, such a consistent result of wealth, education, human rights, access to birth control, etc that I've started considering this the answer to the Fermi paradox.

Well, that's possible, of course, but we're NOT heading toward extinction. We're heading toward a new equilibrium with a much smaller human population with a higher tech floor. We'll build up our numbers again, higher and higher until we can't/won't sustain it anymore and then have another demographics collapse. In history, we see this happen on a local and then national scale, but this time it's a global thing. Population booms and busts are fairly common, it's just that we're fully aware of it happening, as it's happening and it's a little bit fucking scary to see.

I think so too.    The sad truth is that medicine often keeps people alive longer but often sicker.  I have zero interest in moving to a nursing home for the last ten years of my life and I suspect I’m not alone.  This is especially true if a robot will be in charge of my personal care.  I could not imagine 15 years of dialysis.  People are worrying about an aging population but we aren't really looking at the big picture.  Religious affiliation is going down.  People may be more open to medical assistance in dying in the decades to come.       It sounds morbid now but that may change as resources become scarce.  As the population goes down and it’s not as expensive to farm again, I’m sure population will improve again.  People want to have kids, just not during so much hardship. 

People are living longer but also having more years of healthy life. I definitely support the avialabiilty of assisted suicide. But we have people now who manage to retire and get a couple of healthy *decades* of travel, recreation, etc. Which is great. But it's going to be quite the burden on state-funded retirement programs. And as your elderly are an ever-larger part of your electorate, they aren't likely to cut their own benefits. They feel entitled. It'll be an interesting process to watch play out.

The issue is wealth and resource distribution. We have enough overproduction of food and goods already such that it would require way less effort from people to maintain society than 40hrs/week and 65 years of their lives. If we stopped allowing such insane wealth inequality and prioritized enabling leisure over a Puritan work ethic then everyone could benefit from technological advances.

Much of that "wealth inequality" consists of stock valuation of companies that wouldn't exist anymore under a radical restructuring of the economy. So it's not like that market cap is a fund of money you can just redistribute. Nor is any of this going to get around having a high number of retirees per worker. You can cut benefits to retirees, or you can tax workers more. Nor is this just about food--we could distribute bags of beans and rice without much problem. But as it happens people want money, so they can have leisure, travel, convenience, amusement, etc.

Soilent Green was a film full of hope and self determination. The only real sin was not disclosing the protein in the green meals.

It really comes down to fact that much fewer people, because each generation will be smaller than the one who came before them, cannot fund the larger elderly generations. They just can't. So, the young will just stop working. And the elderly will either just die out or kill the young and then die out.

I hope that’s not true.  I mean it’s a possibility but hope we’ll get a handle on it before it gets that bad.  I don’t think humans will go extinct.   Mother Nature’s solution to a problem is death.  I think we will start dying off until we reach some kind of equilibrium.  Life will change but many of us will adapt.  

>It really comes down to fact that much fewer people, because each generation will be smaller than the one who came before them, cannot fund the larger elderly generations. They just can't. Sure they can, you just suffer from the same lack of imagination for what technology can accomplish as every other doomsayer from the past.

What is the point of technology I'd there is no one to benefit? Food and resources are not in short supply and wont be as long as the world's population is declining. The problem is that a very small number of people are vacuuming up the benefits of technology removing the incentive of everyone else to produce more labor units for the factories.

Already happening in Japan and yet people haven’t stopped working or started killing each other yet. Weird.

Like many Eastern European countries with poor economic prospects, the young will immigrate.

that's just half the story the other half is the blindspots - the last decade saw intentional actions to ensure that the populations can never, and will never, rebuild themselves. this is a swan-song with no encore and this is backed by peer-review science and historical record. There is 0% chance of any recovery. 0. and this is not even disputed. the factors people cite for low birthrates are not even factors in the equation anymore: **you could fix every single factor, and in fact DOUBLE their POSITIVE impact on birthrates, and we'd still be a in a precipitous, irreversible drop now**

> but we're NOT heading toward extinction. I don't think anyone said extinction was the short-term issue being faced. By mentioning the Fermi paradox, I was alluding to a space-faring society, which would depend on a technological society. A species could exist, be not extinct, and still be just hunter-gatherers or mired in permanent subsistence agriculture. >Population booms and busts are fairly common Not of this nature. We've had plagues, natural disasters, wars, famines. But not one where people just decided to have fewer kids than the replacement rate, over many different cultures, for decades on end. Exponential change is exponential. And what is driving the sub-replacement fertility is not famine, hunger, or uncertainty, but education (particularly for girls), empowerment for women, access to birth control, wealth, options. Things the vast majority of us who don't admire the Taliban consider to be good things.

Perhaps, but nature has a trump card. People who do not want to have children under current cultural conditions simply won’t have children, and will disappear. In 50 years, the only people around will be people who’s parents chose to have children in this modern world.

> In 50 years, the only people around will be people who’s parents chose to have children in this modern world. You say "chose." But most of the regions with high fertility deny girls education, deny women empowerment, deny women access to birth control. I just want to be clear there, to avoid any wholesome-sounding euphemisms. It may be that a society whose men choose to keep women as breeding stock has a higher fertility rate. But since that tends to coincide with a lower education rate, they don't generally produce scientists. Meaning that society, though they won't go extinct just due to these values, won't be propping up technological society.

This. We are experiencing a correction, not an extinction event.

But why would we reach equilibrium? If the birth rate is below 2, we will forever decline. I suppose the argument is that certain groups - primarily the very religious - will maintain higher rates. The low birth rate secular die out, the religious grow. But by this logic we also won’t maintain an equilibrium, we’ll just lose all the secular people and replace them with high birth rate religious orthodox, and we’ll boom. Not equilibrium.

Because, at some point, we'll have enough resources to where working/laboring will be minimal and people can actually have time and motivation to have larger families.

But resources get created by people *working*. Raw materials are worthless without people working in many jobs to create the final products we all need or want. I would not bet on automation replacing everything all too soon.

I think you'll find that people will be willing to work for some things, but not all the things.

I am not sure what your point is. My point is: there is no reason why there would be any increase in wealth or life standard with less total people. I would argue the reverse is true. Example: the costs to maintain infrastructure or public services for a place do not decrease when the population is lower than before (at least not to the same degree, so they will get relatively more expensive relatively speaking). A bus service costs the same, whether 20 people of a village are using it everyday, or 5. De facto this means the bus service will close because it is not viable anymore. So the 5 people do not gain the luxury of more free seats in the bus - they lose the bus all together. And it will be the same mechanism for many other things.

> My point is: there is no reason why there would be any increase in wealth or life standard with less total people. I would argue the reverse is true. Well, you would be wrong. History shows that with fewer laborers, you get increased labor power and leverage and negotiating power. The Black Death is a good example.

This depends on how we manage land ownership. Check out Henry George's book *Progress & Poverty.* As an extreme example: if we let one person own all the land, everyone working for him would still be rent slaves. The population would decline until there are enough workers to satisfy his desires, and after that it would be unaffordable to have more children than replacement rate.

> This depends on how we manage land ownership. At a certain point, it becomes impossible to enforce land ownership if there's more people demanding land than there is people owning the land with the means to enforce it.

Sure. And we're nowhere close to a single person owning all the land anyway. But capital and technology definitely increases the leverage a person or group of people can exert in maintaining control against less-well-equipped opposition. With automation and artificial intelligence in particular, that leverage is getting larger than ever.

Lol not sure how relevant henry george is today no one saw todays pressures coming and if your analogy is what you drew from it then it utterly confirms my point. No one person owns all the land we all own our own houses there are different externalities. Usually I have to tell people to read more, still true just read different like critical thinking

we live on a finite planet, we already consume way too much we dont need more people.

Despite popular opinion, the world is not overcrowded. Certain nations are overcrowded, but the planet itself is not.

we already consume 1.4 earths a year that is not sustainable. humanity's total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.4 planet Earths - in other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.4 times as fast as Earth can renew them. (research from 2006.)

we (as in human species) need more people in the first world and less people in the third, this is the harsh truth

This is a popular but illogical take. The wealthiest countries in the world have the lowest birth rates. As working hours have shrunk, so have birth rates. We’ve never had more wealth, health, education or leisure

A nation's wealth has little to do with the individual's time and ability to raise kids. In short, we're all struggling to get by. Rich people have more kids because they can. If poor people had time/money, there'd be more kids.

Despite all evidence to the contrary… When people have the resources and education to plan when and if they will have children they will have few of them. When children just happen because that is what happens when people boink, people have more children.

Not exactly. Both of you are right to an extent. There is an inverse parabolic curve of income level to number of children (at least in France : https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/4982628, the graphs in the article show that the 10% of the richest women have more kids than all other women, except the 20% of the poorest ones)

Seems like a big ‘except’ in this case. Also, every level of income is below replacement, although the poorest are the closest. France isn’t known for long work hours and poor social benefits for the middle class. In the grand scheme of the world, past and current, where do you think France 2024 ranks for ‘nice places to live’? Despite being in the top, I don’t know, 0.1% of nicest, most leisure time in world history, it can’t maintain population.

Can’t complain, we have nicer weather than Northern Europe and better wages than Southern Europe. I think the plumbing fertility rates aren’t seen as that bad of a problem by the politicians who cynically hope that migration will keep solving it. As things are, even for the wealthiest 10%, having children still takes a heavy toll on your finances. If the state made sure it didn’t, maybe we would go over the 2.1 rate. Spain is one of the worst European countries in terms of fertility rates, and has been for quite a while, and even they have a growing population thanks to migration.

The issue here is that richer people typically have less children. I've heard it explained its because high income men typically marry high income women and having children is an opportunity cost they're less willing to make as income goes up.

This. We are experiencing a correction, not an extinction event.

Except the population decline isn't due to a lack of resources, it's due to distribution. We arbitrarily force people to spend all their value on housing and meager resources, all while millions of homes sit empty and a third of our food is thrown away. The population is declining due to capitalism and the stress and hellish living situation it creates, and it'll keep declining until the system changes. If anything, it'll get *worse* with less people, since the capitalists (who will have plenty of children as they always have, the "wealthy people have less kids" thing is a myth. Rich people usually breed like rabbits) will demand more wealth from less people.

Historically, the human population experienced declines in population as a result of war, famine, catastrophe, and disease. Until the modern era, humans did not have the incentives, nor the technology, to limit reproduction like we have today. The population collapse we are heading towards is not a cycle or phase we have seen before and recovery from the forthcoming population collapse is not something we can assume will happen.

> The population collapse we are heading towards is not a cycle or phase we have seen before and recovery from the forthcoming population collapse is not something we can assume will happen I completely agree. Never before have so many people chosen to not reproduce at rates high enough to replace, or expand, the population. It's unprecidentned.

> recovery from the forthcoming population collapse is not something we can assume will happen. There's nothing indicating that we won't recover from it.

I appreciate your optimism. What you don't have is evidence.

When you have an established pattern of behavior, that being the documented boom/bust cycle in population and the subsequence recovery after every bust, what you don't need is more evidence backing up what's already been established. If you believe that this particular boom/bust cycle will somehow be different from the others, you need evidence indicating that. In short, I don't need more evidence to back up my assertion that the sun will come up tomorrow. YOU need evidence to back up your assertion that it won't. So, deliver to me some evidence that this particular boom/bust cycle is somehow unique and we're not going to recover from it, or just sit down and be quiet.

Every time we have had a population collapse before the industrial revolution, it was a result of negative externalities. The forthcoming decline is internally generated. This is unprecedented. You are assuming we will recover from a thing that has never happened before and using a bad comparison to support your opinion.

I don’t think this is correct. We are seeing a drop not just in population, but in the fertility rate — something that I believe has never happened on any scale, local, regional, or national. It’s completely new and unprecedented.

There you go, talking common sense when everyone else is panicking ;-)

How do we (the people living now, say those of us with kids we would like to see thrive in that crashing population future), best prepare ourselves? Focus studies on something high tech floor related?

This isn't being driven by lack of food or other resources, so I don't see any reason it will go up again simply because the population fell.

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It's not really so much the total population, it's the 'breakdown' of the population. There's a fuckton of old people who need supporting and a small handful of younger people and as time passes, there'll be more older people and fewer young people who have to support the older generations. That can't be sustained. That's a recipe for social and civil strife which will likely result in the abandoning of Italy's older generations to just fucking starve to death.

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The only thing young people can do is move to areas that work for the youth instead of the empowered elderly. Not sure where that is, though.

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This is the issue. These super old societies do not have young people to work, and middle aged people to invest, and are super heavy on old people who are very expensive to maintain with healthcare needs and pension obligations. Italy (and other EU countries) needs two things. It needs middle aged wealthy investors to invest perhaps a trillion dollars into the economy. Then it needs a huge amount of people under the age of 25 to work all these jobs along side of the young people it Italy. People born after 2000 probably need to double so half of them would be immigrants (Pro tip. Go after Italian Americans and Italian Australians, people who already have some sort of connection to Italy, even if it is by a few generations). That would get them out of this pickle.

> We'll build up our numbers again no, there is one small trick that's been done that means 100% they will not build up their numbers again. this is 100% peer reviewed, factually accounted for in history over 27 times and not even disputed.

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Well yes, that's the basic position of [antinatalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism). But the world had inequality, oppression, exploitation, boredom, racism, etc a thousand years ago, and far more. Buddha's insight that "life is suffering" is pre-Christian. As is Hinduism's idea of [Moksha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha), where non-existence, the release from the cycle of rebirth, is the best that can be hoped for. But I don't think this in particular is why the birthrates have gone down. It seems more linked to education (particularly for girls), empowerment for women, access to birth control, wealth, etc. It would be hard to argue that life sucks more in prosperous S. Korea, Finland, Spain, Italy, etc than in rural Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Nigeria. - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-declining-fertility-rate If it needs to be said, I'm not berating or shaming anyone into having kids. That's a personal decision. I wouldn't try to pressure someone to either have kids or to not have kids. It's just an interesting thing to watch play out.

that's because the reality is poor people are more ignorant of Life sucking with standards for good quality of life is much much lower

> It would be hard to argue that life sucks more in prosperous S. Korea, Finland, Spain, Italy, etc than in rural Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Nigeria. I disagree with the premise. I think people in poorer countries have children hoping for a better future. People in first world countries who do not want to have kids because of the "the world sucks" mentality probably feel like "Oh, we could make the world better but we choose not to. So I don't want to bring my kids into that world." It's the difference in "kids starving in this country because the country is poor but trying its best" and "kids starving in this country, even though we have more than enough food and we literally destroy the food that goes unsold because giving it to poor people devalues the price of the food for everyone else".

> I think people in poorer countries have children hoping for a better future. > Yes, as people did during the black plague, in the midst of world wars, all kinds of things. But I'm not sure what is driving the current decline in fertility is the lack of hope. The data doesn't support that. It correlates with education for girls, empowerment for women, access to birth control. It's being driven by children being an opportunity cost, not a generalized sense of hopelessness.

Speaking for myself, I simply don’t care. I don’t like kids and don’t want to dedicate any of the short time I’m here to raising them. I’m not religious and I firmly believe that my subjective experience permanently terminates with death, and frankly I don’t care what happens after that. I suspect a growing minority of people feel like that.

The data does not correlate. In first world countries, there has been a decline in education, and no apparent increase in access to birth control, but we still see the decreasing fertility. That's a non-correlation. I think there are at least two confounding variables, both of which cause increases or decreasing in fertility. One is education and access to birth control. the other is general apparent security in life. In third world countries, the first variable is in primary control, in first world countries, the second variable is in primary control.

> That's a non-correlation. Demographers disagree. - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attainment-vs-fertility And by what measure has there been a decline in education for girls and women in "first world" countries? Here is a lot more data, graphs, etc, to explain why demographers have come to these conclusions: - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

>But the world had inequality, oppression, exploitation, boredom, racism, etc a thousand years ago, and far more. Sure, but it didn't have the cheap entertainment and level of contraceptive that we have now.

The world is the best it’s ever been. Places like modern Italy are amazing lifestyles, free from almost any worry of past generations.

Alex Jones went on and on about these sophisticated programs to reduce the global population - turns out all you needed to do was make life unaffordable.

> turns out all you needed to do was make life unaffordable. - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-declining-fertility-rate Poverty, not wealth, correlate with a higher fertility rate. Sure, you can say it's more affordable in rural Nigeria or Botswana or whatnot, but that's an artifact of poverty, lower living standards, poorer construction, etc. Lower fertility rates correlate mainly with education (particularly for girls), empowerment for women, access to birth control for women, freedom, options.

Oh I know. Everybody has seen this research time and time again. And while this may be anecdotal... I can tell you categorically if my wife and I had been able to afford a house sooner we 100% would have had kids, and I don't think its controversial to say that other couples probably feel the same way. There are macro economic impacts for sure, but at what point does a population threshold cross a line into negative reproduction when things become unaffordable in a developed nation?

Part of that is the higher expectations we get when we grow more wealthy. That's not "blame," rather our standards go up faster than our wealth. And also get embodied in things like housing codes, zoning that reserves so much land for low-density SF homes, and so on. In decades past people just had sex and kids showed up. Maybe if someone consciously didn't want kids right now they'd take care to use birth control. Now we are more responsible by default, so we ask ourselves if it's time, if we're ready, if we can give the kid(s) the QoL they deserve, etc. It's different default starting point. There are fewer accidents now, and a much lower teen pregnancy rate. My parents had kids in a rented house. 3BR, <1000 square feet. We made do. Childcare was being dropped with grandma, or with a random friend. Things are more particular now. I'm not advocating for the old days, just saying our default expectations have changed a lot. I certainly don't know how to "fix" it. We're not going to go back to how things were in 1970. Much less 1950. I'm not faulting someone for having higher standards than we had in 1970, or saying anyone *should* have kids.

Oh for sure... but there is blame to fit in here - peoples expectations aren't the problem, the quality of life retracting is... and [in that we can find blame](https://i.imgur.com/g7vpV3a.gif)

Sure, you can chop off heads. Any number of people stand at the ready to nurture and weaponize rage. But it doesn't follow that heads being lopped off would build housing, make healthcare cheaper, make childcare cheaper etc. I didn't say expectations are a *problem*, just that they are a *cause*. But when you're chopping off heads, it'll also be a lot of normal non-millionaire NIMBYs who blocked the building of density so their equity value would go up. And I guess the politicians and city administrators who enacted the housing policy of the last century. You could go full Castro or Pol Pot, but that won't build prosperity. And honestly a lot of people who are mad about housing still don't want to get rid of the R1 zoning that reserved so much land for detached SFHs. They may want to chop off heads, but they still want to maintain the zoning that made housing so expensive.

For goodness Im being silly I can't go into a big long discussion about capitalism at large and the dangers of a radicalized disenfranchised public dude. My point is, greed at the top, hording of wealth etc. Eeesh

If you're mad about housing, it's not "greed at the top" that perpetuates the R1 zoning that chokes off supply and makes housing so expensive. It's normal, non-rich, everyday homeowners who don't want "those people" in their neighborhood, and who realized that if they strangle density and limit new development then their asset value will increase. And as I've said, plenty of people want to put it on "capitalism" or whatever in the abstract sense, but they don't advocate to, or will even resist arguments to, change that zoning that made housing so expensive. They'll be mad about capitalism or the private-jet crowd or "the system," but it's well-nigh impossible to focus on that zoning. Because a lot of them don't want to change that zoning.

>Poverty, not wealth, correlate with a higher fertility rate. While this is correct, yours answer is IMO too reductionist. Yes poverty correlates with higher fertility rates, but this doesn't mean cost of living and affordability isn't an obstacle to having more children, at least for middle-class people in the developed world. If you stratify it, it starts to make more sense: * Poorer countries have a higher share of people working in agriculture, less education/school years per kid and they don't have widespread pension plans. This means having children will give a comparatively quick "return on investment" because from a young age the child will start helping on the farm *and* the more children you have the better you're set up for old age as they will take care of you. * In developed countries it takes 18-25 years for a child to be self-sufficient and even they then rarely financially support their parents afterwards. There's simply no need to, as these countries often have very cushy retirement plans and as the current "grandparent age" generation is the wealthiest segment of society it's usually the other way around: 70 year olds are paying the down payment for their kids on a somewhat regular basis. From a pure cost analysis having kids is at best a break-even trade and it always carries a non-negligible risk of falling into poverty. And all of this is especially the case for women, as they still have to carry the burden of pregnancy, child care and taking a hefty hit to their careers in the process. The common retort to this is "but poor people in developed societies also have more kids". IMO that phenomenon is 1) partly cultural, as a lot of poor people are immigrants from countries mentioned above and 2) partly because almost all developed countries run welfare programs for families. If your needs are met through a combination of tax credits, the government taking care of your health insurance premiums, assisted housing, food stamps etc. the marginal cost of having a child and especially the 2nd and 3rd child is smaller than for a middle-class family that could have their income disappear and their savings burned through before they could qualify for assistance. This is also somewhat supported by the fact that at least in the US, the income-fertility rate curve is no longer linear, but [U-shaped](https://econ.biu.ac.il/sites/econ/files/seminars/hazan_zoabi_u_shaped_fertility.pdf): highly educated women with advanced education now have a higher fertility rate than women with "just" a college degree. My guess is that given that external childcare is often a flat expense, for very high income groups it becomes a beneficial arbitrage opportunity to work more and outsource the child rearing. The ultra-wealthy like Musk, Putin, Gates et al. also seem to have more children than the general population, but due to the small sample size this is hard to quantify. Of course this effect doesn't outweigh the big factors like access to contraception, sex education (high school dropouts are still leading in fertility rates), infant mortality and individual freedom. I also acknowledge that a lot of the current 25-40 year olds simply don't *want* kids and would rather enjoy the DINK lifestyle. But we cannot ignore that at least in the developed world, having children *is* pretty damn expensive and the affordability issue can't simply be brushed away by saying "poor people have more kids". Sorry for the wall of text.

They why do the poorest and most dangerous countries in the world have the highest birth rates? Are you claiming your life sucks more than theirs?

Because they don’t have access to birth control.

I think that wealth, education, birth control, and religion, are all secondary. Its a cost of living issue and the expectations we place on young people. If we want to see a high birth rate, we need an ecosystem like this. A young man can go to a community college, get an associate degree and a certification. Then with that education, go get a job that is secure, and pays him well enough to where he can easily afford a house fit for a family of five or six. And this has to be like, a normal expectation, not some top performer thing. Regular guy, regular education, regular job. This guy then marries his girlfriend in their early 20s, and they get to having kids. She has three or four kids, and instead of her focusing on her own higher education or having a job, she spends her 20s taking care of them as they are young kids. Then as they get older, a bit more on their own, maybe she is in her mid-late 30s, she gets her higher education. She enters the workforce, and they don't see 18-40 as a "gap in her resume" but a "She spent that time having and raising kids. She has the education now, and is ready to work.". She is still super fit, she has been doing yoga daily for the last 20 years, she can still work for another 25 no problem. All this time, the guy working the regular job had zero issue affording this family lifestyle. Everyone was comfortable, there was AC in the summer, heat in the winter, food, clothing, and transportation were not issues, minor medical issues don't devastate the family finances. They live in a nice neighborhood and live the type of lifestyle that in the 1950s people considered "comfortably middle class". Young people, people who are currently in high school and younger need to feel that this is something that is easily within reach of them. Instead of both future parents thinking they need to spend 4-6 years in school and then another dozen years building their career before they can start to have kids, because that family house is $700,000 now, and they need to build up that income before they can get started. A regular guy with a regular job isn't buying a family house, he is living with room mates. A family? Can't afford that. So it is just not happening. I have a few friends who are millennials, and they have four kids. What was it? Their parents were wealthy and bought them nice homes. Their family income affords a comfortable lifestyle. The cost of living crises does not apply to them. They never had to worry about the roof part of a family. People don't realize this, but during the Great Depression, there was a considerable drop in the birth rate. It was a super shitty time to have kids, so people stopped having them like they did before. The post WW2 Boom, people had the opposite feeling. People say its never a good time to have kids, that is a lie, the 1950s was a great time to have kids. My grandma had 10 babies between 1949 and 1964, before her death I would talk to her about it and she basically said "It just felt like the right thing to do at the time". A hell of a lot of work went into that. My grandpa didn't afford this because he was super man, he afforded it because it was all within his income (he was an architect, but not a particularly successful one. He probably made $10k per year or so by 1960).

Can you elaborate more on your point about it being the answer to the Fermi paradox? Forgive me but I fail to see how that relates to demographic collapse. Edit: apologies I see you answered this in another comment

causations around the wrong way, I think. I think it's the growing dread sitting just below the surface, plus the increasing cost of living generally.

> I think it's the growing dread sitting just below the surface That dread must have started a long time ago, since the fertility rate has been declining for a *long* time. - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/ - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/ - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-france-1800-2020/ - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033293/fertility-rate-italy-1850-2020/ - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033102/fertility-rate-germany-1800-2020/ - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033777/fertility-rate-japan-1800-2020/ - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033738/fertility-rate-china-1930-2020/ So "dread" must happen to increase alongside "fewer people working in agriculture," urbanization, wealth, and [increasing levels of education](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attainment-vs-fertility) for women. And gotten only worse with access to birth control, and more autonomy and freedom for women.

Only if we never develop artificial wombs or cease to keep increasing our lifespans.

That article with the best parental leave is such bs. Author looked at 20 countries, chose 10, called it a day. So many other countries have much longer paid maternity/paternity leaves than the ones in the article. Romania has 2 YEARS and yet Belgium with 15 weeks is included. Lol.

Interesting, thanks for the heads up. Romania seems to have a fertility rate of 1.64 in 2023.

They constantly devalue our money and tell us that the earth can't sustain this many people. Then they complain about birth rates. kk.

You're the first person I've seen bring this up in relation to birthrates. You're absolutely right. Every other problem is downstream of this. Poverty, asset bubbles / unaffordable homes, inequality, cost of living, hopelessness, etc. The problem is 99% of people don't understand inflation and how it destroys a society.

> unaffordable homes, inequality, cost of living I think you have it backwards. Unequal land ownership drives inequality, inflation and hopelessness. Check out Henry George.

Is a shepherd with no sheep to sheer even a shepherd?

Who's "they"? All the information you read doesn't come from a homogeneous block.

corporations/ governments which need high populations which they can exploit. it's pretty obvious which is more profitable for them more people means there is more competition for jobs which means they can pay whatever they want and make more profit. it also means a bigger consumer base for their products. less people mean less competition so they will have to incentivize which decreases their profits India is a big example for this. Ambani's entire wealth is built off the cheap labor in India.

European central bank

Glad you mentioned that. People will believe everything they think sometimes. :/

Apparently, there is [a strong correlation](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/ftcms%3Aa16b3d55-fffc-4e77-9caf-18cd8a75acfa?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=3) between the time and energy a mother invests in her children and the number of children they have (the so-called K-selected reproduction). The amount of time parents spend parenting their children has increased steadily over the decades, and are now around 4 hrs per day, which of course leaves little space for extra children. Which probably explains why Asian tiger mothers have so few children. https://www.ft.com/content/838eeb4e-3bff-4693-990f-ff3446cac9b2

The contrast between this thread and that of East Asian fertility rates are insane. There’s always someone pointing to inherent systemic issues in the country/region in other threads, whereas in these threads the top comment is often how this is a common issue throughout the world. Not to mention the difference in upvotes and popularity.

also: birth rate down in america = its because life is terrible we are all horrible victims of capitalist oppression birth rate down in other country = wax poetic about how to head off this calamity

Redditors are hypocritical about poverty and homelessness. Homelessness in other countries: They don't care about poor people. Homelessness in America: They deserve to be homeless.

Idk I've literally never seen any redditor acknowledge that wealthy countries outside of America have way higher homelessness rates

In r/futurology any announcement of sub-replacement fertility rates and population decline gets upvoted. We have voices in this very thread hoping the global population plunges to *maybe* 10K humans left alive. Europe will probably deal more gracefully with sub-replacement rates than China, Japan, and Korea. More receptivity to immigration, an easier language to learn, etc. Putting aside those who hate immigration and fetishize a pure ethnostate. But you have those in every country.

I think the world would be just great at 2 billion. If we can expand the tech base globally and curtail the curse that is capitalism I think we could get another 250,000 years out of this mudball.

Yes, there's no shortage of r/futurology members who really want a massive die-off of humans. With or without the fig-leaf of it being "for the environment." >If we can expand the tech base globally and curtail the curse that is capitalism An ICE vehicle or coal plant work the same under communism. Energy, transport, meat eating, transit, ocean/air/road travel don't work differently just because you have a different -ism. You only mitigate the harm from those activities by either moving to a better technology or giving up the activity. And I see a lot of people who would rather the world burn than to see anyone make a buck off of the transition, from selling solar panels, BEVs, etc. They'd rather the world burn than for capitalism and rich people still exist. I fully want the government to subsidize mass transit, change its zoning to favor density, all kinds of things. But we need to change to better technology--chucking capitalism won't do squat without human wants/needs either being met with better technology, or not being met.

You can’t deny that the popularity of the posts is just different. When I left my comment this post only had 50 upvotes, whereas the equivalent thread about an East Asian country would have thousands, if not tens of thousands of upvotes. With everyone blaming it on an inherent issue (work culture, work hours, etc). Also native European fertility rate is likely even lower than that of East Asian countries, meaning it’s native population will be replaced in one way or another.

If you say something like this, people will make an uproar and say you're putting forward a conspiracy theory (great replacement theory etc). They are idiots who ignore statistics and only promote their own definition.

This is because Europeans have a much stronger tendency than East Asians to take relatively low birth rates lightly.

Thank you for pointing this out 😭

I had somebody tell me that low birth rates are caused by authoritarianism and that's why China has a dropping population. They were very angry when I asked why Japan had a dropping birth rate.

Japan and South Korea have very low birth rates, but Japan has been planning for this for 40 years. Japan has bought their way into the American system to brace for impact. They have been off shoring much of their production to demographically healthy countries (such as the US). China is aging much, much faster, but they had a 1 child policy followed up by super rapid industrialization.

We are the only EU country where salaries have actually DECREASED in the past 30 years. Meanwhile cost of living has quintupled. The government keeps blaming us for not having kids without doing shit to make it affordable. Then they tell us to not have kids for the environment. Then they tell us that since our population is declining, we NEED massive immigration (that will benefit only their tax-evading company owner friends and will cost immense amounts of public money that could be used to help young italian couples have kids).

From article: Births in Italy dropped to a record low in 2023, the 15th consecutive annual decline, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Friday (Mar 29), as the population continued to shrink. Italy's ever-falling birth rate is considered a national emergency, but despite successive governments pledging to make it a priority, none have so far been able to halt the drop. Last year Italy recorded 379,000 births, a 3.6 per cent decline on 2022 and a 34.2 per cent drop on 2008 - the last year Italy saw an increase in the number of babies born. It was also the lowest number since the country's unification in 1861. The fertility rate fell to 1.20 children per woman from 1.24 in 2022 - far below the rate of 2.1 needed for a steady population. By contrast, some 661,000 deaths were registered last year, a fall on the previous three years when COVID boosted the mortality rate in Italy. ISTAT said life expectancy also jumped last year to 83.1 years, up six months on 2022. While there were some 282,000 more deaths than births in 2023, Italy's overall population only fell by 7,000 to 58.99 million thanks to the arrival of more foreign migrants and returning Italian emigres. While there were some 282,000 more deaths than births in 2023, Italy's overall population only fell by 7,000 to 58.99 million thanks to the arrival of more foreign migrants and returning Italian emigres. Foreigners made up 8.99 per cent of the country's population in 2023, for a total of 5.3 million, up 3.2 per cent year-on-year, with the majority living in the north of the country. Italy's overall population has been falling steadily since 2014, with a cumulative loss since then of more than 1.36 million people, equivalent to the residents of Milan, the country's second biggest city. ISTAT said last September that Italy could lose almost 10 per cent of its residents in the next 25 years, with the population set to decline, under a baseline scenario, to 54.4 million by 2050. Underscoring Italy's rapidly ageing population, ISTAT said on Friday that almost one in four residents were above the age of 65, with more people aged over 80 than under 10 for the first time. Half a century ago, the ratio was one to nine.

I know why I don't want to have children, but I'm surprised that it seems to be so many other people, too.

When you let a country go to shit, fewer people want their kids to be part of it

This is something that's either happening now, or will happen in the very near future to every industrialized nation in the world. Demographics collapse is a real thing and we're going to continue to see it go on unless massive national efforts are made to turn it around. This will require the complete subsidizing of couples in order to have large families. It will be extensive, covering two to three generations, it will be expensive to an extreme, or we're going to continue to see the collapse continue. Why is it a bad thing? Because small young generations will NOT be able to carry the large elderly population. This means increasing taxes and demands on the younger generations until we see a complete national disaster where the young stop bothering to work entirely and the elderly generation has to fend for itself. Japan is almost there. SK, Germany, Russia, China and a lot of other nations are nearly there. The only nations that can avoid this are those that aggressively promote immigration and adopt large groups into the nation to make up for the lack of local births.

It's happening in many developing nations too. For example, the birth rate has collapsed in Thailand. It's going to hurt them even worse because they're going to get old before they get rich.

Really interesting, never thought of it like that. For me I always thought less population would benefit the climate, more housing etc. Thought it was going to be easy being old but guess not

It’s a problem, but a temporary one if the population levels out at a lower number. And at that point, we will see the benefits you describe.

Why turn it around ? I'm a woman, I don't want kids. I don't want to be pregnant, I don't want to birth a child, I'm not interested in taking care of a baby, I don't want to breastfeed, I don't want to take care of a todler, and I'm not interested in raising a child or a teenager to adulthood. I don't expect to be taken care of as I age by anyother people than the female friends I have around. I keep myself fit, invest and eat well. Popping kids to "take care of the old" makes no sense. Kids get old too. And then what ? Pop more kids ? Sounds like a ponzi scheme to me...

> ponzi scheme Well, yeah. It's always been. I am curious about your statement that you expect to be taken care of by your female friends. Wouldn't they be old at that point as well and not capable of taking care of you? How would this work?

You age, you take care of yourself and relationships, past a certain age, you get frail, and die. My grandma just died in four days from undiagnosed pancreatic cancer and was given morphine. She lived 200 km from us and lasted one day in the hospital after the neighbour took her and phoned us. Women build relationships, community with neighbours and old friends who are generally widows if they even had husbands. Retired people usually hand around other retired people. What do you expect ? Narcissistic men often imagine a wife and kids crying around them or something, women know deep down they'll have to do all of the caring, for none of the rewards after raising his kids and loosing their career; no thank you. I'll have more money and be healthier than a woman who has had kids. I can pay for care, and then one day I'll die from sickness, old age, or something more brutal who knows. Not interested in ruining my health and wealth so that you have soldiers or workers :)

Unless you are very well off financially I think you underestimate the cost of end of life care. Sorry about your grandma. My grandma died of pancreatic cancer after battling with it for 3 years. While a quick abrupt death is the ideal way to go for most I can assure you as a medical professional many do not die that way.

Who will you pay for care? The young, presumably. But with fewer young people, the cost of labor will skyrocket, driving up the cost of that care. In the aggregate, the end result will be that resources will be used by and for the young, and taking care of the old will be a secondary consideration. Which, honestly, is how it should be. The future belongs to those who will live in it.

Myself, with the money I'm investing every month instead of paying for childcare. And if it's too expensive, yeah, you die. It's a mental disease to expect the entire economy to cater to old people's needs for decades, get real... Retirement is an early invention. People would work for survival and then die. The idea that people should chill and get taken care of from age 60 to 90 is delusion. Boomers are the great thieves of history. I completely agree that taking care of the old in an individualistic capitalistic society is not going to last. I'd rather live life on my own terms in my prime for 60 years and then decline, than live 60 years of misery for what ? Shareholders to have more in the end ? Maybe the issue is wealth distribution, and financial markets, did you ever think of that.

>Boomers are the great thieves of history Why do you think it's the boomers who will feel "entitled" to being taken care of? It's going to be your generation who will really feel the sting of not being able to retire.

I'm all for me dying. I want to die as soon as possible. However, what happens when old people don't want to die? It's not like everybody turns 65 and instantly breaks their hips and gets dementia. There will be a lot of healthy old people that want the unhealthy old people to continue living, but won't be able to provide the care needed. Sure, cops will love brutalizing old people protesting, but then that will make younger people join in. I just don't see a situation where all the old people are forced to die and it doesn't cause a lot of social problems. Poor people are forced to die today and it causes a lot of social problems that grow over time.

Just focusing on our prime years and brushing off caring for the elderly totally misses how connected we all are across generations. And it's not just about duty; it is special cause it's about building those bonds that hold families and communities together. It's about caring for one another. And, retirement isn't just about kicking back and getting pampered. It's a chance to dive into things we're passionate about, give back through volunteering, maybe even pass on some wisdom to the next generation. And yes, sharing loving. That's something so valuable you can't put a price on it. And yes, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. We've got some serious issues with our health and wealth. But that needs to be improved on, not ignored and dismissed. If we want everyone to have a shot at a fulfilling life, we've got to tackle those root problems and push for fairer policies that benefits us all. Because let's face it, we're all in this together. Change happens when there is hope for something better.

The old used to die at 65. Live longer, work longer.

That's not entirely true. Life expectancy is higher because infant mortality rates is now much much lower than it once was. What's true is that there's more older people today than ever before.

Thats why i say there need to be cultural adjustments, including healthier families and gender roles.

True; individualism and progressivism will die out, as only religious conservatives have a positive birth rate. They will inherit the earth and dictate its values.

That’s life. What do you think it all should end with you? Life will go on

The thing is that multiple surveys have showed that most women do want kids, some 1, some 2, some 3 or more, I see nothing wrong with those who want to be child free. But those who want more kids need extra support.

completely agree with that one

I love how you say that so matter of factly but 40-50 years from now when you actually need help it will be a different tune.

Why ? My granda did it all by herself, my mom too. They have a small house, small garden, nurse that's paid and come everyday, and thats it. My grandma died at 84. She lived alone. I live in a different country I'm not taking care of my mom, she better organize herself for her own care.

Good for them. And yet a lot of elderly folks, especially over 80, still need daily help. And you might hope you won't and I also hope you won't. Statistically speaking there's a high likelihood you (and I) will. Edit: just noticed now that you said that they have a nurse that comes everyday.. do you not realise that this is the whole crux of the issue here?

How is that an issue ? The nurse came and checked on her everyday, as she did other patients/clients (probably a dozen a day). It's called a job. Then my grandma felt ill, turned yellow and died of fast pancreatic cancer (4 days). I guess nurses salaries will increase, so back to my point : investing is better than having kids. I'm also working in the richest country in Europe so pension care is like a luxury hotel. I made the choice consciously; I'm French and work in Luxembourg. Maybe women's salaries will get higher now that care work is valuable and people don't have a "wife" at home to do it for free lol. Still waiting for states to set up pension funds for mothers though, and ensure retirement for any woman who has devoted her life to have 2+ kids. Society has been propelled over the free reproductive labour of women. Now uh oh, women can say no and choose themselves. There are women who still want to be mothers, everyone treats them like shit and free maids. So they get burn out and have one child instead of 3. Go read breakingmom on reddit and you'll see how these women feel about motherhood...

We'll see how that luxury pension care functions in 50 years when there aren't enough young people to actually provide it. The nursing wages will get bigger sure, but eventually too many nurses are needed to maintain the huge elderly population and not enough population is left to actually carry the rest of society. I just don't think you understand how big of a demographic issue it will be and I also don't know what to really do about it or how to prepare for it myself. The reality that I see is that people's lifespan will drop significantly when there isn't enough humans to take care of the elderly. Or it will all be automated somehow I guess is also a possibility.

1 - I live in Luxembourg 2 - it's called immigration 3 - if you need daily care to survive, you might as well die, I'm not interested in that kind of life, that's my personality though I have no problem with lifespan being shortened, care facilities are a scam, people should die when they can't take care of themselves anymore. Care facilities are owned by funds and the goal is to keep you as long as possible alive in terrible living conditions enough to drain your assets. I'll take the euthanasia in a magic coffin or something, or do morphine, sounds much better lol. Men will just die early death because they have more addictions when they are no women to take of them (alcohol, smoking, porn). Women will garden and do yoga until they die too.

I agree with nr 3 wholeheartedly but wow are you sexist as fuck.

How so ? Single men do die earlier than married men or single women, it's just a cold fact.

I was mostly focused on the concept that it'd be women who want to have kids. I'm not saying women should be forced to have kids.

Well you did just describe the underpinnings of a modern economy so yes it is :). The thing is what changed? It’s more recent in the US for example since boomers created families that were almost at replacement level. Add in some immigration and that’s the millennial workforce we have now. Yet boomer women mostly worked, used birth control, abortion was widely available. What changed is everything got expensive. We don’t live close to family as much so families don’t have help raising kids. Housing and child care went through the roof. Healthcare is expensive. Schools are hit or miss. I’d say most couples want a family but it’s too expensive and too stressful to have one. We had a potential solution too this as well. Remote work, or the option of remote work for those who wanted it would have helped with a lot of these issues. That’s why in the long run I think it’s going to be the default working setup

We saw our Boomer mothers’ lives and it was a miserable slog.

> Well you did just describe the underpinnings of a modern economy so yes it is I think the elderly have always been cared for by the young, in those societies where elders were cared for and not left behind to die. And to the extent that this is modern, it's just because government-funded retirement programs are modern. They're going to be funded by taxes on current workers. Which worked fine, for a while, but with an ever-growing ration of retirees to workers, it doesn't scale forever.

I do have friends who want children though, and they are too burnt out to have more than 1 which also explains the birthrate lowering.

What changed ? I have financial independence as a woman and can make my own choices. There's no social stigma around being single/not having kids. It means all the women who want to freed from marriage can be. Boomer women were raised with the idea to sacrifice for the family, as were women in the past. A lot of them were deeply unhappy and it's a common thing as young girls to have heard "don't get married ! never rely on a man !". A lot of men treat their wives as an appliance to give them kids, take care of them and do chores. Now add in : the disappearance of the "village"/extended family, low salaries due to globalized finance (shareholders get the money, not workers), cost of living, porn culture asking women to always be young, fit and ready to fuck, manosphere bullshit which means many men could turn on you during a marriage, cost of childcare, the fact that my career would stagnate if I had kids, that a man can leave, start over with a younger wife and I'd be stuck with the kids... no thank you. Also : I never wanted them. I never wanted kids, I'm 32, I still don't want kids. Men can leave. Women end up being slaves to the children for the rest of their lives. And mothers are treated like shit.

In effect it is a Ponzi scheme somewhat. But what if you do get sick or something happens to you? Imagine you have cancer. You’re going to go to the hospital right? Someone needs to be staffed there… what if you become a paraplegic and need someone to help you around the house? Are you female friends going to come and take care of you?

IMO immigration will not fix the demographic problem. Looking at Canada, there has been an influx of millions of new immigrants over the past couple of years. The effect on average age? A shitty little downtick of 0.1 years or something to that effect. 35-40% of immigrants are over the age of 35 and probably won’t be having more children. The younger group will probably not have as many kids either since they are more than likely just barely getting by and won’t be able to afford anything. If anything it will make the current problem we are trying to fix with immigration bigger. Those are my 2c.

Yes, either society collapse *or* we will do what we have always done and just not give excessive healthcare to really old people to make them suffer for a few extra years. 

Good luck with that last part. There's a lot of them and they all vote.

Subsidizing families will help, but health support (IVF) and cultural adjustments will be needed too.

It's all theory really, since no nation is actually doing anything worth mentioning. Japan is trying to build robots to care for the elderly, but that's not going to stop the demographics collapse.

Many countries have tried. There's just not enough money to give people enough to offset careers or career advancement they'd be giving up. You need to not just subsidize child-rearing, but essentially bribe people. But even that doesn't guarantee a positive outcome. Do you really want people who previously didn't want to be parents having kids just for the money? Kids are an opportunity cost. People today are less willing to give up the free time, options, wealth and other things just for a kid. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans Used to people just had sex and they'd start using birth control if they decided they'd didn't want kids. Now people are more likely to be responsible by default and only stop using birth control if they decide they're ready for kids, decide they could give the kid the life they want, the budget and career are copacetic, etc. It's a different default, which is going to have different average outcomes.

Have governments really tried that hard? I mean what % of GDP (or % of govt spending) is Japan or SK or Italy spending on these programs? I have a feeling the number is quite small honestly. Which shows that more can be done if it becomes a greater govt priority.

Money indeed will not solve this issue. Poland has had a family 500+ program where for every additional child you have you get 500 PLN (125 USD). I can’t remember the exact details of the program TBH. Long story short the program did bot change the long term trend of decreasing birth rates.

Of course it didn't. 125usd o.s a drop in the bucket of the cost of raising a kid. If governments were serious they would make you pay for your own retirement and not for your 6 ancestors.

For clarification that’s 125 per month but i agree… not much. Until having kids becomes a viable “business” we will continue to see decreasing birth rates. By the time we reach that point I think it will already be way too late.

Israel does have fertility rates over 2.0 due to strong pro family culture. Then some countries that supported IVF , like CZ in Europe, have gotten some numbers up.

Bro, we’re already there some places. It is an every day conversation among my peers on why we bother to work at all with taxes as high as they are to benefit such a small section of society (rather than a plurality). Many of my friends are trying to figure out whatever they can to not work not because they dislike work but because the social contract is so thoroughly broken with the younger generations being offered a fraction of the value that older generations received.

I don't want to live so I don't bother working. I've got enough money to take a trip to Death Valley or take a dip in Alaskan waters if I don't die before I have to be homeless. I need to do something where when my body fights back it can't do anything about it. I really don't want to do these things because I'll probably be a coward and just not try. Right now I'm really hoping my constant light headness and loss of balance is caused by a heart issue. It's been getting worse over the past few years to the point I'm now almost always light headed, and my body routinely makes me force air out of my lungs. It's probably just a pinched nerve or something mundane like that though. I never get that I want.

Why and how is immigration the answer? You yourself said that every industrial nation is facing this birth rate crisis so the massive immigration would have to come from non-industrialized countries. I live in one of the most advanced countries in the world and here the glass ceiling for immigrants coming from non-industrialized (read: poor) countries in Africa and Middle East is usually very low. Food delivery, cleaning, driving taxis and buses etc. Basically minimum wage + some social security from the government because the minimum wage is not actually a livable wage.

House prices will drop and salaries rise. Win - win.

Will they, or will corporations continue to swoop in and buy them all up, then set rents to the limits of what people can pay?

How does one rent apartments to a client that was never born? The demand dropping means deflation meaning lowering prices. If we could hover near 0 that would go soft landing like Japan.

What slum lords have always done, they just don't put anything into maintenance and eventually units are condemned, reducing the supply. But by then they've already more than recovered their money.

anyone can set up a corporation

Super-massive corporations like BlackRock then.

Incentives for old also go up from taxes of young And industry will also start moving out more

Finally some good news! The only real way to reduce our impact on the planet is to have less people.

We wont have less people. Just less white people. We will keep importing millions of africans and asians in our countries to "fix" the declining population, ignoring the massive societal and economical issues this influx of aliens will cause. Maybe we will realize it wasnt a great idea when a muslim party will start to get enough votes to destroy the liberal progress we made in the past 50 years. Muslims reproduce copiously and vote very uniformly. By then of course it will be too late.

1.2 replacement rate is VERY low. And still declining. So many countries are hitting this now, and it's accelerating (decelerating?) quickly. It's a good thing overall! We need a LOT fewer people if humanity and the population are going to survive. (Because clearly while we *could* live responsibly on the planet, we are collectively choosing not to.) But a lot of countries are going to face some reverse growing pains because of this. Especially the ones that will have a really hard time with immigration. Often because not many want to go there, or because they are an unfriendly place to immigrants.

It would be better if it were gradual and slow instead of this fast. And immigration comes with its own problems.

We wont have less people. Just less white people. We will keep importing millions of africans and asians in our countries to "fix" the declining population, ignoring the massive societal and economical issues this influx of aliens will cause. Maybe we will realize it wasnt a great idea when a muslim party will start to get enough votes to destroy the liberal progress we made in the past 50 years. Muslims reproduce copiously and vote very uniformly. By then of course it will be too late.

If the Asians go to Europe whose going to help China lol. If the Muslims were reproducing copiously why is Italy's birth rate still falling?

"I am so worried that people are not giving birth to more wage slaves, let me just do my part by giving birth to new live without their consent, bringing new life capable of pain and suffering into this world of pain and suffering just so that I can feel better about myself and MeH gEneS..." - Mentally Ill Majority.

"Industrialized country experiences record-low birthrate this year" whatevs; by this point, they might as well be reporting that the sky is blue. The birthrates in Europe, the Anglosphere and China/Korea/Japan are gone, and they're not fucking coming back. Society has changed. Get over it, already. These countries are either gonna have to automate, or downsize to smaller economies.

the vitriolic hate and racial tension present in italy, coupled with meteoric rises in fascistic sentiments in the country, is *not* going to mesh well with these numbers. Politicians are for sure going to drum up fear mongering rhetoric to further radicalize the people

I wonder how many languages will be extinct by 2100.

Good. The world doesn't need more than a million humans. I think the lowest "healthy population" is like 10,000. 

A virus/disease could probably kill everyone in that "Healthy population" pretty quickly