Demographic doom-mongering isn’t helping

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":5.59,"text":"The world has a problem. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere, which helps to drive one of our pressing policy challenges: worsening care-dependency ratios or, essentially, the number of people in the working age population available to support, one way or another, those outside it. (I say “one way or another” because a working age adult taking time out to look after young children or ageing relatives is making a contribution, just as much as if they paid someone else to do it for them.) "}],[{"start":40.18000000000001,"text":"Thus far, we haven’t found any policy interventions that reliably get birth rates above 2.1 (the replacement rate). Hungary has spent the best part of five per cent of GDP per year to little effect. The generous welfare states of the Scandinavian countries have experienced falls comparable with countries that make rather less generous offers to would-be or prospective parents, such as the US or the UK. The only “solutions” that much of the rich world has found that have worked are, in different ways, not scaleable: the answers being “be Israeli” or “get religion”. Although, for now, the rich world can make up the difference in the working age population through immigration, the fall in fertility rates is a global trend. Sooner or later we have to solve this, or we are in big trouble. "}],[{"start":96.21000000000001,"text":"Or at least, that’s what I used to think (and have written in the past). But I’ve changed my mind. Not because I’ve become more relaxed about the problem of care-dependency ratios. If anything, the political problem has only got worse. Measures that seemed like a good idea at the time, such as the triple lock, the UK’s gradual solution to the problem of our relatively meagre state pension, now may be so hard to drop that further increases are prioritised over need elsewhere. Italy’s automatic linking of increases in life expectancy with the state pension age (a reform other countries should copy), may now be unpicked by Giorgia Meloni."}],[{"start":139.81,"text":"Both countries are models of how to manage ageing populations, however, compared to France. And across most of the rich world, ageing electorates oppose more support for young families at home, more immigration to top up the working age population and measures to increase the state pension age. "}],[{"start":160.05,"text":"So why have I stopped worrying about fertility rates? It’s true that, in the long-term, “just solve this problem with immigration” will not work. In countries with successful integration models, birth rates among immigrant populations fall back to the same level as the country as a whole within a generation. But for the foreseeable future, “just have a relatively open labour market” is an off-the-shelf solution that we know works, albeit one that is under considerable political pressure."}],[{"start":192.55,"text":"More importantly, I have become less worried precisely because nothing we’ve done has really fixed the problem. If you can’t solve one puzzle, then find a problem you can: this is true if you are sitting a maths exam and true in public policy as well. It is possible to design better immigration systems, to remove barriers to new housebuilding and blocks on economic growth: these might make it easier in the future to drive up fertility rates. In the here and now, these solutions have the advantage of actually working, unlike the various attempts to increase birth rates. "}],[{"start":230.4,"text":"And in the long-term, frankly, I doubt that the human race is going to become the first species in recorded history that chooses to go extinct. Either we will reach a new equilibrium where the remaining population is made up exclusively of groups that tend to have more children — those who are religious, for instance — or the fertility rate will go back up again. I just don’t believe that humanity’s collective tombstone will read: “Homo sapiens. Voluntarily exited the scene.” In nuclear fire, from a man-made pathogen or catastrophic climate change, maybe. Because we stopped having enough unprotected sex? No, I will take that bet. "}],[{"start":272.98,"text":"It is precisely because of those more pressing threats to the human race that I am less worried about birth rates. We should be more preoccupied with things that might actually wipe us out tomorrow rather than stressing about something that we can’t address, we don’t fully understand and isn’t an acute problem yet. Sometimes you just need to trust that the future will take care of itself and hope that the next generation will be better equipped to tackle the problem, or, in this case, at the very least, friskier. Time to stop worrying about birth rates and start worrying about the state of the world instead."}],[{"start":319.27000000000004,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1761036842_2214.mp3"}