Note: I’m neither an economist nor a demographist, I’m just some guy with an opinion about everything, and by default, you should assume that everything I’ve written here is wrong.
Most of you know me by now, I think. I’m a socialist, with radical leftist pacifist leanings. I have all the leftist badges, although I don’t wear them on my sleeve. I won’t bore you with them here.
I also frikkin love babies.
Noisy? Yes.
Smelly? Yes.
Utterly incoherent?? Yes.
Cute as hell? So much yes.
Despite this, something has always made me feel uncomfortable about identifying myself with “pro-natalism”. The reason is fairly simple: it tends to be conflated with the pro-life, anti-contraception crowd, not to mention the “your body, my choice” types who like to troll Xitter.
Quite frankly, contraception is one of the greatest public health boons in human history, and has saved an incalculable number of lives and livelihoods. Yet somehow, there have always been those among the super-religious of many kinds (and commonly right-wing though not exclusively) who have a thing for banning contraceptives; today you’ll typically find them wrapping it in the guise of “trying to stop a population crash”.
So I started to ask myself: is it possible to be pro-natalist and pro-contraceptive/pro-choice? Is it possible to have a pro-natalist policy which doesn’t infringe on the rights of women?
I think the answer is “Yes”.
But then I realised I hadn’t even asked myself the very first and most obvious question:
Question #1: What Is The Problem To Be Solved?
Already, I’m struggling. I’m not entirely sure there is a real problem (yet).
For many decades particularly following the baby-boom, there was widespread worry and panic about the possibility of over-population. For most of that time, there was good reason to be worried: it did look like we were in for unchecked exponential growth. In fact, we were in exponential growth for a while following World War 2.
See the following charts, from Our World In Data:
Y’know the term “baby boomer”? Yeah, that’s the sharp mountain bit. That was a thing that happened, and it was indeed exponential.
In close-up, it looks like the population boom only started to emerge around 1925 at the earliest. There was, without doubt, an absolute explosion in population growth from 1945, peaking in 1963 and has been falling ever since. However, if we zoom waaaaaay the f**k out:
Population growth has had a foot on the accelerator since the 1700s, and once we discovered how to treat disease - and, more importantly, avoid much of it - population hopped on a rocket sled and rode that sucker until the fuel ran out.
Right now, and since about 1974, we’re in linear growth with roughly 1 billion people added to the pile every 12-14 years. Based on projections by the UN, world population is expected to peak in 2068 at 10.43 billion, and dip slightly.
It seems to me that we might now be extrapolating that little dip the same way that people extrapolated the exponential growth phase - by simply assuming the immediate trendline to continue indefinitely - thus beginning a new panic about the coming “end of humanity.”
Whereas to me, what seems more likely is a kind of population plateau, rather than a crash (let alone one so apocalyptic).
As Hans Rosling once illustrated in a lecture on the subject (he did it with physical blocks, so I made a digital version):
Even without a crash, we are presented with several economic problems. The first is that any country which is losing population is going to have a hell of a time. The East Germans built the Berlin Wall not to keep out spies or prevent sabotage: they simply could not afford the loss of population to the west, and their primary financial backer - the Soviet Union - would not pay the bill indefinitely.
It’s often said that economics is not a zero-sum thing, but at a population plateau, it would certainly resemble one in important ways. There would only be a certain number of possible consumers world-wide, and population shift through migration is far less likely to be offset in any meaningful way by birth rates. That means there will most definitely be some losers.
So, is there a problem?
Well, maybe. It’s all very speculative at this point. If we remain at a plateau as I expect we probably will, things will be interesting for a little while, but very manageable.
It only becomes a real problem in the event of an actual crash, and in the interests of hedging ones bets, it’s probably a good idea to at least start working on the problem now, so that we’re not caught out if such a time ever comes.
So really, you could say pro-natalism is a bit of a “break glass” stance for me. If the future of the human population is ever at stake due to a crashing birth rate, then consider me a pro-natalist. Until then, babies are cute, and sex is awesome.
As I see it, there are two main directions pro-natalist policy can take:
* Subtractive policy: subtract the right to control how many children you have by making it difficult to have sex for fun or terminate a pregnancy (whether simply accidental, or due to a sex crime)
* Additive policy: add support and assistance to people who want to have kids (or more kids) to ease the burden on the family
Some people even suggest - as in one of the many really dumb-ass viral Xitter posts from a few months ago - that we should literally stop educating women, which is yet another wonderful example of subtractive policy.
All these policies cost money, but only one has a hope in hell of actually working and not leading to a mass proletarian revolt. Can you guess which one it is? Hint: it’s the one that isn’t a buzz-kill.
No, I’m not getting into an abortion debate in the comments. Don’t do it.
Yeah but what if?
Ok ok, lets talk about Japan. I know you really wanted to. Let’s do it.
Japan is a fascinating case study for all sorts of things, but population dynamics has been a big concern for them since the “lost decade” of the 1990s. From October 2021 to October 2022, Japan’s population shrank by more than half a million people. According to the Financial Times, they lose 100 people every single hour.
You might be surprised to know, however, that Japan isn’t actually the most relevant example for our purposes here. By far, that honour belongs to South Korea.
South Korea has, for many years, had the worst birth rate in the entire world, and it gets worse year after year. In fact, it’s so bad right now, that within 50 years, their work-age population will have fallen by half.
HALF.
That’s mind-boggling. In fact, I dare say that’s catastrophic.
This is all despite the vast amounts of money they have been throwing at the problem for the last 20 years, and despite politicians having declared it a legitimate national emergency. Honestly, for once, I don’t think that’s hyperbolic in any way shape or form.
At the same time, South Korean women are saying that government simply is not listening to them.
Whaaaaat?!
How can this be? Surely, incentives would be the most preferred way of going about finding a solution to the problem?
Clearly, spending to incentivise having children has not worked, neither for South Korea, nor Japan which has been taking many of the same approaches to a problem that has haunted them since the 90s.
Actually, no, that’s not really true. We can’t just say that it “has not worked”, we need to be more specific: it has not worked in the very unique cultural, social and political circumstances of these two Asian economies.
Much of Asia is a world that places incredible pressure on young people to have an all-consuming career, and where their malignant corporate culture and rampant sexism means that maternity leave is out of the question if you have any hope of remaining in work for the future.
South Korea has the highest rates of women’s education in the world, but much of this push for education is in service of their economy’s insane demands on workers. First you slave away at that degree, with your parents demanding that you be top of the class; then you slave away at a job run by (mostly) men that demand all your time and energy be committed to work, and the moment you’re burned out, you’re discarded like empty packaging.
This is when the great dragon that is Asia’s unique circumstances rears its head and stares us in the face: for the average South Korean woman, the near-impossibility of having both a work-life and home-life, let alone a balance between the two, is the determinant factor which drives them away from the prospect of raising a family. When actually asked, women will repeat this point consistently, though it seems their politicians prioritise the appearance of working the problem more than the substance.
[One South-Korean woman] also shares the same fear of every woman I spoke to - that if she were to take time off to have a child, she might not be able to return to work.
"There is an implicit pressure from companies that when we have children, we must leave our jobs," she says. She has watched it happen to her sister and her two favourite news presenters.
One 28-year-old woman, who worked in HR, said she'd seen people who were forced to leave their jobs or who were passed over for promotions after taking maternity leave, which had been enough to convince her never to have a baby.
Japan and South Korea are both in dire straits here. The only hope they have left is to radically overturn their entire social and corporate culture, one that is perhaps rooted in centuries of national development, and replace it with something that grants more individual liberty from their relentless “culture to succeed”, and at the same time, to punish businesses that directly or indirectly violate a persons right to return to work following maternity leave.
Or, to phrase it in the language of additive and subtractive policy: they must subtract power from corporations to add sanity and a minimal “work-life balance” for individuals.
Should they fail, they will become entirely dependent on immigration to cushion the fall. That’s going to be a very bitter pill to swallow for countries that are already fairly xenophobic at baseline. Given their socio-political and cultural problems, they’re unlikely to improve rates of migration without a systemic overhaul, either.
So what about The West? If we were one day faced with a calamity like that of South Korea, could we spend our way out of it? The answer is probably yes.
Firstly, we actually have a sane idea of work-life balance, when compared with our Asian counterparts. I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s true. We also place way less pressure on young people, prioritising holistic well-being and personal fulfilment more than corporate hustle.
Second, we also have some more progressive views on what constitutes a “family unit”:
Same-sex marriage is illegal in South Korea, and unmarried women are not generally permitted to use sperm donors to conceive.
"I'd love to have children. I'd have 10 if I could," [says Minsung, a 27-year-old Korean bi-sexual woman.]
"Hopefully one day this will change, and I'll be able to marry and have children with the person I love," she says.
The friends point out the irony, given Korea's precarious demographic situation, that some women who want to be mothers are not allowed to be.
Minsung’s idea of a family is considered perfectly reasonable in most Western countries, and as far as I know, there’d be little stopping her and her partner having as many babies as they like.
Right now, people like Minsung are a shining beacon, screaming “WE CAN SOLVE THIS! LET US HELP!”
Yet, South Korea’s political class refuse to acknowledge them, and then lament in front of the cameras: “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas!”
Here’s an idea which we could all use: try listening to women for once. After all, women are the solution.
The moral of this story? Leftist ideals can fit just fine into pro-natalism, and although I’m not ready to panic over world population levels yet, I’m not ready to write it off either. We can hedge our bets without picking a side.
With the world turning more and more to solar power and other renewables, we’re finally starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel on climate change (we’re not out of danger by any means yet).
It kinda says something about the human condition that we’re already looking around for a new existential crisis.
