Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says Japan is on the verge of being unable to maintain its social functions. Japan had 1.8 million births per year in the 1970s, 1.2 million people were born each year in Japan in the mid-1990s and in 2022 there were 770,000 people born.
500 Japanese schools close in the country every year. Nomura Holdings, Japan’s largest investment bank, estimates that there are more than 10 million empty houses and apartments. Large chunks of Japan are falling into disrepair. Japan should give the empty houses to the families who are willing breed and have children.
Public education is free only until children reach the age of 15 but in any case, families want private education for their children across the board, because it’s considered better. Care in nurseries or the health system is not universally covered. Prime Minister Kishida has recognized that action must be taken to change this situation. On Thursday, June 1, he announced his intention to redouble public spending on childcare, to bring it up to the level of Sweden.
We have never brought a country back up to replacement rate after it fell below replacement. Replacement means that the mother is replaced with a daughter who also has children. Averaging 2.1 children means 1 boy and 1 girl who end up also having children. 0.1 is for the children who do not go on to reproduce. The best at stimulating low births higher births is Sweden. Sweden dropped below 2.1 to 1.6. They brought birth rates back to 2 and then dropped again to 1.6 and brought it to 1.8. However, this still means averaging 85-90% women have the daughter who has children. Almost replacement is not good enough, but it is better. Sweden is still losing 10-12% every 40 years.
Japan losing 30% of population from its peak is like what the Black death did over 7 years but it will take Japan 42 years from 2008 to 2050 but Japan decline will continue. China could see a 30% decline from 2023-2050.
China at 1.18 fertility rate like the last 3 years means 1.1 billion people in 2050 and not the UN hoping for 1.5 fertility and 1.3B. This hits economically around 2035-2040 when China’s urbanization can no longer mostly offset the effects. Run the world at 1.0 fertility rate and in 2300, there will 160 million people about 2%. Maybe the future world becomes a world of mormons, Muslims and high birth Christian and Jewish denominations. The fertile will inherit the Earth.
Critically endangered species lose 80-90% of their population. Humanity could be critically endangered by 2150. Japan, Korea and China could be critically endangered by 2100-2110. Korea and China at 0.78-0.8 fertility rate would see population go to 17 million in Korea by 2100 and 310 million in China. Population surveys suggest China’s women only as interested in kids as Koreans. Koreans are already at 0.78 fertility rate. Divide fertility rate by two to get the number of lifetime daughters that 1.0 female produces. China is making 59% of a female for the next generation. Fertile female population drops in the 36 years of a generation. Over 70% of the world population is below replacement.
China could lose a US level of population by 2050.
Low birth rates will be worse than the Black death in terms of percentage of population loss. Except if low birth rates are not fixed it is a slow existential risk. India and Bangladesh are below replacement. Tunisia in Africa is below. South Africa will join soon. Indonesia is near to dropping below replacement. Start a clock when dropping below replacement within 40 years the population starts dropping.
Japan has already lost 6 million people from 128.4M in 2008 to 122M today. They are down to about half of the fertile women they had when population peaked in 2008. 23M fertile women in 1974, 19.3M women were 15-39 in 2008. 15M women are 15-39 in 2023. Japan had 770k babies born in 2022, this was about 380k female. Japan has been at 400-430k per year female for ten years. in 30 years Japan will be at 9-10M female 15-39. If we say that societally they do not have kids until 20 then reduce the numbers by 2-3M.
Europe hit peak population, South Korea, China and Japan. Not just peak women. Peak population for 2.4B people or 30% of the world population. 40% of the global economy. Africa has 3% of the world economy.
Japan is going from 122 million people today to about 100 million people in 2050-2056. By 2050, its population could fall below 100 million, of whom 38.8% will be 65 or older. 20 million of Japan’s people are over 75 years old today and 37 million are over 65. Japan’s per capita GDP is shrinking because the median age in Japan is 48.4 years old. About half of Japan’s workforce is over 50, which is when productivity starts dropping until they stop working.
Population loss does directly cause economic losses. Population loss from now to 2050 will cause about 20-30% in economic damage or about a $60 trillion in economic loss. The GDP of a country is the amount of working people times the average economic contribution from each person. If your economy has 30% fewer people and all the people had on average the same productivity then you would lose 30% of your economy.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
To raise the birth-rate we would have to engage in more of a sticky and icky process known as sexual intercourse. I have engaged in this process and often found it to be quite unsettling. I have received snide remarks about my heroic 2 minute efforts from members of the female gender and a lot of relationship hell.
“…Inherit the earth…”
Not if you block non-meritocratic immigration to rich countries, they won’t.
Top 1%, pre-vetted to WORK and not by wealth, and sponsored without any non-immediate family – life-spouse and immediate children only. 5-Year contract, renewable. Brings us down to under 30k a year all G7 countries.
Africa and south-east Asia, replacement rate heroes? twice the population in the next 40 years – who cares? Let’s see how those ‘replacement at all costs’ policy works out.
When men can’t outbid the economy for the fertile years of women, population not only collapses, it selects from the next generation economically valuable characteristics.
Immigration by males makes this work because it further depresses wages for native males making them even less capable of outbidding the economy for the fertile years of young women.
Government programs are incapable of correcting this situation because centralization of social policy puts policy decision into the hands of people with a conflict of interest as is evidenced by the fact that the counties surrounding Washington DC have the highest median income in the US. They don’t feel the destruction of the middle class and can’t conceive of policies to correct the destruction because in order to do so they have to face the fact that they are responsible for genocide.
Militia money is the kind of solution required — distributing economic rents and taxes evenly to only men of military age as replacement for government — could work, but only once the central governments are no longer able to suppress it.
You can either serve the people or you can serve the rich but you can’t do both. Simple changes can increase childbearing. Legalize drugs, the war on drugs removes many men from society. Fair wages for women and increase the Minimum Wage will make childbearing more affordable. Mandatory Time Off for women for purpose of childbearing. Increase the deduction for children. Free tuition for Community, State, and online colleges. Society must make having children more affordable.
These new developments makes the rat utopia experiments look very apt at predicting the future.
Brian Wang: Thank you for sharing your brilliant insights about the future. The rapid world-wide decrease in human fertility is remarkable and unsettling. It is clear that you love humanity, and you are unnerved that so many people are refusing to have children. However, humanity can prosper even with a dramatically lower population.
There will be robots that have narrow superhuman intelligence and superhuman dexterity within one decade (at most two decades). These robots will be able to construct and operate factories to build more robots.
The number of robots will grow extremely quickly compared to the human fertility rate. The size, power, and health of an economy will crucially depend on this robot/AI technology. The creativity and further advances of a society will primarily be based on this robot/AI technology directed by humans.
We are entering the most important transition point in the history of humanity. I hope it will be peaceful. If we act with care then each human will be able to live a life of extraordinary happiness, longevity, advancement, and prosperity; a life of continuing mental and physical progress for all.
Just an idea:
To increase the number of children the government should PAY women the equivalent of a full-time minimum wage job PER child. At $15/hr for 2000hr/yr that is $30,000 a year per child. That is about twice as much as it takes to raise a child/year. If a woman WANTED to be a full-time mother she would need at least 4 children to be able to live equivalent to a single mother with a college degree.
This proposal would reward poor and single females to get impregnated.
We want functional families, not just children.
Just give every family (even a single parent one) a reduction on taxes equal to the amount the government currently spent on school. It is around USD 10k-15K per child. To qualify, just request the child obtain a proper education. With yearly certifications.
You would get more children of working families and less of unemployed / unemployable parasites.
“With yearly certifications” is not a proper sentence. So I guess your Mom would not have qualified. BTW, how are these certifications to be judged?
Unfortunately, only the negative aspects of industrial and post-industrial societies are relayed through the main-stream media. Young adults believe that the world is a “capitalist hellscape” and are so caught up in technology-driven self-entertainment that fundamental human desires are being suppressed. The media doesn’t talk much about how this period of human history is the most prosperous, the most equitable, the most peaceful, and the most healthy of any era. There are problems, of course, but the future has incredible potential. However, we need people to think up, test, and build solutions that will take us into a post-scarcity civilization using resources from the entire solar system. There is something about current industrialized societies that are anti-child and anti-family. That psychosis needs to be cured if we are to survive long-term in any state other than subsistence farming.
I’m old enough to remember when WASPs were worried about Catholic’s seemingly supernatural fertility rates out breeding everyone. Well Latin America is mostly at or below replacement and European Catholic nations are some of the lowest for fertility rates. “High fertility Christian denomination” are all falling and/or experiencing high apostasy rates. Even the Amish, recently forecasted to take over the world are switching from crops to gardens which require less labour and bring them into closer contact with the outside world, resulting in falling fertility and higher apostasy rates. Muslim nations are undergoing the same fertility drop and secularization. Despite the triumphalism many still spew in public about taking over the world and the fastest growing religion, many clerics give sermons panicking about youth leaving the faith and the faithful having fewer kids.
Any ethic or racial group that is pointed to with fear or hope for their fertility is on the way down. Kids being expensive, exhausting with little payback in modern life is the same for everyone.
That’s an irreducible problem that no ectogenesis tech will solve.
People needs to want to have kids, to bring them to the world and raise them into adults, not just be able to.
And the current memetic environment is completely inimical to that notion. Either: the zeitgeist and media basically scream that our world is dying, corrupt and evil, reducing the desire to have kids. Or it professes and shows how living child-free is so much better.
Ancient people’s didn’t have that problem, because they: had no media and choice (they were socially compelled to marry and have kids), no other distractions and no dreamed life to be lost by having kids.
We created modernity to escape the tyranny of being baby making machines and serfs of our lords and betters, and we mostly succeeded. But seems we also lost the desire of keeping making babies as well.
This will fix itself one way or another, though. Either we find ways to make baby making easier and more enjoyable, or society collapses, then we get much poorer, illiterate, and again, willing to have kids.
There is an issue nobody is talking about in regards to our political discourse: people suffering long term exposure to pesticides especially in rural areas may simply be less intelligent:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/
>Forty-one million IQ points. That’s what Dr. David Bellinger determined Americans have collectively forfeited as a result of exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides. In a 2012 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, compared intelligence quotients among children whose mothers had been exposed to these neurotoxins while pregnant to those who had not. Bellinger calculates a total loss of 16.9 million IQ points due to exposure to organophosphates, the most common pesticides used in agriculture.
>Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.
Glysophosphate exposure may also be a root cause of increases in Parkinson’s’ among men, dementia in women and autism (though that is also a result of broadening of the diagnostic spectrum):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw16LPVnNco
You might want to blame forever chemicals and micro-plastics permeating our bodies, causing cancers and shutting down sperm counts and fertility.
These are the effects of micro plastics and hormone disrupters (again courtesy of the agricultural industry) on sperm counts.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich
Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity
>The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe. A new book called Countdown, by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. Following the trajectory we are on, Swan’s research suggests sperm counts could reach zero by 2045. Zero. Let that sink in. That would mean no babies. No reproduction. No more humans. Forgive me for asking: why isn’t the UN calling an emergency meeting on this right now?
>The chemicals to blame for this crisis are found in everything from plastic containers and food wrapping, to waterproof clothes and fragrances in cleaning products, to soaps and shampoos, to electronics and carpeting. Some of them, called PFAS, are known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t breakdown in the environment or the human body. They just accumulate and accumulate – doing more and more damage, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Now, it seems, humanity is reaching a breaking point.
>Swan’s book is staggering in its findings. “In some parts of the world, the average twentysomething woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan writes. In addition to that, Swan finds that, on average, a man today will have half of the sperm his grandfather had. “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” writes Swan, adding: “It’s a global existential crisis.” That’s not hyperbole. That’s just science.
>As if this wasn’t terrifying enough, Swan’s research finds that these chemicals aren’t just dramatically reducing semen quality, they are also shrinking penis size and volume of the testes. This is nothing short of a full-scale emergency for humanity.
When I was a kid ca. 50 years ago, I learned that the world population was ca. 3.5 billion. Now we’re nearing 8 billion. And instead of being pleased that we’re going back to a more sustainable level, we’re worrying about the population explosion not continuing?
Utter madness!
You were lied to and you believe population propoganda. 8 billion people is sustainable. 100 billion people is sustainable shifting off fossil fuels and greenhouses. More people will be a better and richer society. S-curve of EV adoption. World is past 11% EV. Electric cars and trucks will replace ICE cars and trucks within fifteen years. New and older cars. CO2 can be removed by increasing global trees from 3 trillion to 4 trillion. More trees, more humans, almost no fossil fuels. Farming with greenhouses for more food and ten times less water usage. China will be at 50% food grown in greenhouses by 2025-2026. This will mean 10% of people globally getting food from greenhouses.
Just be honest. You need exponential population growth or the exponential profit growth modern capitalism is built on will cause it to collapse in on itself. Shares will be worth nothing, and those with all their money in shares will be destitute.
Better learn to farm.
That’s the real reason they care about population. People are consumers…customers. It keeps the wheels of their mutual funds grinding away. People are also resource users and polluters. We could do with less of each.
But aren’t all bets off if we get an anti-aging drug in the next five years?
“100 billion people is sustainable shifting off fossil fuels and greenhouses. More people will be a better and richer society.”
It might be technically possible to support a population on Earth of 100 billion. Doesn’t mean it is desirable; wouldn’t want to be that crowded. One to two billion on Earth with lots of room for Forests/Jungles/Savannah’s etc. seems more attractive to me. Now if you are talking about moving into the larger environs of the Solar System i.e. terraforming Mars and especially Space Colonies that is a different matter. Then you could have a total Solar System population in the trillions. To say nothing of the wild card of reverse engineered UAP’s which would open up extra-solar worlds for colonization.
Even ignoring the more immediate threats of GHGs and species/ecosystem collapse due to habitat destruction, 100 Billion people is not likely possible. At least with anything like our current energy consumption trajectory. The problem is not obtaining the energy or food, the problem is the waste heat produced by utilizing that energy. The is irrespective of GHGs and is unlikely to be avoided by efficient improvements.
https://aeon.co/essays/theres-a-deeper-problem-hiding-beneath-global-warming
My previous attempt at replying didn’t seem to get through moderation due to a URL.
Apart from the more immediate challenges of GHGs and species/ecosystem collapse due to habitat loss, 100 Billion is unlikely due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, at least on our current energy use trajectory. All the energy we use ultimately gets converted to heat which at the moment translates to about 1/50 of GHG forcing. But multiply our current population by 20 and then bring up all inhabitants to the Western average energy use (5-10X) and we are way worse off than the current world warming scenario due to GHGs.
Millennials such as myself not being to afford or rent decent sized housing to raise kids is a big part of the problem in the West. To many landlords voting for restrictive house building policies so that that can extract unearned economic rents from the young rather than having to bother with making real investments. This “tax on the young” is a big problem but places like New Zealand are sorting it out.
You are living in the most prosperous, peaceful era in human history.
“but places like New Zealand are sorting it out.”
They are?? I live in Auckland and I think housing prices – rentals are exorbitant here. Yes, in some place down South you might get a cheap or even a free house, but you are not likely to to have much choice of employment.
My wife and I recently had our first child at 36 and 37 respectively (couple of years ago) through IVF. It’d be great to have more kids but time etc are against us. We might have had children sooner but our previous relationships weren’t conducive to it and finances always felt like a major blocker to me. The cost of childcare in the UK for the first four years is on par with paying your mortgage.
I never had reservations about the world being bad. I’ve heard multiple people use that argument but I always point out that it’s always been bad – at least we aren’t getting randomly raided by pirates and vikings, and so on.
I did have reservations about caring for another tiny human being but I reminded myself that I was a grown adult whose had to deal with much harder sh*t than that and for longer too – the truth is they’re tiny for all of 12 weeks. It’s over in the blink of an eye. It can be tough and tiring (especially when you’re pushing 40), but it’s also amazing, humbling and heart melting, and it reminds you what really matters. You also learn lots about yourself – such as how patient you really are!
But, seriously, I was thinking this morning about how it develops you as a person – you learn how to be more patient and also more assertive, how to negotiate better (there’s nothing harder than negotiating with a toddler), how to be more entertaining, how to spend less time on a screen, plan ahead and organise better, and so on. You can even build your muscles carrying around this increasingly heavy weight. In fact, I wonder how strong I’d be now if I’d been carrying around two sprogs at the same time at 20 years old like my old pa was back in 1970.
On that note, I was number 6 out of a total of 7 kids, so my parents were probably mocked at the time for overpopulating the planet but maybe they’ll come out on the right side of history!
One possible future is increasing population – currently 8 billion and heading to 10 billion in the next 50 years.
At the same time radical life extension.
At the same time AI and automation meaning few jobs for people.
Brian worries about economic collapse due to less people. But if most of those people have no jobs is more people a good thing?
Capitalism seems to require a use and throw model. This is not sustainable!
New ideas are needed.
I’m surprised that no one mentioned the C word, it’s like the ‘natural’ neutral background. Capitalism does’t care a bit about social reproduction, it even exploits it saying something like: “our subjects (of capital reproduction), your problem. Wonderful women, when possible, say no to all this, low birth rates are a sublime act of subversion.
What about population density ?
Japan have 338 people/sq km.
USA 37 people/sq km.
Is it good to live on each other heads?
Do you want live in your own house or 8 people in room “accomodation” ?
“Eat ze bugz” ?
With today technology it is possible to produce anything with much less people
About Migration. Moderate Migration is good when you bring in people of same ethnicity and culture. Otherwise it is bad.
I lived in Hong Kong for 2 years. Very dense. High rise living was good. There was loads of restaurants and stores on the first through the fifth floor. Very convenient and very comfortable. If you have visited Japan , Hong Kong or Singapore or New York you will know that things are set up differently but are good. Greenhouses like China has been building to provide half their food reduces water usage and increases food. Also, I am talking about sustaining existing population. We can feed everyone now, so we can feed everyone in the future.
HK is the best. (Well prior to China taking over)
I was, a long time ago, in Hong Kong for 2 weeks. Sure the place is (was) great, but would you want to raise children there? If that is all you know why not, but you know another live style as well now. I presume you prefer your current set up.
Religion definitely it NOT the answer, though! xD That is utterly never-going-to-happen material.
Spirituality, on the other hand, that’s another story.
But nah, religion being answer to a birth crisis is, like, Lukka-level! 😉 (wherever you are, Lukka, hope you’re well).
In all seriousness, though, I had no idea that Japan was in THAT had of a population crisis. You make very good points here and the numbers are fairly frightening.
People with more financial stability don’t always abstain from having kids, either. I’ve heard the argument that they do, but it depends largely on a couple’s ideas and beliefs of the world, religious or not.
I’ve also heard people say, “I don’t want to bring children into the world as it is.” My response to that is usually, “Well, that’s cute, but then, who’s going to clean up the trash of the prior generations? You? Because it’s not you.”
I’m still a believer in something like ectogenesis if we absolutely need to sustain the population without people wanting to have kids. I’m not sure what level of genetic mastery we’d have over something like that, or if our mastery of it would end up driving us into extinction. Perhaps if we can get a handle on it at the beginning, we can use that kind of technology wisely.
Ha! Blessed are the cheesemakers, and a Greek shall inherit the Earth.
While immigration is not a long term solution, it is certainly a short term solution while other types of solutions are being developed. If Japan considers “Japaneseness” more highly than having a functional population, that is their choice… For me, living in a relatively happy multicultural country such as Australia it makes absolutely no sense. Either the population crisis is really just not that bad or I guess they will relearn their priorities the hard way – if its still possible.
Note also that in countries with a greater than normal gender imbalance because of selective abortion, the TFR which is defined as per woman is actually worse than it appears. Since 2.1 is usually the normal required for a gender balanced population of young people. If there are less women than men, then each women needs more children to reach replacement level. So replacement fertility may be say 2.2 or 2.3 instead of 2.1. So a 1.18 in China is even worse than it appears.
The question is who are the fertile? Generally the poor, the religious, the conservatives. The urban liberal is an endangered species.
So humanity is going to see a degradation in quality?
thank god.
I am not up to date with Elon Musk and the number of his offspring or partners. But Elon – the male does not really count. What counts is the number of children a woman has.
After all these years, I finally learn what the 0.1 is for — to replace those who don’t / can’t reproduce. Makes sense.
It’s also representing things like young people in car accidents, child cancer, etc.
It’s not for that. It’s for those who don’t make it from birth to reproductive age. E.g. we need an average of 2.1 per woman because some of those 2.1/2 girls will not live to be women of reproductive age. Also because there is a small gender imbalance at birth – something like 51 to 52 percent boys is normal. (Not counting selective abortion just the natural rate)
Or die prematurely
Compensates for people that won’t be able to reproduce (Early death, for example).
If it were just 2, it’d be a flatline or going downhill
Incels too.