''Why Japan’s low birth rate makes economic sense'

[MrFanti]

Interesting read...
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/11/17/commentary/japan-commentary/japans-low-birth-rate-makes-economic-sense/#.Wkmi1SOZP1w

[trish]

“...why should Japan want more children? The obvious, direct consequence of a lower birth rate is a constricting labor supply. But fewer workers is not necessarily a bad thing. Thinning labor puts upward pressure on wages, increasing living standards and reducing unemployment.”__William Collis (from article linked in OP's post)

It is also true that a thinning population lowers domestic demand and therefore the need for labor. What the author (William Collis) assumes here is that foreign demand for Japan’s products will either grow or at least remain constant. This raises the question, What would happen to the demand for labor around the world were the populations of all ‘first world’ nations to decline?

Pretty clearly the practices and demands of 7.6 billion people puts undue stress on the planet’s ecologies and climate systems, as well as upon our economic and our political institutions, our sustainability and well-being.

The tricky thing is to figure out how the world might be induced to voluntarily decrease population growth and to do it in such a way as not to damage ourselves even as modern economies seem to be fixated on growth? Of course I’m exploiting an equivocation here, to emphasize a point, but how then are these two notions of growth related?

It’s not gone unnoticed that birthrates in well-off democracies tend toward replacement levels. When people have reliable pensions, social security and savings, they no longer depend on their progeny to support them in old age - and they find it’s a lot easier and more rewarding to raise two children rather than eight. Slowing population growth is inextricably tied to the problem of economic inequality. Here the trick is to raise living conditions in the poorer parts of the world without adding even more stress to the world’s ecologies and climate systems. Besides famine, plague and war, immigration has been one of Nature's favorite ways of relieving population pressure in stressed regions. There are no closed systems.

[Stavros]

Prosperous countries like Germany and Japan are experiencing population decline; indeed, as has been pointed out before in HungAngels (see the thread on Hans Rosling), the short-term growth of population in aggregate terms is expected to peak around 2025.50 and decline thereafter, with low fertility rates among men one factor, and smaller families in more prosperous societies a noted trend.

The concept of 'over-population' only makes sense in areas where large numbers of people are concentrated placing strain on social services, the physical infrastructure, and related issues. This is often due to the the availability of natural resources (fewer people live on mountains and in deserts than in coastal and fertile and well-watered areas), but mostly the availability of work. Parts of California and New York may appear to be 'over-populated' whereas parts of Montana and Alaska are not.

An outstanding feature of those who think of population in terms of simple mathematics: two parents produce six children who each produce another 6 and so on until the world bursts asunder- is that there is no historical evidence that this has ever happened, and ignores those factors that inhibit population growth as noted above.

Most of all, the people who claim the world is over-populated, never include themselves in that statistic. Some people are more valued than others, it seems.

[Ts RedVeX]

Interesting for commies, maybe. - Water for your propaganda mill.

It is demand that propels innovation and if you think that Japanese elders are going to demand being able to go on holiday to Mars, quantum computers or bigger houses, then you are probably in the wrong.

[nitron]

Japanese elders , want to be young again and healthy, that puts demand on health research and anti aging. Spurs quantum computes, and long term , living for hundreds of years will influence there society to think long term, the essance of progress, Nes pa"?