Where Have The Children Gone?

(5 minute read)

For most of human history, governments worried about having too many people.

Thomas Malthus famously predicted that population growth would eventually outrun our ability to feed ourselves. During the twentieth century, similar fears resurfaced repeatedly as the world’s population climbed from around two billion to more than eight billion. We worried about overcrowding, famine, shortages of resources and whether the planet could possibly support another few billion people.

Yet over the next fifty years, many countries may face almost the opposite problem.

They are running out of children.

Across almost every developed country, women are having fewer babies than are needed to replace the existing population. The replacement level is roughly 2.1 children per woman. Across the OECD, the average fertility rate is now only about 1.46, and almost every developed country is below replacement level. Italy, Spain and Japan are around 1.2, while South Korea, despite a recent small recovery, remains extraordinarily low at about 0.8 children per woman.

Europe has been below replacement level for decades, while China has moved remarkably quickly from worrying about overpopulation to worrying about population decline. The United Nations now expects China to lose more than 200 million people by the middle of this century, if current trends broadly continue, while Japan and Russia are also expected to shrink substantially. By 2100, just over 73 years from now, China could potentially have barely half the population it has today. That would mean their population had decreased by almost 800 million people in less than one lifetime.

Those numbers are so large that it is easy to lose sight of what they actually mean.

Imagine a town where every generation is significantly smaller than the one before it. Schools begin closing because there are not enough children. Universities compete for fewer students. Employers struggle to replace retiring workers. Houses in some areas become increasingly difficult to sell because there simply aren't enough younger families wanting to buy them.

Meanwhile, the number of elderly people continues rising.

This creates one of the great economic problems of the next fifty years. Most pension and healthcare systems were designed when there were large numbers of working-age people supporting a relatively small retired population. If there are fewer workers paying taxes while increasing numbers of people live into their eighties and nineties, the arithmetic becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

Someone has to pay for the pensions, hospitals and care homes.

Governments therefore have only a limited number of choices. They can raise taxes, reduce benefits, increase the retirement age, encourage more immigration, persuade people to have more children, or somehow make each remaining worker considerably more productive.

In reality, they will probably try to do all of them.

Immigration is already becoming one of the most politically difficult parts of this demographic transformation.

Countries such as Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States need workers. Hospitals require nurses and doctors. Construction companies need builders. Farms need workers. Technology companies need engineers, while ageing populations will require enormous numbers of carers.

At the same time, large-scale immigration creates genuine pressures on housing, schools, healthcare and infrastructure, while rapid cultural change can create political resistance.

That leaves governments trapped between two uncomfortable realities.

Economically, many countries need immigrants.

Politically, large parts of their populations want fewer of them.

The United Nations expects immigration to become the main source of population growth in more than fifty countries over the next few decades, including the United States, Canada and Australia. It will also be one of the major flashpoints for civil unrest.

Elsewhere, however, populations will continue growing rapidly.

Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be one of the great demographic centres of the twenty-first century. Its population could rise by almost 80% by the middle of the century, reaching around 2.2 billion people. Countries such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania may become some of the largest nations in the world.

That means the demographic balance of the planet will shift substantially.

Europe, China, Japan and Russia will become older and, in many cases, smaller.

Africa will become younger and much larger.

India and parts of South and Southeast Asia will remain enormous, although fertility is falling there as well. Indeed, one of the most remarkable demographic patterns is that birth rates tend to fall as societies become wealthier, more urban and better educated.

There are many reasons.

People marry later. Women spend longer in education and have more career opportunities. Housing is expensive. Childcare is expensive. Young adults take longer to become financially secure. In many countries, parents also invest far more money and time in each child than previous generations did.

There is also a simple change in expectations.

A century ago, having several children was often regarded as a normal part of adult life. Today, many people choose to have one child, or none at all.

Governments are beginning to realise how difficult that is to reverse.

Some countries already offer generous payments, tax advantages, subsidized childcare and housing support to encourage people to have children. South Korea has spent enormous sums trying to raise its birth rate. Hungary has offered substantial financial incentives. Other countries are experimenting with longer parental leave and reduced working hours.

So far, the results have generally been modest.

That makes me wonder what governments might offer by 2076.

Could couples eventually receive tens of thousands of pounds for having a second or third child?

Could families with three children receive heavily subsidized housing?

Could parents receive large tax reductions for twenty years?

It sounds extraordinary, but if a country genuinely believes its future population is collapsing, the economic value of a child who will eventually become a worker, taxpayer and parent may become extremely high.

Could these incentives be different for what would originally have been considered the native population, as compared to the immigrant population?

Technology may also change the calculation.

In my previous newsletter about the future of work, I looked at the possibility that AI and robotics could allow economies to produce far more with fewer human workers. That may become one of the principal answers to population decline.

A country with twenty million workers supported by advanced robots might produce more than a country with forty million workers today.

Factories could operate with very few people. Autonomous vehicles could transport goods. Robots could work in warehouses, construction sites and farms. AI could perform large parts of administrative, legal and technical work.

Most importantly, robots could help care for older people.

Japan is already exploring this because it faces the demographic problem earlier than most countries. By 2076, a domestic robot may help an elderly person out of bed, prepare meals, monitor medication and alert doctors if something appears wrong.

That does not eliminate the need for human contact, but it could dramatically reduce the number of workers required to care for an ageing population.

Then there is longevity.

If people live longer but remain healthier for longer, our current definition of “working age” may become increasingly outdated.

Today, we often treat sixty-five or sixty-seven as the point at which people should stop working. But if medical advances allow a seventy-five-year-old in 2076 to have the health and energy of a sixty-year-old today, retirement may gradually move later.

That need not mean forcing people to work until they drop.

People might work fewer hours, change careers, or move into less physically demanding jobs as they age.

Someone could retire from construction at sixty, retrain and spend another fifteen years teaching apprentices or supervising robotic equipment.

I find this personally quite interesting because I started writing science fiction relatively late in life. The idea that a person has one career, retires at sixty-five and then becomes economically inactive for the rest of their life already seems increasingly outdated.

Perhaps by 2076 it will seem positively strange.

There may even be advantages to a smaller population.

Less pressure on housing. Less congestion. More land available for nature. Fewer demands on energy and food production. In some countries, houses that are almost unaffordable today could become much cheaper if the population begins shrinking.

The difficulty is getting from here to there without damaging the economy along the way.

Population decline is not necessarily a catastrophe.

Rapid population decline could be.

A society can adapt to having fewer people if productivity increases and the age structure remains manageable. The real danger comes when there are too few young workers supporting too many elderly people over a relatively short period.

That is why demographics may become one of the most important forces shaping the world over the next fifty years.

It will influence immigration, pensions, housing, taxation, military power, economic growth and even which countries carry the greatest political influence.

The world of 2076 may look very different from the one we instinctively imagine today.

China will be substantially smaller. Europe may be older. Africa may contain a much greater proportion of humanity. Robots may compensate for missing workers, while governments compete not merely for investment and technology but for young people willing to move there and build their lives.

For centuries, humanity worried about what would happen if we had too many children.

We may now be entering an age when many of the world's richest societies start asking the opposite question.

What happens if we have too few?

As a science fiction writer, I find that fascinating because demographic change happens slowly enough that we often fail to notice it, yet its consequences can reshape entire civilizations. Unlike a new invention, there is no dramatic moment when a population suddenly becomes old. It happens one birthday, one retirement and one missing classroom of children at a time.

Technology will undoubtedly help us adapt. AI, robots, improved medicine and longer healthy lives may allow smaller populations to remain prosperous in ways that would once have been impossible.

But technology cannot decide how many children people want to have.

That may ultimately remain one of the most personal decisions of all.

What do you think? Will falling birth rates become one of the great problems of the next fifty years, or will AI, robotics and longer lives make population decline much easier to manage than we currently fear?

Till next time,

Brian

BA Gillies

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