Population Decline

[Jeff Lebowski]

Are you folks following the news out of China? Everyone has been talking about China's population going off a cliff at some point, but now it appears that it started happening a few years ago but the government has been hiding the information (shocker, eh?). That One Child policy is going to end up strangling the country in the long term. Apparently, the impact has permeated the culture and many of the younger generation have no desire to have kids. This is going to have massive negative impacts on the Chinese economy and overall Chinese global influence and will likely have a significant impact on the world economy.

I traveled to rural China about 20 years ago and there were slogans painted on all of the fences and walls, etc. I asked my US host what they said and he said that most of them were warning people of big penalties if they violate the one child rule. Being saturated with that has to have an impact on how a society views the family unit in general. Not to mention all the stupid baggage from communism.

Furthermore, one of the main tools used to enforce the policy was abortion. I believe that such widespread and common use of abortion will also have an impact on a culture. And not a good one.

[Clark Addison]

I have two lovely nieces due to the One Child policy, so some good came from it!

I may have told this story before. When I worked at Bank of America, the bank took a 10% stake in China Construction Bank. They divested the ownership shares in 2010 or so, but kept a relationship in several areas, one of which was that CCB paid for consulting from BAC for several years, with about half a dozen projects a year.

In 2015, one of the projects was Small Business Data and Credit Cards, so the program office roped me in and I went over to China 3 or 4 times for a week or two to meet with the CCB folks. It was a lot of fun, and I met a lot of people over there. Some of them spoke very good English, a lot of them spoke poor to fair English, and several spoke almost no English. My Mandarin isn't great, so I stuck with English most of the time. As a result, most conversations were not extremely deep or complex, and I stuck with standard and easy to answer questions (where did you grow up, how long have you worked at CCB, etc.).

One of the questions I used at first was "So, how many kids do you have?" It took like 5 people giving me a weird look and saying "Uh... One" before I smacked myself on my forehead and thought about what an idiot I was.

In my defense, they gave us some guidance on things we shouldn't talk about (e.g. Tiananmen), and no one told me "Don't ask them how many kids they have if you don't want to feel stupid"

[RC Vikings]

I was a little surprised when I heard India would overtake China shortly in population. Other than CEO's in the tech industry and telemarketers, India doesn't seem to be much of a player in the affairs of the world. I wonder when that will change.

[Uncle Ted]

Are you folks following the news out of China? Everyone has been talking about China's population going off a cliff at some point, but now it appears that it started happening a few years ago but the government has been hiding the information (shocker, eh?). That One Child policy is going to end up strangling the country in the long term. Apparently, the impact has permeated the culture and many of the younger generation have no desire to have kids. This is going to have massive negative impacts on the Chinese economy and overall Chinese global influence and will likely have a significant impact on the world economy.

I traveled to rural China about 20 years ago and there were slogans painted on all of the fences and walls, etc. I asked my US host what they said and he said that most of them were warning people of big penalties if they violate the one child rule. Being saturated with that has to have an impact on how a society views the family unit in general. Not to mention all the stupid baggage from communism.

Furthermore, one of the main tools used to enforce the policy was abortion. I believe that such widespread and common use of abortion will also have an impact on a culture. And not a good one.

The elderly will be eating the young. Japan has a similar problem which started in the 90’s. It caused Japans economy to stagnate. I wonder what kind of impact this will have on the world economy. But maybe Covid will save China’s economy by killing off the old and weak sooner.

[myboynoah]

Lex de Azevedo was a true prophet.

Korea is facing this worse than Japan.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Speaking of Japan, I highly recommend this article written by a BBC correspondent who spent a career in Japan, married a Japanese woman, and had three kids there. Detailed account of the decline and stagnation of the Japanese over the past 20-30 years, largely as a result of population decline, but also due to some stubbornness.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490

As a missionary in Japan, everything seemed super expensive to me. I returned four years ago and was kind of shocked at how cheap everything was. At first I thought it might be my changed perspective, but I believe it is more than that that. From the intro:

In Japan, houses are like cars.

As soon as you move in, your new home is worth less than what you paid for it and after you've finished paying off your mortgage in 40 years, it is worth almost nothing.

It bewildered me when I first moved here as a correspondent for the BBC - 10 years on, as I prepared to leave, it was still the same.

This is the world's third-largest economy. It's a peaceful, prosperous country with the longest life expectancy in the world, the lowest murder rate, little political conflict, a powerful passport, and the sublime Shinkansen, the world's best high-speed rail network.

America and Europe once feared the Japanese economic juggernaut much the same way they fear China's growing economic might today. But the Japan the world expected never arrived. In the late 1980s, Japanese people were richer than Americans. Now they earn less than Britons.

For decades Japan has been struggling with a sluggish economy, held back by a deep resistance to change and a stubborn attachment to the past. Now, its population is both ageing and shrinking.

Japan is stuck.

[BigFatMeanie]

Based on my experience in building software for a global market, the cultural resistance to change in Japan is very powerful, IMHO.

[LVAllen]

Not to worry. N. Korea has women and female children they can't afford to feed. I expect that by mid-century, one of China's largest imports will be trafficked brides and sex slaves from N. Korea Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, and Thailand, if it isn't already the case.

[tooblue]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ected-by-young

“Japan is on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society,” he said, adding that addressing the stubbornly low birthrate “cannot wait and cannot be postponed”.

A similar dynamic is playing out here. I have two adult children, both married more than four years. They are faithful LDS and in no hurry to have children. My oldest and his wife are approaching 30. Both couples plan to have children, but feel they have to wait.

There is no realistic pathway to purchasing a home over the next five years. Rent is high, so one of the couples still lives in the basement of their in-laws. The home across from me just sold for 3.5 million. I do not live in Alpine. I live in a very ordinary North American suburb. The home is not worth 3.5 million except it inexplicably is.

We are partly solving our population crisis here through emigration. 80% of the students I now teach in college are from India, Sri-Lanka, Korea, China and South America. In regards to LVAllen, we already have recruiting teams visiting Vietnam. But it is not a completely viable solution: the influx adds to the housing crisis and has put considerable strain on the health care system.

There will need to be more than just incentives and tax breaks to address the issue long term.

[Jeff Lebowski]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ected-by-young

A similar dynamic is playing out here. I have two adult children, both married more than four years. They are faithful LDS and in no hurry to have children. My oldest and his wife are approaching 30. Both couples plan to have children, but feel they have to wait.

There is no realistic pathway to purchasing a home over the next five years. Rent is high, so one of the couples still lives in the basement of their in-laws. The home across from me just sold for 3.5 million. I do not live in Alpine. I live in a very ordinary North American suburb. The home is not worth 3.5 million except it inexplicably is.

We are partly solving our population crisis here through emigration. 80% of the students I now teach in college are from India, Sri-Lanka, Korea, China and South America. In regards to LVAllen, we already have recruiting teams visiting Vietnam. But it is not a completely viable solution: the influx adds to the housing crisis and has put considerable strain on the health care system.

There will need to be more than just incentives and tax breaks to address the issue long term.

From the article you linked:

The population of the world’s third-biggest economy has been in decline for several years, and suffered a record fall of 644,000 in 2020-21, according to government data. It is expected to plummet from its current 125 million to an estimated 88 million in 2065 – a 30% decline in 45 years.

Yowza.

If your home really is worth $3.5M, you would have no problem moving to Alpine!

[tooblue]

From the article you linked:



Yowza.

If your home really is worth $3.5M, you would have no problem moving to Alpine!

The house across the street is a custom build, three bedroom ranch style bungalow with a pool and backs onto a ravine with a heated driveway. But I promise it is not as big as most homes in Alpine. It's a bungalow.

My neighbourhood could be compared to Sugar House, east of 1300 east in SLC. My home is not worth 3.5 mil, more like 1 to 1.5 depending on the market. We bought it for 200K 18 years ago. But we are not moving anytime soon.

[Non Sequitur]

I don't get the concern. The truth is that the planet is struggling to support the current population, so why would we encourage an increase in breeding just to satisfy global economic concerns? That's a population ponzi scheme. Cut the population, let the global workforce shrink, the aging population expand and the global economy collapse for a quarter of a century. The human race is resilient and will rebound and will be better for it. As an aside, my first granddaughter was born yesterday, and I couldn't be more proud.

[myboynoah]

I don't get the concern. The truth is that the planet is struggling to support the current population, so why would we encourage an increase in breeding just to satisfy global economic concerns? That's a population ponzi scheme. Cut the population, let the global workforce shrink, the aging population expand and the global economy collapse for a quarter of a century. The human race is resilient and will rebound and will be better for it. As an aside, my first granddaughter was born yesterday, and I couldn't be more proud.

Congrats on the granddaughter! It's a lot of fun.

On population, a big part of the issue is where the populations exist. Many countries in the West need and will need increased population to maintain economic viability. Countries like Japan and Korea will need to get over their cultural biases against other Asians (particularly those from SE Asia) and institute more liberal immigration policies to address this issue. Or, just have more children. But, for a number of reasons (TB outlined some of them), current trends are below replacement levels. They need to ask who will work in their factories, who will provide basic healthcare and eldercare, who will pump the gas, who will do the R&D? Uncomfortable decisions need to be made.

[Pelado]

I don't get the concern. The truth is that the planet is struggling to support the current population, so why would we encourage an increase in breeding just to satisfy global economic concerns? That's a population ponzi scheme. Cut the population, let the global workforce shrink, the aging population expand and the global economy collapse for a quarter of a century. The human race is resilient and will rebound and will be better for it. As an aside, my first granddaughter was born yesterday, and I couldn't be more proud.

51akh8lrC3L._SY1000_.jpg

[tooblue]

Congrats on the granddaughter! It's a lot of fun.

On population, a big part of the issue is where the populations exist. Many countries in the West need and will need increased population to maintain economic viability. Countries like Japan and Korea will need to get over their cultural biases against other Asians (particularly those from SE Asia) and institute more liberal immigration policies to address this issue. Or, just have more children. But, for a number of reasons (TB outlined some of them), current trends are below replacement levels. They need to ask who will work in their factories, who will provide basic healthcare and eldercare, who will pump the gas, who will do the R&D? Uncomfortable decisions need to be made.

Yup. It is all good and well to just say let it all collapse, but as we live longer who will be there to wipe the drool from your face in hospice care, if there is even a hospice care facility to go into? Robots maybe: