I'm not clear on why this is neccesarily a problem. It's not like our population is actually dropping.
At some point, doesn't the population have to stabilize? If it grows forever, we're going to face serious resource constraints at some point.
At some point, doesn't the population have to stabilize? If it grows forever, we're going to face serious resource constraints at some point.
I think this is going to be a huge problem over time. There have been massive disincentives put in place to have kids today and so people my age and younger have responded as rational economic actors generally do. Of myself and my 3 siblings, I have two kids, my younger sister has one and will probably have a second (and suffer dearly for it money-wise). My other two siblings and their spouses/SOs will have zero. That is half the replacement rate, not including premature deaths. DW and her sisters have done better, but between 3 sisters they only have one surplus kid in excess of the number of parents. None of us feel like we can afford more than one or two kids and the sister with 3 is stretched, to put it lightly.