20250619 - population & family...

 Note :- some of the things I have said below might seem a bit sexist and offend a few. I am definitely not intending to do anything like that. Please ignore this if you don't agree with the view I have shared...

The world population is shrinking. There is enough data available to show that the women's fertility rate is going below the population replenishment level of 2.1 (i.e., every woman has 2.1 children on an average to sustain the population)

But the world population is not going down. There are many other statistics to show that.

Thing is, The population in most "developed" countries is steadily declining and it is steadily increasing in "developing/ underdeveloped" countries.

Ex.,
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, etc. - they are all going down.
Niger, Angola, Uganda, Somalia, Mali, etc, etc - they are all exploding!

So what is really happening?

If we scratch the surface of the data, we will realise that the world population is constantly growing only because we are living longer and after about 2012, the total births in the world have been constantly decreasing every year since. And it is reducing very rapidly in developed countries and only in the developing countries the births are increasing.

It looks like if women are given development (like in most developed countries), more education, more opportunities, more money, more power, etc., equality basically, they will stop having children. That's what the statistics and trends tell us.
It is equally supported by looking at the countries on the other end of the scale - where fertility rates tend to be 3 - 6 on an average.

Many of the developed countries have and are trying desperately to reverse the trend (baby bonus, children incentives, family money, etc, etc). Nothing has worked. Nobody has succeeded in reversing the trend.

I think the problem is the definition of what a developed country is and how countries have typically got there.
There are a couple of yardsticks to the definition of a developed country - foremost and biggest of it being per capita GDP (country's GDP/ country's population)
GDP itself is a complex definition to understand, it actually doesn't mean much practically when we look at GDP per capita.

Ex., the internet is filled with many, many stories of young, educated, capable and employed people in very developed countries struggling to make ends meet. They are living paycheck to paycheck each month. So, the country's GDP/ Capita is high but average people don't earn enough to make ends meet.
Young couples are not wanting to get married in the first place, forget about having children afterwards.

Almost all countries that got developed, got there by spurring the country's economy for a long time. This is a very simplistic view, but hopefully not very far from reality.

"Increased consumption" is what got them there.
Crank up demand for things -> that will need industries and production -> industries will create jobs -> Jobs will create more salaried people -> salaried people will increase tax base and disposable income -> further increasing demand, improve government ability to invest in development, so on and so forth...
Economically speaking, it puts the country in a positive spiral.

But the base question is - how to crank up demand?

My take is, this is what binds all the developing countries together.

Break up the family unit!

In a family of grandparents, parents, children/ grandchildren living together, usually there is 1 house, 1 car, 1 TV, 1 refrigerator, 1 washing machine, 1 of everything ...

But it is not helpful for the economy. Bring about a social norm that children  should not live with their parents after a certain age (a taboo almost!), and after a generation, neither will the grandparents. Thus, we have created demand for minimum of 3 of everything (many more depending on how many children each generation has)

This was a great model for increasing demand for the economy but it also created unintended consequences.

Young couples were comfortable having kids earlier because the kids would grow up with grandparents. Apart from the factor that it was a very safe environment, they didn't have to worry about the very huge burden of child care, daycare, post daycare care, baby sitters, etc., Also, since everyone is living by themselves, EMI/ Mortgage/ Rent, monthly expenses for everything, huge expenses for bringing up children, etc , etc. everything adds up very quickly!

Basically, after 4-5 generations of cranking up the economy and increasing demand, it is not affordable for the average young couple to have children. They are shit scared of having children!

That's what has happened to almost all the developed economies and naturally the fertility rate is going down. Not because of women being empowered more but because they have no confidence in the support and money needed for having children!

It is the norm nowadays to see protests in many developing countries against immigration. They have absolutely no idea what they are doing and what they are up against. At the rate of population decline, in another 1 - 1½ decades, they will have a huge number of old people (who are not dying) and very few young people in the workforce who can contribute to taking care of them... they will all have social unrest beyond their imaginations.

Anyway, as I said, it is a damage we have (probably unconsciously) and embraced it as the right template and have either got developed or furiously running towards it (economically speaking). That is the direction every developing country is heading towards and towards the same fate.

But as I said, it is probably an incorrect or very incomplete definition of a "developed country".

Unless we reverse this trend and change the social structure to join back family units, I feel it is just futile putting bandages over population problems with incentives and other handouts.. it needs to be embraced as a natur​al, affectionate and caring upbringing over time and not as an economic solution to problems.

It will not be easy. Nor will it be quick. We have taken many decades to break it. It will take similar or more time to reverse it...

PS: Another unintended consequence of the above change that has been done:
Imagine you are a mid 40s - early 50s individual with savings over 2-3 decades of work life. The writing is on the wall that your children will not be with you and take care of you when you get old and retired. What will you do?
Any sensible person will look for a place to invest that money and grow it to have a large enough nest egg for taking care of themselves later.
All this money got invested in the market seeking growth of profits and returns and any cost.
So the market responded and did just that. Move jobs to cheaper places and huge layoffs to get to the profits ensued with closing expensive plants in the developed countries.
Now we are trying economic tools like tariffs to bring back jobs that have been hived off over decades because of social reasons. Good Luck doing it...