This is a question that many of the countries in the developed world will be facing. Fertility rates throughout these countries are well below replacement level. This is something that is really starting to raise some eyebrows.
It is amazing how quickly the narrative can change.
Only a decade ago, people were chirping the same rhetoric that started in the 1970s. That is when the over-population crowd began to claim there were going to be too many people for the planet.
Over the last decade, more evidence is pointing to the contrary.
Elon Musk Leading The Charge
Say what you want about Musk, he is always willing to discuss major problems he feels are confronting humanity. Whether you agree with him or not, there is little doubt that he looks at the big picture and is willing to take action in line with that.
Also, when it comes to the narrative, when a publication like Business Insider starts to cover it, the message is changing.
Getting back to Musk, he talked about the topic of under population in 2017.
Musk has expressed concerns about declining birth rates for years. "The world's population is accelerating towards collapse, but few seem to notice or care," he tweeted in 2017. Last year the Tesla CEO called population collapse "potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization." Experts are divided on the topic.
Experts might be divided but it is becoming more evident that, in the developed countries at least, there is a decline. Some countries have dealt with this so long that it is impossible for them to make it up. There simply are not enough women of reproductive age.
In the past 5 years, Musk has not changed his tune regarding this topic.
He is not alone in this belief.
Natural Progression?
There is other thing that Muck mentioned that we can focus upon if we step further back.
The entrepreneur has highlighted his efforts to curb population decline before. "Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have. I am a rare exception," he tweeted in May. Musk is the world's richest person, with a fortune estimated to exceed $200 billion, according to Bloomberg.
We can move passed high net worth individuals. This statement is true for countries. As they get wealthier, the number of children decline.
Again, this is something we saw over the last decades as counties advanced. With poverty rates dropping globally, we saw fertility rates following the same trend.
This is a problem economically. We are still seeing the global population growing. Yet, even sub-sahara Africa is seeing the rates drop. They are elevated compared other parts of the world yet it is following the same path.
We are accustomed to economies expanding and overall wealth growing. The opposite happening due to reduced consumption is not something we are use to dealing with.
On top of that, an older population requires more services will offering reduced productivity. This obviously generates a big problem when it comes to paying for said services. If the tax base is being reduced, due to less workers, how are governments going to be able to maintain the promises made?
This is going to get very tricky unfortunately.
Demographics is not something that most pay attention to since it is like watching glaciers move. The is a field where the stop watch is done in decades. However, we could be within a couple decades of demographic collapse.
This really did a number on Japan. There are a lot of countries that will face a similar situation.
Will anyone figure this out?
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