quietlyradical

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I recall there being somewhat of a panic surrounding the idea that the world was becoming dangerously overcrowded. We were told that population growth threatened food supplies, natural resources, pollution, wildlife, and even world peace. “Zero Population Growth” wasn’t a fringe slogan—it was considered responsible citizenship. Fast-forward fifty years and suddenly we’re being told the opposite: civilization itself is supposedly at risk because people aren’t having enough babies. I can’t help but wonder, “What changed?”

I was seven years old when the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. In the months that followed, the United States’ government established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress quickly passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. CARE International regularly broadcast televised PSAs highlighting the horrors of children in third-world countries having to drink contaminated water or suffering from the bloated bellies that accompany severe malnutrition. When I was 10 years old, I remember the Arab Oil Embargo and my parents complaining about having to wait in long lines for gasoline or encountering gas stations which had signs up advising potential customers that they were closed because their gasoline storage tanks were empty due to the shortages.

Additionally, advances in western medicine were contributing to longer lifespans. When I was born in 1963, the average life expectancy was 54 years worldwide and 70 years in the United States. By the time I was 18, in 1981, life expectancy had increased to 62 worldwide and to 75 in the United States. It was predicted that if people continued to have large families, the growth in the world population would very quickly become unsustainable. As a result, the Zero Population Growth movement began. Prospective parents were encouraged to have no more than two children so that the stress on the planet and its resources could be minimized.

Today, however, we are hearing the exact opposite – birthrates are too low and this will lead, we are told, to many negative consequences, but is this really the case? In order to address this question, I decided to take a look at who is worried about our shrinking population and why. What I discovered is that different groups are worried for many different reasons.

First, economists worry about a reduced workforce and lower tax revenues which will make it more difficult to fund programs like Social Security and Medicare that provide support to an ever-growing population of retirees. Business owners worry because a shrinking population means fewer potential employees and fewer potential customers. Governments worry about a shrinking tax base and fewer people available to serve in the military. Political conservatives worry about changing family structures, including more people choosing to remain single and/or childfree and what this means in terms of what conservatives would consider to be “traditional family values.” While there may be some level of validity to all of these concerns, I also think that there are a number of other questions to consider.

First, is endless population growth really necessary? Is the idea that an economy must continue to grow in order to be viable perhaps an outdated assumption? Consider agriculture, for example. In previous generations, a successful farming operation depended heavily upon physical labor, which was often provided by the farmers’ own large families. Children cared for the livestock, tended the gardens, and helped in the fields during planting and harvesting season. Today, however, the family farm is being replaced by large commercial farming operations. High-tech machinery enables far fewer individuals to plant and harvest many acres in a fraction of the time and with far less manual labor than was required even fifty years ago. Scores of dairy cows can be milked simultaneously using milking machines. Eventually, self-driving technology will likely enable completely autonomous combines to plant and harvest fields with little to no human intervention.

Factories are already highly automated with robotic assembly lines operating efficiently with few human workers. Artificial intelligence and sophisticated computer software allows all kinds of office work to be performed without the need for large numbers of clerical employees. Supermarkets, retail stores, and fast-food restaurants operate using kiosk ordering systems and self-checkout. As technology continues to advance, I believe that a day will come in the not-to-distant future where supermarket shelves will be stocked by robots, robots will fill Amazon and Temu orders, and the products will be delivered by drones. Food will be prepared by robotic chefs, and public spaces will be cleaned by automated robotic janitors. Taxis, buses, and long-haul trucks will be self-driving. Legal disputes will be solved using AI and routine medical interventions may become automated as well.

Next, perhaps we, as a society, should evaluate whether fewer people is necessarily a bad thing. A smaller population could mean no more housing shortages, less homelessness, less traffic, a reduction in climate change, and lower crime rates. Additionally, for those who favor “small government,” fewer citizens would be a much smaller Congress and a reduction in the cost associated with paying representatives and providing for their very generous health insurance benefits.

So, what about the concerns with the shrinking tax base? While the current model of using payroll taxes paid by younger workers to fund the pensions and social security benefits of retirees might prove to be unsustainable, economists agree that there are other alternative solutions which definitely can provide viable alternatives. Companies who replace human workers with automation reduce their expenses and, as a result, may increase their profits. A higher corporate tax rate on this increase in profit could provide a mechanism to provide for the security of retirees and provide displaced workers with Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Universal Health insurance. Implementation of Universal Basic Income (UBI) would, in turn, ensure that companies would continue to enjoy a demand for their products as people receiving UBI used the money to purchase consumer goods, allowing economic growth to continue, even though jobs may have been eliminated due to automation. Additionally, the combination of UBI and universal health care would increase the likelihood that people of all would provide volunteer labor in sectors of society that are of personal interest to them, thereby saving companies even more money. People who are assured of having their basic needs of food, shelter, and medical care provided, could then, in turn, provide free childcare, elder care, or basic household services to other individuals who are still employed with various corporations. These employees would experience less stress and be more productive, which also would benefit their employers in terms of reductions in absenteeism and turnover, and increases in employee morale.

Rather than fretting about the declining birth rate, I think that our attention should be placed on leveraging automation to increase productivity and lower business expenses, redesigning retirement systems, adjusting how we measure economic health, and understanding how programs like UBI, universal health care, and free education have the potential to help our economy to continue to grow in spite of a shrinking workforce.

I don’t know whether today’s birthrate decline will ultimately prove to be beneficial or harmful. But I do know this: fifty years ago, we were warned that population growth threatened humanity’s future. Today we’re warned that population decline threatens humanity’s future. Maybe the real lesson isn’t that one side is right and the other wrong. Maybe it’s that societies tend to mistake current economic assumptions for eternal truths. If automation and artificial intelligence allow fewer people to produce more than ever before, perhaps the question isn’t how to restore yesterday’s population trends. Perhaps it’s how to build an economy that works in tomorrow’s world.