In Praise of Population Decline
- Nathanial Gronewold
- June 5, 2024
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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An NPG Forum Paper
by Nathanial Gronewold
June 2024
ABSTRACT
To most Americans, a falling birth rate is not viewed as a bad thing. Public opinion polling shows that most people on Earth want to live alongside fewer people, not more. Americans are no exception. But our country’s leaders, the pundit class, its most myopic economists, and the press corps continue to insist that fewer births and eventual depopulation will deliver nothing but despair. They’re wrong. They are blind to a central fact: life in an overcrowded world is the very thing sending birth rates plummeting in the first place. High population growth and overcrowding have delivered pain to the populace. Population decline will alleviate and eventually eliminate this pain. China, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Spain, and other depopulating countries will soon become some of the luckiest places on Earth, though it will take time and the correct policies for them to achieve this state. Meanwhile, the economic pain Americans are feeling today is only about to get worse unless population growth in the United States ceases – which we unfortunately won’t see for decades to come as recent developments make clear.
A VISION OF A MORE HOPEFUL WORLD
I’m stunned by how many people fear the trend of falling birth rates taking hold nearly everywhere. Search for news on “birth rates” or “population decline” and the results are a long list of overwhelmingly negative articles. We’re told that Italians may be going extinct, and the South Koreans could soon follow them. The last time I checked, there were more than 50 million South Koreans and nearly 60 million Italians, so it’s perhaps a bit premature to put them on any endangered species lists. Nevertheless, the falling births trend is unequivocally deemed a crisis wherever it’s occurring. I’m honestly taken aback by how thoroughly a media consensus has emerged on this topic. Clearly, the press corps has made up its mind: falling birth rates and falling population numbers are bad things that must be stopped. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. In this world, one that has only known relentless population growth for centuries, many can’t fathom what population decline might look like. I believe it will usher in hope for a better future, and I’m not the only one. But we must be honest; there will be downsides.
A lot of infrastructure will become unused and eventually decay. Taxes could rise as unimaginative governments (including ours) refuse to explore other means of balancing spending with dwindling tax revenues. Healthcare systems could crumble under the weight of an older population that consumes their services more frequently. Retirement funding systems like Social Security may struggle to keep up with a rising number of retirees. All these scenarios are possible and even probable under population decline.
But look at the flip side: what has relentless population growth delivered to the world? Have we ever taken a serious accounting of the consequences as well as the benefits? We know the outcomes experts regard as positive; surging economic growth, for one. Let’s focus for a moment on the less recognized negative consequences of unrestrained population growth, the problems that residents of the US and Canada are now suffering under. Hopefully, this reflection will put to rest once and for all the false notion that population expansion is only ever good and pure and never has any downsides to it.
Once upon a time, a single-income earner could raise a family under a solid roof, afford to feed and clothe a household, send the kids to college, and then have that single-income earner and spouse retire comfortably. Population growth has put an end to all this. Because the human population will always expand faster than the housing stock, the cost of shelter has risen so dramatically that it now takes a minimum of two income earners to keep a roof over a household. Often, these two earners carry more than one job just to keep up. Higher education costs have soared so much that tuition can no longer be covered by a student’s summer job; mass quantities of debt must be accrued instead, also thanks to relentless population growth. Outdoor recreation used to be a simple affair – you would just load up the family into the car and off you’d go. Today, the great outdoors increasingly requires reservations ahead of time. A handful of national parks now take advance summertime bookings and enforce “timed entry” protocols. The number of parks managed this way will only increase as the population continues to swell. Even spontaneously going out to a restaurant now involves advanced planning to skirt around the inevitable crowds, especially on weekends…Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.
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