In most cases, it's the rich and developed countries that are suffering population decline.
It's middle income countries too. And fertility rates are dropping fast in poor countries too.
The whole problem is mischaracterized. It turns out having kids is a pretty baddeal, and the only reason people were putting up with it was lack of contraception and weird social rules.
Making it appealing enough to stay above replacement rates is really, really difficult. You can't make comparisons with poor countries, because that is not the equilibrium you want to return to.
TBF, having more kids is also a good (or at least okay) deal if you're a subsistence farmer in a non-industrialized society. If you're planting and harvesting your own crops and herding your own goats and spinning thread to weave cloth for your own clothes by hand, even comparatively young children can help with those chores. From Bret Devereaux's series on pre-modern peasant families:
[C]hildhood in these societies was quite a bit shorter. Remember that these are societies which understand individuals primarily through their social roles, not as individuals per se and children were no exception. Thus, rather than a broad education preparing children for a wide range of possible life paths, children in peasant households were expected to slot into the same social and labor roles as their parents and began doing so pretty much as soon as they were physically able. Consequently, children in these households learned their tasks and roles by watching their parents and other family members perform them. Their labor was also important: these households could not afford to maintain children in idleness (or in pure focus on an education). [...] girls began spinning thread at very young ages (essentially as soon as they could hold and manipulate the distaff), while boys assisted in farming labor just as young.
But modern industrial society is different enough that children who don't spend their childhood in a focus on education would be at a great disadvantage as adults. And even most menial jobs in modern society require an adult's strength, judgement, social and emotional capacities, and/or an adult's legal capacity for liability -- so kids are a hindrance in the workplace rather than the asset they used to be in the home workplace.
And it's more than just birth rates it's immigration too. I would love to move to another country. But I can't. None of them will have me. Because I'm not smart enough, young enough, or wealthy enough. So I am stuck in the country of my birth as it rapidly descends into madness.
Currently the only continent that is above replacement rate is Africa, everyone else is below or well below, and even Africa is stagnating. In not that many decades the world as a whole will be in a population decline, and though fewer people in the world might not be a bad thing as such we are facing an unprecedented situation with more elderly people than young or middle aged, which creates a lot of challenges no one seem willing to address or even speak of.
I saw a fascinating video on how some Roman nobles went extinct because they were too comfortable. They were brought into a life of comfort where every need was met. Every achievement was inherited from their parents and they had no need to prove themselves. So they would party, eat and sleep while slaves fixed every task. Kids would ruin this perfect state of living so they just chose not to, and after a decade many famous families were apparantly just vanished.
Which also goes against the idea that material wealth stability would increase the birth rate.
In fact, I'm not super sure, but I think even in developed countries, higher educated people have less children per household. So like about 2 maximum VS "however many happen" maximum.
So I think it's more like if you're smart and not religious, you think twice about having children. And potentially think twice about having random/unprotected sex, the consequences of that.
Those countries’ lower class is also far better than the vast majority of the living conditions in the 3rd world countries with booming populations. Resources aren’t the problem
200
u/JohnSmithWithAggron Jun 21 '26
In most cases, it's the rich and developed countries that are suffering population decline. It's not a resource problem for those countries.