Population anger
There are some people who need to get a grip
So it goes on, wild words hurled around, people so knee-jerking you wonder how they move around. Plus myopic polemical business as usual ideas being bandied around as if they had some basis in statistics, economics and social justice.
Population decline in the news again.
A leader article in the economist magazine finished with the catchy ‘fewer babies means less human genius’. Where the hell does that idea come from? Maybe they think that you can only get quality if there is sufficient quantity? That producing ‘genius’ is simply a function of population size? An argument so obviously flawed it’s amazing it appeared in what is supposed to be a serious magazine. We can counter it by glancing at the world today where poverty levels continually increase, this means less ‘genius’ as poorer people have poorer access to higher education. Being born to a low income family means fewer opportunities and also has tragic negative impacts on peoples’ cognitive capacities. So don’t talk to me about needing big populations to have enough ‘genius’. To be fair the Economist article authors did write ‘Unleashing the potential of the world’s poor would ease the shortage of educated young workers without more births.’ The authors don’t share any insights on how this could happen in today’s unjust societies.
Another point is that, led by idiots, we have staggered into a massive rise in global conflicts. In 2022 the number of people killed in one or other of the myriad global conflicts totalled at around 238,000 people, how many of these people would have added to the ‘genius’ pool?
Just to finish off who much has human ‘genius’ been affected by our miserable diets? Garbage in garbage out, so say the computer coders, same thing for us, a poor diet, under-nourishing or too full of toxic ultra transformed foods negatively impacts cognitive functioning.
The population time bomb
Once upon a time this was all about the possibility of famine and social collapse due to population growth, the fastest doubling of the global population happened between 1950 and 1987 from 2.5 billion to 5 billion, basically in one generation. Nowadays it’s all about there being too many pensioners being supported by too few workers. This latter thing is based on the utterly simplistic idea that in order to maintain economic growth we need a growing population. Fichtre! How many times must it be pointed out that you cannot maintain economic growth on a planet with finite resources? How many studies need there be before people understand that the negative externalities of our current economies are destroying the biosphere and human health. I should have been a genius but I breathed in too much lead charged car fumes as a child, I feel just a tad pissed off about this.
Is there anyone writing anything sensible on this subject? Yes there are, fortunately, but what is seriously annoying is that in the same way that climate researchers were, and still are, ignored for years so too are those researchers telling us not to panic about a decline in fertility rates. I’ll come back to them in a minute.
Migration
That’s the way to go say some economists, get younger people in from other countries and then it’ll all be fine. Seriously? Do they not see the injustice and stupidity of such a policy? One country is basically ripping off another one, or more than one. Take the case of doctors as an example, they study and train in their home country, the financial burden falling on that country and then they are seduced by another country. There are around 11,055 Nigerian doctors working in the UK. According to the UN countries should aim for a minimum of 4.45 doctors, nurses and midwives per 1,000 people. In Nigeria there are around 2.27 doctors for every 10,000 people.
People moving around and working for a while in another country is a good thing, the locals get to meet to meet people from another culture and maybe get their minds broadened. That said it’s not a good thing if it’s draining people out of a country and placing an economic burden on it.
Back to the clear thinkers
‘Despite many predictions of the dire consequences of falling populations the economic impacts are likely, on balance, to be positive.’
‘The higher is population growth the less is your ability to maintain assets per person unless you raise savings – but that means lower consumption.’
‘to achieve the highest sustainable standard of living per person the population should decline.’
‘population ageing and slower population growth raise the overall economy wealth to income ratio.’
And so on, a world away from the alarmist projections of too many people who should know better.
Politicians, a word in your ears
Ask a politician what they intend to do :
encourage women to have more children. This will mean fewer women in the workplace which will hit your GDP.
encourage women to have more children. Women are choosing to have fewer or no children because they want a career. If they have a career they boost your GDP.
encourage women to have more children. Again? Women juggle the desire to have children with the desire to keep on with their careers. In order to do this they need cooperative fathers, flexible labour markets, easy access to childcare. The countries with the lowest public spending on childcare and education for the most young have the lowest fertility rates.
encourage ….. nah, can’t do that again boss, rule of three. Anyway if you want women to have more sprogs you need to bear in mind that, stating the obvious alert, fathers have a role to play in childcare! Look at the graph below. The more the blokes get involved with house work and childcare the higher the fertility rate. By the way those people shouting to bring back what they call a ‘traditional family’ (the males work and the females tend the house and children) would mean disenfranchising, dis-educating women and excluding them from career opportunities. Difficult to see how this would go down well with the majority of women and it would knacker GDP. Not very ethical or prosocial either to say the least.
So, politician, you can see where this is going can’t you? Everything will have to change if you want women to have more children and change for the better. That said you are still wrong in thinking that a growing economy needs a growing population.
Still angry
Instead of seeing the decline in fertility rates as an opportunity that should be embraced wholeheartedly, it’s all becoming confused with nonsense ideas and fatuous policies. When people start blathering on about population decline bring on ‘the end of the world’ as Zeihan sees it they would do well to bear in mind that their metrics (aggregate GDP or GDP per capita) don’t include human wellbeing and happiness. Many societies with very low monetary income have remarkably high levels of life satisfaction, comparable to those in wealthy countries.
Declining population levels can help us transition our agricultural, economic and social systems to ones which don’t destroy the biosphere, to ones which are equitable and just. Knowing what we do we can build societies in which consumption is sustainable and ethical, in which we don’t seek happiness though acquiring more stuff but we find contentment by sharing what we have with others.