{"id":26530,"date":"2017-10-07T07:56:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-07T12:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26530"},"modified":"2017-10-07T07:56:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-07T12:56:10","slug":"is-population-decline-catastrophic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26530","title":{"rendered":"Is Population Decline Catastrophic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Population Decline Catastrophic?<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"population.PNG\"<\/h2>\n
In the 1970\u2019s we heard the earth was going to get so crowded we\u2019d be falling off. Now the panickers have flipped to population decline. They were wrong in the 70\u2019s, so are they wrong again? Is a declining population catastrophic?<\/div>\n
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Countries from Germany to Japan are investing in mass immigration or pro-birth policies on the assumption that they must import enough warm bodies to stave off economic collapse.\u00a0I think this is mistaken. Falling population on a country level is certainly no catastrophe and, indeed, may be positive. I\u2019ll outline some reasons here.<\/p>\n

Historically, the first question is why population declined. If it\u2019s the Mongols invading again then, yes, the economy will suffer. Not because of the death alone, but because wholesale slaughter tends to destroy productive capital as well.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if the population is declining from non-war, we have a well-studied natural experiment in the Black Plague. Which is generally credited with the \u201ctake-off\u201d of the West. Because if the population declines by a third while capital including arable land stays the same, you get a surplus. Same resources divided by fewer people.<\/p>\n

Think of zombie movies where dude\u2019s running around with unlimited resources at his disposal \u2014 free cars, riverfront penthouses. That, in diluted form, is what a declining population gives us \u2014 more land, more highways or buildings, more resources per person.<\/p>\n

Now, if the population\u2019s declining not because of a terrible disaster like the Plague, rather because people simply want fewer children, then you don\u2019t even get the massive hit from losing productive people. A worker dying at 40 takes a lot of productivity with him, while a child unborn isn\u2019t actually destroying anything but hopes and dreams.<\/p>\n

So if the Plague was a per capita economic bonanza to Europe, having fewer children should be an even larger per capita bonanza.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Population Decline Catastrophic? In the 1970\u2019s we heard the earth was going to get so crowded we\u2019d be falling off. Now the panickers have flipped to population decline. They were wrong in the 70\u2019s, so are they wrong again? Is a declining population catastrophic? Countries from Germany to Japan are investing in mass immigration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,7],"tags":[477,16330,16329,1371,12729,783,1808],"class_list":["post-26530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-labor","tag-mises-institue","tag-peter-st-onge","tag-population","tag-population-decline","tag-taxes","tag-wages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26531,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26530\/revisions\/26531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}