The declining birth rate is an economic concern at least in the aspect that many social services for the elderly require a growing economy with costs lagging behind the growth factor. Over the last 80 years, social security made the presumption of a continuously growing economy, and typically a growing populace in the U.S. meant a growing economy. Though many Gen Z and Millennials blame Baby Boomers for the situations they’re in (e.g. NIMBYism, the statistic of there are so many of them, their voting powers as elderly people who rely on government revenue which is directly driven by young people’s contributions), I think many younger generations fail to see that they would do the same as the Baby Boomers; it’s just human nature what they all do and the government services that they utilize. Roughly 30-50% of adult Americans who are childless prefer to go child-free for life. According to Pew Research Studies, of those childless survey takers, 50% of women and 40% of men said it was because they just didn’t want to have kids (the study didn’t dive into that question like was it for more personal time or for career aspirations); the rest were due to financial constraints. Future generations are going to face the same issue that Gen Z and Millennials had with Baby Boomers because of the declining birth rate when many infrastructure and housing development will lag and Gen Z and Millennials refuse to let go of their property to the younger generation.

The growing number of Americans who don’t want children simply because they don’t want them have some roots: in the American feminist movement, many women have come to believe that children will make them unhappier; statistically, that’s true for America, but, in Scandinavian countries with many social services, children make their adults happier. Yet those countries still face a replacement rate below the academic standard of 2.1. (Funny enough: the researcher who brought up this analysis was bashed by the extreme feminist advocates for going against the political narrative that the government and men simply make women unhappier: https://news.uchicago.edu/why-are-more-women-saying-no-having-kids). There’s also a growing discontent of men in relationships, so many women decide to stay single, including post-divorce. I won’t dive deep into their happiness statistic and divorcees/single peoples’ savings issues (TL;DR staying married is much more financially beneficial, regardless of having children). In the article, it’s also discussed that women have been questioning motherhood in much of human history.

There’s also the question: is a declining birth rate actually a problem? Pro-natalists postulate we’d lose out on talent, infrastructure and services would crumble, and our economy would be even tougher for future children. Having children spun into a patriotic narrative, having children is a service to the country. It’s not just the U.S. spewing this narrative: China’s XiJinPing says the same in the latest convention under his leadership and faced rebuke by women online who were told to be mothers and stay at home by their leader.

That’s precisely the conflict spurred against women: the declining birth rate for countries with elderly services, especially if the cost of such services is politically fixed due to voting powers i.e. western countries political bind to spend a lot on expensive healthcare for more-frequently-sick-than-younger-people elderly patients.

Simply speaking, I believe the government and pro-natalist’s movement believing the economy will suffer with a below replacement level birth rate doesn’t need to be solved with an at least stable population. To those against caring, you can compare India and Congo’s population growth rate and say that they’re still poor. To those who do care, you can say that America’s infrastructure, robust knowledge economy, and educational pipeline ensures that a growing population would help at least stabilize the issue of funding social services.

My point is that there are multiple ways to solve the social service issue from a government level: lower costs for everyone’s daily needs like shelter but also reducing social service checks (adjusted for inflation) and reducing medical costs. No, universal healthcare doesn’t solve this; economies are showing that costs are rising, and the touted universal healthcare nations like Argentina, Canada, and Western Europe are shifting to privatization and the burden of healthcare costs to profitable firms (whereas the government could never provide the same amount of money for everyone’s specialized needs).

One more point about social services: Lee Kwan Yew’s view of America’s politics is government centric, but China, through its millenias of survival of anarchy / warlords, have survived because of family networks. America is uniquely less robust in terms of the individual’s financial protections in elderly care not because China has universal healthcare (Chinese people pay for healthcare like Americans, and it’s known to make people bankrupt. Progressives fail to see this nuance because they don’t care to read or mention it for political purposes) but because there are two support systems: family and government.

The unfortunate issue with most of these democratic nations is the individual’s rightfully selfish desire to extract from the government as part of the social contract. In middle school history, we’re taught Mesopotamia is widely considered the first human civilization. I believe we’ve entered a different type of civilization; the moniker states we’re in an age of nation states, a time when people are so intertwined with government unlike ever before. Our populations have grown far beyond our genetic disposition of small dispute resolutions in tribes of small groups that we’ve invented laws and policies to help dictate the masses. At such a great scale of population, it would be impossible to have everyone conform to similar thinking and align themselves to be with the government; in this case, it is to sacrifice some social security checks and medicare services to cut down on spending when the intake revenue, which is derived specifically from employer payroll and employee payroll taxes, directly cannot support the elderly population at a sustainable level. In a country like China, they can do this as an authoritarian regime and the culture of a family support network.

Now to be fair to the pro-natalists and typical economist concerned with below replacement level birth rate, I do agree with one counterpoint: the positive correlation of a population’s growth rate and its economy growing is theoretically true. With more people, there are more brains and more hands to diversify and increase worker pools. Although a double-edged sword meaning more people increase costs, the general theory is that the productivity of another addition to the population outweighs the cost they incur on society. I’m a big believer in the Civilization Scale theory in that, until AI robots are of the same intelligence (mental and physical flexibility) as humans and cheaper than the government and individual cost of growing a baby, many services for people like healthcare and infrastructure work must be worked on by a certain percentage of workers to actually conduct those services. Without enough people willing to productize those services, a large population would suffer from a lack of service. This is what is happening in Japan; even in the US, with high labor cost and standards for labor, many infrastructure based jobs cannot be accomplished. It’s also why healthcare is the fastest growing industry and still expensive as there still isn’t enough hands-on deck for the increasing elderly population.

However, I’m also a technologist. I believe with realistic future technological outlook and good management and policies, we can account for a shrinking birth rate by replacing certain processes with technology. Unfortunately, the US has bad management and policies which in turn also means relatively slow technological gains in industries that require the physical scale of people like infrastructure/construction/transportation/healthcare/snow shoveling/pothole-filling — again, commending Mamdani and his socialism/political need to show HUGE numbers to prove change is happening.

Pro-natalists, who are usually in the Republican or more specifically anti-immigration camp, want Americans to replace Americans rather than importing immigrants like what Saudi Arabia, Scandinavia, and Canada have done. Canada and Europe are in the same boat where cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and religious clashes happen frequently; it no longer happens as much in the U.S. because of its long history of immigration but also its much lower quantity of low-skilled immigrants compared to Canada and Europe. Though liberals tend to shut down concerns for importing immigrants with different values, they always fail to acknowledge what if they refuse to adhere to many American values that most Americans cherish on. Unlike the 1800s for America when Americans hated the low-skilled Chinese and Europeans coming over — many to seek refuge of various causes but also many loving America’s liberal idealism — many of the new immigrants especially tend to simply stick to their original identities. It’s not just asylum seekers from war torn countries in the middle east, but knowledge workers from China and India whose home nations are much richer and more stable such that the immigrants who come aren’t here for idealism but mostly for money. However, immigrants are needed in order to lower the value of necessities such as housing or services. They are bound to come, and they are needed to lower costs.

All this to say, there are valid concerns everywhere. A lowering birth rate can mean economic downfall if the proper economic policies aren’t implemented such as lowering welfare checks or lowering costs for the services welfare enables. Immigration has the concern of assimilation which historically hasn’t been an issue until recently with many refugees from the Middle East and Central America who don’t enshrine democratic values like those of the 19th century. But I believe it’s in women’s right to not have children, and the remedy isn’t to force them to because many simply don’t want to, many financially cannot, many do not see the benefit (sometimes due to feminist propaganda like the happiness index), or many have children out of obligation. There can be remedies to enabling women having children by lowering financial constraints or proving that it can make some women happier. To those who feel constrained but want them or by nature of humans may feel happier once had but don’t know it yet, the downstream effects of good government policies to those who already want them can alleviate the birth rate “crisis” that will have better effects than people believe.