Demographic Collapse

 

Warnings of demographic collapse due to low fertility abound. There’s this video on the European collapse. 

In the main, these come across as reverse Malthusians. Both sides are forever prophesying society’s collapse due to population swings in one direction or another. And it never seems to happen the way they say it will.

The problem with the reverse Malthusian position is that it has even less evidence behind it than the Malthusian position. Malthusians can at least point to real social collapses due at least in part to high population, including Easter Island and even modern Haiti and Rwanda. They can also point to the fact that the global population has multiplied by 8 in just over 200 years. 

The reverse Malthusians can point to… well some economic stagnation in Japan and parts of Europe. Population globally and in most countries isn’t even going down any time soon. This isn’t a social collapse. As for the dire warnings that these economies don’t have enough young people, Spain’s youth unemployment is worse than US unemployment during the Great Depression.

Which brings me to another point. Conservatives complain that Europeans are not having enough kids and that they get married too late or not at all. They then complain about urbanization. 

What’s the alternative? As the video notes, in many of these countries, there isn’t room for many Europeans to live in areas with lower population densities. Where there is room, there isn’t economic opportunity. Even in more successful (and fertile) France, youth unemployment is twice that of the US, and it’s hard enough to build a family in the US. The US trend of conservative families buying farm land and going rural isn’t available to many Europeans, where land and gas costs are much higher. 

Let’s be reasonable: these are small countries where population surged in the 20th century, population in most of them isn’t even going down, and they already have heavy competition for scarce land and jobs. 

Back to my original point: the collapse never seems to come. And I doubt it will, at least in the way we typically think of a societal collapse. Rich western countries have had declining fertility for two full generations and any deficit of young workers is simply recouped through immigration and technology. In China, demographics are even worse but that hasn’t stopped their economy from being one of the most dynamic in the world. 

This isn’t to say that the general lifestyle of having dogs instead of children and building culture on contraception is a good thing. Childless Europeans will be miserable and likely abused in their old age with no family to care for them. But for many, especially those who grew up in secular families without strong communities, it’s tough to see an alternative. They’ll continue to muddle along with a wealthy country middle class lifestyle supported by the welfare state with the hard work (including elderly care) being done by poorer immigrants. It’s not a good life, but it’s also not the French Revolution.