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Birth rates are notoriously declining in Japan, China, Korea, and Europe. In fact, they are too low to maintain a nation’s population not just in those widely publicized cases, but also in every affluent nation except Israel. Paradoxically, the few countries that still have high birth rates are the countries last able to afford them! Those are the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Niger, which has an average of seven children per woman, population growing at over 3% per year, but average income around just $1000 per year.
The governments of Japan and other affluent countries are very worried about their low birth rates. Elon Musk foresees the end of civilization, from a shortage of babies. Are Musk and governments right to be worried?
If they are right, couldn’t we fix the problem by paying citizens to have babies? No: Italy’s dictator Mussolini, and many modern governments, tried that solution and other incentives. But none of those attempted solutions have worked. Sweden lavishes money on childcare. Australia paid a “baby bonus” of 5,000 Australian dollars to parents producing a baby. France reduced the income tax owed by parents. Korea and Japan offered both mothers and fathers parental leave from work.
Despite those financial incentives, the native populations of all those countries are still declining, just as is the native population of Japan. Why does all that money not buy more babies?
To understand why, just ask your friends of child-bearing age, but with few or no children, why they made that choice. You’ll hear the same answers again and again, both from prospective mothers and from prospective fathers. Their answers include the costs of feeding, clothing, and educating a child; pressure on working adults to prioritize their jobs, rather than to stay home with children; and reluctance to launch a child into this deteriorating world.
If you pose the same question just to prospective mothers, you’ll get some additional answers. Many women say that their husbands expect them to do most of the housework and childcare; that they are no longer willing to remain household slaves, as were their own mothers; and that it’s hard to balance a career with motherhood.
My Japanese men as well as women friends who are offered paternity or maternity leave to encourage them to have babies discover that they are subsequently denied promotions if they accept that offer. At the end of the workday in the office, they are expected to go out and socialize with fellow workers, rather than to go home and change their babies’ diapers.
In short, attitudes of business owners, politicians, and prospective parents themselves are obstacles to bringing up children. I don’t deny that the need for money also plays a role. But money doesn’t solve those obstacles of the attitudes of important people — like one’s spouse, one’s boss, and one’s prime minister.
Are a low birth rate and a declining population really a catastrophe, as Elon Musk claims? Economists tend to agree with Musk. They think that a declining population is bad for the economy. They claim that fewer people mean fewer inventors, less innovation, less tax revenue, a smaller army, a shrinking consumer market, and a growing Social Security burden on the government.
Yes, those concerns are realistic. But they focus on only part of the story. Much more important than a country’s number of citizens is the quality of those citizens: their acquired skills, and their ability to contribute. Think of Finland and Israel, both with populations under 10 million, and nevertheless famous for their inventors, their businesses, and the successes of their armies at fighting countries over 10 times more populous.
If Japan’s population really did decline from 126 million to — horror of horrors — “only” 116 million, would Japan’s economy, inventions, and business successes be overtaken by those of Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia, each with a population above 200 million? Of course not! Japan’s importance doesn’t depend on Japan having 126 million people. It depends instead on the geographic and historical advantages of Japan, and of being Japanese.
Economists worried about low birth rates also harp on the disadvantage of an increasing population of old retired people needing to be supported by a decreasing population of young workers. Why don’t those economists also worry about the insanity of mandatory retirement, a policy that contributes to that population of old retired people? In most European countries, Japan, and Korea, businesses REQUIRE workers to stop working and retire at a certain age, almost always in their 60s.
Of course, many workers experience their work as paid drudgery and are eager to retire. But other workers, especially professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, and businesspeople, enjoy their work. Mandatory retirement forces them to retire at the peak of their ability, power, and experience, when they are best able to contribute to society. Mandatory retirement cuts them off from social relationships, from purpose in life, and from reason to consider themselves useful.
That’s bad for workers themselves. A result is that they tend to become depressed and lonely. It’s also terrible for their country: they switch from contributing tax payments to receiving pension payments. In the United States and a few other countries, mandatory retirement has now become illegal nationwide, with exceptions made just for a few jobs in which declining skills of older workers might endanger the public or the workers themselves. Those understandable exceptions include commercial airplane pilots and air traffic controllers.
Thanks to the abolition of mandatory retirement in the U.S., many of my American friends are still choosing to work in their 70s, or even in their 80s and 90s. I “retired” just a few months ago, at age 86, in order to be free to spend more time writing. We older working Americans are enjoying our lives, our work, and our contributions to American society. We are helping our government by still paying taxes, and by not yet drawing pensions. Japanese and European politicians worried about their growing numbers of pensioners should begin by outlawing mandatory retirement.
Politicians never mention the most important advantage of declining birth rates: Those declines relieve pressure on the world’s resources. Today, the world’s biggest problem is too many people, not too few people. Essential resources of which the world doesn’t have enough to support even its present population include freshwater, seafood, forests, farmland, and minerals. Competition for resources has been the most important ultimate cause of wars. Just think of the modern wars for which resource competition was the leading ultimate cause: World War II in the Pacific, Germany’s 1941 invasion of Russia, the 19th century War of the Pacific between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru, and others.
That’s why a world with declining birth rates and shrinking populations will be a more peaceful, more stable, happier, and richer world.
Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” “Collapse,” “Upheaval,” and other international best-selling books. He was formerly a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Japanese translation of this article appeared in The Yomiuri Shimbun’s Sept. 15 issue.
