Comment by logicalmonster
3 years ago
Outside of either aggressive capitalist desire to continuously lower wages or some groups wanting to destroy Japanese culture, I've never understood why there was such an extreme panic by some about Japan's lower birth rates to the point that they urged mass immigration there.
A stabilizing population on an island with limited space seems like a good thing. A little more space opens up for living and real-estate prices might become more favorable. Maybe there's room for more parks and other things that make life good. When conditions become more favorable, people will be able to reproduce more.
We see in the animal kingdom the predator-prey cycle that population takes care of itself. When there's too many rabbits or deer, there's no cause for concern: the plentiful food supply means that wolves and foxes will be able to reproduce more and take care of the situation. When there's too many wolves/foxes and the situation reverses, the scarce food supply means that the predators aren't able to flourish and the rabbits and deer are able to reproduce more.
I'd say that the human desire for reproduction might work in the same way, only instead of prey, maybe real-estate prices and quality of life is the cyclical variable to note.
I think there a few flaws with your thoughts
> A stabilizing population on an island with limited space seems like a good thing. A little more space opens up for living and real-estate prices might become more favorable. Maybe there's room for more parks and other things that make life good. When conditions become more favorable, people will be able to reproduce more.
Population density is not homogenous. Excluding pandemic era, the trend has been decreasing population density in the countryside and smaller cities, while more population moves to the big cities. In general, population size need not correlate for the average persons lived population density.
> I'd say that the human desire for reproduction might work in the same way, only instead of prey, maybe real-estate prices and quality of life is the cyclical variable to note.
This is likely true on the extremes to some degree, but I haven’t seen much evidence that this is a driving force of population dynamics.
> I've never understood why there was such an extreme panic by some about Japan's lower birth rates to the point that they urged mass immigration there.
This is generally because the population is not stabilizing, it’s on the verge of collapsing. If fertility rate rises “naturally” in the future, as you suggest, then it’s obviously not an issue. But maintaining a 1.3 or lower fertility rate indefinitely will result in an exponential decay of population which could itself result in a decline of living standards. For example, if the population decreases too much to support a high speed rail system so these are abandoned as unprofitable.
>> I'd say that the human desire for reproduction might work in the same way, only instead of prey, maybe real-estate prices and quality of life is the cyclical variable to note.
>This is likely true on the extremes to some degree, but I haven’t seen much evidence that this is a driving force of population dynamics.
In South Korea, young people are struggling to find affordable places to live, to the extent that many people live with their parents well into their 30ies. Coincidently, they also have one of the lowest birth rates in the world.
In my city, I see a lot of people who first build a house or buy an appartement, and then have kids, in their 30ies, because they can't afford a big enough place before that.
As housing prices rise everywhere, it takes longer and longer for people to be able to afford a place big enough for a family. Of course people then delay having kids, and many end up not having kids at all.
GDP can’t go up without strong reproduction and/or immigration. The economy stagnates and government debt becomes massive, which is what you see with Japan.
The scary thing is that this is something the USA and lots of other countries are headed towards as well.
https://dailyinfographic.com/government-debt-by-country
GDP can grow with a stable population if your Real gross domestic product per capita is growing which it has been for the USA [0]. Japans has barely grown for the past 30 years which is their big problem [1].
[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA
[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDJPN
What do you think the cause is for the differences? I strongly feel that a lot of that latter “strength” for the USA chart after 2009 was made up of money printing.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
https://inflationchart.com/gdp-in-m3
I guess we will see if USA can continue up only. I have my doubts. Fertility rate needs to be 2.1 to remain stable and we dipped below 2.0 around 2010 and are at 1.64 now (Japan is 1.34). The previous US administration clown show also drastically cut immigration.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/global-decline-of-fer...
2 replies →
The birth rate is so low around the world that we may see peak population by 2060 (worst case) and then an exponential decline. Quality of life will decrease as the number of old people drastically out numbers the young people.