The number of children born in Japan in 2025 fell from a year earlier to 705,809, the fewest since data became available in 1899 and hitting a new low for the 10th consecutive year, health ministry data showed Thursday.
I’m a bit conflicted on the population and birthrate issue. On one hand you have those who worry that an ever increasing population will lead to resource scarcity, economic stress and degrading climate resilience. Then you have those, especially on the right, that insist we need to have more babies. Usually, that “we” is white people. For example, that weird Collins couple who are having kids not of love but out of eugenic patriotic obligation.
So, my question is this: when discussing population crisis, be it overpopulation or under-population, what is legitimate concern and what’s just ring-wing fear mongering?
The legitimate concern is every economy runs on the assumption of infinite growth. In essence every nations economy is one big pyramid scheme that can go on and on as long their women have at least 2.1 births on their downline.
We need a system that can run well on degrowth, there’s no good reason why one couldn’t work but there are trillions of reasons why people will fight tooth and nail to prop up the current one. People’s choices and the environment be damned.
The core issue is population distribution. Most governments are designed to run with a certain proportion of people in each age bracket. Japan and much of Europe is headed towards being essentially old age communities. Governments are not effective at saving money to provide for the needs of a majority elderly population elderly. They typically make use of resources coming from the productively employed segments of society. With an elderly skewed population, there would need to be major institutional overhauls to meet the needs of people.
There are advantages and issues with both high and low population, but the most pressing issue is that when population decreases, it puts a strain on working people because there’s a higher share of the population that is retired.
I’m a bit conflicted on the population and birthrate issue. On one hand you have those who worry that an ever increasing population will lead to resource scarcity, economic stress and degrading climate resilience. Then you have those, especially on the right, that insist we need to have more babies. Usually, that “we” is white people. For example, that weird Collins couple who are having kids not of love but out of
eugenicpatriotic obligation.So, my question is this: when discussing population crisis, be it overpopulation or under-population, what is legitimate concern and what’s just ring-wing fear mongering?
The legitimate concern is every economy runs on the assumption of infinite growth. In essence every nations economy is one big pyramid scheme that can go on and on as long their women have at least 2.1 births on their downline.
We need a system that can run well on degrowth, there’s no good reason why one couldn’t work but there are trillions of reasons why people will fight tooth and nail to prop up the current one. People’s choices and the environment be damned.
The optimist in me hopes that AI just makes up for the loss in human labor from population loss and everything just keeps functioning.
The issue happening in Japan is that there won’t be enough young people to support all the old people who can’t work
The core issue is population distribution. Most governments are designed to run with a certain proportion of people in each age bracket. Japan and much of Europe is headed towards being essentially old age communities. Governments are not effective at saving money to provide for the needs of a majority elderly population elderly. They typically make use of resources coming from the productively employed segments of society. With an elderly skewed population, there would need to be major institutional overhauls to meet the needs of people.
There are advantages and issues with both high and low population, but the most pressing issue is that when population decreases, it puts a strain on working people because there’s a higher share of the population that is retired.