November 10, 2015
The NYT apparently thinks so, since it ran a front page piece on the difficulty of increasing birth rates in Europe, China, and elsewhere. Let’s see, if we have a declining population that means fewer traffic jams, less crowded parks and beaches, and less pollution. Sounds like a crisis to me.
I know the “hard to get good help” crowd is worried about who is going to work as their servants, but for the foreseeable future it looks like we are facing a situation of inadequate demand in the economy (a.k.a. secular stagnation). This means that we do not have enough demand to fully employ the available workforce. If we don’t have enough demand to employ the available workforce how is it a problem if the size of the available workforce shrinks?
People should feel confident enough in their economic situation and have sufficient social support in the form of affordable child care and paid leave from work that they can have children if they want. But if the population declines because people opt not to have children, it’s difficult to see what the problem is.
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