The number of births in China tumbled 10% last year to hit their lowest level on record, a drop that comes despite a slew of government efforts to support parents and amid increasing alarm that the country has become demographically imbalanced.
China had just 9.56 million births in 2022, according to a report published by the National Health Commission. It was the lowest figure since records began in 1949.
The high costs of child care and education, growing unemployment and job insecurity as well as gender discrimination have all helped to deter many young couples from having more than one child or even having children at all.
I’d love that, but the concern is that society collapses from the sudden top heavy population ratio that we’ve never had to deal with and are unprepared for. The kids won’t have much of a future if that happens
Not necessarily. Also this is already happening in many countries, and they don’t collapse into ruin. They just stagnate for a few generations.
It doesn’t necessarily reduce population density though, because often what happens is that young people leave small towns and villages that have fewer opportunities and move to the big city, causing those little towns to die. That’s usually bad for maintaining cultural and linguistic diversity across a country’s landscape, but good for biodiversity, because as people go, the environment recovers.
Also as population declines, land and resources tend to consolidate more and more into the hands of fewer oligarchs. But the oligarchs all own us already anyway, so NBD.
Just have to think further out.
How does that relate to society collapsing?
The generation of the future that will live in a less populated world, and perhaps enjoy the lack of density, may be a few generations away
…
It’s weird how some people seem to romanticise the idea of society collapsing, or shrug off the potential consequences, when it might be as damaging as any world war.
The generation of the future? Dude, there might not BE any future generations if society collapses the wrong way.
I’m not romanticizing anything, I never said it would be gumdrops and lollipops.
There would absolutely be problems with a top heavy society, as you mentioned.
My point was that it would be a generation sometime after that one, that can even possibly hope to enjoy a less burdened world.
Or we can fizzle out, it doesn’t fucking matter.
Can you expand on why society would collapse? Like what are the specific problems that would lead to collapse?
I’m not claiming that it will, just that it’s a possibility. As to the how, simple societal unrest caused by economic collapse. If not properly handled, it could be the trigger on a chain reaction.
IIRC one of many covid conspiracy theories is the chinese government intentionally release or allow covid to spread to reduce those older generations given how covid disproportionately kills old people.