The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Don't fear declining birth rates

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Gone are the days of the post-war baby boom and nation-wide one-child policies. Fertility rates around the world – From the US to China to South Korea to Japan - are on the decline, and 23 nations are expected to see their populations halve by 2100. Some demographers are sounding the alarm. They argue that low birth rates combined with an aging population will lead to wage inflation, soaring healthcare costs for the elderly and shrinking workforces to pay for public services and already massive government debts. In sum, the shrinking populations of advanced economies will lead to widespread social and economic decline. Other demographers aren't so concerned. They point out that a declining population will put less pressure on our resources and slow the effects of climate change. It will also ease the burden on women and lead to less unemployment as the demand for workers increases and wages improve. And finally, it will force governments to improve existing childcare, health care, and education policies to encourage families to have more kids. Lower birth rates are an opportunity to re-examine our existing social and economic structures and make changes that will benefit everyone in society. Arguing for the motion is Sarah Harper, Professor of Gerontology at Oxford University and Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing Arguing against the motion is Lyman Stone, Adjunct Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies    Sources:  BBC, PBS, CNN Money, Airirang News The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/ Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Reza Dahya Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode, We provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you,

the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Don't fear declining birth rates. Birth rates in the USA have dropped to their lowest annual levels in three decades, falling for nearly every group of women, and part of a longer decline that dates back to the Great Recession. The authorities in China have announced that couples will be allowed to have a to three children raising the limit from two. It follows census figures showing a steep decline in the birth rate. South Korea continues to see its population decline. Last year, the number of births

and the total fertility rate both fell to all-time lows. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. While gone are the days when the post-war baby boom and nationwide one-child policies, fertility rates around the world from the United States to China to South Korea to Japan are on decline. Fully 23 nations are expecting to see their populations halved by 2100. Some experts are sounding the alarm. They argue that low birth rates combined with an aging population will lead to wage inflation, soaring health care costs for the elderly, and shrinking workforces to pay for public services and massive government debts. The shrinking populations of advanced economies will lead to widespread social and economic decline. Here's Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk.

We should be concerned about demographic implosion. If you look at countries like Japan, most of Europe, China, and you look at the birth rates is only at about half of the sustaining rates. What we'll actually have in those countries is a very high dependency ratio, where the number of people who are retired is very high relative to the number of people who are net producers. the social safety net will not hold. Others aren't so concerned. They point out that a declining population will put less pressure on society's resources

and slow the effects of climate change. And it will force governments to improve existing child care, health care, and education policies to encourage families to have more kids. The sooner we stabilize our numbers, the sooner we stop running up the down escalator. Stop population increase, stop the escalator,

And we have some chance of reaching the top, that's to say, a decent life for all. Those championing lower birth rates, like historian Sir David Attenborough, argue that this massive demographic shift will offer us a rare opportunity to re-examine our existing social and economic structures and make changes that will benefit everyone. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, don't fear declining birth rates. Arguing for the motion is Sarah Harper.

She's a professor of gerontology at Oxford University and the director of Oxford's Institute of Population Aging. Arguing against the motion is Lyman Stone. He's a demographer, adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. Sarah Lyman, welcome to the mug debates. Hello. Thank you. Good to be with you. Looking forward to this conversation.

We've been treated with a spade. news, even the last couple days, about the effect of this pandemic, COVID-19, on birth rates across the developed world. This is part, as you both know, better than most, part of a larger trend of declining birth rates. I think it was Joseph Demester. You can correct me. He said that demographics is destiny.

So whenever we're talking about birth rates, we're really talking about the futures of our societies, of our nations, of our civilization. They're key to kind of understanding the. trajectory that we are collectively headed on. Our motion today is simple to the point, be it resolved, don't fear declining birth rates. Sarah, I'm going to put a couple minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you for your opening statement, please. Thank you very much. And I'm actually going to pick up on something you said right at the beginning because I see declining birth rates as a natural progression of human civilization. It's all part of the demographic transition. It's started here in

Europe about 200 years ago and it's now flowing across the globe. And as health and education of populations improve, so people move from having large families to smaller ones, but importantly, high quality children who survive to grow up healthy and to live long lives. And this is good because it places less pressure on our Earth's resources and it's slowing the effect of climate change. Because we don't inhabit this planet alone and continuing to increase our population and enabling everyone to have a good standard of living, that's high quality food, clean water, good housing and space to live in, is destroying the biodiversity of the planet.

And ultimately, we're going to destroy the ecosystems needed not only to sustain us, humans, but also other creatures who inhabit our planet. And I think the 21st century is going to be that tipping point when we will move from predominantly younger populations to a much more balanced age structure. And that's what people fear. And so we do need to ameliorate these effects as we transition.

And in particular, we know that there are fears that declining and aging populations will lead to the so-called demographic burden. But firstly, migration is the natural demographic way to balance out falling birth rates. Remember that mini lower and middle income countries, that's countries predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, still have very high birth rates. Secondly, current midlife and older populations, far more educated and healthier than ever before. And particularly in the context of 21st century knowledge and service economies, they or we can work and care and contribute far longer. And then thirdly, alongside migration and extending our working lives, technology is going to

compensate. So the really important thing is to understand that falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. and they are good in particular for women who can now choose how many children, if any, they wish to bear. Thank you, Sarah. Terrific opening statement succinct to the point. We're now going to get the opposite point of view from Lyman today.

He's arguing against our motion, be it resolved, don't fear declining birth rates. Lyman, let's have your opening statement, please. I want to begin by saying, no, we don't need to fear low birth rates. But nonetheless, it might be that low birth rates, in the future will have bad consequences that might be worth doing something about, whether we fear it or not. When we talk about low birth rates, in general what we're talking about is countries where the average woman is having something like 1.6, 1.5, 1.4, or in the case of like South Korea or Hong Kong, 0.9 or 0.8, children each on average. This is what I want to focus on when we talk about the problems of low birth rates. I think the terms of the debate year have to be about what's sometimes been called,

there's a theoretical perspective in here as well, but what's sometimes been called the second demographic transition, that is the growing number of countries that did not stabilize at small families with high-quality parental investments in their children, but in fact moved to increasingly no children with no investment on the part of because there's no one to invest in. So I want to start with the elephant in the room, which is climate change. Of course, anthropogenic climate change is a huge threat to our world,

which we share with our species and with non-human life. And not only climate change, we can also think about resource depletion, we can think about destruction of natural habitats and biomes, which aren't always the same thing as climate change and all sorts of other ecological problems. The question is, are these in fact population driven? Is it in fact the case that when countries say adopt a stricter policy on fertility rates, that is they adopt a more antinatal policy, you know, 30 years later do they actually have

lower carbon emissions? And the answer is no. In fact, adopting stricter birth control policies is not associated with any reduction in the growth in carbon emissions, and in some cases it's associated with an increase in that growth. So on climate change, the argument that population is a threat is empirically falsifiable, and it is empirically false. And we can also see this on like biodiversity and habitat loss. Brazil is not the fastest growing country in the world, and yet it is one of the fastest environment destroying countries in the world. When we look at the chief producers of, say, plastic waste in the ocean,

right? We're looking at China in that case, as the major producer of politics. Lester, which is the major component there, and yet they're already, they have shrinking population. Now you can say, well, global population is driving this. But if you say global population is the problem, not national, then what you're arguing is that the burden of tackling climate change should be on the countries that are having global population growth, which is the poorest countries. And also, I should mention that migration is a problem in this. So migration is often seen as a solution to low population growth. But moving someone from a low-emission poor country to a high, emission-rich country is just as bad as birthing someone into a high-emission-rich country.

So if the concern is climate change, migration is just as much of a problem as any other form of national-level population increase. Thank you, Lyman. I just want to be a sense of the balance here between our respective arguments that we're unpacking in the opening statements and lots of time in the rebuttals for people to dig into their respective critiques of each other's arguments. So, sir, that's your opportunity now. I want to give you the chance here to respond to Lyman's opening statement and some of the areas of contention that he's already taken with you in this debate.

Gosh, I'm going to try and simplify what I think I've just heard because Lyman, you introduced a variety of very complex interactions here. And yes, I mean, it's very clear that we obviously agree in a variety of areas. We obviously disagree. And as I say, the evidential base that I draw on, I think it's a very clear. slightly different from yours. What I think you basically have done is that you have confounded the two issues. And that's one of the things people often forget that, of course, we're not just looking at demographic change here. We're looking at other drivers. So we're looking at demographic change, which on the whole has two major components. One is falling fertility and increased mobility or

migration across the globe. We're also looking at climate change, which is partly due to demography, partly due to economics, partly due to changing lifestyles and the massive increase in consumption, particularly in North America, but also in other high-income countries like Europe. And we're also looking at technology. And we do have to think of all of these quite simply. So why don't we start by just looking at something that you were talking about, which is I think you were talking a little bit about consumption. And one of the issues, you're very, very right, that it's the high-income country,

that are reducing their population. And we know that they are the ones that have the very high levels of consumption. We also know that the high fertility or birth rate countries, particularly in Africa, are inevitably going to increase their consumption. And we also know through something called telecoupling that as we increase our consumption in high-income countries, particularly in the northern hemisphere, we have a dramatic impact on those very, very vulnerable populations and environments in the southern hemisphere because everything that we are doing due to things like international trade

and consumption is impacting upon not any climate change but also the biodiversity in those areas. So in a way what you're saying is actually a counter argument because I think what we should be arguing is that it's really, really good from a climate change point of view and a biodiversity point of view, that the high-income, high-consuming countries are well below replacement, and we should encourage that to happen because that, if you like, has been the whole problem with lack of biodiversity and increased impact on our climate. It's us lot. It's been the high-consuming, high-income countries and the fact that we will no longer be replacing ourselves I think is good for the climate. Okay, sir, that's a key point.

and a fascinating one. So I want to get Lyman to kind of use up his rebuttal because he snuck a lot of rebuttal into his opening statement there, which is just fine. But Lyman, I want you to come back on this point because it's an interesting one. Sarah is saying here, in effect, you've got it backwards. We should welcome the low replacement rate. You're talking about all kinds of policy solutions and levers that you want to pull to get that replacement rate up. She's saying, look, this is actually a situation, a status quo that we should embrace and work within. What's your rebuttal? What I would say is, if you look at the IPPCs, I always get that abbreviation wrong. I'm saying IPPC. Okay. So to the layperson, who is that and why is it important?

That's the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Thank you. So it's sort of the leading big international body that collates climate change research and advice. They do not recommend any population-level interventions for tackling climate change. And in their scenarios, they don't identify population as a key driver of climate change. And the reason they don't is because it's not. And quite frankly, if you think climate change is an emergency, as I do, the idea that we should cut births so that those people will have fewer emissions 40 years from now, because obviously a baby does not increase emissions. In fact, it decreases them often since, well, that's a complicated substitution thing. But regardless, new people don't be.

begin to create emissions for quite a while. No, they do. But... No, in fact, having a child tends to reduce maternal income and lower income leads to lower consumption. Now, this is a gender equality problem, but it is the reality. So, regardless, the IPPC doesn't recommend any of these things. And interestingly, there was this petition by scientists a few years ago.

Like, thousands of scientists signed a petition about climate change, and they did urge population action. And the urging was based on a paper published a couple years ago that compared Bangladesh and Pakistan. And they said, look, Bangladesh did a really aggressive birth control policy. Pakistan didn't. The result was Bangladesh had lower population growth. So that's proof that we should have population control as a climate change strategy. The problem with that is if you look at the carbon emissions for Pakistan and Bangladesh, Bangladesh had faster carbon emission growth after their birth control policy was put in place than Pakistan did.

That is, even on its own terms, the argument that's the argument that's the question. that this petition leaned on was empirically wrong. The idea that altering the population trajectory alters the emissions trajectory is an empirical claim that is taken on faith in the iPad equations but does not have empirical evidence to support it. Okay, Sarah, come back on climate once more and then I want to move on to some of the other key

kind of features and facets of this debate. Yeah, I mean, I think we have to be very, very careful. I don't think anyone is advocating. Well, no, I mean, that there are some out there groups that are advocating that we, you know, if you like force women to have fewer children to save the planet. And I think that is really unfortunate. But we're not talking about that here. What we're saying is women naturally want to reduce their childbearing when they have high levels of education

and their health is good and that of their children is good. And we know that and we know that that happens at the beginning of the fertility transition. and it tends to go all the way through it. And I think, therefore, what we are saying is that, number one, it is actually good because a side effect of the fact that women tend when they are highly educated. And when I say highly educated, I'm not talking about socioeconomic differences. I'm talking about countries that have high levels of education of women,

that they tend to reduce their childbearing. And that is a good thing for climate. And I think the really interesting thing is because one of the key things that came out of COP 26 was around health, was around health and climate change. And in fact, WHO has really argued that countries need to have health built into their climate change scenarios. And one of the reasons for that is that we know that if we continue to consume, if we continue climate change, and if we continue to destroy biodiversity, that the health of both current and future populations will suffer.

So population per se isn't used as an argument, and I think we can come back to this because it's also a very sensitive issue, and I'm sure we're all aware of that sensitivity. But definitely, population vis-a-vis the health card, has very much come to the forefront over the last five years in particular. Thank you, sir. Let me join the debate and try to check off. Can I comment on one thing? Okay, briefly. Yeah, I think this would be a good transition away from climate change is this, women naturally wanting to have fewer children.

And I think this is a hinge in this debate is the classic movie title, What Do Women Want? And we often get in this trap where we think we know what other people want, that we can sort of speak on behalf of others. And I mean, I'm guilty of this. I think everyone who speaks in generalities about populations is guilty of this. But the helpful thing with fertility is we have quite literally thousands of surveys around the world where we ask people, how many children do you want? There's a wonderful paper that came out, I think, about four years ago that collected all the data for European countries. And it's entitled, To Is Best, the Stability of Two Child Preferences, because in fact, we do not observe a decline in the number of children that women want in rich countries. Yes, there's a decline when they go from poor to middle income, but we don't observe a decline. decline in the very rich countries. In fact, they're rather stable around two to two point five children

each. And where we observe the lowest fertility in the world is not in the richest countries. Norway is still having relatively large numbers of children. It's in middle income countries, like some of the East Asian countries, some of the Southern European countries. Of course, the lowest fertility in the United States is in Puerto Rico. So I just want to be clear that the Low fertility rates we see in high-income countries and middle-income countries are not, because that's what people want. They tell us what they want in surveys and they want to have more children. They feel thwarted from having children. Can I come back here? I'm really glad that you brought this up because I think you're wrong

and I don't know where you get your evidence base from. As you know, we have the demographic and health surveys. And we call it average ideal number of children. And there's a lot of research on what we call underachievement or under-realised fertility. And in fact, there have been quite a lot of sort of mega reviews looking at this. And I would, just to give you an example, when you actually decompose some of these answers, men tend to underachieve more than women. In other words, men tend to want more children than women do. Education definitely reduces what we call underachievement.

And it's very clear that if you take the difference between women who want large families, and of course actually not many women in high-income countries want families of over three or four, then they are the ones who tend to underachieve. The vast majority of women who say they want one or two children, when we look at the ends of their fertility, typically they have come up with either one or two, and that is what their desired family size or their... average ideal number of children. This is statistically very complex and we don't want to spend too much time arguing about it, but I would say that consistently, and I have papers in plus

one on this, looking exactly at this question. In actual fact, we can say that the big difference is between how many children do you want if you want children and the growth of what we call child-free, particularly women. Women, it isn't that they're childless, it's just that they increasingly are wanting not to have children. And I think that's a really interesting shift maybe we should talk about because it's talking about something that's culturally very, very different. Why is it that so many younger women, particularly at the beginning of their childbearing years, are now saying they just don't want children? Fair enough. So I think it's worth noting that in the US, among millennials, right, so people born in the late 80s and into the 90s, about 25% are likely to

end up childless. And in various surveys, we have different ways we survey the question. The share who say they desire, intend, want, or have an ideal of zero children ranges from 5 to 18 percent. So depending on how you cut it. But either way, that's a considerably larger share that will have no children than say that they want to have no children. For that, we look to things like Eurostat, ISSP, the World Value Survey, the World Fertility Survey, things like that. And those surveys all reliably show that fertility rates in high-income countries are far below what women want. I think what would be very interesting to consider is that, in fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, of all the European countries, they're the most similar to the US. And there is a

huge amount of both survey material and qualitative material as well, which has looked at this and has tried to understand why it is that we do have, without any doubt, low total fertility. rate in both these parts of the world. And yet they're very, very different, you know, the, the Nordic countries, that's Norway, Sweden, Denmark. I suppose Finland tends to come in here as well. And then you look at the US, a completely different welfare regime, very, very different ethnic composition. And yet consistently, we've had between about 2.1 and 1.7 over the last few years in both the US and in the Nordic countries. And a lot of it seems to be a around things like economic concerns, this idea about postponement.

There is now evidence coming out, particularly the Nordic countries, around things like global uncertainty and climate change. There was a really interesting Canadian US study, which very much mirrored a similar Swedish study recently, which looked at increasing emphasis of the millennials, which you have just spoken about, who want high-quality children, and suggesting that the whole norms

around childbearing have changed. In particular, this idea about good parenting, you must have read this, parenting is seen as a project now, and therefore if we have one or two children, then we will be good parents. And this idea about personal fulfilment, a lot of work particularly in Asia, in Korea, in particular, where young women are prioritising personal fulfilment over the obligation to reproduce. and I think that's something that we have seen over the last 20, 30 years. You know, I no longer have an obligation to my parents to have a child. And I think that is a real generational shift that we saw occurring towards the end of the 20th century. I mean, I look at my peers.

I mean, I'm in this cohort, right smack dab in the middle of it. And yes, there's lots of anxiety about being a good parent and fulfilling all these things. And so parenting doesn't look fulfilling because, we create a society that demands quality, that asserts that you're going to improve the quality of a child if you do this, this, and this, regardless of the fact that the evidence for this is sometimes sparse. And so I would argue that the low birth rates here are a problem, that it's not that this whole generation just doesn't care about kids. And so they decided to pursue personal fulfillment. I mean, all people in all times try to pursue personal fulfillment. But what gives that

fulfillment is socially malleable. And because we have created social norms that make parenting appear to be far more exhausting and burdensome than it need be, partly because of essentially latent class notions around child quality, I think that this inhibits people from having children that they want to have. And I shouldn't say, I think, I should say I know. I run a regular survey where we include some questions on parental anxiety and feelings of stress, about the idea of having children. And it's one of the strongest predictors of women having fewer children

than they say they want to have. Is the presence of sort of agreement with these sort of high parental anxiety statements. So yeah, this is a real thing, but it's not a positive thing. Saying that a parent feels a lot of pressure to make sure their two-year-old gets into four different music classes

in order to feel like they're not failing as a parent, it is not an endorsement. So I think, I mean, I think what I think is interesting is that we're obviously covering a lot of ground here. So on the one hand, we disagree, and we both come from, I presume, robust academic backgrounds,

and therefore we have to disagree. I mean, the evidence that I read is obviously different from the evidence that you appear to read. But we both agree that something is happening in our society, which means that there is real concern about having children. And I think probably what we're going to come down to, I would suggest that we both agree that round about two is roughly what women want. I don't think women want three or four.

You may say otherwise I will have to disagree and we can't go anywhere on that. But I think we both agree that once you get down below two children, and that means that you have got, you know, as we say, maybe a quarter, maybe more women in particular deciding not to have children to be child-free. One has to ask why that is happening. And that is really where we see the, very low birth rate coming in. Now, that takes that away from that argument, is this a good or a bad thing? And I obviously think it's a good thing. Right at the beginning, we talked a little bit about

the pandemic. And what I think is very interesting there is, as you said, there's a lot of information at the moment coming out, some of it very early data, but some of it more robust, suggesting these low birth rates that may continue. And I would argue that's because for most young people, this pandemic has not been the traditional pandemic where we tend to see this huge sort of revival of birth rates after a pandemic. I mean, if we look at the contemporary epidemics and pandemics we've had, and particularly go back to the 1918, 19, 1920 pandemic, where there was this real feeling among the young people who'd survived that they wanted to have more children. This has not knocked out babies and children. This has knocked out older

adults. And I think that people of childbearing age have actually been affected far more in the way that they were affected and are affected by economic recessions. And we know after an economic recession, it can take quite a long time for couples to feel confident about bringing children in the world. So where we are heading is actually probably continuing flattening or falling birth rates in mini-European and North American countries. On that, I think we do agree.

Yeah. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world. And you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends.

shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.w.w.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. A sign of a great debate is when the moderator is made obsolete, and you've both done that marvelously well at the last 15 minutes. I've just enjoyed listening to you, go back and forth. But I'm just conscious of our time, and I want to shoehorn into this debate, just a couple points that I know must be on. on listeners' minds. And the first, let me come to you on this lineman, is the argument that we have an aging society that's living longer that is responsible for a lot of unfunded liabilities, financial liabilities for governments. And how do we cope with those burdens and the responsibilities

to take care of the boomer generation when our population is seemingly set to contract, the result of lower birth rates going forward? Unpack that a bit for us, and then I want to come to Sarah to get her view on maybe why that isn't some kind of existential, financial, or moral or societal crisis. So obviously, intergenerational transfers are challenging to manage when generation sizes get very lumpy one way or another, particularly when the older generation is larger. And we often think of things like social security systems, but it's not only that. You can also think of something like the stock market, right? Apple is only valuable as a stock because

there are people to buy Apple products. If the future market for Apple products is shrinking because population is shrinking, then Apple stock becomes less valuable. Now, because most companies, large companies with public trading are global, they have a way to hedge that, but only in Western countries. So by the time Nigerian people are getting old, Nigerian companies won't have lots of other countries to sell their products into that are still young. So it's worth noting there's a lot of options for high-income early transition countries like Western Europe and the U.S. that don't exist for countries farther down the line. Now, you can manage intergenerational transfers by intensifying extraction from young workers.

And what effect will that have? Well, young workers will be even more strained and they're likely to have even fewer children. And as a result, what will happen, it will be more severe the next generation. Another thing you can do is try to do more technological advancement to supplement labor. That's a great option. The problem with technology is that technology is capital intense. And in general, the return on capital falls as population growth falls.

There's a lot of rather complicated reasons for that. But that does tend to be the case, which means actually the incentive to invest in it declines as we get older, which means it gets harder to make those investments actually pay off. Moreover, capital-intensive shifts in the economy are not neutral with regards to inequality. They tend to intensify returns to people with access to capital who are already rich. And this is one of the problems of aging, in fact, is that it tends to exacerbate inequality quite a lot, and not just in the present time, but intergenerational. When the average person has longer years of working and then support in old age, they tend to

die with reasonably sized bequests. Those bequests are divided among a smaller number of heirs, which means wealthy families more successfully pass on their wealth to the next generation. We actually have a great example of this. It's not a mystery what a zero population growth society looks like in terms of class terms, because this was most of human history until modernity. So the creation of intergenerational aristocracy is not a coincidence, but is a feature of low population growth societies because it's easier for elites to pass on advantage. There's also other things. Older consumers tend to have more brand loyalty, so new companies have a harder time competing so you get less entrepreneurship. So intergenerational transfers are an issue.

They're not the only one. And I should say solving the lack of young workers with immigrants is a great solution for a little while. But as more and more countries have their fertility transition and they're having their transitions faster and faster all the time, which means this problem is becoming more and more acute in more and more countries. You will eventually run out of workers because more and more countries will want to receive those immigrants. Fewer and fewer countries will be sending them. And also, you're going to end up with a situation where a lot of poor countries have their demographic transition and have absolutely no economic growth to pay for the retirement of all those people. We call this.

getting old before you get rich. India is pretty much already there. China is pretty much there. Africa is well on its way. In the U.S., Puerto Rico is the canonical example. So, I mean, there are a lot of problems here. Now, there are ways to tackle it, but they basically revolve around increasing extraction from the working generation one way or another, either through intensifying inequality through capital substitution or through higher transfers through taxes or through lower returns on work and investment. One way or another, your intensifying extraction from younger workers, which will tend to make the problem worse in the next generation. Okay. So let's set up our closing statements in a moment. But first, I want Sarah to respond to this sweeping argument that Lyman has just set out

here about the negative economic effects and potential impacts on economic inequality and intergenerational fairness that declining birth rates could entail. I mean, I completely agree about issues around intergenerational transfers and intergenerational fairness. I think what we've just heard is 20th century thinking. As I said, you know, the world is changing so fast. We cannot underestimate the role of technology and labor. You already talked a little bit about consumption being global, and you have extrapolated to the end of this century

things that already are not happening at the beginning of the 21st century. So the idea that we're going to have Nigeria in exactly the same position as the US is now, but in 50, 60 years' time, I think is highly unlikely. So what I would say is that, again, you cannot look at this in isolation.

is changing tremendously. Cohorts are changing. I haven't heard anyone say that older people are brand loyal and is very difficult actually to get them to change. That is 20th century thinking. We know that that isn't the case anymore. We know that someone who's in their 60s and 70s in a high income country is nothing like what their parents were like. We know, for example, that if anything with technology, we're going to have actually less work for each individual to do. We also know that the idea that we're going to have people in, you know, I mean, people often talk about the demographic burden and they take 60 as the cutoff. It's unthinkable that I think that in 50, 60 years' time, we're going to have age 60

as having any significance whatsoever because all the evidence is that not only a life expectancy is increasing, but healthy life expectancy is increasing. And if anything, we will be stretching work across the life course and we will be allowing, hopefully, people in their 30s and 40s who many of them are still having. children to be able to concentrate on positive parenting, then return into the labour market, then be caring maybe for older adults, then return back into the labour market. So we're going to have flexible working lives. We're going to see the intergenerational contract change tremendously. So yes, it is a transition. And yes, we do need policies in place. And we do need the corporate

world to wake up to the fact that this demographic transition is occurring. But I think a lot of governments are aware of this. And I think mainly because of technology, which will increase, or science and technology, it will increase the health profile of us all, and particularly older adults, and it's going to change the way we work and consume. So I have far less of a fear than what we have just heard a few minutes ago from Lyman. Okay, let's push to closing statements now. So Lyman, you're up. This is your opportunity to sum up your final arguments in this fascinating and far-ranging debate, be it resolved, don't fear declining birth rates. You've been arguing mostly opposed to the resolution. Let's hear your summing up. So as I said from the

beginning, I don't think we need to fear low birth rates, but I think we have to be cognizant of their effects. We have to take seriously that they impose real costs. Low birth rates don't have the benefits that are often ascribed to them. That is, they don't, in fact, result in fewer women having fewer unintended pregnancies. They don't result in a more hospitable climate for future generations. They don't have these positive effects, and they do have negative effects. They alter inequality. They alter economic growth. They alter intergenerational transfers. They alter basic judgments about fairness in society. And beyond all of this, they are not what most people say they want for themselves. We don't need any other reason to think that these low birth rates are a problem than that

they are not what people say they want. Whether you think people want 1.9, 2, 2.1, 2.3 kids hardly matters when you're talking about countries that in some cases have 0.8, 0.9 children per woman. And when you have countries that are going on a decade or two of persistent ongoing decline below replacement rate, We're not debating whether it's good for a country to modernize and give women basic political, economic, and civil liberties and equality. That's not the debate here. The debate is whether we should have a society where parenting is so stressful that people feel terrified to do it. We're debating whether we should have a society where we should provide direct transfers to help people have children because we are concerned that low birth rates are bad for society or whether we should not have that concern and therefore not provide them. those transfers. That is the debate we're having. And I am arguing that low birth rates are enough of a

problem that it justifies making considerable transfers to assist families and that treating them as if they are not a problem ignores the manifestly negative forces driving them, which will create manifestly negative consequences in the future. Thank you, Lyman. Okay, sir, we're going to give you the last word in our debate today. You've been arguing in favor of the motion. Be it resolved. Don't Don't fear declining birth rates. Wrap this debate up for us. I'm going to actually agree with a lot of what Lyman said in his closing statement. In so much as I don't think we should be at all worried about what is going to happen.

It is going to happen, but we shouldn't be fearing it. And I come back to what I said at the beginning is that I do disagree with Lyman because I do think nearly all the evidence I have looked at around climate change and biodiversity. says that it is good for us to have fewer children and it will inevitably lead to declining and aging populations. That's what we shouldn't be fearing. It's good because we will be placing less pressure on Earth's resources and slowing climate change. But it's going to happen and therefore we should be putting policies in place

which, A, support people to have the number of children that they want across the globe. And I think by the end of the century, we will see many women in particular, choosing to be child-free across the globe and those that want to have children. I hope we live in a society where they are supported to have children. We will have a much more globally free migration system whereby areas of high youth can move to areas where there are less youth. We will have current midlife and older populations far, far more educated and healthier than we are now, and so we will be working far longer. And we will have technology.

supporting us. So my argument remains, this is natural, this is going to happen, and we need the right kind of policies to support individuals and communities and countries to adapt to this. Thank you, sir, and thank you, Lyman. Again, we've had a far-reaching debate here about demographics, about the economy, about the effects of climate and population and how they're intertwined together. So thank you for giving us such a rich and multi-layered conversation. and for the civility and substance with which you've engaged one another. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you for being part of this discussion. Well, that wraps up today's debate.

I want to thank our participants, Lyman, and Sarah. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have any questions or feedback on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Here's a note from a listener called Ann about a recent podcast debate on assisted suicide. I enjoyed the debate, but I think it's important to note that in Canada, we don't seem to have the option to get lethal drug injections and to decide for ourselves when we die. Thus, the physician is obligated to give the fatal dose. This seems more than a bit unfair to me.

Interesting point, Ann, certainly something to think about. You can go back and listen to that debate on our podcast feed from just a few weeks ago, raising a whole series of facts. fascinating issues and debates about our respective right to die. A reminder also that our Monk members-only podcast with me and Janice Gross Stein out every Friday digging into the big issues and ideas shaping the news is yours to listen to free any time as part of our perk of basic membership at the Muck Debates. You can grab your basic membership for free by simply going to www monkdebates.com forward slash membership.

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