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I've previously posted on the Motte about the Swedish state-funded Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility and suggest solutions to the problem. Another report has dropped, this time analyzing the broader effect the declining fertility will have on the Swedish state budget – and reaching some surprising conclusions! As before, here's a link in case you know Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/nyhet/utredningens-nya-skrift-lanceras-farre-barn-och-fler-aldre-vad-hander-med-sveriges-offentliga-finanser/
After a few poor showings the reports have really returned to form, and this is another excellent and informative review. The main insight – which is obvious after you've thought about it, but significantly less obvious before it's been shown to you – is that declining fertility and aging population is indeed very bad for both the government budget and the broader economy long-term, but in the short-term it actually benefits the government fiscally. This is because another little baby child that's born in the ghetto is an immediate drain on the state or municipal budget, while the long-term drawbacks of, y'know, having an entire population which can't fucking work only become apparent 20 years down the line when those baby children were supposed to be grown-ups doing grown-up-things (i.e. paying for the two or three generations who are now retired and demanding pensions).
In a way this is good, because it means many states will soon be facing a slight cost-relief, potentially providing an opening to solve the situation through increased spending. In another and probably more important way though it's very bad – mainly because it makes the negative effects of low fertility a lot more insidious and difficult-to-show than if the economic consequences were immediate. It's also bad in that the government and municipalities have major incentives to cut costs on schools and kindergartens in the short term, which in turn is liable to exacerbate the situation long-term. I actually reckon that this is a big part of what's happend and is happening in South Korea and Japan – perversely, their unsustainable fertility rates are economically sustained by the momentum of declining fertility itself, sort of like when Wile. E. Coyote runs off a cliff but refuses to fall because he won't look down.
Between the lines, the report more than it did previously hints that immigration could be one way to compensate for the decline in fertility. This is an argument I expect all Europeans will soon be hearing a lot more often again – I reckon the Spaniards used it to justify their completely insane amnesty for illegals. Sweden will soon hold an election and the current right-wing government seems prone to lose to the Social Democrats, and for that very reason I am displeased with this new direction the report seems to be taking. There's a small but non-zero risk that the left-wing parties, if they seize power, will again open the floodgates of mass immigration, once and for all drowning Sweden in third-world dysfunction beyond hope of repair. This would be very sad, and I sincerely hope it does not come to be; and for that same reason I hope the Committe doesn't sway from its goal (solving the fertility crisis) if and when the current government does get ousted.
A few comments, general and specific. Let me start with the general: It strikes me that the economic problems created by fertility problems (fewer children > fewer adults > less productivity > less value created and monetized > smaller treasure chests to pay the pensions, healthcare and other requirements of older generations) are contingent on two completely unsustainable norms: (1) convincing a significant section of the population that it’s a legitimate expectation that they should be able to “retire” for perhaps 30-40 years after (often) 25-30 years (and sometimes even less) of work that in many cases was a public service, or sideways related to public service, and therefore not actually productive of much value/monetary return in the first place and (2) expansion of lifespan without much expansion of healthspan, and sometimes even significant diminishing of healthspan, creating another unsustainable reality that older people are draining resources for years or decades, and sometimes medication and the “health system” keeps them alive in much reduced quality of life circumstances in a way that a cold skeptic might describe as profiteering on the pain of the populace.
Without these two unsustainables, and given continued expected technological progress (I appreciate there is irony here) underpopulation or declining fertility rates are much less of a problem.
I do concede that more should be done to make families and child-bearing popular again, but not for broader economic reasons. Rather, places that are full of older people are not pleasant places to be.
On the specifics:
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Can you say more on this? Were they bad reports, or reports you disagreed with?
2
I was in Italy recently, and at one train station on a Saturday afternoon the train was overwhelmed by approximately 100 young people (~12-16 years old) who were all north or central African either by birth or origin. They were noisy but not unpleasant and it looked like none had a ticket, because a ticket inspector appeared on the train and they all disappeared in the opposite direction, presumably getting out at the next stop.
I looked up Italian immigration numbers and found that Italian national statistics office reports that said immigration levels are almost exactly replacing the declining population rate, and that Italian women are now having the lowest number of children in history (from memory I think it was 1.2 or perhaps 1.4 on average). I thought that was interesting at the time, and that it wouldn’t take too many years of that reality to completely change what Italian society looked like.
I strongly agree with your general sentiment here. I think the real elephant in the proverbial delivery room is in fact our newly-acquired longevity. Smartphones and liberal anti-dharma-thinking are all well and good as partial explanations, but the real paradigm which has shifted is that we now routinely live 40% longer than we did just a century ago, and that the majority of this extended life span is funded by the working young. No one has looked at this seriously because of the implications, but this has to be both one of the causes of declining fertility, and also the reason this decline is set to be so terrifyingly destructive.
As regards your question about the reports, you can read through my previous posts on the subject. In short, after a strong initial showing we had a few reports which mostly attacked peripheal questions (such as access to fertility treatments) and generally skirted around the bigger questions. We're now back to form with reports that add super-useful data and provide interesting perspectives on the most pressing issues (though we've yet to have one taking a good hard look at the longevity-question).
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