14 - THE DEMOGRAPHIC COLLAPSE

THE DEMOGRAPHIC COLLAPSE

Introduction

Why are people having so few children and what are the impacts on society?

This question has been at the centre of my personal life and quest for happiness, as I always wanted to be a father, and it is the reason I wrote this book. It is also humanity's greatest challenge of this century, by far.

For the first time in human history, there are more people over 60 than under 20 in advanced economies. Our social welfare system, which is based on a large population of young, active people supporting a small population of elderly people, is crumbling because the demographic pyramid has been turned on its head. The lower the birth rate falls, the more it enters a negative downward spiral. As fewer and fewer children are born, there are fewer future mothers, and this continues indefinitely. No society in history has ever recovered from that spiral. Not only are there fewer future mothers, but there are also fewer young adult workers, while older people are living longer, creating a burden for the fiscal system, economic output, stability of purchasing power and social welfare system. Low fertility rates over generations simply lead to the death of culture, values, identities and humanity altogether. Investigating why people have fewer children provides some answers as to what can be done about it and how we can get back to two children per woman to stabilise the population. While I have some answers and proposals, make no mistake: There are no solutions, at least none that we could implement without causing major problems in other areas of society.

The world's population has grown exponentially over the last two centuries, not coincidentally with the increased use of fossil fuels that enable our society's prosperity, mass food production, improved sanitation and reduced infant mortality, among other things. While a growing population is a sign of health and dominance for a species, it raises the question of ecological balance and planetary boundaries. The larger the population, the greater the generated wealth and material resources consumption, the greater the impact on ecosystems and biodiversity. But in the last 50 years, the trend has reversed in the developed world, with a sharp drop in birth rates below replacement level. While a smaller population might have a positive impact on the environment, rental prices and overall density in cities, a shrinking population is detrimental to the economy and social welfare system, particularly given the ageing population.

Will the world's population continue to grow, and how will it be distributed across countries and continents? Is a growing population and a falling birth rate a good or a bad thing? What are the reasons behind the falling birth rates across the world? Are there effective birth control measures that can be implemented to boost the fertility rate? Is it ethical to encourage people to have more or fewer children? These are many fascinating questions with different answers depending on your point of view.

I am taking a rational approach based on facts and statistics, comparing commonalities between countries and analysing what history can teach us. I will also explain the key reasons for our fertility decline and why trends won't change anytime soon. Finally, I will discuss what this means for our societies in the near term.

There is a great 10-minute summary video about the decline in fertility rates around the world that you can watch here.

Another good 30-minute video about the impact of the demographic collapse on the economy, the social welfare state and the overall standards of living can be watched here.

If you have more time and would prefer to watch a video summarising this chapter of my book, one of the best documentaries about falling fertility rates is undoubtedly "Birthgap" by Stephen J. Shaw. You can watch it here.

This chapter is the heart and soul of my book — the main reason I wanted to write it in the first place — and explains why I am overly pessimistic about the future of our civilisation. I hope to shed light on the taboo topic of fertility rates and raise awareness of the dramatic impact on social welfare systems that we are bound to experience in the next three decades, so that people can prepare for the decline of our prosperity. Let's get started!

Evolution of fertility rates

Many countries' populations are in clear demographic decline, including those of Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Thailand and Chile, to name a few. Since 2022, China has had more deaths than births, reaching in 2024 the lowest number of births since 1949. South Korea has had more deaths than births since 2020. France is expected to register in 2025 more deaths than births for the first time since 1945, a milestone that the UK is expected to reach permanently in 2026. Populations are shrinking and ageing so quickly that migration cannot compensate for this anymore. This demographic collapse will have profound socio-economic effects.

Fertility rates have been falling slowly in the USA and Europe since the industrial revolution around 1800. This is not a recent phenomenon. In the history of the world, there has never been a country that has fallen below the fertility replacement level of 2.1 for a decade, only to rise above it again the following decade. The only exception is the babyboom era of 1945-1970. There is no precedent for a sustained returned above 2.1 once the fertility rates are below 1.9, post 1970. Regardless of the political leader or the pro-natalist policies implemented, no country has ever successfully stabilised its native population in the long term. While there are still plenty of untried ideas and proposals, the odds are obviously against it, and it is likely that fertility rates will continue to decline until our industrialised civilisation hits rock bottom in terms of available labor force, public debt, public social welfare systems, and public spending in general. See Figure 1A below for the fertility rate in the USA over the last 200 years.

Figure 1A: Fertility rate in USA since 1860

Before the Industrial Revolution, around 45% of european children did not survive to the age of 15. This rate of around 50% remained consistent across civilisations and centuries prior to 1800. The culture, practices, beliefs and technologies of different civilisations throughout history had no impact on infant mortality, which remained at around 50% across the globe for centuries. As the child mortality rate declined due to improvements in medicine and health in the 19th and 20th century, the fertility rate remained above the replacement rate of 2 children per woman until 1940. Then came the exceptional post-WWII 'baby boom' period, with around three children per woman from 1945 until 1965 in developed economies such as those in Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. The baby boom era was an outlier in a 20-year period of rising fertility rates, which occurred during 200 years of overall declining fertility rates. The babyboomer era led to massive population growth, followed decades later by labour force growth and economic growth.

The fertility rate started to decline in the late 1960s, falling below the replacement rate in the 1970s. It has continued to plummet, especially since 2015.

Figure 1B below shows that the global population has grown faster since the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Better sanitation, medicine, machinery and efficient new industrial technology at scale have enabled lower fertility and mortality rates and higher life expectancy, leading to a population boom. Peak population growth was achieved in the 1960s, after which growth began to decline. It is projected that growth will become negative worldwide (i.e. a decline in the global population) sometime between 2060 and 2070.

Figure 1B: Global population growth over the last 3 centuries

Birth rates in the world's rich economies have more than halved since 1960. A century ago, women in the industrialised world, and even today in the world's poorest countries, had many children, between 3 and 8 per woman. This high birthrate was needed to compensate for high infant mortality, low life expectancy and the need for manual labour at a young age to provide for the family. The average fertility rate in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries fell from 3.3 children per woman in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022, according to OECD data, as shown on figure 1C below. That’s below the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population, absent migration, known to demographers as the replacement level. Today, the birth rate per woman in Niger is still 6.8, compared with 4.1 in Africa, 1.7 in the USA, 1.5 in Europe and 0.7 in South Korea. A fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to ensure the natural renewal of the population. The additional 0.1 takes into account the natural imbalance of 105 boys for every 100 girls, as well as rare cases of infant mortality.

Figure 1C: Fertility rates evolution 1965 - 2023

Look at the fertility rate in each country in 2024 in Figure 1D below: Each country in a shade of blue has a structurally declining population, while countries in a shade of red are still growing each new cohort of babies with a fertility rate above the replacement rate. As you can see, with the exception of Africa, most of the world's countries are in structural decline.

Figure 1D: Fertility rates around the world

The industrial revolution and the massive use of fossil fuels for transport, shelter, food production and health care has reduced the need to have multiple children to support the family. In our industrialised society you can have no children and still have all the comforts of this world with a job and pay for all the services like food and shelter, home repairs, public health care and public pensions. Machines everywhere are doing the work for us and physical human labor on the field and at home is no longer in high demand. You don't need your own children to look after you when you get old, because society as a whole will do that for you with hospital and elderly care. In 1800, one in two children did not survive to the age of 18. In 1950, this figure was one in four, and today, only four per cent do not make it to adulthood in the world. The fact that our children are likely to survive to adulthood does not encourage us to have more babies. Procreation has gone from being a survival necessity to a lifestyle choice that you may or may not have.

Figure 1E: Fertility rate evolution in the world

Figure 1F below shows the six most populous countries in the world, hence with the most impact on total world population. Whether those countries are considered 'rich' or 'poor', the trend for all of them since the 1970s is simply downwards, with no end in sight and no reason to expect a turnaround. All signs suggest it will continue to do so.

Figure 1F: Birth rates in the six most populous countries

The current world population of 8 billion is expected to peak around 10 billion by 2050/2080 and then start a slow decline by the end of the 21st century and a fast decline in the 22nd century. While developed countries have a fertility rate below the necessary 2.1, meaning that their populations will tend to decline unless compensated by immigration, some other underdeveloped countries still have a fertility rate well above 2.1. This means that we are facing an imbalance: some countries have a growing population and others a declining one, which also coincides with the economical poorest and richest countries respectively, so we can probably expect more and more "economic" migrants seeking a better life abroad in the coming decades, in addition to climate migrants and political refugees.

In most industrialised countries, the fertility rate is now well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, which is considered to be the level at which a country's population would be stable without immigration, in all OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) member countries except Israel. This decline is beginning to change the face of societies, communities and families, and is already having a major impact on economic growth and prosperity.

The typical demographic transition experienced by any country begins with low life expectancy and high fertility and child mortality rates. The country's demographic pyramid resembles the Stage 1 graph shown in Figure 1G below. These countries tend to have high poverty rates and low education level. Then, as mortality rates fall and life expectancy rises, fertility rates begin to decrease. This is the transition from stage 2 to stage 4. The country tends to industrialise, achieve a higher level of education, grow its GDP per capita and improve its standard of living. The final stage, stage 5, is what we started to observe in many industrialised countries in the 1970s: Fertility rates plummeted below the replacement level of 2.1 and the shape of the demographic pyramid turned upside down, with a large cohort of people over 50 and very few children under 20.

Figure 1G: The 5 stages of the demographic transition

Currently, 70% of the world's population lives in an environment of declining birth rates, with a fertility rate below 2.1, and this share is growing. By 2050, 95% of the world will be living in a country with a fertility rate below replacement level, meaning a decline in number of birth each year. The global child population peaked in 2013, and has since decreased by 5%. The total population does not accurately reflect our current trajectory because it includes many people over 45 who tend to live longer but no longer influence the growth or decline of the future population. The young population of the world has already started to decline because the important factor is how many children our children will have. The total population of 8 billion is still growing and is expected to peak at around 10 billion by 2060. This figure is misleading because it is increasing due to people living longer, which is causing the average age to rise. However, after the age of 45, you have no influence whatsoever on what the future population will be, so technically, you don't matter anymore. The population of children and young adults is a projection of the future population 40 years from now and a better track record for our demographic destiny.

The future belongs to Africa

Most children today are born in poor countries for two main reasons: First, because parents do not know whether the children will reach reproductive age in good health so that you need multiple of them to have some healthy remaining at adulthood, and second, because children provide economic insurance, mainly by working on the fields and at home, doing household tasks and harvesting food.

There is a direct correlation between infant mortality and fertility in the history of all countries, particularly visible in the first half of the 20th century, when birth conditions improved and fertility rates started to drop. Figure 2A below shows that, of the 35 countries with the largest proportion of children in their population, 32 are African. This is an incredible feature!

Figure 2A: Countries with biggest proportion of children

Figure 2B below shows the countries with a fertility rate below or above replacement level. A country's population is below replacement level if it is already experiencing a decline in the number of people in the youngest age group, i.e. Fewer amount of 1 year old babies than 30 year olds adults, whereas above replacement level means that the country is expanding its population in younger age groups.

Figure 2B: Countries with a fertility rate below or above replacement levels

Apart from Afghanistan and Yemen (both located in the Middle East), all the other 18 countries in the top 20 with the highest fertility rates are in Africa, as shown in Figure 2C below.

Figure 2C: Countries with the highest fertility rates

Africa has the highest fertility rates by far. The projected growth of the African population is impressive and will definitely have significant economic, geopolitical and immigration implications.

By 2100, we project that the African population will grow from 1.5 billion today to 3.5 billion, representing an increase from 18% to 42% of the world's population, as illustrated in Figure 2D below. This will literally create a new geopolitical and power structure.

Figure 2D: African population growth forecast

If we look at projections for the working and child populations, Africa's figures are even more impressive, as shown in Figure 2E below. The working-age population of Africa is projected to increase from 700 million today to 1.9 billion by 2100, whereas China, Europe and the USA are each projected to have only 300 million workers. This would represent a seismic shift in the balance of geopolitical power.

It is also projected that 50% of children under 15 years of age will be African by 2100, compared to 25% today.

Figure 2E: African labor force and children population growth forecast

Over the next 70 years, some other regions of the world in Asia (excluding China, South Korea and Japan) and South America, will experience slight growth, followed by a slight decline. India, the Middle East and Africa are the only regions expected to grow by 2100. North America is expected to remain stable as an influx of young workers should counterbalance an ageing population. Only Europe and Southeast Asia are expected to lose population over the next 50 years. See related figures 2F and 2G below.

Figure 2F: World population projections by region

Figure 2G: Cummulative world population projections by regions

If we focus on the working-age population (aged 25–65), the picture becomes even clearer: India, West Asia (the Middle East) and Africa will increase their working populations, while Japan has had a shrinking working population since 2000, Europe since 2015, and China from 2025 on, as shown in Figure 2H below. Since WWII, the working population has risen by around 1% per year, providing GDP growth and prosperity and ensuring the sustainability of public debt. However, a shrinking working population is bound to cause economic havoc in society, especially when combined with a high proportion of retired people and high national debt.

Figure 2H: Past and projection of working populations

The number of births in Algeria (900,000 in 2024) now exceeds the combined total for Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece! The number of births in Nigeria alone (7.6 million per year) exceeds the number of births in the USA and Europe combined! (3.6 million each). Also, the fertility rate of people of African descent in Europe — those with a North African or sub-Saharan African background — is much higher than that of white Christian local Europeans. Add it all up and imagine what the world will be like in 20 years' time. White Christian Europeans will be an ageing minority population, and guess where will be the dominant part of the world in terms of its workforce, ideas, innovation, growth, culture and values? Africa!

One thing to keep in mind: Projections of population over the next 20 to 30 years, up to 2050, including the working and retired populations, are very predictable and accurate (assuming there is no war or major disease), because children aged 1 to 15 have already been born, fertility trends evolve very slowly, and countries that are attractive to immigrants tend to remain so over time. However, beyond the next 30 years, nobody can claim that these projections are reliable because the economic and geopolitical conditions in the 2040s are likely to be very different from today's. This means that migration flows and fertility trends could reverse by then, making projections for the period 2060–2100 more of an exercise in guessing than science.

Let's hope that the active population boom, economic growth and falling birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa over the next decades of the 21st century will lift billions of Africans out of poverty, as happened in Japan, South Korea, China and Indonesia over the past 50 years. As shown in Figure 2I below, Sub-Saharan Africa still has a third of its population suffering from extreme poverty today.

Figure 2I: Extreme poverty in East Asia and Sub-saharan Africa

For Africa to become a powerful continent in the second half of the 21st century, it will need to address its weaknesses: It must invest in infrastructure of all kinds, such as roads connecting neighbor countries, water supply and electricity grids. Energy poverty and unreliable electricity supply are particularly damaging for industries. It must also diversify its economy and stop relying heavily on the extraction of raw resources (a problem known as the resource curse or the Dutch disease), instead relying on income and corporate taxes from a diversified economy. African countries should move up the value chain by processing raw materials locally (e.g. cacao beans to chocolate, coffee beans to roasted coffee, raw metal ore to refined materials, crude oil to diesel), provided the rest of the world stops tariff escalation. African countries should also enforce foreign entities to pay local taxes instead of extracting resources and declaring revenue in a tax haven countries. Africa must reduce corruption and invest tax revenue in public infrastructure. African countries should control their own currency instead of pegging it to the US dollar or the Euro. They should also limit brain drain by keeping talented young people in their country of origin to develop the economy and increase local standards of living.

General declining fertility rate around the world

Falling fertility rates do not have an "organic floor", or at least no country with this problem has reached one. It is quite possible that the average fertility rate in the developed world will fall from its current level of 1.6 to 1, and possibly to 0.5, or even lower to 0.1. Technically, and given the trends of the past 50 years, all directions point to a bottomless pit. Birth rates will continue to fall without major societal intervention, as illustrated on figure 3A below.

Figure 3A: Declining birth rates in Europe and North america

A population shrinking due to low fertility rates does not shrink in proportion to its current age structure. It declines at the base of its pyramid: The number of babies and children decreases, but the population of adults and the elderly remains, especially with an expected life expectancy of 81 years. Over time, the proportion of older people relative to younger people is increasing, as shown by the rise in the median age over the last 50 years on figure 3B below.

Figure 3B: Rising median age in Europe and North america

The problem is that the large cohort of older people, dependent on young workers for social support, health care and pension funding, is becoming a huge economic burden on the shrinking working population. The old-age dependency ratio, the ratio of retired people to the working population, is rising rapidly, as shown on figure 3C below.

Figure 3C: Old-age dependency ratio in Europe and North america

As the dependency ratio has already shrunk since the 2010s and will continue to shrink over the next 30 years, it will continue to take more people of working age available to support those outside of it. Whether a worker takes time off to care for an elderly person, or pays someone of working age to do so, more labour is being allocated out of the productive economy for the care of dependent people.

A shrinking working-age population combined with a growing retired population puts a strain on economic growth because it means lower tax revenues and, consequently, reduced public spending on infrastructure, investment, education, healthcare and pensions. Across the EU, the increase in the number of older people not participating in the labour force each year is not being matched by the influx of young people and people of working age, exacerbating labour shortages and causing inflation and supply chain disruptions.

Combined with rising life expectancy, low birth rates also put pressure on public finances as there are fewer people contributing the tax revenues needed to pay for the rising costs of an ageing population. For example, in the USA, there were five workers supporting one retiree in 1960. By 2020, this had fallen to 3:1, and it is expected to reach 2:1 by around 2050 or 2060, as shown in Figure 3D below.

Figure 3D: Old age dependency in the USA

The average number of children per woman in the 38 most industrialised countries has fallen from 3.3 in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022, according to an OECD study. In the 1960s, there were 6 people of working age for every retired person, according to the World Economic Forum. Today, the ratio is closer to 3 to 1. By 2050, it will be 2 to 1.

To understand the scale of the fertility decline: If the entire world had Thailand's fertility rate of 1.2 today, and we maintained that rate for 100 years, we would go from 8 billion people to 1 billion people in just one century. That's just crazy! Now imagine the impact it would have on your daily life, the goods and services you expect to consume, all the imported stuff we all get from other countries, the military equipment, the supply chain bottlenecks, the GDP and debt of nations, the housing market, etc. .... Really unimaginable consequences. We are heading in that direction and it is only a matter of time.

The world population exploded from 1 billion to 7 billion in the 20th century. If the whole world had a constant fertility rate of 1.6, as in the US or Europe today, the world population would fall back from 10 billion in 2050 to 2 billion in 2250, a decline almost as fast as the rapid population explosion of the last 100 years, as illustrated on chart 3E below.

Figure 3E: Population evolution if the entire world had the current US fertility rate of 1.6 from now onwards

Birth rates have fallen across Europe, even in countries such as Finland, Sweden and France, where family-friendly policies and greater gender equality had previously helped boost the number of babies. Austria and Estonia had 1.32 children per woman in 2023, down from 1.41 the previous year. In Estonia, the rate was 1.31 in 2023, down from 1.41 the previous year. In Finland, the birth rate was above the EU average until 2010, but will fall to 1.26 in 2023, the lowest since records began in 1776. France had the highest birth rate at 1.79 children per woman in 2022, but national figures show that it fell to 1.67 in 2023, the lowest on record. Rates also fell in countries where they were already very low, reaching 1.12 in Spain and 1.2 in Italy in 2023.

A basic explanation for the decline in fertility rates on the last century: If people are less likely to die, they are less in a hurry to have babies, so they start later. And if people believe that all their children will survive and be healthy, they need fewer children.

Having children seems to be less of a priority for women and more of a burden or constrain. But what is true for women is also true for men. More and more people are convinced that they don't want to have children for a variety of reasons, such as the responsibility, burden and commitment of being a parent, or they postpone parenting until late in their 30s or even 40s and then either they don't have the right partner or they are biologically incapable of having children. Having a family is no longer a priority for many people, both men and women around the world.

Declining fertility is a global phenomenon, not just a trend in Western culture. Even some countries that you would never imagine now have low fertility rates below replacement levels of 2.1, such as India, Turkey and Thailand. Their fertility rates have fallen to 1.95 in India, 1.6 in Turkey and a staggering 1.2 in Thailand. See Figure 3F below.

Figure 3F: Thailand, Turkey and India

India, despite having a very young population, has had a slightly declining demography over the last 20 years, mainly because its replacement rate is closer to 2.5 than 2.1 due to relatively high infant mortality. Turkey has seen a massive drop in its fertility rate since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, most likely due to the very high inflation and lack of currency stability of the Turkish Lira over the last 5 years. Thailand is really an astonishing case where no one would expect such a low fertility rate, but it has actually been below replacement level since 1990 and has been declining especially since 2015.

Other countries with remarkably low total fertility rates in 2024 are Puerto Rico with 0.9, Costa Rica with 1.1, Colombia with 1.2, Chile with 0.9, Taiwan with 0.9, Spain with 1.1, Italy with 1.2, Poland with 1.1, China with 1, Japan with 1.1 and South Korea with 0.7.

For these countries, we are talking about halving the population of a given young cohort every generation or about every 30 years. These countries will become almost extinct before the end of the century. That's the dramatic impact of extremely low fertility rates.

In summary, apart from Sub-Saharan Africa, which has an average fertility rate of 4.5, and the Arab region of North Africa and the Middle East, which has an average fertility rate of 3.1, every other region of the world is experiencing a structural decline, with a fertility rate below the replacement rate of 2.1.

During major epidemics throughout history, it was mostly the weak who died: children and the elderly. Once the disease had run its course, the remaining population was mostly in the prime of life, aged 18 to 30. This was ideal for restarting a society's economy and population reproduction.

The same applies to war: it was young men who were killed during wartime, while the elderly suffered and died sooner due to a lack of support and a depleted workforce. When the war ended, most fertile women were still alive and eager to have a stable family with children with the remaining young men, while the elderly population had dwindled. This created the perfect conditions for a post-war population boom with no significant impact on future generations, since it is women who contribute to the fertility rate.

Even considering the Black Death epidemic of the 14th century, or the Thirty Years' War in Germany in the 17th century and the two World Wars in the 20th century, the reproduction rate restarted quickly, reaching pre-war levels within a few years or one generation latest, as shown in Figure 3G below.

Figure 3G: European population from 1000 until 1700

In short, the only significant drop in population that we have experienced in the past due to an epidemic or war has never had a long-term impact on the subsequent generation's fertility or reproduction rates. In fact, I would argue that, in the long term, war and epidemics have led to sustained or increased fertility and reproduction rates. However, since the 1970s, we have experienced structural depopulation from the bottom up, starting with the children age group. This has had no impact on the elderly, nor has it led to a decrease in life expectancy — quite the opposite, in fact, as more elderly people are living longer. This is an unprecedented situation, and we are now in the third generation of a lower fertility rate below reproduction rate. There is no sign of this reversing, but rather a worsening of the birth rate in the coming decades. This will affect not just a single country or region, but already 70% of the planet. This is a truly unprecedented situation in the history of humanity. The magnitude of our demographic crisis is unparalleled.

Apart from a 20-year period from 1945 to 1965 — the generation of the 'baby boomers' — birth rates have been falling for 200 years. So how did we get an exceptional 20-year window of strong and growing fertility rates? The unfortunate answer is by experiencing a devastating world war lasting five years, with millions of deaths, borders being attacked, and bombs falling from the sky, including atomic bombs. Our societies had to endure five years of war, poverty, the constant fear of death and no guarantee of a better tomorrow, in order to experience the sense of urgency and necessity to reproduce on a large scale.

This 20-year period was the only exception among the last 200 years of declining fertility rates.

The next significant and sustained increase in the birth rate can only be caused by a similar tragic event, a rupture in society and a major change in narrative. I believe that the light at the end of the tunnel will be seen when, 20 or 30 years from now, there are lots of extremely poor and lonely retirees without children who are not receiving public pension benefits because the demographic structure and taxpayer base does not allow it. Only then, when most people over 70 are suffering in silence and loneliness, will young adults say: "I don't want to end up like that. I want to be surrounded by children and grandchildren when I'm old to support me physically and financially." Only then might the fertility rate go back up to 2.0 or above, which would lay the foundation for a stable and prosperous economy 30 years later. This is the only realistic pathway I can see; it is our only hope, but the return to prosperity will not happen before 2080. We have at least the next five decades of social misery, fast degrading social welfare system, eroding public infrastructure, poverty, civil unrest and slow suffering ahead of us.

Impact of declining fertility rate in industrialised economies

Over the past 300 years alone, the world population has grown from 0.6 billion to 8 billion, which is a 13-fold increase across 12 generations. Previously, for many centuries, the world's population remained relatively stable at around half a billion, but the Industrial Revolution and increased use of fossil fuels changed everything. A growing population puts huge pressure on our resources, including fresh water and minerals, and undoubtedly affects our climate and environment negatively.

With our current living standards, the Earth's carrying capacity is probably around 3 billion people, not 8 billion. So why is a declining population an issue?

Well, a declining population in itself is actually not an issue. Imagine a scenario where everyone's head over the age of 65 or retiring was cut off. The population would probably shrink from 8 billion to 7 billion overnight, and public spending on pensions would disappear and on healthcare would fall by 40%. This would enable massive tax cuts. Companies would thrive, and individuals would experience a significant increase in purchasing power and living standards. GDP would grow massively and the government would achieve a budget surplus, enabling it to not only service the debt, but also to pay it off and reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. Even if the fertility rate were 1 and each generation were half the size of the previous one, there would be no supply chain issues or lack of workers because, with no over-65s, demand would be much lower. Apart from children, all consumers would be providers to society. Healthcare services would be abundant as most people would be under 65 and relatively healthy. The population could decline from 7 billion to 2 billion by the end of the century with an average of one child per woman and there would be no major societal or civilisational issues. Life on Earth for the biosphere and other species would improve, and everyone under 65 would enjoy much higher living standards. This would benefit both humanity and the environment.

Obviously, cutting off the head of anyone is a virtual scenario that nobody wishes for. A softer version would be to provide no public pensions or public healthcare to those over 65. Retirees could live as long as possible, but would not receive any government benefits. This would have a similar positive effect on society, although it would certainly drastically reduce life expectancy. My point is that a declining population does not necessarily impact a civilisation's prosperity. The issue is who remains in the population. However, when the population declines from the bottom, first with fewer children and then with a smaller young workforce, while the elderly live longer and are entitled to generous pensions and free healthcare, and nobody dares to alter the redistribution of public money taken from under-50s and given to over-65s, then yes, a declining population is bound to massive loss of prosperity, high inflation, leading to mass protests and civil war. In this scenario, which is what we are starting to experience now and over the next 3 decades, a declining population definitely threatens social welfare and prosperity, and guarantees a coming civil war and collapse of civilisation.

A declining population is not a problem in itself. Fewer people means less pollution, carbon emissions and resource extraction. It means more available housing. It means less supply and less demand, so the balance is kept in theory.

Declining population due to low fertility is a problem for 2 reasons:

1. The population is declining from the bottom, by having fewer children while retaining most of the retired population, rather than from the top, as the older population dies off. This puts enormous economic and social pressure on the working population to support the relatively growing elderly population by providing more tax revenue and more health care and services for the dependent retired population.

2. With the amount of debt a country has, with a shrinking labour force and thus shrinking economic output, it becomes less viable and impossible to service the debt, which is likely to lead to high inflation and the collapse of social services and thus social unrest and riots.

Over the last 200 years, the countries that have become rich have tended to have fewer children and, over time, these countries have tended to become old in terms of the median age of their population. What we are now seeing is that even countries that are not significantly above the world average in terms of GDP per capita now have fertility rates below replacement level, which puts these countries at great risk of getting old before they get rich.

There is a strong inverse correlation between a country's fertility rate and its economic development. The richer the country in terms of GDP per capita, the lower the fertility rate, as shown in Figure 4A below. This has been true for the vast majority of countries over the last 100 years.

Figure 4A: Birth rates compared to GDP per capita

If we use another measure other than GDP per capita, which is skewed and does not take social inequalities into account, to measure a country's progress or development, the trend remains the same. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a measure of a country's life expectancy, university enrolment or educational level, and standard of living or income per capita. If you compare the HDI with the fertility rate of every country in the world, there is an almost perfect match everywhere: The more developed a country, the lower its fertility rate. The less developed a country is, the higher its fertility rate. Figure 4B below shows a comparison between the HDI index and the fertility rate.

Figure 4B: HDI versus fertility rate

The further developped a country is, the less its people tend to have babies. This is a universal rule, independant from culture, traditions, religions or politics. Urbanization, women education and GDP growth are all drivers of declining fertility rates. Declining fertility rate is also happening right now in India and Africa and it will continue in the future, as the standards of living improve.

Reducing the fertility rate from 5 to 2 is great for a country, great for women, great for the planet and the environment. But going from 2 to 1.3 is catastrophic in the long run.

While having fewer children means more fun and free time for us adults, and reduces the ecological footprint on the planet, the low birth rate has serious implications for our societies, which are only now beginning to be felt as the baby boomers retire: The ratio of the working population to the over-65s in industrialised societies is falling to dramatic levels and will continue to do so for decades to come. The population is ageing very rapidly, putting pressure on the working population to support the retired, who will need more human attention, more health care and a pension system to maintain a decent standard of living.

When people who are aware of the demographic situation claim that we are having fewer and fewer children, they are not telling the whole truth. 30 or 40 years ago, we could say that we were having fewer children, below the replacement level. Having too few children was 30 years ago, but today, the reality is that we are having fewer and fewer workers! This trend began in the 2010s, around 10 years ago, and was masked by increased immigration. Without immigration, the natural balance of workers would be declining rapidly. In other words, if you compare the number of people turning 20 with the number of people turning 65 in a given year, the ratio has been negative in most industrialised countries for over 10 years. The issue with low birth rates is not only that we are having fewer children; it is also that we now have fewer workers and young adults aged 20–40, who consume and work the most, especially in demanding manual jobs, with an increase in elderly population to support.

From an economic point of view, a child costs its parents and society attention and money until it becomes a young adult and starts working and contributing to society. An elderly person who retires also requires more health care and social support, while no longer contributing to the well-being of society. In economic terms, only the working population contributes and reaps the benefits of society, which are then spread over the whole population, as shown on the net fiscal impact by age group in the UK on figure 4C.

Figure 4C: Net fiscal impact in the UK by age group

The impact of low fertility is not about the decline in total population. The total population says nothing about the demographic impact on a society. Whether a country has 50 million or 300 million people does not tell you whether the economy is doing well, whether people are happy and prosperous, whether the social system is strong or crime is high. The total population is not really important. What matters with a low fertility rate is the decline in the working population or the share of the working population. The effect of low fertility rates is what proportion of the total population is retired, what proportion is working and what proportion are children.

Figure 4D below shows the evolution of the median age and of the labour force participation rate, i.e. the percentage of the working/productive population in relation to the total population.

Figure 4D: Median age and labor participation

Whether you consider the developed world of industrial countries, or the emerging markets of developping economies, you see the same picture with a 20 to 30 years delay: In the industrialised country, the dependency ratio of workers compared to the rest of the population started to decline around 2010, while in the developping countries, it will start declining around 2035, as shown on figure 4E below.

Figure 4E: Dependency ratio in industrial economies VS developping countries

Now, for each country or region, if you plot the evolution of the dependency ratio and compare it to the global dependency ratio of the world, the given country or region will sometimes be above and sometimes below the global average. When it is above the world average, we call this 'demographic dividends', as it means that the country or region has a higher proportion of workers than the world average and is experiencing booming economic growth. Conversely, when the dependency ratio of a given country or region is below the world average, it is referred to as 'demographic payback', and the country or region is likely to experience a slowdown in economic growth due to having a lower proportion of workers than the world average. Cycles of demographic dividends and paybacks have been observed in Japan, Europe, India, China and many other countries or regions, coinciding perfectly with periods of high and low economic growth. The demographic cycle is the most significant macroeconomic factor.

Demography is destiny!

As can be seen in figure 4F below, Europe experienced high demographic dividends from 1950 to 2000, which explains the consistent GDP growth of 5% to 3% in the past. From 2000 to 2020, there was a reduction in dividends, which corresponded with growth of 2% to 1%. However, since 2020, Europe has entered a period of demographic payback, which explains the 0% to 0.5% growth of the last three years. Looking ahead, the period from 2040 to 2100 will see the worst demographic payback and a dire economic situation in the decades to come, probably some continuous years of economic recessions.

India, which was close to the world average from 1950 to 2015, has also entered its demographic dividend period since 2015, which is why it is recently showing a GDP growth of 6%. These demographic dividends are expected to last until 2070; after this, India's population will begin to age like Europe's today.

Finally, figure 4F shows Africa, which has been well below the world average since 1950. Starting in 2050, Africa will enter its demographic dividend cycle and finally experience massive economic growth in the second half of the century.

Figure 4F: Cycles of demographic dividends and paybacks

Figure 4G below summarize the demographic state of some major countries and regions:

Figure 4G: Demographic state of various regions

From a fiscal perspective, a low fertility rate of below 2 means that, a few decades later, the active (working) population will shrink. This will lead to less GDP or economic output, resulting in less tax revenue from income, business and VAT. This essentially means that there is less available money for government spending on public services. Meanwhile, the total population will either grow or remain constant due to improving life expectancy. This will mean that total demand for public spending on infrastructure, the police, firefighters, healthcare and pensions will either remain constant or grow. The majority of industrialised countries have gone into significant public debt the last 2 decades in order to close this public funding gap between shrinking tax revenue and growing public spending.

All in all, if the active working population were to fall, all things being equal on the retired population and the child population, that would mean less supply of goods, services and tax revenue, but also less demand in consumption, so prices should balance out. You can't tell the effect in this situation. But what actually happens in the industrialised countries is that the retired population increases and the working population decreases, while the total population remains the same, so you still have the same total demand, but a decreasing supply of goods and services and less tax revenue, and that has a big impact on rising prices and inflation.

In order to maintain a public health care and pension system, especially to pay for the growing intensive health care and public pensions of the large elderly group, the active labour force will bear an increasing tax burden. This will encourage young adults either not to have children due to financial constraints or to move abroad to a less taxed environment. In both cases, this will exacerbate the fertility crisis and the budget deficit, which in turn will reinforce the fertility crisis over time.

Fewer people are good for the planet and the environment. More people are good for the economy. The real issue is beyond the total population, it is the demographic structure of a population, or the share of each age group in the total population. How many aged 0-25, 25-45, 45-65, 65-100 people there are as a relative percentage of the total population is what really matters, because it defines the social system, the productivity, the burden on the workforce and the future of a population. The sad reality is that most western countries are in a bleak situation and have a terrible or catastrophic outlook for the next 40 years.

A population can be divided into about 4 age groups:

0-20 year old children: they do not produce for society, they are costly and time-consuming for parents and for public expenditure (child care).

20-45 year old adults: They are both big consumers and big producers in life, with lower wages and more capacity.

45-65 year old adults: They still work and produce for society, but they tend to consume fewer goods and more services, and they tend to save or own more assets.

Over-65s: They are retired, no longer producing, but receiving a lot of health and pension benefits, consuming mainly services and public money.

Because the 20-45 cohort is smaller than the same cohort 20 years ago, the level of local consumption has started to decline, putting more pressure on local businesses. And because the current 1-20 year old cohort is extremely thin, there will be even less consumption in the next 20 years. This can only have a negative impact on the real economy. I am not talking about the stock valuation of multinationals, but the GDP of industrialised countries. In Europe, we had 4% annual growth in the 1980s and 1990s, about 2% in the 2000s and 2010s. We are now surviving at around 0.5% to 1% and I expect that Europe will remain at 0% growth in the 2030s or even experience continuous economic degrowth ost 2035 due to the decline of the working population.

Figure 4H below shows the evolution of the share of the working population in different regions over the last 50 years.

Figure 4H: Population evolution by age group

What is happening to Japan today will eventually happen to every industrialised country: The low fertility rate of the past 50 years has led to a sharp decline in the number of people under 25 and an increase in the retired population (in brown), while the active population (in blue) remains constant. What happens next is that the share of the active population decreases and the share of the retired population continues to increase. Caring for the elderly will become a major problem due to a lack of dedicated health workers. China and South Korea will be the next to follow this trend. Then it will be Europe and North America. South America and India have decades to go, while Africa is clearly still a very young population, with 60% of Africans under the age of 25.

70% of health spending today is on people over 60 and the pressure of fewer taxpayers and more people over 60 will soon be unsustainable and we will have to reduce the quality of health services.

Figure 4I below shows the dependency ratio, which is the ratio of the dependent population aged under 25 and over 65 compared to the working population aged 25 to 65.

Figure 4I: Age dependency ratio, past and projections

A dependency ratio of 60% means that for every 100 people aged 15-65, there are 60 people either under 15 or over 65. The higher the ratio, the greater the pressure on the working population and the welfare system. You can see that for most countries the ratio fell between 1970 and 2010, the period of the demographic dividend: Lots of workers, few old people and fewer children, a huge boost for the economy and the welfare system. But you also see that from 2010 to 2060, with the exception of Nigeria, India and South Africa, the ratio goes up, which is the demographic payback: A lot of elderly people to support and fewer workers to drive the economy. Difficult times ahead in the coming decades.

In the 1960s, the dependency ratio was high in most countries because of the baby boom, plenty of children in the developped world, not because of the over-65 population. At that time, most women had children and were mainly housewives. The husband's job alone was enough to support a family of 4 or 5.

What you can see for most countries so far in the 2020s is that the population is getting older, but it is still mainly under 65. The real challenge comes in the 2030s to 2050s when these older people stop working and stop contributing to society. That is why we have not yet felt entirely the consequences of an ageing population. We started slowly to feel the ageing of the population in the mid-2010s and 2020s, but the consequences will be felt much stronger in the coming 3 decades.

In the 1950s in Europe we had an average of 8 workers for every retired elderly person, so you had strong support for social services, health care, education, hospitals, pension systems, etc. Today in Europe there are only 3.8 workers for every elderly person. And life expectancy has increased, which means that pensioners live longer and receive more benefits throughout their lives, demanding more health care, more support, while being unproductive but still needing water, food, electricity, roads and supermarkets. This social system, built after the Second World War, was possible and balanced at the time, but it is now running a huge deficit, adding to the government's budget deficit every year, and is becoming unsustainable. See below in Figure 4J that the share of government spending on social support such as pensions and health care has been growing since the middle of the last century and will continue to grow as the population ages, leaving less budgetary room for other allocations such as education, infrastructure, defence, investment, etc. Note also that there is no correlation at all between the share of spending on social support and the fertility rate of the country.

Figure 4J: Share of GDP spent on social support

Not only is the working population shrinking in most developed countries since 2010 or 2020, leading to less production of goods and services and less tax revenue, but the working population is also ageing.

The median age is around 40 in the US and 45 in Europe, compared with around 20 or less until 1960. An ageing workforce raises several issues: A tendency towards establishment continuity and status quo, less risk taking, less entrepreneurship, lack of creativity and innovation, reluctance to adapt to new technologies, reluctance to implement drastic laws and regulations to fix the broken social system, basically not questioning the policies even though the population is about to collapse. Young people are rebelling, fighting authorities and ready to go to war. Older people tell stories and share their know how. The age of the working population has a drastic socio-cultural impact.

An ageing workforce also means higher wages, which weakens our competitiveness and increases structural inflation. If you have a horde of 20-25 year olds entering the labour force, it pushes down the wage structure and keeps overall prices down and competitivity. but with a lack of young workers entering the labour force, and with the active workers ageing and naturally moving into higher wages, it moves up the average wage of western nations, adding to inflation and weakening its competitivity compared to other younger countries.

To better understand the dramatic impact of an ageing population on a country's GDP and national debt, let's take an example: Imagine 5 friends decide to buy a $1 million house together. Each of the 5 individuals takes out a $200,000 mortgage with a monthly payment of $1000 per individual, or $5000 in total. Now imagine that 2 of the 5 individuals suddenly disappear, die or for some reason default on their mortgage. Suddenly you only have 3 people to service the 5000$, or 1666$ each. That's a huge burden, and depending on the income of each of the 3 individuals, some may not even be financially able to service that extra $666 per month.

A similar situation is now happening with the national debt of the developed world compared to the GDP produced by the shrinking working population: We are starting to see cracks, and the next few decades will prove that the national debt cannot be serviced by a shrinking working population, leading to new debt issuance, more money printing and high inflation, resulting in a severe loss of purchasing power for citizens. In the case of sovereign debt, you cannot sell the underlying asset (the house) to pay off the debt, you have to repay the debt or go into international default, so you have to keep printing money and issuing more debt. This has happened in the past in Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Germany, among others, leading to hyperinflation and rationing of all goods.

In addition to the financial aspect, there will be an increasing shortage of workers in the health, education and hospital sectors: The elderly population is growing, requiring more personal care, but the working population is shrinking, and young adults tend to prefer other kinds of jobs that are more lucrative, that allow them to work from home, or that give more meaning to their lives. That's why our social system, such as doctors, emergency clinics, rehabilitation centres, mobile ambulances, will tend to lose quality and efficiency in the future, and the waiting time for an appointment will become longer. Even today, the quality of healthcare in Europe is much worse than it was 20 years ago because of the overload due to the large ageing population, and it will definitely get worse in the coming decades.

Figure 4K: labor intensive inflation VS goods inflation

As shown in Figure 4K above, while overall inflation in the USA was 75% between 2000 and 2022, the price of labour-intensive activities such as healthcare, childcare and education rose by far more than 75%. Meanwhile, the price of activities involving machinery and automation such as manufacturing goods and objects did not rise muchor in some cases decreased significantly.

It also happens that healthcare, education and childcare are heavily subsidised or entirely funded by the public sector. This is not surprising, as institutions can raise their costs (like a university tuition fee) at will, knowing that government support will cover the increase and ensure that services remain affordable for people. This effectively creates a perverse incentive. This trend of labor intensive services cost rising faster than average inflation will undoubtedly continue in the coming decades: human labour will become very expensive, while goods and products manufactured by machines and robots will continue to become cheaper.

An ageing population means that, over time, the ratio of retired elderly people to active workers shrinks. This is known as the old-age dependency ratio. Countries with a rapidly ageing population will have more elderly people requiring healthcare and pensions, but fewer working people producing goods and services for everyone and paying taxes mainly redistributed to the elderly. The number of takers is increasing while the number of givers is decreasing. This is an impossible situation that is making unsustainable pressure on prosperity and the social system worse. Figure 4L below illustrates how the public money and the social system find themselves in a predicament, with no obvious means of extrication.

Figure 4L: Dependency ratio in China in 2020 and forecast in 2050

See Figure 4L above for an example of an ageing population with a low fertility rate. China already has an ageing population in 2025. Today, for every 100 people of working age, there are 44 children or pensioners dependent on those 100 people of working age. By 2050, the ratio is expected to rise from 44 to 73, almost doubling the number of dependents per worker, and most of the dependents will be the over 65, who need attention, health care, a pension system, emotional and physical support. How can a society, with all its social and societal privileges, continue to function when the elderly population will almost double in relation to the working population? The same catastrophic situation is expected in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the USA.

A drop in the fertility rate from 2.8 to 2.2 is not a problem. More 20-year-olds enter adulthood each year than people retire, and the economy continues to grow as the working population increases. It is good for individuals to have more freedom and a lighter burden when it comes to raising children, and it is better for the planet when population growth is slow or stable.

However, the issue arises when fertility rates fall below the replacement level of 2.1; for example, if it drops from 2.2 to 1.7. While individuals and society benefit from a lighter burden of raising children, more time for work and consumption, and greater freedom in education, employment, dating and leisure in the first 20 to 30 years, after 30 years the lack of young adults puts a strain on the economy and social welfare. The working population and the size of the economy shrink, and the ratio of working adults supporting a growing number of pensioners who are living longer also declines. Public debt rises as governments cannot cope with increased spending on the elderly and reduced revenue from a shrinking workforce. This leads to high inflation and a loss of purchasing power. Our societies and our standard of living are bound to collapse within the next three decades. This unstoppable tragedy is an unfortunate destiny that nobody can control or rectify, as the process of fertility falling below 2.1 began decades ago and continues to plummet to this day.

The delayed impact of low fertility rate on society

When a society stops having children or significantly reduces its fertility rate, there is an economic boost to living standards for about 30 to 40 years: Fewer children mean less public spending on childcare and education, and childless adults aged 30 to 65 have more money for themselves and more free time for work, productivity, spending and consumption, all of which boost the overall economy and prosperity of the nation. This is known as the demographic dividends.

The real negative impact of low fertility begins after this 30-year period: The childless 65 year olds go from being taxpayers to being pensioners, from being productive workers to being health care recipients, and the babies not born in the last 40 years are now 20-40 year old workers who are missing from the economy to produce goods and services, consume as customers, and to pay taxes to redistribute social welfare. As fertility rates started to fall in the 1970s and fell below replacement rates in most Western countries around the 1980s, you can now see the link that the prosperity boost the world experienced from 1975 to 2010 in Southeast Asia, the US, Europe and other developed countries was mainly due to demographic dividends, on top of more fossil fuels and better technologies like the internet.

By 2020, the demographic dividend will have largely run its course in most developed countries and we have entered the decades of demographic payback: A large elderly population requiring pension and healthcare support, while the active working population is rapidly declining, putting enormous pressure on the economy, public deficits, loss of purchasing power and increasing pressure on young adults to avoid having children in order to maintain their quality of life.

The same is true at an individual level. If you decide to remain childless at 30, you will enjoy a better lifestyle with more free time, career opportunities and money to spend on leisure activities, so you will feel that not having children was a great life choice. However, once you reach 60 or 65, you will be entirely dependent on public services, the social system and the working population, who are the children of other people of the same generation. You also have no children to provide social, personal or financial support in your old age. You will have to live off your savings, if you have any, or off a public pension, and you will absolutely rely on the active workforce, which happens to be the children of your peers. This is the hypocrisy and illusion of childlessness or having one child: It feels good for 30 years, but then you become entirely dependent on others who chose to have two or more children. However, if everyone chooses the childfree or single-child path, who are 'the others'? This system will not work in the long term, despite giving the illusion that it works for the first 35 years. Bear in mind that we fell below the replacement level of two children per woman in 1980 and do the maths.

Basically, the impact of a declining fertility rate for a society in a given year is the difference between the fertility rate 65 years ago and the fertility rate 20 years ago, because it indicates how many people will retire in that year compared to how many people will enter the labour force.

For example, the impact on society in 2025 is the difference between the fertility rate in 1960 compared to the fertility rate in 2005, assuming that the total number of immigrants was not significant between 1960 and 2000. In the US, the fertility rate was 3.6 in 1960 and 2.0 in 2005, which means that in 2025, for every 36 people retiring next year, there would be only 20 people entering the workforce to support those retirees, putting enormous economic and social pressure on those young workers. This rough calculation does not apply to the US because many immigrants have come to the US as direct workers, so the total population of a country should be taken into account to get the true number of people retiring and entering the workforce in a given year. Like Singapore and Switzerland, the US is one of the exceptions that can perform demographic wonders by 'importing' immigrants aged 25–35 due to its attractive conditions. However, most other industrialised countries have insignificant migration, and the difference in fertility rates between 20 and 65 years prior is an easy way to assess the economic health of a country.

Whenever a country has a fertility rate below 2.1, it is in structural decline, which means that each generation is less populous than the previous one. The lower the fertility rate, the greater the gap between 2 generations. Multiply this gap between several generations and you can quickly decimate a population, a whole country, an entire civilisation. Figure 5A below shows the relative decline in the number of births (or the size of the younger population cohort) for each generation, depending on the fertility rate. For example, with a current fertility rate of about 1.5, Europe's younger population is declining by 28% in 31 years, 49% in 62 years, and 65% in 94 years. In other words, the native population of Europe is on track to decrease by two thirds within a century. Keep in mind that once the number of babies is halved, it is only a matter of time before the working-age population is halved as well.

Figure 5A: Population decay per generation

Another way to understand and measure the severity of the situation is to look at the time it takes to halve the number of birth, or to halve the population of the youngest cohort, depending on the fertility rate, as shown in Figure 5B below.

Figure 5B: Time to halve the population

Take Europe for example: with an average fertility rate of 1.6, it would take 65 years to divide the population of a given age group by 2.

For Germany, with a fertility rate of 1.4, it takes only 45 years to halve the population of a cohort. This means that, without taking into account immigration and assuming that no one dies before the age of 91, with a fertility rate of 1.4 there are 4 people aged 90 for every newborn.

Now take South Korea with a fertility rate of 0.75. Every 20 years you halve the population. You have twice as many 60 year olds as 40 year olds and twice as many 40 year olds as 20 year olds. For every 100 grand parents, you have only 12 children. For every 4 people aged 65 retiring, you have only 1 young adult aged 23 entering the labour force! This has dramatic consequences in terms of the economy, the running of society, and overall we are facing a population extinction!

In countries with very limited immigration, such as China, South Korea and Japan, a fertility rate below 2.1 will increase exponentially with each generation, making the situation worse. This is because there are very few immigrants to offset the local population decline. Currently, Europe is largely compensating for its natural population decline, with around 4 to 5 million immigrants moving to the EU each year, resulting in an annual population growth of around 1 million. This brings the total number of EU inhabitants to around 450 million as of 2024. Without immigration, the EU's natural population would decline by around 3 million per year.

The massive economic boom experienced by industrial countries from 1970 to 2000 was no coincidence; it was perfectly predictable in demographic terms and is known as the 'demographic dividend'. This was characterised by the baby boom generation entering the workforce, a small elderly population, the rapid increase in consumption of cheap and abundant fossil fuels, increased female labour force participation and falling fertility rates, which meant more people in the labour force and more time and money to spend on work and personal consumption and more career opportinities. Simply by counting the growth of the working-age population from 1970 until 2000, we saw a roughly 1% increase in the population aged 20–65, and another 0.5% due to rising female participation in the labour force. Add a further 1–1.5% increase in productivity, and you have a base for +2.5% GDP growth simply based on demographics during the 1970–2000 era. No wonder we grew at a 4% or 5% pace back then. Compare this to the 2020s: The working population aged 20–65 is actually flat or declining by 0.5% per year; female participation in the labour force has plateaued at around 75%, with no additional female workers entering the workforce; and productivity gains are at approximately 1% per year. Therefore, the baseline GDP growth rate based on demographics is only +0.5% per year. No wonder industrialised countries achieve GDP growth of +1% per year at best nowdays.

Since the 2010s, the dependency ratio between the working population and the dependent population (pensioners and children) has worsened. We have entered a phase of a declining working population and, over the next three decades, a glut of elderly people to support with a declining working population, a lose-lose situation on both sides of the equation, which means doom and gloom for the economy and for the social welfare system: Less social benefits, less pension benefits and lower quality of health care services, inflation and some disruptions in the supply chain. See below on figure 5C the projected decline of the working age population.

Figure 5C: The decline of the working age population

The shrinking active population, combined with an increase in the retired population, can be measured and evaluated using the 'old age dependency ratio', which is the ratio of the working-age population (15–65 years old) to the retired population (over 65 years old). An old-age dependency ratio of 4 means that there are four people of working age (15–65) for each retiree aged over 65. Figure 5D below illustrates the evolution of the 'old age dependency ratio' in various regions worldwide in 1997, 2023, and the projected figure for 2050.

Figure 5D: Old age dependency ratio, past present and future

Having fewer children, or none at all, creates a paradox and an illusion. While having fewer children is definitely better for hedonism, self-realisation and individual achievements, it has negative long-term effects 30 years later. However, it has a positive immediate impact on individual and on society: Young adults have more time to work, consume and enjoy life, and there is fewer costs and burdens associated with children. If we were to stop having children overnight, society would not notice for 20 years and would actually boom during that time. There would still be healthcare workers, taxpayers to fund public pensions, and people to provide goods and services, including truck drivers, public transport drivers and restaurant staff. Apart from childcare centres and schools, where teachers and caregivers would be let free and available for elderly care or elsewhere, we would not notice at all that there are zero children for 20 years. Having fewer children creates the illusion that society can still function properly with fewer children. Nobody would notice the consequences immediately. It would only be 30 years later, when people 60 years of age decided back in their thirties to have fewer children, that society would suddenly find itself in a tremendous shortage of young workers, taxpayers and consumers. Well, that's exactly the situation we are in today, in the 2020s.

When the consequences are felt decades later, people seem unable to recognise the cause and effect. The political leaders from 30 years ago are long gone, and nobody associates the current state of public debt, increasing budget deficits, low growth and low fertility with a lack of political decisions and restrictions from 20 to 30 years ago. Industrial countries started going below replacement levels in the 1970s and 1980s, so the effects were felt in the 2010s, and compensated by national debt and pumping money into the economy. We are entering a period where cracks will start to appear everywhere in society due to a lack of young workers, which is linked to low birth rates in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Because birth rates decreased further in the 2000s and 2010s, the next three decades will be disastrous, with society, social welfare, public infrastructure and institutions collapsing under the burden of debt, a lack of workers (who are taxpayers and consumers), and a lack of public money to spend on health care and pension.

You could argue that maybe in the next few years the fertility rate will go back up to 2.5 and we'll be fine, right? Well, not at all. First, all the trends and circumstances point to an even lower fertility rate around the world in the coming decade. But even if by some miracle we were to see a trend reversal, even if every woman in the industrialised world were to have 4 children overnight, it would take 25 years for those babies to enter the labour force and become productive for society. And in those next 3 decades we would still have a huge imbalance with lots of retired people and very few active people working. The next 30 years will definitely be a bloodbath for the national debt and the social system (healthcare and pensions), and most likely for inflation, the supply chain and labour shortages, regardless of future trends, because the low number of young people between the ages of 1 and 30 is fixed by the past, we cannot turn back the clock.

On the positive side, as the working population shrinks, the labour market will remain tight for decades, and every young and skilled worker will be in high demand, so job vacancies should remain plentiful, and great job offers with incentive will be proposed to attract young talents. Work should be better remunerated in the future and overall employment should remain high. Real wages could keep pace with inflation much better in the coming decades than in the past 2 decades, even with high structural inflation.

The 2 worst demographies in the world: South Korea and Japan

With the lowest fertility rates in the world and the worst demographic structure, South Korea and Japan will inevitably suffer poverty, economic collapse and probably civilisational extinction. To get an idea of the scale of the demographic disaster in these two countries, consider that at current birth rates, 100 young adults today will become 100 elderly people in 2 generations, and will have 33 children and 11 grandchildren only. That's how dramatically the population is declining, from 10 to 1 in only 2 generations or 70 years.

Take a look below on figures 6A, 6B and 6C at the two worst demographics in the world: Japan and South Korea.

Figure 6A: South Korea and Japan demographic pyramids

Figure 6B: South Korea and Japan fertility rates evolution

Figure 6C: Japan and South Korea age structure

South Korea and Japan have a catastrophic demography with inverted pyramids. While Japan started to fall below a fertility rate of 2.1 as early as 1957, the decline in South Korea came later, but was much steeper.

While the population is getting very old on average, both countries have so far maintained a relatively high working population, while the retired population has grown slowly, leading to more government debt to support the elderly. Over the next two decades, however, the working population will decline sharply while the retired population will either stabilise or grow, putting a huge strain on the economy and the welfare system.

To give you an order of magnitude of what will happen in these two countries: In 2035/2040, each year, there will be 1 newborn baby for every 3 people retiring in Japan and 1 newborn baby for every 5 people retiring in South Korea. Imagine the burden this will put on the young workforce to support the elderly in the future! By 2055, both countries are expected to have about 1 retired person aged over 65 for every worker aged 20-65. A 1:1 ratio of workers to retirees is absolutely unthinkable and will lead to massive poverty, suffering, lack of support and a vanishing health care system. An economic and social burden that will inevitably lead to the collapse of society.

In South Korea, more pet strollers than baby strollers are sold. In Japan, more adult nappies are sold than baby nappies. On average, two schools close in Japan every day. When a school closes, it's not just an empty building; it's also a community that loses its connection. People move out of the district or town, and an entire social and economic ecosystem dies.

Japan was the first industrialised country to reach a fertility rate below replacement level in 1960, while other industrialised countries started around 1980. This makes Japan a fascinating case study, 20 years ahead of all other countries in terms of demographics and the impact on the national economy and social system. South Korea, although it reached a fertility rate below replacement level around 1983, is in worse shape than other developed countries because of the massive and sharp drop in fertility from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 1.7 in 1985. In just one generation of 25 years, the country has undergone a massive transformation, which means that it now has a huge number of adults over 60 and very few people under 40. Japan's median age today is 50 years old, the highest in the world. It means that half of the populaion is above 50, half is below 50. As you can see from Figure 6D below, the child population of Japan peaked around 1955, not coincidentally marking the start of the japanese economic boom. The working population peaked in 1990, not coincidentally marking the start of economic stagnation after decades of growth. The total population peaked in 2010. From now on, the active population will continue to shrink rapidly and the ratio of workers to retirees will keep rising.

Figure 6D: Japanese population by age group, past and future

South Korea has a fertility rate of 0.7, the lowest in the world, which virtually guarantees population extinction in the coming generations. It means that the number of children divides by 3 every 30/35 years, or by almost 10 every 70 years! If this rate were to continue until the end of the century, it would mean that for every 100 children today, when those children become great-grandparents in 90 years, there will be only 5 children for those 100 elderly people! We are talking about population extinction, the collapse of a culture, an entire nation that is rapidly disappearing, an entire ethnic group vanishing within a century.

As shown in Figure 6E below, South Korea is set to experience a brutal shift in its age distribution over the next three decades. The country is facing demographic extinction due to a lack of immigration and a general anti-baby culture and ultra low birth rate, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

Figure 6E: South Korea age distribution projections

The growing demographic crisis is a major challenge for South Korean policymakers, who are grappling with declining economic growth and rising pension and healthcare costs for an ageing population.

In the face of widespread economic and cultural discrimination against women, many South Korean women remain reluctant to marry or have children, or even to date any man at all, like the members of the "4B" movement. Young people's attitudes towards marriage and childbearing have not improved much over the past decade, given the structural economic and cultural problems. A survey found that 73% of South Koreans support the implementation of child-free zones in urban areas. This suggests an anti-child attitude among young adults and a change in society's view of children.

In response, the government has committed more than $270 billion since 2006 to make childcare more affordable, extend paid parental leave and encourage reduced working hours. The government has extended parental leave from 12 to 18 months, tripled the monthly childcare allowance and expanded subsidies for small businesses that allow flexibility for working mothers. Large companies have also offered incentives, such as a $75,000 bonus for each baby they produce, one of many eye-catching incentives on offer.

Nevertheless, South Korea's fertility rate in 2024 remains the lowest in the world at 0.75, down from an already very low rate of 1.25 a decade earlier in 2015. simply put: Policy incentives hardly work in our civilisation, they help a little for those who desire children, but don't move the needle at the societal level.

In South Korea in 2025, we will have 800,000 people turning 65 and retire, while only 650,000 people will turn 25 and enter the workforce. That's more than 1 retiree for every 1 worker! And the trend is set to worsen over the next 25 years, reaching 2 to 1 in 10 years and even 3 to 1 in 2050. Yes, 3 additional pensioners for every additional 1 new entrant to the labour force each year around 2050. The social system (mainly health and pensions) will become completely unsustainable, not to mention a falling GDP that will make public debt unserviceable. A real economic and societal collapse is on the horizon for these 2 countries, very soon.

The reasons for the fertility collapse in South Korea can be explained by rapid urbanisation, from 30% to 80% in just 40 years, a speed of modernization and industrialization only seen in China. The traditional roles of men and women, the patriarchal influence, also forced women to choose between a career and motherhood. South Korea is one of the top three countries in the world in terms of educational level (university degree), and this comes at a cost: On average, 12% of household income is spent on education, compared to 3% in the US. With this level of financial and time commitment from parents, having multiple children is simply not an option. And if you are highly educated, chances are you want to have a great career and not become a housewife. In addition, the strong conservative tradition of marriage before children has been maintained through rapid industrialisation. Japan and South Korea are the two countries in the world with the lowest percentage of children born outside marriage, well below 10%. Having a child outside of marriage is culturally discriminated against, so adults, and especially women, have to make a commitment beforehand, which means no separation is possible, and for women it means surrendering their freedom to their husband's influence, authority and choices. Many South Korean women joined the progressive 4B movement (no sex with men, no childbirth, no dating men, no marriage with men) as a sign of emancipation and protest against conservative patriarchal pressure.

Japan recorded 721,000 births in 2024, the lowest level since records began 125 years ago, as the country's demographic crisis deepens and government efforts to reverse the decline continue to fail. Only 3 years earlier, in 2021, the number of births in Japan was 811,000. The number of births has been falling for decades and appears to be largely unaffected by financial and other government incentives for couples to have more children. Combined with a record 1.6 million deaths in 2024, the figures mean that Japan's population shrank by almost 900,000 people in a single year, excluding immigration. For decades, immigration to Japan was almost non-existent, but now the government and companies are forced to hire foreigners, mainly Filipinos, to make up for the shortage of domestic labour. In some cities outside Tokyo, 40% to 50% of the local population is over 65.

Government agencies have introduced increasingly radical measures to reverse the decline. Incentives offered by the government include payments of up to $20,000 per child for swapping overcrowded Tokyo for communities outside the city and surrounding prefectures, and free day care. The Tokyo metropolitan government has been trying to get employees to work a four-day week. Some Japanese companies are pulling out all the stops to recruit young workers, with firms so desperate for graduates that they're paying off student loans and offering cheap housing. But all these incentives are having no visible effect on the fertility rate, which is currently 1.2 children per woman, a record low.

In 2023, Japan's then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the country was on the verge of "whether we can continue to function as a society" because of its shrinking and ageing population. About 30% of the population is over 65. Japan's demographics are becoming increasingly skewed, with a rapidly shrinking cohort of young people having to support the health and social security costs of a country with a massive public debt, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 260%. Some demographers had hoped for a baby boom in Japan after the COVID-19 pandemic, but the decline in births has continued unabated.

See below, in Figure 6F, the projected Japanese demography in 2065. I find it hard to believe that this scenario will come true, firstly because projections so far ahead (40 years) are often wrong, secondly because in this scenario, with as many workers as pensioners, a society cannot function and is bound to poverty and lack of support for the elderly, which means that life expectancy will fall and those elderly Japanese will probably not be able to live as long as 84 years, the current life expectancy.

Figure 6F: Projected Japanese demography in 2065

Japan is a fascinating case study because it was the first developed country to have a fertility rate below replacement level, with a total fertility rate of 2.04 as early as 1957. This means that we can observe how Japanese society functions with an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, and anticipate similar situations or patterns in other countries in the coming decades (next are South Korea, Germany and Italy). Some trends to watch: Outsourcing of all labour when not needed locally, such as in industry. Massive public debt to GDP ratio of 260%, forcing the central bank to keep interest rates close to 0% in order to be able to service the debt. No growth in GDP per capita of $32,000 per person between 1993 and 2023, while for comparison, the US tripled and Europe doubled over the same period. The Japanese currency, the yen, loses 50% of its value against the US dollar between 2020 and 2025, restricting imports of goods. Mass migration of young adults to the capital Tokyo, while small towns are abandoned, leaving only the rooted older generations.

Other notable countries with an ageing population are Germany, Italy, Spain, China, Thailand and most other developed countries will be suffering tremendously from their demography in the next 5 to 30 years. Population collapse and its desastrous consequences on the economy and the welfare system is definitly happening in the coming decades and there is no stopping it or reversing the trend. The worst part is that nobody in the mainstream media is talking about it. This is the greatest threat to humanity and no one is aware of it. It is mind-boggling!

Next on the list of worst demographic is Europe, especially Italy, Germany and Spain, but Europe is not in such bad shape yet, because it has always allowed and welcomed immigration, which has compensated for the declining local population. China, South Korea and Japan have been much more protectionist, pro-nationalist and against mass immigration, which has left these Asian countries with a very bad demographic situation and lack of young people.

Shrinking workforce and supply chain disruptions

To understand the drastic consequences of a shrinking workforce on the supply chain, let's imagine a world with only 5 people, each representing a company or a country. Imagine we want to build a house, so 1 of the 5 people is the architect, 1 is the plumber, 1 is the electrician, 1 is the bricklayer and 1 is the interior specialist. You need all 5 people with 5 different skills to build a house.

Now imagine that in the not too distant future there are only 2 working people left on the planet. How will you build the house? If only the plumber and the electrician are still working, who will build the walls? the roof? the kitchen? The 2 remaining people are unqualified and incapable, so the complex house cannot be built at all. Even if the 3 missing people were to transfer their knowledge to the remaining 2 before they retire or die, it will take much longer for 2 people to build a house than for 5 people. On top of that, the remaining 2 workers are aging rapidly, closer to 60 than 20, and are either able to do the physical work, or unwilling, or just slow.

So, all in all, we will see massive supply chain disruptions over the coming decades as a result of the rapidly shrinking workforce. Goods and services that can be produced by lots of people in lots of places (like steel bars, potatoes, milk, concrete) won't be affected by supply chain disruptions, but items that require highly skilled labour, complex supply chains, specific materials or know-how (like semiconductors, aircraft) will be affected by the coming supply crunch due to a declining workforce. For simple products such as plastic toys, cosmetics, food and clothing, we won't face many shortages because a shrinking active population means less supply and demand, so availability will balance out. If one plastic toy or food item is unavailable, customers can buy a similar one and it won't impact their lives. However, for highly complex items such as mobile phones, aircraft and cars, which rely on hundreds of suppliers and 50 countries across the entire supply chain, fewer workers will cause supply chain disruptions. For these items, if one part is missing, the final product cannot be sold.

Complex systems will have to simplify or they will die. Our world of high-tech, highly complex logistics, with specialist companies delivering goods just in time, will inevitably suffer from a shrinking population. All hopes are now being pinned on AI and robots to take over the jobs of retired people, but tech enthusiasts often assume that any job can be done by a machine, ignoring the reality of low-income jobs that will remain human labour for the foreseeable future: Childcare, eldercare, education, nurse and doctors in hospitals, police, firefighters, cleaners, cooks and chefs, nannies, waiters, hotel staff, receptionists, athletes, artists, entertainers, etc.

Another example: Let's say you have a total of 15 people living in a given country, 5 are retired and 10 are working and building 100 cars per year, and that's your economy. If the following decade you have 7 retired people and 8 working, that's still a constant total population of 15 people. But this economy will only produce 80 cars, so your economy will shrink by 20%, while your pool of retired people to support has increased by 40% from 5 to 7. How is the country going to cope with a 20% fall in GDP and a 40% increase in pension expenditure? How is the country going to service the debt, which has remained unchanged in nominal terms, with 20% less revenue? We will have a significant collapse in social benefits and high inflation to pay down the nominal debt.

In Europe, the ratio of workers to pensioners has fallen from 6 to 1 in 1950 to 2 to 1 in 2025 and is expected to fall further down to 1.5 to 1 in 2040 or 2050.

Without sufficient policy action, S&P Global analysts estimate that budget deficits will rise from a global average of 2.4% of GDP today to 9.1% per year by 2060. Global net government debt as a percentage of GDP would nearly triple. The economic consequences would be dire. There are no policies that can solve this conundrum: raising taxes, cutting pensions or raising the retirement age are not the answer because they would require governments to put more and more of the burden on the working population year after year. Immigration would be the solution, but there will be no more countries of similar ethnicity (Judeo-Christian and white Caucasian) with a surplus of workers, so all the immigration needed will come from very different nations, mostly less educated, and mass immigration will struggle with integration and acceptance. The other possible policies are so drastic that no leader dares to propose them. The economic and social prosperity of most of the western world is linked to civil tension, economic struggle, loss of purchasing power and suffering from a massive downturn.

The Phillips curve is an economic concept that suggests there is an inverse, short-term relationship between unemployment and inflation. This means that as unemployment falls, inflation rises, and vice versa. Policymakers can only choose between lower unemployment and higher inflation, or higher unemployment and lower inflation, always trying to find an acceptable balance. This trade-off is attributed to labour market tightness, whereby low unemployment leads to higher wages and consequently higher prices.

The Phillips curve

With an ageing population requiring healthcare services and public spending, combined with a shrinking labour force and the prospect of deglobalisation and a multipolar world, inflation is structurally set to rise over the next few decades. AI is arriving at just the right time for humanity, offering us our only hope of maintaining stable prices through giant productivity gains. However, human-intensive labour in healthcare and social support, such as caring for people with dementia or other age-related cognitive and physical impairments, will not be replaced by AI and robots, as these tasks require empathy, sympathy, a clear mind and supervision.

The slow decay of the social system

In the western world, and particularly in Europe, we have a social contract:

People give according to their ability and take according to their need. Working people pay taxes for the pensioners who receive these benefits, for a common global health care system, and everyone receives public health care when needed, and for various government supports such as unemployment or immigration benefits, business start-ups subsidies, and so on. Public money is largely distributed throughout society with the money collected from taxpayers. It is a great social system that Europeans are proud of and have fought hard for over centuries.

The system can only work if the redistribution of benefits is equal to the sum of the taxpayers, i.e. the working population.

To give you an extreme example, you can imagine a population that is 40% pensioners, 20% children, 10% unemployed adults and only 30% active working adults. You can imagine that with only 30% of people working, this active population cannot support the other 70% on the basis of a high standard of living. In this imaginary situation, how will the 30% manage to pay the pensions of the 40% retired, pay for the 10% receiving unemployment benefits, pay for the health care and care for the elderly of the 40% retired, working in hospitals, as doctors or nurses, working in child care, schools and care centres for the elderly, but also working in the rest of the economy to produce goods and services? There would be too few workers to meet basic social needs and too few workers left for the other productive activities of society to produce goods and services.

Well, since the 1970s, fertility rates in most developed countries have been below replacement level and have been falling ever since. This means that each generation is larger than the next. If you have 10 million people aged 50-60 in a given country, you have only 9 million aged 40-50, only 7 million aged 30-40, and so on. Now you can easily understand that when a person over 60 retires, that person leaves the productive workforce, goes from being a taxpayer to tax receiver as a pensioner, and tends to need more and more health care and personal care as that person ages.

This is the problem that all developed countries will face over the next 20 years: All the baby boomers born after the Second World War in 1945-1965 are retiring (or have already retired), and the population cohort of each decade has been declining ever since. For every 2 new retirees, only 1 new 20-25 year old enters the labour force due to the declining fertility rate of the last 50 years. So the young adult entering the workforce will face a double burden: he/she will have to replace 2 vacant jobs, and he/she will now have to support 2 elderly people financially and physically. You can see where this is going: An increase in workers' tax payments and a drastic reduction in the quantity and quality of the social support system, working longer hours and printing new money via government debt to patch up the broken system and make it look as if it is temporarily fixed.

People have become accustomed to the great social system of the last 50 years and take it for granted. Whether it is retiring at 62, receiving a pension of €2,000 net per month until you die, or having almost free health care, people take these benefits for granted and see any regression or tightening of the rules as a violation of universal human rights. People forget that the welfare system can only function if people have enough babies to provide enough workers to support the system. With the falling birth rate of the last 50 years, we are entering a phase of a clearly unbalanced social system, a social contract of a society that can no longer be fulfilled. The consequences will be dramatic and any political decision will be futile and will only serve either the workers or the pensioners. You know who has the wealth and who runs the world, so you know which age group will suffer the least.

No children due to environmental concerns

There is a popular argument that 8 billion people is already too many people on earth, that the planet can not carry that many people with our way of living, and that it is a good thing to stop making babies and a good thing that the planet depopulates in the future to reduce our environmental impact.

This is true in absolute term. 8 billions people the way we live and consume is definitly too many. The carrying capacity of planet earth, to provide all our food and material we consume, is probably around 2 to 4 billion people, not 8 or 9. But not every human counts the same.

An African on average consumes and pollutes 5 times less than a European and 10 times less than an American. So if the african population would double over night, from 1.5 billion to 3 billions, it would have a limited impact on the carrying capacity of earth. But if USA would double its population over night from 350 millions to 700 millions, it would have a much bigger impact on the planet in terms of CO2 emmission, toxicity, material footprint, etc...

As African countries will most likely become the only source of population growth over the next 50 years, this is not an issue for the environement, the soil and the forest of planet Earth. And if European population decreases as anticipated over the next 50 years, that's also a good thing for environmental concerns.

Many people argue that we should stop having children in industrialised countries because babies will contribute heavily to climate change in the future. While this is true in the broader sense, it isn't true in the short term. It is estimated that, over an 82 year lifespan, only 8% of a person's total carbon footprint is incurred in the first 20 years of life, while over 50% occurs between the ages of 20 and 60. This means that even if we stopped having babies overnight, it would only reduce carbon emissions and environmental degradation by 8% over the next 20 years. We would have to wait for 3 decades to reap the climate benefits of not having kids, and only 20 to 30 years from now we would see a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, and by then the planet would still be greatly impacted by the current population. Not to mention the socio-economic crushing impact of not having new people enter the workforce.

Those claiming we shall depopulate the planet for environmental concerns are absolutely right. The question is, how do we get from 8 billion to 3 billion without suffering? Unfortunately there is no answer to that question.

Throughout history, population reduction has always happened through extreme suffering: Through war, through natural disaster or through pandemic disease. In all cases, the weakest were sacrificed: old people and children died of disease or natural disasters. Young men died in wars, but when women mostly survived and could still reproduce after the war ended, from survivors and from older men who did not go to war. The physically fit men and the lucky ones were the ones who survived. So the idea that we should stop having babies to go from 8 to 2 billion ignores the necessary imperative to avoid great suffering: If the population under 50, including young workers aged 20-40, decreases, the population over 60 should also decrease to avoid mass suffering, or at least the population over 60 can no longer fully rely on the support of the declining working population. That's how nature works, that's the law of give and take in a social system: You need enough caregivers to support the number of caretakers, you can't reduce the number of caregivers and expect the same level of support for the growing number of caretakers. We can't over-engineer the laws of mathematics and biology.

At current average consumption levels, 3 billion people would be much better than 8 for the Earth's carrying capacity, its ability to regenerate the ecosystem and absorb our waste. If we were at 3 billion with a fertility rate of 2 and the population remained constant, that would be fine for the planet. The problem is, how do we get from 8 billion to 3 billion in a soft and acceptable way?

If the path is to have fewer children and fewer young adults, it will crush the economy, it will collapse the social system, and it will put too much burden on the taxpayer and the workforce to support the elderly population.

The only sustainable way to get from 8 to 3 billion people is to get to a fertility rate of 1.8 and to cut off all benefits for the elderly: No more state pensions, no more free health care. This will lead to poverty and suffering for the elderly who cannot afford private treatment and care, unfortunatly reducing healthy lifespan and life expectancy.

No one wants this level of suffering for the elderly pensioners, so there is no peaceful way to maintain society and the current standard of living while reducing the population from 8 to 3 billion.

Since we have stopped having children since the 1970s, we will eventually reduce our population in the industrialised world and it will be extremely painful for both working adults and the elderly.

I am not saying that we should wipe out the entire over-60 population, I am just saying that as we voluntarily let the younger population decline, we should let the older population decline as well if we want to keep the social system intact, or more sensibly, the growing older population should not live on the social and financial burden of the shrinking working population, and this can only be done by reducing pension benefits, cutting health care and public services for the over-60 population. Otherwise, if we continue to provide all these benefits to the retired population, while the declining productive workforce has the burden of supporting the growing ageing population, this is far too much of a burden and is not sustainable, it can only lead to the self-implosion of a working society.

Note that it is not a question of money. You can throw an infinite amount of money at this problem, the mathematical equation would not change. You cannot expect to reduce the total population by stopping babies, but not expect extreme suffering for the rest of the population, especially the elderly. This is foolish, nonsense, short-sighted, utopian and unrealistic. Nothing against my parents, both in their 70s, I love them, but this is the unfortunate pragmatic reality.

If all age groups (60+ old, 20- young, and 20-60 middle) would decrease the same, the social and economic system would be far less under pressure, while the planet regenerating capacity would be relieved. But because the population shrinks from the youngest age group, the under 40, while people keep living until 85 years old, and because we have a massively populated age group of babyboomer born 1945-1965 still alive, the trajectory of the next 30 years is about to be a lot of 60+, some 40-60, few 20-40, and almost nobody under 20, in most of the industrialised countries.

This puts unsustainable pressure on the economy and the social welfare. For the population degrowth to be a good thing for the planet and the environment, we would need all age group population to decline the same. While 2 mid-life adults today will soon have only 1 baby, the 4 grand parents remain 4 living people on earth, still consuming, still relying on the 2 parents and the 1 grand kid to provide for them.

Young adults in the industrialised world who decide not to have children due to current overpopulation are misguided. While Africans will continue to grow their population, stopping people in Europe from having children is a selfish and individualistic decision made for the benefit of one's own life. Saying you don't want kids for the health of the planet ignores the global demographic reality and is part of collective societal suicide. It is also a feel-good story: You get the impression that you are doing something good for the planet, and you enjoy a wonderful childless lifestyle in the meantime — a win-win illusion. I call it an illusion because when those 30-year-olds decide to live without children for environmental reasons, they make society much worse for when they turn 65, because there will be no active workforce to support them in their old age. While today's society offers excellent conditions and we have the privilege to have concerns about non-essential needs such as caring for the planet, this luxury will not always be there.

When public hospitals are overrun, you have to wait two weeks to see a doctor, public pensions provide only a third of the minimum salary, public infrastructure like roads is in disrepair, blackouts are a common daily occurrence and tap water is undrinkable, I can guarantee you that people with environmental concerns will ignore this and focus on their immediate survival and welfare, and no one will talk about humans destroying the planet. That's the reality of riches.

We are the only species that prioritises the health of the planet over our own survival. I believe that people who claim they don't want children because we are polluters and destroyers of the planet use this argument as an excuse of convenience to avoid the responsability of having children, like an easy way out, which leads to a better lifestyle for themselves in the short term. If climate change were really the reason for not having children, why would these people care about the future? If they do not reproduce, then no one will experience it. If you don't have children or grandchildren, why would you care what happens 60 years from now?

Currently, the countries with the highest fertility rates are the ones most affected by climate change and violence (the Middle-East and Sub-Saharan Africa). Meanwhile, Switzerland and New Zealand, havens of stability, are well below the replacement rate. If dystopian dread were the issue, the numbers would be the other way around.

We are the only species on Earth that thinks about saving the planet. Yet our species and civilisation are dying, and we are concerned about the planet and climate change. What an irony! The planet will always be fine, even with +4°C of global warming. Our species will have great difficulty surviving, but plankton, trees and other species will adapt and survive. The problem is human life on this warmed-up planet, not survival of life in general. For example, there was abundant and diverse life thousands of years after the dinosaurs and the meteorite that covered the planet in a dark cloud of smoke and CO₂ for years. The planet and biodiversity recovered from that, but the dinosaurs did not.

Yes, climate change is a big problem in the coming decades, but it is not the end of the world. People will adapt, move to other places and eat a different food. Demography is a much bigger problem to humanity with much sooner consequences than climate change.

And for all those who are concerned about environmental impact or geopolitical risks: Don't forget what life was like in the 1900s to 1940s: you had a 30% chance of dying before the age of 20, you worked 12 hours a day, every day, you had no social system, no security, food was scarce, no options and no choice of jobs or locations, minimal transport, bad medicine and health care... life was extremely hard, miserable and difficult in every way compared to today where most of us enjoy a great standard of living with abundance, prosperity and security. Don't forget the past conditions when you say the future is bleak. Yes, there are plenty of problems with a large population of heavy consumers, but none of them will be solved by having fewer children. Our current world is fantastic to live in from an historical perspective, and I am glad to have a child to enjoy all the great abundance of today's world. Climate change is a convenient excuse and a case of confirmation bias, whereby people convince themselves that they can enjoy a great childless lifestyle while also doing something good for the planet. However, this is a narrow-minded perspective. Without reproduction and young people, there would be no progress or innovation, no social welfare and no cultural heritage.

"The Population Bomb" is a book written by Paul Ehrlich in 1968, warning of the overpopulation and food shortages humanity was about to face. At the time of his writing, his concerns about an overpopulated planet were perfectly valid and defensible. Fertility rates were around 2.5 in the western world and 4 everywhere else, the world's population was growing rapidly, and the world's GDP was also growing rapidly, putting pressure on the environment to provide the food and materials we needed for a rapidly growing population. We were not sure how we were going to feed all these people.

Just 5 years later, the trend of declining fertility rates began and agricultural "progress" such as fertilisers, pesticides, bigger tractors and machinery solved the problem of feeding the population. Since 1980, in a stunning turn of events, the concern has gone from an overpopulated planet to an underpopulated planet. Maybe I should have named my book "The Depopulation Bomb" instead of "The Last Decade".

The demographics of Europe

If you want to change the world and make billions on the way, you go to Texas or California. If you want a stable and safe job which pays u enough to pay your bills, have a very good work-life balance, occasionaly go on vacation and be at home at 5pm, and receive plenty of government subsidies, benefits and support, you go to Europe and work preferably in a state owned position.

Although this kind of life in Europe is very pleasant, with a lot of free time and little professional stress, making a lot of people happy in their life, you can't expect the same economic output and the same dynamic for Europe compared to Asia or USA. It puts Europe long term at a competitive disadvantage to Asia and USA, and it puts Europe as a dinosaur, a museum: An old population in a country long of history and ideologies, relying on existing social avancements but not leading in innovation and not questioning its values, habits, moral or ideologies.

Since the 1980s, Europe has deliberately allowed people to choose not to have children without any penalty or negative consequences, thus shrinking the working population and inflating the relative population of retirees. Europe also has no oil or gas production, no mining industry, which makes it totally dependent on imports for energy and raw materials. The result is a continent with declining economic output, a shrinking workforce and a growing budget deficit. An unsustainable and explosive situation where the good old days of the last 40 years can no longer be maintained.

Looking at recent fertility rates in Europe in 2024 in Figure 7A below, all countries are well below the replacement level of 2, and most are well below 1.5. As a reminder, at 1.4, a country loses a third of its young population every generation of 35 years. At 1.1, the child population is halved every generation. This is the situation in most European countries, and has been the case for several decades, meaning that not only are children now missing, but young adults aged 20-40 are also absent year after year.

Figure 7A: Fertility rates in Europe in 2024

Let's look at the demographic pyramid of Europe countries in Figure 7B below. Europe has been in a demographic structural decline for 50 years.

Figure 7B: Demographic pyramid of the EU

The shrinking of Europe's demographic pyramid at the bottom is due the the declining fertility rates that started in the 1970s and remained below replacement rate since 1980, as shown on figure 7C below. Not a single country in Europe has had a fertility rate above replacement level since the 1980s.

Figure 7C: Europe fertility rates evolution

Compared to Africa, which has a growing young base and more and more births every year, Europe has its peak population in the 35-65 age group, as shown in Figure 7D below. This has been an optimal age structure for the last 30 years, but we have now entered a new age in the next three decades in which more 65 year olds will retire each year than 20/25 year olds will enter the labour force, putting enormous economic and financial pressure on productivity and the social welfare system. In terms of demography, Africa and Europe are like day and night. Africa is today what Europe was in 1960, a clean triangular pyramid. Only differences are the slight dents in the European population. These were due to World War I, the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II.

Figure 7D: Europe demographic pyramid compared to Africa

See Figure 7E below for the projections of the different age groups in Europe. As you can see, the working population started to decline around 2010, while the elderly population is expected to continue rising until 2060. The dependency ratio (the number of people under 15 or over 65 compared to the number of people aged 15–65) was relatively stable between 1950 and 2020, ranging from 45:100 to 55:100. However, from now until 2060, this ratio will grow to 75:100, placing greater social and financial pressure on the working population to support the rest of society.

Figure 7E: Age structure projections of Europe

As shown in Figure 7F below, Europe's dependency ratio is expected to increase over the coming decades. In 2010, the old-age dependency ratio was about 25%, meaning there were 4 Europeans aged 15–64 for each European aged over 65. By 2050, this ratio is expected to reach 50%, meaning there will be only 2 Europeans aged 15–64 for each European aged over 65. Such an ageing society will have drastic consequences for economic productivity, the sustainability of public debt and the quality of the social welfare system.

Figure 7F: EU dependency ratio projections

To better visualise the shift in Europe's demographic pyramid, see figure 7G below for the change in population over the last 15 years alone. You can see that we have significantly fewer young workers aged 20–45, who are the most dynamic and flexible workforce. There are also noticeably more people aged 60–75, who are a burden on the pension and healthcare systems.

Figure 7G: EU demographic pyramid 2009 vs. 2024

Now, let's project and compare the European demographic pyramid between now and 2050 in Figure 7H below. Projections up to 25 years are very accurate (barring WWIII or nuclear Armageddon) because all children aged 1–17 have already been born, and immigration flows do not change that quickly. Meanwhile, fertility rates are relatively constant with few changes in trends. We can clearly observe the massive increase in the number of people aged over 65, as well as the noticeable reduction in the working-age population (20–65). Social standards and public services are sure to fall dramatically in the coming decades. Countries will inevitably struggle to collect enough tax to sustain social welfare and past debt commitments, leading to more debt, high inflation and loss of purchasing power. This will be met by social protest, riots and, most likely, civil war, political oppression and the end of prosperity as we know it today in Europe.

Figure 7H: EU demographic pyramid 2022 vs. 2050

Immigration has always been an important part of European identity and values, as well as its demography. In the coming decades, immigration will be even more important in offsetting the low birth rate and high death rate of an ageing population. As shown on figure 7J below, the natural population of the EU, measured by the difference of birth counts to death counts and excluding immigration and emmigration, has been in decline since 2012. The gap is growing tremendously every year, which is a reason why many politians felt the need to fill this gap with immigration, in order to keep the economy and the associated social welfare system running.

Figure 7J: The EU natural population is in decline since 2012

Figure 7K below shows a projection for 2050 of the various age groups in Europe and some notable countries compared with 2015. This projection is conservative, as it was done in 2015, and birth rates have fallen even more in the last 10 years. We can see that most of the countries are expected to have fewer people in work and more retired people, especially those over 80, who will need additional care, support, social presence and health care.

Figure 7K: Age structure projections of Europe

Figure 7L below shows a projection of the old age dependency ratio in 2050 for some areas of Europe. It can be seen that Spain, Italy, Greece, eastern Germany and the Baltic states will be facing the problem of a large number of pensioners for a small number of workers.

Figure 7L: Old age dependency ratio in Europe by 2050

One of the main reasons why having children has become optional in Europe nowadays is that Europeans now rely on the state for support and benefits throughout their lives, especially in their elderly days. They rely on public childcare, free education, healthcare and a state pension in their old age. Young adults have no incentive to have children for their own security of future care and support because they are told, and they can experience in current society, that the state will take care of them as it has done since 1950. Things may change when young adults realise that the elderly can no longer live a decent life based on state support alone, but as long as there is no incentive and the public welfare system is in place, why bother with children?

Europe has no good future because it has replaced the family unit with the state. People rely on the state for support when they grow old, when they are sick, when they are unemployed or when they start a business. In the past, all of this was covered by family members, relatives and children. Whenever something is wrong in life or society, we feel like the state must intervene and do something. Our overreliance on the state has created huge public debt and depleted Europe from children and young adults.

Following a long period of growth and social welfare since 1950, people now expect entitlements, social benefits and life comfort to be a permanent fixture, a universal human right. People take for granted running public transportation, an unlimited supply of fresh water, five weeks' holiday a year, a 35-hour working week, a comfortable public pension at 64, free and unlimited healthcare, a stable currency, no blackouts and mostly functioning infrastructure. They ignore the fact that all of this relies on a large working population and a small number of pensioners. High taxes and subsidies mean the government is heavily involved at all levels, controling and manipulating the market with corruption, lobbying and under-the-table deals, stifling the greatness of free market that balances offer and demand and assign capital where it's most needed.

The impending collapse of the working population will have massive and painful consequences in the coming decades. Europe will experience what Argentina has experienced over the last 120 years: high living standards in the past, followed by economic turmoil, massive inflation, mass protests, and political regimes swinging from far-left populist spending and printing money beyond their means, to far-right military oppression under austerity measures. Currency manipulation will occur through massive printing and devaluation. There will be massive debt and debt default, and then the purchasing power of the euro will plummet quickly and be abandoned, leading to sustained mass poverty.

GERMANY

Figure 8A: Demographic pyramid of Germany

Figure 8B: Age structure of Germany

Germany has the largest economy in Europe. It has high-tech industries producing machinery and chemicals. The industry sector accounts for 28% of its economy, which is by far the highest in Europe. Germany has a reputation for quality brands and has been a net exporter for decades.

Although Germany currently has a very low debt level of 65% of GDP, this is expected to rise dramatically over the next 15 years due to the retirement of the large 55–65 age cohort and increased investment in defence and infrastructure.

Germany has a rapidly ageing population and the third worst demographic profile in Europe, behind Italy and Spain. As of 2025, a quarter of the entire German workforce is over 55, compared to only 13% in 2005. This reflects an ageing workforce, which is costly and less innovative, and which experiences high levels of absenteeism due to sickness. It also means that a quarter of the current labour force will retire within the next 12 years, but only around two-thirds of these will be replaced by young workers entering the labour market, shrinking the active population of Germany in the coming 15 years and exacerbating the already significant labour shortage.

Another aggravating factor of the shrinking German working population is that 40% of the entire workforce, which consists in 17 million people, is working part time in 2024. This is an astonishingly high number that is detrimental to the economy and the social welfare system. Of those 17 million part-time workers, 24% are young parents who choose a balanced work-life and family life, 12% are young adults who combine work with further studies, both are valid reasons for a part-time job. But 27% are adults who voluntarily work fewer hours for more free time, even though they could work 35 or 40 hours a week. This is one downside of a wealthy economy with robust middle-class salaries, a generous social system, and convenient company policies, with no government incentives to increase to full-time worker.

Germany has experienced two decades of a shortage of qualified staff and engineers, with around 750,000 job vacancies and difficulties in recruiting and attracting a young, skilled foreign labour force. The labour market shortage will continue to worsen over the next decade, weakening the economy. Rising energy costs since the Ukraine war in 2022 have led to deindustrialisation and the outsourcing of energy-intensive activities, resulting in economic stagnation over the past three years.

Germany has had a late baby boom generation. While other developed economies had high fertility rates in the period 1945-1960, Germany actually had its modern fertility peak in 1960-1975. This led to the German economic miracle after the end of the Cold War in 1990 and German reunification: A huge number of young workers, coupled with technological leadership in industry and machinery, and some cheap energy from domestic coal and Russian gas. That was the main driver of Germany's economic superpower in the 1990s. But today, not only is the country's infrastructure ageing, but Germany's lead in chemicals and automobiles is fading due to the electric car revolution from China and expensive and less abundant energy.

See below on Figure 8C the demography of Germany in 1990 had an abundance of 20-35 year olds and some 50 year olds for very few over 60. A great mix for a power and industry-heavy nation and a recipient of an economic boom. Fast forward to 2020, that large 20-35 cohort is now 50-65, about to retire in the next 10 years, but as the birth rate has been falling, the size of the younger 20-30 cohort has been declining for decades.

Figure 8C: Demographic pyramid of Germany in 1990 and 2020

The real trouble is yet to come: As of 2025, the large cohort of 55-65 year olds who are still working but will retire in the next 10 years, and because the birth rate has been below 1.7 ever since 1975 and at around 1.4 in 2024, these old workers will not be replaced one-to-one, and we will start to see a decline in the working population, while the retired population will grow. In the next 15 years alone, Germany will go from 50 to 40 million workers and from 20 to 25 million pensioners. Germany's economic decline can only get worse. See projections to 2040 in Figure 8D below: The retired population over 65 will grow, the largest population of older workers 50-65 will decline slightly, and the population of young workers 20-50 will decline sharply.

Figure 8D: Demographic pyramid of Germany in 2024 and 2040

Immigration has been the solution of the past 10 years, but it has not been popular with the citizens, as more and more white Protestant majority ethnic groups are losing ground to Turkish, Syrian, Afghan and sub-Saharan African immigrants.

In fact, if we look at the demographic pyramid of Germany, split into people with and without a migrant background, as shown in Figure 8E below, we see an even more impressive transition.

Figure 8E: Germany's demographic pyramid by migration background

Figure 8E above shows that the population of German residents with a migrant background (in red) remains constant and has a fertility rate of around 2, while the population of German residents without a migrant background (in light blue), who were the majority of white Christians above 50 years old, is falling drastically. For every 4 Germans aged 60-year-old without a migration background, there is now only 1 newborn without a migration background, which means that the average fertility rate among white Christian Germans is around 1.2.

As a result, the ethnic groups of Germany are changing very rapidly. Every second baby born in Germany today has at least one parent who is not German. In the coming decades Germany is going to be a very mixed country with a lot of Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Turks and sub-Saharan Africans. Whether the population likes it or not, this is the new Germany and I expect even more immigrants in the next 15 years to compensate for the massive retirement of the late baby boomers. When an ethnic group stops having babies, while the immigrant ethnic groups keep on having babies, the minority ethnic group becomes the majority ethnic group in a few generations. I am not judging whether this is good or bad, everyone is entitled to their opinions and political views, I am just stating the fact and reality that Germany's population has undergone a massive ethnic transformation that will change the fate of the country forever.

Figure 8F below shows that, since reunification in 1991, foreigners have had much higher fertility rates than local Germans. This means that the share of descendants of foreigners in the country is growing.

Figure 8F Germany residents fertility rate by nationality

Germany's GDP in 2025 is about the same as in 2019. This economic stagnation is due to its energy policy, the cut in supply of cheap and abundant Russian gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, deindustrialisation to countries with a cheaper labour force and energy costs, a loss of competitiveness due to bureaucracy, and China's dominance in the electric vehicle (EV) market, as well as an ageing labour force. As shown in Figure 8G below, private investment in the country has been decreasing since 2018, while public spending on social welfare has grown and is projected to grow much more in the coming decades, as the largest proportion of the German population is aged 55–65 and is about to enter the retirement phase.

Figure 8G: public spending, private investment and GDP growth in Germany

ITALY

Figure 8H: Demographic pyramid of Italy

Figure 8I: Age structure of Italy

Italy has a rapidly ageing population, probably the worst demographics in Europe, and a stagnant economy over the last 15 years. It has one of the highest debts in the world at 145% of GDP, wide disparities between the rich north and poor south, a high unemployment rate and uncompetitive industries. It is a net exporter of skilled young workers with degrees (brain drain) and 25% of the population live in poverty, earning less than 60% of the median income. There is also a high level of unofficial black market activity, mostly to avoid tax. This has fallen from 25% before Italy joined the Eurozone to around 10%, but it is still extremely large for a major economy. Still, Italy is one of the top three economic countries in Europe, but for how long?

Italy has the worst demographic situation in Europe, comparable to Germany, with a fertility rate of 1.2 in 2024. Italy is in a similar situation to Japan, with its largest population cohort aged 45-65, who are still working today but will retire in the next two decades, and a very low fertility rate over the last 40 years. A lethal combination. The median age in Italy is now 48, and people get married at an average age of 37, telling about the economic struggle of young italian adults.

Adults are getting older on average, but so far most of them have still been working, and this has kept the working age population stable at around 35 million people from 1985 to 2025, but now for the coming decades the working age population will fall from 37 in 2024 to 30 million in 2040 and 25 million in 2050, and in the meantime the retired population will continue to rise from 10 million in 2000 to 15 million in 2025 and to 20 million in 2050.

Figure 8J below shows the dramatic change in Italian demography. In 1996, the largest cohort was 20-35 years old, driving the economy and industry in the north, very similar to Germany. Fast forward to 2021, and this cohort is now 45-60 years old, about to retire in the next 20 years, but birth rates have been extremely low over the last three decades, so that the cohort of 10-25 year olds is extremely thin and will not be able to replace the retiring adults or maintain the economic and social stability of the country.

Figure 8J: Demographic pyramid of Italy in 1996 and 2021

Italy is coming to the end of the demographic dividend of the last 30 years, with a large working population having very few children, and is now entering the demographic payback phase. In 1950, there were 17 children under 10 for every person over 80 in Italy. Today the ratio is about 1 to 1, a staggering change.

There is no way Italy can escape massive poverty, social breakdown and social unrest over the next 30 years. The country is now entering an economic and financial turmoil due to the high level of public debt and also entering social collapse and civil unrest that will last for the next 30 years, and nothing or no one can stop Italy from collapsing from one of the European powerhouses, industrial leader, to now a dull old country, unattractive to foreigners and hampered by a 140% debt to GDP ratio that will become unsustainable with a declining workforce. Old villages and small towns are being abandoned in favour of larger cities in the north of the country.

From 2030 onwards, for every five adults retiring at the age of 65, only two young adults will enter the labour market. In 1960, the ratio was 30 to 5; now, it is 2 to 5. How can an economy continue to function when five people stop working and only two people are there to replace them? Italy is doomed to poverty, loss of social privilege and a massive decline in quality of life. Add to that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 140%, the second highest in Europe after Greece, and it is clear that the Italian economy and tax collection will be unable to service the debt while the economy is contracting rapidly due to a shrinking labour force and a growing over-60 population that requires healthcare, manpower support and financial benefits.

Italy has the worst demography of Europe. With almost as many workers as pensioners in 2050, how can the country still prosper? Why a fertility rate of 1.2 in 2024, Italy is about to half its children population every 35 years. Italy is doomed to massive economic slowdown, a decline in state services, the collapse of the health system and a steady exodus of young, educated workers in search of a better future. Civil unrest in Italy and is a guarantee in 2030-2050.

There are several reasons why Italy is in such a bad demographic situation. First, there is the financial distress of young adults. Average salaries in Italy are very low compared to the country's GDP per capita, compared to other developed countries, or compared to the high cost of living in the country. Many young adults stay at home with their parents until their 30s because they cannot afford rent. Employment contracts are often precarious. 30% of people work on temporary contracts with no visibility of their future, and most workers have no job security and can be fired within a month without compensation, especially women who can easily lose their jobs if they become pregnant. This lack of economic stability does not encourage young couples to plan a family. The Italian government also offers very little support for childcare, parental leave or any kind of compensation, which puts more pressure on young adults not to have children because they may not be able to afford them. Finally, foreigners would prefer to go to France, Germany or Sweden because these countries offer more social support and a better public welfare system. Moreover, children born in Italy to immigrant parents are not granted Italian citizenship by default, as is the case in France, which does not encourage immigrants to choose Italy as a place to settle.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Italy deliberately devalued the lira on a massive scale to remain competitive in terms of exports. Inflation was high, but wages were automatically adjusted to catch up with higher costs of living. This was Italy's industrial secret, but it all stopped suddenly in 2000 when Italy adopted the euro and lost the ability to print its own money and manage devaluation. Italy also has many small family businesses that do not grow in size or pass the baton to the eldest son based on birthright rather than merit, which limits productivity and competitiveness. Italy's high and complex bureaucracy scares investment money, especially foreign investment. The southern half is quite poor and mostly relies on public subsidies. Italy suffers from a brain drain of young, educated adults who refuse to work for high taxes and low net income. It also has a large shadow economy dominated by the mafia, which runs alongside official businesses and institutions. It has a mountain of debt at 140% of GDP and the most disastrous demographics in Europe.

SPAIN

Figure 8K: Demographic pyramid of Spain

Figure 8L: Age structure of Spain

Spain excels in tourism thanks to its beautiful landscapes, historic towns, cuisine, wine, agriculture, automotive industry, railway infrastructure, football and renewable energy. However, Spain has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.1, meaning the population is halving every generation. It also has the highest proportion of births to women over 37.

While the largest age group in the population is currently 40 to 55 and active, Spain is currently experiencing a demographic dividend: an economic boost due to a large active population and an extremely low birth rate. However, in 10 years' time, Spain will start its demographic payback and begin to experience a dramatic decline in working population size due to its demographics, similar to that which South Korea is set to experience over the next 30 years.

Spain is set for a terrible socio-economic death spiral starting in 2035. As the majority of voters are now over 50 or 60, politicians strategically allocate more public money to support the over-60 population. Public pension and healthcare expenses are growing fast, and over-60s are less likely to suffer financially when many of them own a house. Spain is the European country with the least public spending on children and young parents, making life unaffordable for young parents and contributing to young Spanish adults delaying or avoiding parenthood altogether. Essentially, Spain has a high tax burden on the small under-45s cohort to support the large, privileged and state-supported over-60s population. While Spain GDP is growing at an outstanding pace of 2.5% recently post-COVID due to its large working age population, infrastructure is ageing, and the young labour force is insufficient for maintenance activities. Many provinces are depopulating and ageing rapidly as almost everyone under 40 moves to big cities. Spain debt-to-GDP ratio is high but stable at 110% due to the recent economic growth.

Spain is in a similar situation to Italy, but about 10 years younger, so that the negative impact of the demography will be felt about 10 years later than in Italy. Its largest cohort is the 40-60 year olds, which means that Spain has enjoyed the demographic dividend for the last 20 years and has another 10 years of dividends before entering the demographic payback in 2035. Germany's decline and Italy's decline will take place in the next 10 years, while Spain's decline will start in 10 to 20 years. As in Italy, the fertility rate in Spain has fallen massively in the last 10 years and is now 1.2 in both countries. This means that the population halves every 30 years! The main reason for the low fertility in these two countries is mainly financial: young adults tend to have low salaries, little job stability, high rental cost and no stable economic prospects, making their lives quite expensive and insecure even before having children, so that even young adults in couple relationships who want children simply postpone their desire until they reach a more secure professional point, which often turns out to be in their late 30s and too late to have children or limit their family to 1 unique child.

From 2040/2045, Spain will have a massive cohort of retired people who will not be supported one-to-one by the young working population. Spain will need massive immigration of people in their 20s and early 30s from Latin America and Africa, which is expected and necessary for Spain's stability and prosperity after 2040, as shown in Figure 8M below.

Figure 8M: Demographic pyramid of Spain in 2024 and 2041

This will be a vicious circle for both Italy and Spain in the coming decades, because as they enter the demographic payback period, with a declining working population and a growing number of pensioners, this will put enormous pressure on the economy and public finances, leading to less prosperity and stability, which will reinforce the main reason why young adults choose not to have children, thus further reducing the fertility rate. The brain drain will continue for the educated young spaniards and italians. The influx of unskilled migrants will not solve the demographic problems of Spain and Italy. The decline of Germany, Spain and Italy, Europe's three major powers, is likely to drag down the whole of Europe and the eurozone in the coming decades. I fear for Europe, a continent of unrealistic ideologies, attached to its broken social system, will experience great social unrest and political instability in the coming decades. Europe's good times are likely to be over since 2020.

POLAND

Figure 8N: Demographic pyramid of Poland

Figure 8P: Age structure of Poland

Poland, even more than Spain, is reaping its demographic dividend, with many adults aged 30-45 and very few children. No wonder Poland is the exception in Europe, with GDP growth of around 4% over the past 20 years and an expected growth of 3% over the next 5 years.

Poland has capitalised on its low cost of living, dynamic population and investment in R&D, new technologies and digitalisation to make the country an attractive place to work with a now solid standard of living, limiting the brain drain of the previous 1990s and 2000s. Poland has also benefited from EU subsidies and policies, as well as having its own currency, the Polish sloty, to manage interest rates, currency valuation and money printing at its own pace and as needed. Poland is the exception in Europe with both high GDP growth and high GDP per capita growth, as shown in Charts 8Q and 8R below. And, not so coincidentally, this is the country with a massive 30-45 year old peak productive age with very few children. This shows that a country's economy and growth are largely predictable and linked to its demography, as was the case in the past with Germany and Italy, and recently Spain.

Figure 8Q: Poland GDP growth

Figure 8R: Poland GDP per capita compared to other EU countries

In 1990, Poland had an abysmal economy, reeling from communism and high inflation. It transformed its economy into a growth monster, achieving conservative underdog success based on cheap, educated and hard-working labour. This was especially evident since 2008, when Poland was less affected by the financial crisis due to its less bloated loan market. Poland has actually benefited from a low zloty currency, becoming the workshop of Europe and receiving massive EU subsidies to modernise its infrastructure since joining the EU in 2004. More recently, Poland has moved towards becoming a tech and R&D hub.

Poland used to be a source of cheap, skilled labour for Western European countries. However, the gap is slowly closing as Polish wages have grown considerably since 2007, as shown in Figure 8S below. Compared to purchasing power parity (PPP), Polish wages have grown by 50% over the last 17 years, while in countries such as Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the UK, they have stagnated or even declined.

Figure 8S: Real wage growth in Poland

This rapid growth was only possible thanks to one key parameter: a plummeting birth rate among young adults. Poland now has an extremely low fertility rate of 1.15 in 2024, one of the lowest in the developed world and in Europe. No wonder it is reaping the benefits of a large young workforce and no children to spend time and money on. Poland has another 20 years of demographic dividends, and then it will enter a demographic payback with a very old population, essentially paying the price after 2045 for not having children now.

The economic boom in Poland and the growth of its cities has been driven by a plummeting fertility rate since 1990, particularly since 2004 and Poland's accession to the EU, when many young Poles travelled around Europe and delayed or chose not to have children. The demographic dividends of the last 20 years were a major driver of the booming economy in the cities, but they will lead to Poland's downfall starting in the 2040s when it faces a demographic cliff with a current fertility rate of only 1.1 child per woman.

FRANCE

Figure 8T: Demographic pyramid of France

Figure 8U: Age structure of France

France has a long tradition of small, artisanal companies in which workers have the skills and talent to make companies successful and thus workers are highly valued. This has led to workers having power and demanding social benefits and protection. This explains why there are long traditions of protests and strikes over almost any work-related or state-related topic. It also explains why France has the highest public tax and spending as a percentage of GDP in the world, at 46%. This high level of taxation leads to some brain drain, an exodus of young, skilled workers, as well as the relocation of millionaires and companies outside of France to avoid high taxation.

France's high level of social benefits gives the government a strong influence over the economy through subsidies, regulations and laws, as well as many state-owned large enterprises (SNCF, EDF), which are inefficient and uncompetitive in a global state-led economy and inflationary for the local population.

France also has a strong egalitarian culture in terms of both gender and economics, and people would prefer a balanced lifestyle to maximising their income.

Consequently, due to high social expectations and low productivity and efficiency, France has been spending beyond its means for some time, with the highest budget deficit in Europe at 5% to 6% per year.

On the other hand, France has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe at 1.65 in 2024, as well as a solid demographic profile and a long tradition of immigration. But the fertility rate is falling fast, like in the rest of the world, from 2 in 2014 to 1.65 in 2024.

France has the second largest economy in Europe after Germany and ahead of Italy, but the 3 issues of French society related to public money are: Firstly, pensioners are living very comfortably on average; it's not the low pension income, but the fact that many pensions are very generous and starting very early. Secondly, low-wage workers are not paid enough, particularly those earning close to the minimum wage. Thirdly, too many people receive various kinds of public benefit without contributing to society, such as unemployment benefits and long-term paid sick leave.

The middle class is slowly dying and most people are close to earning a low wage. The net median salary is only €500 more than the minimum wage per month, meaning half of workers earn close to the minimum wage, or to put it in other words: Half of french citizen are close to the poor lower wage class. This is mainly due to the minimum wage increasing with inflation, but middle-class earners not getting a raise because of the massive tax implications for employers. This has a demotivating effect, as workers have little financial incentive to climb the career ladder if they know their upgraded position will not be accompanied by a pay rise.

France has undergone massive deindustrialisation over the last 40 years, reducing its manufacturing output from 20% to 10% of its GDP, which has had a devastating effect on the French economy, public finances and balance of trade. This has been driven by the belief in a service economy and environmental friendliness, which has had a negative impact on the economy outside of Paris city centre. France has become a museum and tourist destination, drowning in debt and constent social protest.

France's demographic pyramid is actually very good. The 2 main issues are that people retire quite early at around 62 to 64 years old, and also that 32% of the population aged 20–65 is not working for various reasons, such as receiving unemployment benefits, long-term sickness, caring for children, early retirement or seeking asylum. Another issue is that French people have a long tradition of fighting for their rights and protesting to secure and maintain social benefits. They will undoubtedly fight and go on strike to protect their social welfare, even when the balance between taxpayers and welfare recipients is heavily tipped in favour of the latter. When you have a large number of pensioners, a small number of workers aged 20–40, and an even smaller number of children aged 1-20 coming up over the next 20 years, combined with a third of the population aged 20–65 not actively working while it could, it is not possible to maintain a decent social welfare system for long. We are already starting to see the cracks with high budget deficits and political turmoil.

Figures 8V below show that France has the longest retirement life expectancy due to early retirement at ages 62 to 64, combined with the highest public pension benefits. On average, pensions are 3% higher than salaries, which is an absurdly generous system that will ruin France if maintained. Consequently, France has the highest government spending and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP.

Figures 8V: France has a very generous public pension system

France spends 33% of its GDP on social protection, the highest proportion in the world. It is a welfare state on steroids. There is so much 'free' money that people retire at 62, even though most of them would still be able to work. The unemployment benefits and healthcare system are so generous that they incentivise many to remain unemployed or to declare themselves physically or mentally unwell. A society that promises a free lunch incentivises inactivity and turns its economy and public services into a state of disarray, leading to collapse and bankruptcy.

France is the world champion of taxation, with tax revenue accounting for around 46% of GDP, the highest in the OECD. This puts so much pressure on entrepreneurs and businesses that no company can grow on French soil, and most big companies outsource to other countries, creating a vicious circle of poverty. This pushes millionaires and young, talented adults out of the country, further draining the economy and reducing tax collection and creating a general climate of pessimism and depression.

And talking of millionaires: France has a cultural aversion to economic success and wealth. If you or your business becomes wealthy, this is viewed as suspicious, unacceptable and unfair to poor people, and the government will confiscate your profits or wealth. This is a truly communist mentality, which is about to bankrupt the country in the next 10 to 20 years.

France has gone from one of the lowest fertility rates in the world between 1800 and 1945 to one of the highest fertility rates in the developed world since the Second World War. France had one of the lowest fertility rates in the world from 1800 to 1945, with 4.5 in 1800, 3.5 in 1850, 3 in 1900, 2.2 between World War I and World War II, back to 2.8 during the baby boomer era of 1945-1970, and falling below 2 for good after 1975. For 150 years between 1800 and 1950, France's fertility rate was just above replacement level of that time, and its population grew slightly from 30 million in 1800 to only 40 million in 1900, and remained at 40 million until 1950. Then came the baby boomers, a massive increase in the population, as everywhere in the world for one generation, to reach 60 million in 2000. Compared with other developed countries, France did not experience a massive increase in its population between 1800 and 1950, and its population remained more or less stable. After 1975, however, many countries experienced a rapid decline in the birth rate, while France was able to maintain a decent high rate of around 1.8 from 1980 to 2020.

What still makes France an exception in Europe, with one of the highest fertility rates still at 1.7 in 2023, is its family culture. Having children is still seen as a standard part of adulthood, and having children is part of French adult life and not an impediment to women joining the labour force. France has been one of the world's leading egalitarian, progressive and pro-natalist countries. This can be explained by the fact that France has always been a socially welcoming country, with favourable policies for immigrants, and has received many people from Morocco and Algeria, but also Portuguese, Italians and several African countries that were former French colonies. France has a mixed ethnicity with mixed ancestry, and those with a migrant background tend to have higher fertility rates than native-born people with 2 native parents. The diversity of French ethnicity, combined with a strong family culture, makes France a demographic exception within Europe.

France has long been an exception, with a sustained high fertility rate of around 2 until 2015. There are 3 possible explanations for France's well-shaped demographic pyramid: The first is that France has always valued the family and children are part of its culture and traditions.

Another explanation is that France has traditionally been a country with an egalitarian patriarchy and family hierarchy, where girls and boys were treated as equals and received the same inheritance, without sons getting the privilege of the home and the father's business, while the daughter had to move to her husband's place, as in other more authoritarian family regimes such as Germany, South Korea, Spain or Italy. This has mitigated the impact of women's emancipation and empowerment on fertility rates, as French women did not suddenly feel "liberated" from male oppression in the 1970s, and it seems that French women have found a good balance between motherhood and work, being able to do both while maintaining around 2 children per woman. But like Norway, even the 'good' countries have now fallen below 1.5 in the last decade, with France now at 1.6 in 2024.

The last possible explanation for the high fertility rate is that France has a tradition of welcoming and absorbing immigrants, mainly from Morocco, Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa. These ethnic groups have a higher fertility rate of 2 or 2.5 on average. Because these immigrants or their descendants are an integral part of the total population and have maintained strong family values by having several children, the average national fertility rate has remained high over the last 4 decades. As it is forbidden by law in France to have statistics based on ethnicity or religion, there are no official statistics like those available in the USA or Germany to back up my argument. But being French myself, I have a pretty good idea of what is going on in France.

France's demographics are great compared to other European countries and should benefit France in the coming decades, potentially giving it an economic lead in Europe. Although the demographics look good on paper, France is plagued by a high unemployment rate, a high rate of people living on partial or full state support, and the French deficit is growing year on year, reaching 5.8% of GDP by 2024. The potential is there in terms of available people, but the skills and qualifications do not seem to match the country's job needs. While the working population is expected to remain at around 40 million over the next 30 years, which is great for maintaining a stable economy, the retired population is expected to grow from 10 million in 2010 to 15 million today in 2025 and 18 million in 2040, further exacerbating the French government's budget deficit.

UNITED KINGDOM

Figure 8W: UK demographic pyramid

Figure 8X: UK age structure

The UK still has a solid demographic profile. However, it has higher inflation than the rest of Europe due to high energy costs and variable mortgage rates, which are now reaching 4%. Political decisions regarding coal, gas, nuclear power and wind energy have led to the deindustrialisation of steel, chemical and other energy-intensive industries. This has resulted in high unemployment, more poverty and rise in sickness rates, with welfare spending growing faster than the 1% GDP growth and stagnant GDP per capita since 2018.

The UK is a land of talent and innovation. From chemistry to railways, from renowned economists and writers to musicians, from engineering to technology, and from exporting machinery to football fans, English teachers and sarcastic humourists, the UK has always been at the forefront of innovation, and remains a stable country with reliable institutions.

The UK has experienced stagnant GDP per capita since 2009 and almost zero economic growth (GDP) since 2019. Once the most advanced industrial country, at the forefront of the steam engine, railways and Industrial Revolution around 250 years ago, the country has been rapidly deindustrialising since 1970, losing its share of steel manufacturing, oil and gas production, chemical and petrochemical manufacturing, as shown in Figure 8Y below.

Figure 8Y: Manufacturing's share of the UK's GDP

The UK is in a similar situation to France, with a fairly high fertility rate of 1.8 over the last 40 years, with a recent decline since 2015 to 1.55 in 2023. This means that the working population is expected to remain constant at around 40 million people for the next 3 decades. London is a vibrant, dynamic, cosmopolitan city, with 40% of its inhabitants being foreign-born. It is home to the largest financial headquarters in Europe, alongside Frankfurt, Germany. Thanks to its native English-speaking advantage, it will remain an attractive destination for immigrants.

The UK is currently plagued by a lack of business and public investment, ageing infrastructure, and decades of deindustrialisation replaced by financial services which have hit a wall since the 2008 financial crisis. The housing market is completely unaffordable, with people spending 40% to 50% of their income on rent. There is also high bureaucracy for new construction. Brexit has made exporting a paperwork nightmare for small businesses, and there is an over-concentration of activities in the London area.

One notable difference between the UK and France or Germany is the huge cost of childcare in the UK. Whereas in France and Germany, childcare, school and university education is almost free, in the UK the cost of primary schooling can be enormous, around £1000 to £1500 per child, which is certainly a factor in the recent drop in fertility rates. In addition, the UK, once the manufacturing superpower of the world, has completely deindustrialised and remains essentially a financial services centre, which is not necessarily the best place to be in the coming decades of debt crisis. In addition, the UK's energy policy of shifting from abundant domestic gas and coal to renewables, especially wind, has raised the price of electricity across the country, weakening any remaining industrial competitiveness.

Demographics of other major countries

Let's have a look at the demography of 4 major countries, either by GDP or by total population: China, Russia, USA and India.

As shown in Figure 9A below, the trend in all four countries is similar to that seen elsewhere in the world since 1960. Fertility rates have decreased everywhere. India, the least developed of the four countries, has naturally had a higher fertility rate since 1960, but has been below the replacement rate since 2015. Russia experienced a sharp decline following the revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which created widespread insecurity and instability. Russia's birth rate has not recovered since then. The USA has had a stable birth rate of around two children per woman since 1970 until 2010, but has seen it slowly decline below 2 after 2010, probably due to the high cost of living. After implementing a soft one-child policy in the early 1980s, China actually saw its birth rate fall below two in 1990, when the country began to industrialise and urbanise quickly.

Figure 9A: Fertility rates of China, India, USA, Russia

USA

Figure 9B: USA demographic pyramid

Figure 9C: USA age structure

Overall, the US has a pretty good demographic structure. Its fertility rate remained solid at around 2 from 1970 until 2010, when it started to decline to 1.6 from 2023. This gives the US a solid and stable working population of around 220 million over the next three decades, which should maintain its ability to provide healthcare and pensions to its growing retired population.

The US is in an excellent position for a number of reasons. It is an economic superpower because of its size, its oil and gas industry, its technology giants and its military presence around the world. The US has always been a country of migrants seeking a better life. The integration of immigrants is easier there because of the mindset of the locals, who are themselves immigrants or descendants of immigrants. The US also has the US dollar, the international reserve currency, which allows it to attract capital and run a budget deficit. Most importantly, the US speaks English and remains the top destination for the brain drain, the highly educated foreigners looking for a great career abroad. This allows the US to compensate for its shrinking domestic labour force by attracting talent from abroad and growing its young workforce.

Since emerging as a winner from WWII without sustaining any damage on its own soil, the USA has been able to leverage its geopolitical power by imposing the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and by establishing large US army bases across the globe. As shown in Figure 9D below, the US economy has grown ever since. Japan was its toughest competitor from the 1970s until the mid-1990s, but an ageing population and a shrinking workforce put an end to this. Since the 2000s, China has become the USA's biggest economic rival. However, China will only have until 2040 before its population ages rapidly and its working population shrinks, following the same pattern as Japan, but 4 decades later. If the USA can maintain a fertility rate of 1.6 and continue to attract the best young skilled workers to compensate for the natural decline of its working population, USA will continue to dominate the world economy for the foreseeable future.

Figure 9D: Evolution of GDP in USA, Japan and China

Simply put, the US is the best positioned of all the industrialised countries to overcome the looming demographic misery of the coming decades.

RUSSIA

Figure 9E: Russian demographic pyramid

Figure 9F: Russian age structure

Russia, like other countries of the former Soviet Union, suffered enormously from the economic collapse of the USSR, and this affected fertility rates at the time, with a sudden drop in fertility rates from around 2.2 in 1988 to 1.4 in 1993. These are the young workers (and soldiers) of today, aged 20 to 35, that the Russian economy is missing today, dampening any Russian ambitions for further conquest and invasion in the future, but also the missing young adults in their fertility prime. Russia's age structure is bad, but not as bad as China's or Germany's, because it was able to maintain a fertility rate of around 2 from 1970 to 1990, which is paying dividends today with a fairly stable workforce of over-35. But like any other industrialised country, over the next three decades Russia will see its working population fall from 90 to 80 million and its retired population rise from 25 to 35 million, which will put pressure on economic growth.

Russia is so vast geographically that it is a collection of different ethnic groups and independent republics. Its inhabitants have quite different cultures and traditions linked to their geography, climate and landscape. This makes Russia more adaptable to changes in the relative power of one part of the country over time. The recent political sanctions and geopolitical changes following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 will change its economic destiny, bringing it closer to China and Iran, but away from Europe. Russia remains a largely unattractive country for foreigners, unlike the US, Dubai or Singapore, for example. Nevertheless, Russia is a mineral and energy superpower and this will keep its economy going for decades to come. In addition, the Russians are more mentally prepared for difficult times and are not fully supported by government intervention like the Europeans.

The China-Russia geopolitical alliance challenging USA supremacy is bound to fail in the long term when depopulation hits those two countries, assuming the USA remains an attractive destination for immigrants. Russia and China have a fertility rate of around 1, while the USA's is still around 1.6, with many young, skilled immigrants joining the American workforce and largely compensating for the 0.4 "missing" fertility rate needed for population replacement. Consequently, the working population in USA is still rising and is expected to continue to rise over the next 20 years. Meanwhile, Russia and China are already experiencing a decline in their working population, and this decline is expected to intensify over the next three decades.

CHINA

Figure 9G: China demographic pyramid

Figure 9H: China age structure

China has experienced the fastest industrialisation of any country in human history. In 1980, China was mostly poor villagers riding bicycles and living in the countryside, and within 4 decades it became an urbanised, megalopolis-rich country, embracing new technologies and becoming the manufacturing factory of the world, with a growth rate of 8% from 1990 to 2010 and 5% from 2010 to 2020. Its working population jumped from 0.4 billion in 1970 to 1 billion in 2010.

While China's GDP is still second to the USA's in 2024, at $19 trillion compared to $29 trillion, if you compare the two economies using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) to account for the real cost of living in different countries, China overtook the US in 2016 and is expected to overtake Europe in 2028, as shown in Figure 9I below. This is measured by the share of the world GDP adjusted for PPP.

Figure 9I: China's share of the world GDP

This fantastic and fast growth has pulled many Chinese out of poverty into the middle-class, as shown on figure 9J below:

Figure 9J: China rapid wage growth 1980-2020

This was made possible by the massive demographic dividend of people moving to cities and the one-child policy. The one-child policy, which was implemented in China from 1975 to 2015, was designed to prevent overpopulation and food and resource shortages, allow mass migration to cities and reduce the need to build housing, and increase labour productivity and women's participation in the labour force.

Chinese advertising (propaganda) on the 1-child policy

The one-child policy was not strictly imposed; it was more of a strong recommendation. Some girls were 'selected' (abandoned, not declared or handed over to other families) when they were born. This increased the ratio of boys to girls to 125:100 in some years and areas, instead of the natural ratio of 105:100. This affects the fertility rate a generation later, as only women count towards the reproduction rate. During the one-child policy era (1980–2015), adults who had their first child as a boy usually stopped there, as boys traditionally inherit in the family. When the first child was a girl, couples were allowed to have a second child in the hope of having a boy. Girls born during the one-child policy period in 1980–2010 without siblings were denigrated and made to feel unwanted because traditionally, all Chinese parents wish to have a son to continue the long tradition of inheritance and agricultural work. Girls without siblings were also the only hope for successful family transmission, so they received an excellent education, better than men, and were given all the time and attention of their parents as a single child, which reinforced their sense of specialness and the pressure to achieve greatness in life. Now that these women are adults, they are confronted with the traditional patriarchal tradition of China, in which men work and are in command, while women are expected to essentially be only good mothers and wives at home. They therefore reject the traditional patriarchy. This conflict has generated a toxic gender culture: women do not want to give up their careers to have children or become housewives. This leads many women to choose to remain childless in order to continue with their busy careers and to be able to care for their ageing parents, which is very common in China, where several generations often live together. Meanwhile, most men would love to have two kids while not being too involved in household duties or childcare. The high level of female education, combined with the urbanisation and rapid industrialisation of China between the 1980s and 2020, as well as the country's patriarchal traditions, creates an explosive mix. Over-educated women either don't find a suitable partner or, when they do, refuse to have children and be confined to their perceived traditional role. Consequently, many men become incels and remain single, and the probability of a couple both wishing to have children is low. This is reflected in the plummeting marriage rate, high divorce rate of 45%, and extremely low fertility rates of 1.

China's working-age population peaked at 1 billion in 2014, and it is predicted that this figure will fall to 700 million by 2050. This represents a 40% reduction in the workforce over just 35 years and will have a significant impact on China's economy and that of the rest of the world, given that every country depends on China. Conversely, the number of retirees aged over 65 is expected to double from 200 million in 2025 to 400 million in 2050. This means that the old-age dependency ratio — the ratio of the working-age population (15–65) to the retired population (over 65) — will fall from 20:4 in 2025 to 7:4 in 2050. Society as a whole will struggle immensely to cope with this enormous demographic burden.

There are serious reports that China has been lying about its demographic statistics, and that there may be 10% to 25% fewer people under 20 years of age than assumed or officially declared. This is because every local community or local administration (schools, town halls, kindergartens) received government funding based on population size, so there was a natural incentive to artificially inflate the number of young people at every level. This means that China's demographic crisis could be arriving sooner and/or be worse than anticipated, and because China is the factory of the world and has been mostly responsible for our gains in purchasing power since the 1990s, China's situation impacts the entire world.

From 2000 until 2020, China experienced an incredible 20 years of economic boom at 8% GDP growth per year. Since 2020, it has started to change rapidly: In addition to the three years of strict Covid-19 lockdowns, the property boom of the last 20 years is over, house prices are falling and many Chinese who invested in property have lost money, generating stress, conservatism and lower consumption among the population, a bleak outlook and a desire to save money rather than spend on consumption, which has lowered China's economic growth and increased government debt.

Chinese kindergartens are facing a crisis as enrolment numbers have plummeted by 25% over the past four years, dropping from 48 million in 2020 to 36 million in 2024. This rapid decline in fertility rates is primarily attributed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic strict lockdowns, as well as the collapse of the real estate bubble, which has eroded the savings and investments of millions of Chinese citizens and undermined their perception of a stable economic outlook. China has been experiencing an overall population decline since 2022, with more deaths than births over the past three years.

China is following in Japan's footsteps, only 20 years later: A rapid rise as a major economy (1970-1995 for Japan, 1990-2020 for China) with low birth rates, then the final economic dividends until 2000 for Japan and 2020 for China, then the demographic payback with a declining working population and the loss of its economic superpower, 2000-2010 for Japan and from 2020 for China. Finally, an ageing population and an economic burden with massive debt, 2010-2040 for Japan and from 2035 onwards for China. Figure 9Kbelow shows the evolution of the old-age dependency ratio in Japan and China, i.e. the ratio of the working population to the rest of the population aged under 15 and over 65. It can be seen that the rise and fall of the dependency ratio in China is about 20 years behind that in Japan. China's fate seems to be the same as Japan's, except that China still has a third of its population living in rural areas and a relatively low average GDP per capita of USD 12,000 compared to Japan's USD 33,800 in 2023, as shown in figure 9L. China is getting old before it gets rich.

Figure 9K: Evolution of the dependency ratio in Japan and China

Figure 9L: Evolution of the GDP per capita in Japan, China and South Korea

China has another 10 years of high working population until 2035, when it enters the demographic payback period and will suffer from a drastic fall in the working age population and an explosion in the retired age population. China's working-age population peaked at over 900 million in 2010, but is forecast to shrink from around the same 900 million in 2030 to around 600 million in 2055. That's a third less workforce in just 25 years! The implications for its economy, its debt, its elderly support system and the global supply chain are frightening.

China, like Russia, has one advantage in navigating the coming demographic collapse: A one-party political space, which is a de facto authoritarian regime that allows one man at the top to make difficult decisions without having to convince an opposition or risk political unrest. This is a key point to understand: When things are going well and there is economic prosperity, it is best to be in a democracy and debate where the growth of the pie should be distributed. But when things go bad, when the economy goes sour, the best governing regime is an authoritarian one that has the full authority to make unpopular decisions like cutting public spending, reducing pension benefits or postponing the retirement age. On average, Chinese pensioners receive less than $1,000 a month, receive fewer healthcare services and medicines, and are therefore less of a financial burden than those in the USA or Europe. Unlike the USA and Europe, the Chinese government will not allow the ageing population to ruin its fiscal situation by providing generous benefits to retirees. When the demographic payback comes around in 2035–2060, China will limit public spending on the elderly and manage its fiscal situation much better than Europe or the USA.

China's fertility rate was still a respectable 1.8 in 2017, but it has plummeted to 1 by 2023, a very sharp decline. China's total population has already started to decline, with more deaths than births each year, and India overtook China as the world's most populous country a few years ago. The number of newborn babies has been divided by 2 in just 7 years, from 18 million births in 2016 to 9 million births in 2023, a shockingly rapid decline. Chinese people have suddenly stopped making babies! This can be explained by the poor financial stability and prospects of young adults, low wages, social media, Covid-19, or that most adults in their reproductive peak are mostly without siblings, or that the social and cultural pressure to marry is rejected by emancipated women, who are unwilling to give up their freedom by committing to a man and becoming a housewife. Figure 9M below shows the sharp decline in marriage in China, halving in just 10 years from 13.5 million in 2013 to 6 million in 2024. The number of marriages is perfectly correlated with the number of births, as marriage in China most likely means a birth in the following 1 or 2 years.

Figure 9M: marriage count and birth count in China over the last 10 years

As a result of declining fertility rates over the last 30 years, if we project China's demography into 2050, you can see on Figure 9N below the evolution of the 3 age groups: Less children under the age of 20 (area with green dots), a massive decline in working population age 20-63 (area with white dots) and a massive increase in retired population over 63 for men and over 58 for women (area with black dots). This will have drastic consequences for the chinese economy, the standards of living, and consequently for the world supply chain.

Figure 9N: China's demographic pyramid in 2024 compared to 2050

As the working population declines over the next 30 years and the government focuses more on domestic consumption and raising living standards, China will have to stop exporting all its manufacturing output. China, the world's factory, has already lost some of its dominance as wages in China have risen and the super-abundant workforce has begun to dwindle, with factories now moving to Vietnam and Indonesia where labour is cheaper and abundant. While China will still dominate material processing and 'green energy' technologies such as electric vehicles, solar and wind power, the rest of the world will have to adapt as China will no longer be able to produce all sorts of cheap products for the whole world. China's manufacturing and economic transformation, forced by its ageing demographics, will be fascinating to watch over the coming decades and will have a major impact on overall inflation.

Since 2000, China has become the world's manufacturing factory. Price deflation over the years, abundance of materials, cheap goods, was only possible because of China.

China’s state champions use a combination of direct subsidies, aggressive intellectual property theft and lax environmental and labour oversight to make their industry unbeatable in competitivity and grind away at market share, first in their domestic markets and eventually via exports.

China will gradually reduce its working population as it will no longer be able to produce all the things the world needs. China will also have a larger proportion of its workforce supporting its growing retired population. Moreover, Chinese wages have risen naturally over the past two decades as the country has developed and industrialised, making new countries such as Vietnam or Indonesia the new destination of choice for cheap labour.

That's why the demographic collapse of China will have massive consequences for everyone in the Western world, for every industrialised country: Supply chains will be affected, relocations will have to take place, prices of imported goods may be affected.

INDIA

Figure 9P: Indian demographic pyramid

Figure 9Q: Indian age structure

In 2022, India has surpassed China as the world's most populous country, with 1.4 billion people. While India is still an economically poor country with a per capita GDP of USD 2,500 compared to China's USD 12,600, India is the world's next superpower and has been growing at 7-8% per year for the past 30 years. One reason is its huge young population, with a median age of 28 compared with 38 in China and 39 in the US. Another is that India is entering its demographic dividend period, with many young adults and a declining fertility rate. India's fertility rate has fallen steadily from 4 in 1990 to 3 in 2005, reaching replacement level at 2.1 in 2019, and has been below ever since. This means that the number of newborns is now declining year by year, as you can see at the bottom of the demographic pyramid. This means that over the next 30 years, India will see a huge increase in its working population, with more women entering the labour force, while it will not face a rising pensioner population until 2060. India's destiny is to follow China as the next factory of the world and the next economic superpower, but it must first work on its infrastructure, such as access to fresh water, sanitation and a reliable power grid, and lift a large proportion of Indians out of poverty. India needs to grow its middle class and public infrastructure before it can compete with the world's economic superpowers.

Nevertheless, India's future is bright. The second half of the century will belong to India and Africa, which will account for two-thirds of the world's population.

Over the next 4 decades, India is well placed to compete with China for the title of 'manufacturing factory of the world': India's population has just surpassed China's at 1.45 billion, making it the only country able to match China's sheer population size. India is a geopolitical ally and commercial trading partner of almost every country in the world, including China, Russia, Europe and the USA. This opens up many opportunities for future economic growth. India's economic growth rate is 7%, rising quickly, while China's has slowed from 10% a decade ago to 4% now. Furthermore, India entered its demographic dividend period around 10 years ago, when its fertility rate fell below 2.1, paving the way for four decades of rapid growth. India's median age is 29, compared to 41 in China. China is ageing rapidly and is set to enter its demographic payback period in the 2030s, whereas India has 40 years left to enjoy the benefits of its demographic dividend. As shown in the figure 9R below, India's working-age population is set to grow by around 15% until 2050, while China's working-age population is expected to decline by 25% in the same period. This will undoubtedly shift economic and geopolitical power from China to India in the coming decades.

Figure 9R: Working age population of India and China

Most people believe that India has too many people, or rather, too many babies. However, the peak birth rate was in 2001, which is almost 25 years ago. India's total population is growing and surpassed China's in 2023, but that's because people are living longer. If we look at the under-20 population, it has been shrinking for the last 20 years. By 2024, 90% of Indian states had a fertility rate below the replacement level. Calcutta now has a fertility rate of only 1. Fifty years ago, Calcutta had around five children per woman, now it has only one. This is an incredibly rapid shift in demographic transition, marking a swift change in society and traditions. India is four decades away from having the current western demographic profile. India's demographic transition has already been underway for the last 20 years, contrary to the assumptions and beliefs of most people. Even its neighbour Nepal has had a fertility rate below the replacement level since 2017, reaching 1.9 in 2024.

Figure 9S: Demographic pyramid of Nepal

The decline in fertility rates is a global phenomenon, even in poorer countries where people would expect families to have five children on average. The young population is decreasing almost everywhere outside of Sub-Saharan Africa. Even Sub-Saharan Africa is on track to go below replacement level by around 2050. No country in the world is immune to the continuous and sustained lowering of the fertility rate.

Why the birth rate is declining in industrial countries

There is no consensus on why the birth rate has fallen since the 1970s. Several studies have been done and there are several factors that could explain it. Even today, if you asked 10 different people, you would get 10 different answers. Having babies is not an exact science.

Disclaimer here: This section identifies some dominant trends in industrialised societies over the last 50 years. Everyone on earth is different, and my thesis and these trends may not apply to you, or you may think differently, and that's perfectly fine. My intention is to show the dominant motives - psychological and sociological factors - behind the trend of declining fertility that emerged after 1960 and changed the number of children people have on average. Sociology is a complex subject and major trends are difficult to prove because of the heterogeneity of people. These trends may not apply to you, but they are important at a global societal level.

If we aggregate all the studies and what the experts have found, we can boil down most of the reasons for declining birth rates to 6 key factors:

- The lack of financial security and economic stability

- The lure of a a great lifestyle as a childless adult

- Urbanization

- The high level of education overall

- The trend towards more freedom of choices, the birth control pill, women emancipation, feminism and women empowerment since 1960s

- The rise of social media and smart phones since 2010

What is very interesting today is that many young adults under 25 want to have children one day, and many childless women over 45 wish they had babies in their life. Most people want to have children at some point in their lives. So what are the reasons that explain the gap between people's wishes and reality?

They are many. Among the most frequently cited are prioritising career and personal lifestyle over having a family, postponing the decision to have children until their mid-30s and not finding the right partner at the right time, lack of financial stability or sound economic prospects, fear of geopolitical instability and future climate change, and biological/medical inability to reproduce.

There are many studies on the declining fertility rate and the desire for children. One such study is from the PEW Research Center from 2024. See figure 10A below for the poll results regarding the desire for children and the likelihood of having them. Figure 10B shows the main reasons for not having children. Finally, figure 10C shows that people view careers and friendships as much more fulfilling than having children.

Figure 10A: Children wish and likelihood

Figure 10B: Reasons for not having children

Figure 10C: Career and friends more fulfilling in life than children

The results of the poll show that, for most people, having children is no longer a priority, especially when you consider the impact that children can have on your career and on the time you spend with friends and enjoying leisure activities. These trends have increased universally over the last 60 years in all industrialised countries, from the USA, to Colombia, Germany, Colombia or South Korea.

Claiming to know the one true reason for declining fertility rates is a biased view of the problem. Even if we could solve this specific issue, it is unlikely that the fertility rate crisis would be resolved.

If you ask South Koreans or Japanese people why the fertility rate is low, they might tell you that men do not contribute enough to household tasks or childcare. However, even in Scandinavia, where gender roles are very balanced, the fertility rate is still quite low at around 1.4. Simply asking men to do more at home is not the ultimate solution. If you ask someone in London why the fertility rate is low, they will tell you it is because housing prices are too high. However, if you look at Scotland, where the average housing price per square metre is half or a third of that in London, the fertility rate is extremely low at 1.3, so housing prices alone are not the real issue. If you ask someone in the USA or New Zealand why the fertility rate is low in their country, they might say it's because there aren't enough public support and financial incentives or benefits for young parents or childcare, but if you look at Hungary, which is publicly pushing for more babies and offering tax credits, or Germany, which provides free childcare and paid parental leave, you'll see that the fertility rate is still low at 1.5 for Hungary and 1.4 for Germany.

There is no single cause of falling fertility rates, but rather multiple factors common to many places on the planet. Solving one cause would not generate a rebound in fertility rates. The problem runs much deeper and affects several levels of society, so only drastic societal changes could alter the downward trend that we have experienced over the last two centuries, apart from a 20-year baby boom hiatus.

Historically, the main reason for the decline in birth rates between 1700 and 1950 was the reduction in infant mortality thanks to medical advances, technological progress and improved hygiene. While two centuries ago, one in two children did not survive until the age of 15, families had to have four or more children just to maintain the size of their family through the generations, ensuring they had young children and grandchildren to take care of them when they grew old and to pass on their knowledge to the next generation, maintaining a stable population. Society has changed, and so has the way parents approach child-rearing. Parents now expect all of their children to grow up and become adults, and as a result, they don't need to make 4 children so that 2 can survive to adulthood, they simply make 2 babies with the assumption they will both survive to adulthood. Also they invest more of their time, attention and money in them. This has changed the definition of fatherhood and motherhood tremendously, as young parents now want the best for their children, exercising more control over their behaviour, being more present and hands-on, stimulating their curiosity, and trying to make them more intellectual so they can be successful in life. In the past, when families had six children, it was not possible to keep an eye on each of them or invest all your time and effort in just one of them, so children were left to their own and had to take care of each other. You couldn't afford to pay university tuition fees, buy cars and pay rent for all of them. You couldn't control their activities or what they said to others because you simply had to divide your time as a parent among all your kids. Unconditional love, affection and attention have always been part of the parental role, but nowadays, in addition, a mother's role includes teaching, attending all sorts of arts and sports activities, and spending a lot of her time and effort educating her children to become the elite or the best it can be. There are plenty of added responsibilities and burdens, and much more spare time is spent trying to give your child the best possible opportunities. Parenting requires far more investment today than it did 100 years ago. This is one reason why parenthood can feel daunting; it's a commitment that lasts 20 years, involving constant care and nurturing, as well as the expenditure of time, effort and money to give your child (or children) the best possible chance of succeeding in life. This is a major reason why young adults decide against having children, as they anticipate the high burden of responsibility it will entail, as well as the time and effort it will require. The role of parenting has evolved, making it a much bigger burden than it used to be.

The reasons for the continuing decline in fertility rates have been hotly debated, while some potential solutions, such as immigration and forcing people to retire later, have proved politically unpalatable.

Women with low levels of education delay having children because of concerns about the stability of their relationships, financial dependence on their partners and the need to live close to their parents to help with childcare. On the other hand, those with a tertiary education worry about falling down the career ladder and want a practical partner to share parenting and housework, and a partner with a similar educational background, which is hard to find. Whatever your social or professional situation, there are always good reasons for postponing parenthood or simply not having children.

Personal comment here: I am giving a list of reasons to explain what I am observing around me and what other specialists and studies are reporting. I personally have a child, I always wanted to be a father, I love it, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me and it gives so much meaning and purpose to my life that I cannot even imagine my life without my little boy. Having children is fantastic for me. But I can certainly understand and respect the decision not to have children in our modern society.

Politicians, business leaders and lobbyists are not interested in young adults having two or more children because it restricts their productivity, working hours, total income and tax contributions. It also reduces their overall consumption and spending on private goods and services (parents instead consume more public services such as schools, childcare and maternity leave). Looking ahead 20 years, economic growth and consumption would be higher if young adults decided not to have children. On an individual level, this book explains the many reasons why people prefer to have no children or fewer children. In summary, we are in a system where lawmakers, business leaders and individuals all have a genuine interest in not having children. That's why fertility rates are falling year after year.

Financial constraints

If you ask randomly people, read the results of a poll or check the comments on any article or video about the falling birth rate, you will find that around 50% of people claim that finance and the cost of living (and the cost of residency) is the main reason for not wanting children or having fewer children than originally desired. The most commonly cited reason for having no children, or fewer than desired, is economic insecurity, which is a combination of high housing prices, job insecurity, and unaffordable childcare. Let's take a closer look at that claim.

In the recent past, major economic events have been followed by a notable reduction in the fertility rate. When the economy of a country suddenly deteriorates, the birth rate usually plummets. We have witnessed this causal relationship several times in different nations. For example, the oil shock in Japan in 1973, when it was the fastest-growing economy and in the top 2 with USA, was followed by a significant reduction in the number of children in the late 1970s. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 drastically reduced birth rates in former Soviet countries over a period of 5 to 10 years. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008, which triggered the credit crunch in the USA, marked the start of a downturn in fertility rates in the USA after years of stability at around 2. Türkiye has experienced high inflation since 2020, and the fertility rates have dropped significantly to 1.5 the last 5 years after decades of a rate between 2 and 2.3. Since 2022, the loss of purchasing power in Europe following post-Covid inflation and the invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the decline in the birth rate over the last three years. These examples show that when economic and financial conditions worsen dramatically and suddenly in a country, people put their plans for starting a family on hold and the fertility rate drops, usually never recovering to the pre-event level.

Let's have a look at the biggest share of our individual spending: Housing. In terms of real purchasing power, the cost of renting accommodation has indeed doubled in all cities of the industrial world over the last 30 to 40 years. By this, I mean the proportion of the median income needed to rent a square metre. In other words, the change in the size of an apartment you can rent with 40% allocation of the median income. Even if you consider buying a house, the percentage of the median income needed to pay the monthly mortgage on an average house has also doubled in the last 30 to 40 years.

As can be seen in Figure 11A below, the average house price to average wage ratio in the USA has almost doubled since 1985. If you consider only large, attractive cities such as Los Angeles and New York, the ratio has probably tripled.

Figure 11A: House price to income ratio in USA since 1985

The same is true if you compare house prices adjusted for inflation in other industrialised countries in the G7, as shown in Figure 11B below.

Figure 11B: Real house price since 1980 in G7 countries

The price of accommodation is undoubtedly an issue, especially in cities where large apartments and houses are scarce. If you live in a 60 m² apartment with your spouse, it is extremely difficult to envisage having two children in that size of apartment. Having two or more children generally means that one of the parents starts working part-time. In today's world, one and a half salaries are barely enough to feed a family of four, whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, one solid salary was sufficient. The cost of daily life has increased in relation to the median salary, especially in relation to the minimum wage.

This issue is particularly significant for those on low incomes. In France in 2025, the minimum wage for 35 hours per week is around €1,450 net per month, while the median net salary is around €1,950 per month. In Germany, the minimum wage for a 35 hours per week as a single adult is around 1,400 EUR per month net, while the median income is around 2,200 EUR per month net. In UK, median wage is £2520 gross per month, and minimum wage is £2120 gross per month or £1820 netto per month. This means that 50% of the population earns less than netto per month €2,000 in France and €2,200 in Germany and £2140 in the UK, as example. A simple 50 m² apartment will cost you between €800 and €1,200 per month in a city, including all charges such as electricity, heating, water and internet. That's about half of your salary, leaving you with only €1000 per month for all your other expenses, such as food, groceries, transportation, clothing, etc. Half of the population of these 3 fairly wealthy countries live on a tight budget, allocating half of their net income only to pay the rent of a 50 m² appartment. That's not in poverty, but close to it, and there are definitly no excess or luxury. They cannot save more than €50 per month. Even if two of those people live together, how much extra money is left for children in this scenario? If adults struggle financially, how can you expect them to sacrifice and commit to the responsibility of children?

On the other hand, we must acknowledge that standards and expectations of accommodation have increased dramatically over the last 70 years. Just 70 years ago, it was considered acceptable to live in 25 m² per person with a shared toilet on the staircase and a simple removable bucket for taking a shower. Nowadays, the bare minimum is 40 m² per person, a fully tiled, separate bathroom, a private toilet in each appartment, a heating system in each room and an elevator for any apartment above the third floor. It is no wonder that the median price of accommodation has risen tremendously, partly due to higher equipment standards and expectations in modern housing.

Most people believe that the shrinking active population will push down rental prices. However, this is not the case in big cities. It might sound counter-intuitive at first, but the shrinking active population that started in the 2010s will push housing prices up in the next two decades, not down. I am talking here about rents for tenants, not real estate purchase. Rents are determined by 3 factors: Affordability or average salaries in the area, supply and demand dynamics, and interest rates.

Local average salary obviously matters: People working in finance in Manhattan or at tech giants in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco can afford whatever rent they wish, driving prices to an unaffordable level for anyone else and far above the national average. Conversely, rents in small towns or rural areas are naturally constrained by the average salary of the local population.

Supply and demand is the most obvious factor: while the population is ageing quickly in rural areas and young adults are moving to bigger, more vibrant cities, we can expect rents to continue to decline in villages and small towns, while rents in big cities will continue to rise.

Interest rates are a lesser-known factor with multiple impacts. Governments will have to borrow more every year to finance their broken welfare systems due to population inbalance, which drives interest rates up. Over the last 4 years, interest rates have increased from 1% to 4% in the USA (the 10-year treasury bond is the reference) and from 0% to 3% in Europe. When interest rates rise, house construction becomes more expensive to fund and new construction slows down. It also makes buying a house and paying off the mortgage monthly more expensive, meaning many cannot afford to buy and revert to the rental market instead. Fewer new houses on the market coupled with higher demand for rentals is a double-edged sword that pushes rental prices up.

Other factors contributing to rising rent prices in cities include: More people are single nowadays and not living as couples under the same roof, meaning that the average number of people per household is decreasing and will continue to do so over time. This also means that the average home area per person (in square feet or square metres) has increased, aggravating the supply-demand imbalance. Cities also tend to have more single adults, while families with kids tend to move to the suburbs or countryside, which increases the demand for rsidential units in cities.

As a result, I expect interest rates to continue rising and rents in attractive cities to continue rising over the next two decades faster than the inflation rate. Between 2022 and 2025, rental prices increased significantly, primarily due to higher interest rates, but also due to modest population growth in big cities and an increase in single young adults, while the number of families with children decreased. Rental prices are one of the main reasons why people have fewer children than expected, so this trend of high rentals will continue to push down fertility rates in the coming years.

Another huge aspect is the financial constraint of having a child, especially in countries with very little public child care support like the USA or the UK: you have a financial burden to support and educate your child for years to come, you need a bigger car, a bigger house, more spending on food, clothes and education. Adults with limited incomes or insecure jobs without long-term prospects may be reluctant to make a financial commitment for the next 20 years by having a baby.

In the 50s and 60s, most families had one parent working and this was enough to provide an income to support a family of 4 or 5. In the 80s or 90s, most families had both parents working to support a family of 4 or 5. Since the 2010s, and especially post Covid inflation, a couple needs both adults to work and there isn't enough income to consider a family with 1 or 2 additional children. In many countries, such as the US, the UK or Spain, financial security is probably the main reason for falling fertility rates.

For instance, childcare costs in the US are increasing at twice the rate of inflation. This is simply because fewer people are interested in taking these jobs than in the past (due to women's emancipation and higher levels of education), and because childcare is labour-intensive, with no option to replace staff with machines or outsource the work to a low-wage country.

Housing costs are high even before having children, and when children enter an adult's life, childcare costs can also be very expensive, taking up a large proportion of an adult's income. When both parents work, even part-time, toddlers and children need to go to a nanny, nursery or kindergarten. Childcare costs vary drastically between countries, ranging from negligible, as in Germany or South Korea where almost all costs are subsidised by the state, to very expensive, as in the USA, Switzerland or Great Britain, as shown in Figure 11C below.

Figure 11C: Childcare cost compared to the average salary

There's no doubt that low-wage earners find it difficult to afford to have children. It is low-wage earners who need pro-natalist financial incentives the most. These include one year of fully paid maternity leave, free childcare and kindergarten, tax breaks, and part-time jobs compensated as full-time jobs for those with two or more children.

If you consider the basic necessities of housing, energy bills, healthcare, medicine and insurance — things that almost everyone has to pay for — they have taken an increasing share of the average salary over the years, going from 17% in 1947 in the USA to 41% today, as shown in Figure 11D below. This means that most of the income of low-wage earners goes towards basic necessities, leaving almost no room for extras, leisure or children. It seems that nowadays, only those on median salaries and above can afford children.

Figure 11D: Basic needs as share of average income in USA over 1947-2023

At the other end of the spectrum is the comfortable middle class, who are in the 20–50 percentile of the income distribution. Young adults in this group earn around 2,500 EUR per month net. This amount of money is absolutely sufficient to feed a child without experiencing scarcity or significant restrictions. Even if one adult works part-time, a family of four would have a total income of around 4,000 EUR net per month, which is ample to feed the family.

The issue with the middle classes claiming that life is too expensive is that they are not willing to make sacrifices or accept financial of lifestyle or comfort restrictions to accommodate the cost of children. They want to have children but still have one bedroom per child. They want children, but not if it means moving further out to the suburbs or to a less glamorous district. They want two children, but only if both parents have their own car. They want children, but they also want to be able to afford nice clothes, restaurants and travel. They want children, but do consider buying only brand new furniture, toys and clothes for the kids and would never considering cheap second-hand items. When this middle class claims that the cost of children is the reason for not having them, what they actually mean is that they prioritise the high standard of living that comes with not having children and are unwilling to cut back on lifestyle expenses for the sake of having children. However, children require time, attention, money and resources. You have to sacrifice a lot of your previously enjoyable daily life to raise children.

This middle class has attended university and worked for at least five years before considering having children. The longer the young middle classes remain childless and enjoy a certain income, the more difficult it is to give up some of their financial comforts for children. Once you are accustomed to buying and paying for everything you want in life without any second thoughts, it becomes extremely difficult to change these habits when planning for children. I think that for the top 20 to 50% of earners, money should not be an issue, but the reality is that this young middle class is not willing to accept financial restrictions. Their claim that money is the issue is biased — they actually mean that they are not willing to give up their comfort for the sake of having children. You can't tell me that money is the issue for this middle class when societies and regions of the world (like sub Saharian Africa) with 3 to 5 children per woman are about 5 to 10 times poorer. Why are Bulgaria and Rumania the 2 highest fertility rates in Europe and Germany is one of the lowest? It does not make any sense. Beyond the basic needs, higher income raises standards and expectations, and people are no longer willing to sacrifice a comfortable lifestyle for children and family life. That's the psychological reality, and people will claim, "I don't earn enough money for children," when what they really mean is, "I am not willing to make some sacrifice and live a poorer lifestyle with one more child compared to my current childless lifestyle."

At the other end of the earnings spectrum are the richest people in the world: the top 5% or 1% of earners. As shown in Figure 11E below, those who are rich and ultra-rich usually have quite a lot of children. The simple reason is that they can afford to employ people to clean, cook, pick up children from childcare centres and act as nannies, which makes life as a full-time working parent much easier. Interestingly, for the lowest 90% of income earners, there is no significant difference in fertility rates. Whether an American earns $40k, $100k or $200k a year, it has no significant impact on the fertility rate, which remains constant at around 1.75.

Figure 11E: Fertility rate per household income in USA

Social determinism is a real phenomenon. For a variety of reasons, children of low-wage earners mostly tend to become low-wage earners themselves due to their upbringing, lack of access to intellectual content, talent evaluators and social interactions, and lack of access to high-end universities. Similarly, children of the top 3% of earners or the wealthiest individuals tend to remain in the top 3% of the population because of inherited wealth, networking opportunities, access to lawyers and financial advisors, and high opportunity social interactions. The middle class is the part of the population with the most potential to move up or down the social ladder, although there is also a solid chance for children of middle-class earners to remain in the middle-class bracket.

Figure 11F: Fertility rate per household income percentile in USA

Figure 11G: Fertility rate per household income in France

As Figures 11E, 11F and 11G above show, the poorest 20% and the top 5% tend to have slightly more children than average, while the middle class is the most impacted by declining fertility rate. Extrapolate this over a few more generations (2025 is already the second generation since the 1970s) and the middle class will reduce significantly. By mid-century in industrial countries, expect 50% to 70% of the population becoming low-wage earners and the top 3% owning 90% of the wealth and controlling the world. When the poorest people have a fertility rate of 2 or above, while the middle class has a rate between 1 and 1.5, mathematically, over three generations, the amount of low-wage people remains while the amount of people of the middle class falls by 65%, meaning that the low wage earners take much bigger proportion on the total population to the detriment of the middle class. This is another reason why social inequalities are bound to continue rising as they have done over the last 40 years, and the fertility rate is absolutely one of the main factors. The greater the concentration of power at the top, the more likely it is that riots, protests, civil wars and authoritarian regimes will occur.

Another reason for couples not having children or delaying childbirth, and thus potentially reducing the number of children they have, is that the average income of people in their 20s and early 30s has risen very slowly in recent decades, compared with older age groups, which have seen relatively much larger increases. Figure 11H below shows the growth in US median real household income by age group, adjusted for inflation, since 1970. You can see that each age group has outperformed its younger counterpart.

Figure 11H: US median real household income growth by age bracket

More recently, between 2022 and 2023, you can see in Figure 11J below a more precise quantification of the year-over-year changes in US household income. While all cohorts ave seen growth in 2023, with an average of 4%, the 25-45 cohort has seen a slight increase of around 2%, while the 45-65 cohort has seen a significant increase of around 6%.

Figure 11J: US median household income growth by age bracket in 2022-2023

Women will always value a man's income when deciding whether to pair bond or have children. Some women prioritise their partner's income more than others, but it is always a factor. The issue is that a woman's reference point or standard is what her father earns. If a woman's partner earns significantly less than her father, she will deem it a low income based on her perception of what constitutes a good income, relative to her father's earnings (or her mother's if she was raised by a single parent). This puts young male partners at a disadvantage when it comes to starting a family, as real wages for under-35s are stagnating while those for over-50s are growing steadily.

This may explain why young adult couples are postponing marriage and having children until later in life when their economic prospects are better, de facto reducing the total number of children they have or even having no children at all. Young men aged 25-35 are becoming poorer relative to those aged 45-65 and cannot support a family, especially if men want to maintain their consumption levels and living standards. Children are often too much of an economic sacrifice for men and too much of a lifestyle sacrifice for women.

The narrowing gender pay gap and the low income growth of the 25-35 age group, are 2 major factors and an important economic explanation for declining fertility rates.

Delaying birth: 35 is the new 25

For those who do have children, the average age of mothers has risen steadily over the past 50 years. Whereas in the 1970s people had children around the age of 26 to 28, today people study for a long time, enjoy the single life, travel, have a career and decide to settle down and have children later, around the age of 31, sometimes even having their first child after turning 35. It seems that 35 is the new 25!

Figure 12A: Evolution of the average childbearing age

Figure 12B: Woman age at childbirth in the EU

As shown in Figure 12A and 12B above, mothers in the OECD on average gave birth to their first child at 31 years of age in 2022, compared with an average age of 27 in 1980. The average age of EU women at birth rose to 31.1 in 2023, one year later than a decade ago. It rose to 31.5 in Germany and 32 in Italy, Spain, Ireland and South Korea. Delaying childbearing increases the risk of not having children at all, either because the right partner is not available or because of declining biological capacity. For many women, there is an increased desire to pursue life goals that do not necessarily involve children.

In Spain in 2002, there were four times as many 27-year-old women giving birth for the first time as there were 38-year-old first-time mothers. Now, in 2024, there are as many 27-year-old first-time mothers as 38-year-old first-time mothers. This is an incredibly rapid change, reflecting the fact that young adults are delaying pregnancy and parenthood in order to enjoy a child-free lifestyle for as long as possible, to establish a solid financial foundation, or because they haven't found the right partner yet.

Figure 12C below shows that the 20-30 age group is having fewer children, while the 30-40 age group is having more.

Figure 12C: Birth rate evolution in USA by age group

In OECD countries, the average age of childbearing was 27 in the 1970s, but it is now 31 and rising. The effect of this trend is that we now have closer to 3 generations per century instead of almost 4, which stretches out and reduces the proportion of the population under 25, making the overcrowded elderly population even more unbalanced.

As countries develop and become prosperous, the share of young adults attending university or any kind of tertiary education increases. Young adults who have studied for so long obviously want to work in a high-level position and reap the rewards of their education, either through jobs with high levels of responsibility or high incomes. The longer you study, the more important work becomes in your life, and giving up some of your work commitments for a child becomes less desirable. We can see across the world that the higher the proportion of people attending tertiary education, the later people have children and the lower the fertility rate. South Korea, which has the highest level of education in the world, also has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.7.

Figures 12D and 12E below illustrate the strong correlation between the average level of education and the fertility rate. Figure 12D shows the entire population of a country, including both men and women. Figure 12E shows that the trend for women only is as much pronounced, with a strong correlation between educational attainment and fertility rates among women. The more education a woman receives, the fewer children she is likely to have.

Figure 12D: Correlation between average education level and fertility rate

Figure 12E: Women's educational attainment against their fertility rate

Countries with highly skilled jobs mean that people tend to spend longer at university. In Germany, it is very common for students to graduate at the age of 28. After the long studies of the educated adults, you want to get the reward of a solid job position and practice for several years, then you tend to either climb the corporate ladder or try to reorientate into a field you really like. Before you know it, you are 35 and still saying "Yes, I want to have children one day", only to be faced with the reality that 90% of adults in OECD countries who are childless at the age of 35 will never be parents in their lives.

How many people study something for years, only to never apply their knowledge in their profession? How many people learn things at school that are not necessary in life? Studying until the age of 22 or 25 could be reduced by years if we really wanted to. An earlier start to the active life brings many benefits to individuals and society. Why not make everyone go to work at 18 or 19, and then allow them to re-enter the education system after a few years, when they have a better idea of what they want to do? For example, at the age of 30, we could take a sabbatical or work part time while studying part time.

More and more people are postponing having children, either to secure financial stability through several years of work, or because they have not found the right partner, or because they want to enjoy life before committing to parenting, or because they don't feel mature enough to take on the responsibility of having a child at a young age. While this is not a big issue for men, who can still procreate in their 40s, biology is less kind to women: Women ability to procreate declines sharply after 30, and they have only a marginal chance of reproducing after turning 40. This is the unfortunate ticking clock that every woman has known since her teens. Don't waste your time, or time will waste you.

Figure 12F: The ticking clock of women's biology

The average age of parents at birth is now in the 30s, and for many of us in the mid- to late 30s, because people tend to settle down or find the right partner for a family later in life. Waiting until your mid-thirties or later to find the right partner poses a problem because the longer people wait, the harder it becomes to find the right partner, and this is especially true for women. As a woman, if you spend a lot of time at university, you definitely don't want a partner with a lower education than you. If you have a successful start to your career, you are less likely to give up your job if you find someone who doesn't live nearby. You probably have a nice, well-furnished apartment in a location you like. You have worked on yourself, your wardrobe and your surroundings. You have a solid group of friends and colleagues. You have structured your weekly calendar with activities you like and have little free time or willingness to give up the things you like doing. You have dating experience and carry some 'baggage', so you tend to avoid the dating mistakes of the past and want to date someone better than your ex. Your whole life revolves around you, and you look for someone who fits into your lifestyle. It's as if you are a very detailed and complex puzzle piece, so the chances of finding another piece that fits and connects with you are extremely slim.

Essentially, the longer you wait, the higher the bar you set for your future partner and the person you want to have children with. The standards you demand of a partner increase every year or after every break-up. If you are 33 or 37 and still looking for 'the right partner', the pool of suitable partners is drastically smaller than it was when you were 23 or 27, because ageing brings maturity and rising expectations. No one wants to settle for less than they believe they deserve. Also, after the age of 32, many potentially good partners are already in happy relationships and not available on the dating market.

If you buy a house and there is nothing in it, it's easy to buy a lamp or mirror that you like for the house. But if you have lived in the house for five years, it is fully furnished and decorated, and you need a new lamp or mirror, you will be very picky in order to find one that fits the house in terms of colour or design. This is exactly what happens to young adults who wait too long to settle down and have children. The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes to find a suitable partner. The higher a woman's status, income or job position, the more hypergamous she is, the more she desires a man of an even higher status. However, this kind of man is very difficult to find because every woman is looking for someone like this. This is why women who study for too long and obtain a highly valuable degree, or women who have a high income early in their career, actually reduce their chances of finding a long term partner and having children, because they reduce the pool of potentially available and acceptable partners.

If you settle down and marry in your mid-twenties and have children in your late twenties, you develop together; you shape your weekly routines together; you build your expectations based on what your partner can offer; and your lives are formed around each other. Obviously, relationships in mid-twenties can go wrong in the thirties, but people are much more malleable in their twenties. Therefore, the chances of staying with a partner who is young enough are higher, as starting a new relationship in your mid-thirties or later makes it more difficult to find the right person.

One astonishing statistic: If you are a woman age 29 in the western world and don't have children yet, there is statistically a 50% chance that you will never have any. At 30 of age, people want to believe that they have ample time in their mid to late 30s to have children. However, the reality is that after turning 30, the chances of finding the right partner, settling down, deciding the time is right to have children and remaining biologically fertile diminish rapidly. We want to believe that our fertile years are between the ages of 18 and 42, and that it's perfectly fine to settle down in our mid-30s. But the reality is different. When you are 24, you are more flexible and have fewer preferences. Once you are past 30, you have your fixed home, job, friends, hobbies and life values, not to mention your long list of criteria for a partner, which makes it more difficult to find someone compatible. At the same time, the pool of potential partners is shrinking. While almost everyone is on the dating market at 20, by 35 there are only a few remaining childless adults who wish to have a family. For women aged 35 or over, the chances of getting pregnant diminish rapidly with age because they produce fewer fertile eggs. Many childless adults realise after turning 40 or 45 that their life feels empty and meaningless and that they are lonely. They may have felt great or OK about not having children at 25 or 35, but once they enter their midlife routine and face the harsh reality of work and their career, many experience a sense of unfulfilment and regret about not having children.

In almost every country, the later the average age of the mother at birth, the lower the country's fertility rate. Countries where the average age of first birth is 24 or 26 tend to have a fertility rate close to 2 to 2.5, while countries where the average age of the first birth is 30 or 31 mostly have a fertility rate of 1.5 or below.

IVF (in vitro fertilisation) is a common practice that helps adults in their late 30s and 40s become parents. While it can sometimes work wonders, the reality is that most of the time, IVF is not successful. It is expensive and involves women injecting themselves with hormones. There are no guarantees of success and it often ends with doctors telling clients to give up on their dream of becoming parents, which is a heartbreaking realisation. Our prime fertility years remain 18 to 30, and nature and biology are undefeated.

Some people suggest adoption as an option. Some adults, due to delayed childbirth or biological infertility, say that they want to adopt one day. Adoption is seen as the ultimate last resort for those who have postponed having children. In reality, this almost never happens. In the USA, for every adoptable infant, there are 30 adult households looking to adopt, so the chances of adopting a child are very slim. This is because nowadays, most people have the number of children they want. Unlike decades ago, people giving away an infant for adoption is very rare in this world of childlessness and low fertility. There is also the complexity and heavy legal paperwork required to adopt, which limits the number of cases.

One last thing: people form bonds when they share special experiences, whether they are based on friendship or love. This could be travelling, going on holiday, attending training or university, having an adventure abroad or in a unique place, creating art or building something together, or even starting a business together. These moments are definitely more abundant in your twenties. Once you reach your late thirties or forties, life becomes more routine, your energy levels decrease and you experience fewer new things. The excitement of great moments becomes rare. This is also one reason why forming a new loving relationship in your forties or later is more difficult than in your twenties.

This book focuses primarily on why people have stopped having children, and the impact this has on society. One reason for the plummeting fertility rate is that people who want children see parenting as something that can only be done with a partner who is "the one true love". But this is not a necessity. Many people became parents in alternative ways: through unplanned pregnancies, for example, or women deciding to raise a child on their own via IVF incemination, or people adopting a child, and so on. Having children does not mean making a lifelong commitment to your partner; It's only a commitment to being a parent for 20 years. Being in love with the other parent or living with them is optional.

Almost everyone dreams of loving and being loved by one person for the rest of their life. You may aim for that, and appreciate the commitment and stability of a single partner for life. I totally get this. However, this unique and exclusive relationship is not a prerequisite for having children in modern society. 300 years ago, having two kids and not having your husband around was almost a death sentence. Nowadays, however, you get so much state support and there are daily childcare centres and part-time or full-time jobs for everyone, so being split from the other biological parent of your children is perfectly manageable. Parents can split the childcare duties 50/50, so it's not an everyday burden and you still have ample time for work and friends. My message is that many women are delaying or postponing birth because they first want to be deeply in love with a partner. Sometimes you don't have a partner, or you are in a good relationship but not necessarily a love story for the ages. Those women will question whether to have babies because their relationship situation is not perfect, and this contributes to the rising age of first pregnancy or leads to childless adulthood.

To understand the impact on society of having children later in your 30s than in your early 20s, imagine 2 types of family patterns.

The first family, the Smith family, has 2 children per generation and has babies at the age of 25. The second type of family, the Miller family, also has 2 children per generation, but has babies at age 35 instead of 25.

Imagine these 2 families, Smith and Miller, after 80 years.

Family Smith has 2 grandparents aged 80, 2 parents aged 55, 2 children aged 30 and 2 grandchildren aged 5. This gives a total population of 8 Smiths, including 2 pensioners, 4 working adults and 2 children.

The Miller family has 2 grandparents aged 80, 2 parents aged 45 and 2 children aged 10.

That's a total of 6 Millers, including 2 pensioners, 2 active adults and 2 children.

The Smith family has 4 workers for 4 dependants, but the Miller family has only 2 workers for 4 dependants.

This has 2 consequences: The 2 working Millers each have a much greater burden to support their entire family of 6 (ratio of 2 to 6, which is 1 to 3) compared to the 4 working Smiths to support a family of 8 (ratio of 4 to 8, which is 1 to 2). Also, the Smiths have twice as many workers as the Millers, 4 to 2, so the 2 working Millers each have a heavier financial burden to pay the rent or mortgage for the family home, compared to the 4 working Smiths who can divide the total rent or mortgage into 4 for each worker. The "size of the economy" of the Millers is twice as small as that of the Smiths.

With this example, you can see that having children later in life both reduces the total population of working people and increases the dependency ratio of inactive people compared to working people, which puts more difficulty on the output productivity of the working population and also puts more pressure on the social system of a society.

Childlessness the new trend

The fertility rate of mothers (not women but mothers) around the world has remained around 2.4 for the past 50 years, and women who want children tend to want 2 or 3 children, the same as 50 years ago. Family size has hardly changed. What has changed is an explosion in the rate of childlessness, from 5% of women in 1970 to 40% of women in the developed world today.

Figure 13A: The increase rate of childless women in the USA

If you ask Americans what the ideal family size is they would like to have, the average answer is 2.3 children. If you ask them how many children they intend to have or expect to have, their answer is 2.0. And if you take the actual current total fertility rate in the US, it is 1.6. As shown on figure 13A above, 50% of women aged 15 to 44 are childless today in the USA.

So the desire to have children is there and it's about the same as it was 40 years ago, but when you take into account what people can afford, what the dating life offers in terms of potential mates and what their biological fertility is capable of producing, the birth rate goes down from 2.3 to 1.6. Figure 13B below show the evolution of US households.

Figure 13B: Households evolution in USA

Germany now has a fertility rate of 1.3. Given that the average number of children a mother has is about 2.4, this means that almost 50% of women in Germany are childless today. That's a staggering high figure, with one in two women of childbearing age not having any children, for whatever reason.

Germany, like Italy, is slowly approaching a fertility rate of 1.1, which means a halving of the young population every 35 years. it means a population divided by 8 in 100 years, without immigrants. Germany and Italy will completely collapse very soon, like any other industrialised country, unable to maintain its GDP, unable to support health care or pensions for the over 65s, unable to pay its national debt.

If we look at the number of children per mother (only women with children), it has remained at around 2.4 over the last 50 years. The size of the family has not really changed, remaining mostly between 2 and 3 children per family. What has changed over the last 50 years is the proportion of women age 25-40 who have no children at all: from 10% in 1960 to around 50% in most industrialised countries. That is the big change: More and more women are remaining childless throughout their lives. Half of the childless adults do not intend to have children in their life.

There are various reasons why people remain childless. They may not want children, feel that parenting and child caring is not for them, or have been busy with other activities and work. They may also claim that they cannot afford children, or have never found the right partner at the right time, or have anxiety, depression, or childhood trauma and therefore prefer to focus on themselves rather than on a child. Some people may also be biologically infertile despite wanting children and having the right partner. There are many reasons why people end up not having children.

There is also social and cultural pressure: social media pushes for consumption and self-realisation. If you are childless, you are a better target for all the advertising on social media because you have more time to spend on yourself. In terms of culture, in many countries with strong conservative traditions, having a child means you have to marry the father before you give birth, and you commit to staying with your partner forever, whether the couple works out well or not, you have to follow social and religious tradition as a parent. Individuals can be forced to follow a lot of rules, habits and traditions, which can put a lot of pressure on young adults and force them to decide not to have children.

Another reason for the declining birth rate in our industrialised civilisation: People are very busy with their own problems, fears, anxiety and personal traumas, so having a child would be an additional responsability and unmanageable burden on top of their own life problems. Also, not finding the right partner is a factor: We have so many options, from career to passions to dating apps, that it's hard to commit to one person. it has to be true love, and it seems that people can't find love easily nowdays, or perhaps people's standards and expectations of a partner are too high for one person to meet.

Childlessness is a self-reinforcing process in communities: The more young adults don't have children, the more their friends don't feel the mimetic need and social pressure to have children either. In a group of 5 good friends turning 30, if none of them has children, they will all feel good about not having children, but if 3 of them have babies, the other 2 will suddenly feel the desire and pressure to have babies themselves, because we are a mimetic social species, copying others around us. That's why the falling birth rate, mainly due to the growing trend towards childlessness, is pushing the birth rate even lower year after year. The more childless adults around us, the less mimetic social influence and subconscious pressure we feel to have children.

The problem goes deeper than deliberate childlessness. Even more worrying than not wanting to have children is that young adults who do want to have children are not even able to find 'the right partner' and unfortunately remain single for very long periods of time, or date and break up shortly afterwards. These young adults will claim "I haven't found the right partner who is right for me and deserves to be with me", but the reality is that many young adults today, men and women, are not willing to give up their nice, enjoyable, busy lifestyle to make room and sacrifice for a partner.

In Germany, If you start dating someone of the broad middle class in their 30s and ask him or her out, chances are the next "availability" is only next week Friday between 4pm and 6pm in that particular area only, because all the other time slots for the next 10 days they are busy with work, sports, entertainment events, meeting friends, time off, studying in the evening, restaurant, etc... Young adults are not willing to sacrifice their preferred lifestyle to make room for a date with an unknown person, to risk spending an hour with a rude person. And the same goes for the other person on the date, which make a date extremely unlikely to happen. So many young adults have never given up their comfortable lives to give a potential mate a chance, so they have only had experienced short relationships, not willing to make big decision like moving together, quitting a job to follow the partner, etc... People end up in their late 30s still wishing for the perfect partner who is available on Fridays from 4pm to 6pm, available on Wednesday evenings to cook dinner for late arrivals from work, but who also accepts not to see the partner the rest of the week because the partner is busy with personal leisure. If you are not willing to drastically alter your daily life and weekly routines, then it is no surprise that you are unable to find a mating partner.

It's terrifying. We are victims of our own success, of the society we have designed. Modern times are a blessing and a curse for the western world. A blessing because all these women are empowered to make their own decisions and choose the happy life they want. A curse because it will lead us to population collapse, mass extinction of civilisation and on the way we will go through poverty, civil war and suffering.

One other explaination of the childlessness trend is that many children of divorced or separated parents who grew up in a single-parent household become one day young adults. The percentage of US and European children living in single-parent households nearly tripled between 1960 and 2023, increasing from 9% to 25%. Yes, it might sounds crazy but that's true: Between a quarter and a third of all 14-year-olds in the Western world now live in a single-parent household, meaning those children grow up with parents who are divorced or separated and not living under the same roof. Studies show that when those children become young adults, they tend to have fewer children than adults who grew up with both parents. The more parental separation we have in our societies, the lower the fertility rate of the next generation.

Today, about a third of children under 18 in Europe live with only one of their two parents due to parental separation. Living with the partner with whom you have children is gradually becoming the anomaly rather than the norm.

Children of divorced or separated parents living in one or two single-parent household have a weaker perception of long-term relationships and marriage. These children, when they grow up, will be more likely to see their own potential relationship as insecure, unstable, short-lived and possibly troublesome, and so they will be more likely to choose not to have children or simply not to be in a serious couple relationship at all.

Nobody has ever proved the exact psychological effect of separated parents on the future family models of children, but we do know that a child who has grown up under the same roof with its 2 parents for 20 years will have a tendency to follow this model and will have a tendency to look for a partner to mate with and have children with. On the other hand, children who grow up in a single parent household with a reduced family size would naturally tend to repeat this family pattern and have fewer children. With so many parents divorced or separated these days, children are unlikely to be encouraged to have a stable and large family of their own when they grow up.

The same goes for siblings: If you grew up with brothers and sisters, you tend to see yourself as a future parent of several children.

Another trend of the last 40 years, which seems to get worse every decade, is the children who grow up having a single parent figure, because the other parent does not care about raising his/her child or has serious problems like alcohol, drugs, gambling, criminality, or the teenagers who experience sexual abuse or threats in their early life. Both these types of childhood do not lead to adults with a positive view of family, they usually become afraid of having their own children. It seems that there are more and more young adults, especially GenZ, who either did not have a father as a reliable presence or role model when they were growing up. There also seem to be more and more young adults who had a sexual encounter/abuse or a very bad first experience or some kind of trauma of a long-term relationship in their teenage years, and these young adults have a definite lack of confidence to be in a stable long-term couple relationship. They don't believe in a stable, loving couple who can have children and raise them together, and so having their own stable relationship is a difficult task, let alone having children. Bringing a child into this world means suffering and trauma for them and so they do not want to reproduce this pattern and tend not to have children themselves. This is certainly a factor in the long list of reasons why many young adults today do not have children.

Since we need roughly 2 children for every 2 adults to maintain a stable population, this means that to maintain a stable population over time, we would need one 3-child family for every 1-child family, and the same number of 4-child adults for every childless adult. To understand the scale of the birth deficit, just look around you and ask yourself: How many people do you personally know who are childless adults over the age of 35? And how many adults do you know who have 4 children? I bet for the vast majority of us it is 10 to 1. For me it is about 50 to 3. I only know 3 adults of my generation (30-50 years old) with 4 children, but I know many childless adults over 35.

In order to maintain the same size of the next generation, for every childless adult we would need one adult with four children. This is a ratio that is obviously way off, at around 10 to 1. A ratio of 10 to 1 means that all those childless adults will not be "renewed" in terms of the working population in 25 years' time, because the "missing" children will not enter the labour force in 25 years' time. The children will be absent from the labour force, but the adults will certainly turn 65 in 30 years' time, claiming a pension and lots of health care and all the goods and services of life that require human labour, while no longer actively contributing.

Having three or more children has become like the Latin language in that it is now extinct because almost nobody can speak it anymore. To maintain a stable young population, we would need an adult with three or four children for every adult with no or one child, which is clearly not the case. The balance will continue to tip towards fewer children on average. Therefore, reversing the depopulation trend will be extremely difficult until we experience prolonged catastrophic social upheaval.

The problem of childlessness is that it is beneficial for 30 years, but becomes a problem 30 years later when young adults are missing in the society. The problem is not now, but 30 years from now. And no, immigration is such a small part of repopulation that it will not fill the gap. And by the way, our problem started in the 1980s, so the "future" discomfort actually started around 2010. Since 1980, we have lacked children, and since 2010, we have lacked young adults. In the coming decades, we will lack adults of all ages, from 20 to 60. Our working population in the industrialised countries will certainly and definitely decline significantly in the coming 3 decades, regardless of the migration policy chosen. That's a given. And all the negative consequences that go with a shrinking labor force and a balooning retired population are also a given.

Personal lifestyle over family

There are many other reasons to explain the overall decline in fertility in industrialised countries. The biggest and simplest explanation is this: Life is too much fun and there are so many good opportunities, personal pleasures and entertainments when you are single or a couple without children.

Life is just too good without children and people don't want to exchange their childless lifestyle for the burden, responsability and constraints of raising a child.

Drinks with your friends, restaurants, gym and sports, art exhibition, parties, weekend travel, concerts, a career with a high income and management position, relaxing time at home watching your favorite Netflix series, etc... Life has so many good options that we would lose as soon as we have a child, why would people give up this fantastic lifestyle?

On the other hand, once you become a parent, work tends to be less of a priority in your life, you add a huge burden of responsibility, you hardly sleep for the first year or two, and for mothers, you gain weight and change the appearance of your body forever, you get plenty of hormones during pregnancy that are suddenly released, your stress level to protect and care for the newborn rises, you need to spend money on child care and a bigger home, and you are busy spending your evenings playing with the kids. These are all reasons to strongly consider not having a child.

In 2003, 80% of childless 18–35-year-olds in the USA said they wanted to have children one day. By 2024, this figure had fallen to 50%. Young adults tend to prioritize other things in life above having children.

People have an innate sex drive, but we do not have an innate child drive. Having children is only a vision, a wish, a representation of the future, a lifestyle. You can have a child drive or not, and either is fine. There is nothing wrong with a person, man or woman, not having this instinct for motherhood or fatherhood. If you were all alone on a desert island, you would look for food and maybe masturbate, but you would never feel 'I must reproduce and have babies'. Having children is not an instinct. The willingness to have children is socially conditioned, it is not biological. Our society promotes consumption, self-realisation, personal achievement and pleasure, and promotes less and less having children and has instilled even a negative perception of large families of 3 or more children. The media and social media show a world of self-absorbed people striving for personal achievement, such as spending time with friends, travelling, shopping, having a great career and being independent. And when our society sells pleasure, easy money, self-actualisation, self-improvement, looking good, consumption, holidays, being professionally successful, fame and whatever you see on social media, people are not conditioned or nurtured in a society that promotes children and family as the centre of happiness and fulfilment.

The rapid decline in fertility began in the 1970s at almost the same time in several developed countries, even though these countries do not have similar cultures and people. So what was common to South Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy and the US in 1970?

The answer is the explosion in oil consumption, which led to enormous wealth and rising living standards. Machines started to do all the work for people, prosperity increased and so did the good opportunities and non-essential "distractions". Life became easier, offering more comfort and convenience. The sense of survival and the associated need to have offspring faded away. Societal habits started to shift from being collectively family-driven to being individually driven: People moving to big cities for better education and job opportunities, high level of education and long study for women, travel and entertainment, more leisure and consumption, more goods and services to enjoy life, more reliance on public social welfare than on your own children to secure your elderly days. We felt an increased desire to pursue life goals that did not necessarily involve children. For women, as the quality of life increased, the sacrifice required to follow a traditional housewife's life at home with several children became less desirable. Hedonism, the belief that pleasure or absence of pain is the ultimate good or goal in life, started to become the dominant trend and way of life. Since the 1970s more people tend to have fewer children, or to remain childless, or to have children at a later age marks a shift in attitudes towards greater individual freedom and alternative life goals and lifestyles, and helps to explain the decline in family formation.

Today's values of society, conveyed especially through social media, are all about "me". Get a good job, go on a luxury holiday, buy a nice dress, become famous on TikTok, Youtube or Instagram, own a business, get nice abs and biceps to look good, etc.

We have lost the sense of sacrifice for a greater purpose, like having children.

Children used to be a woman's top priority, followed by a good job and a solid partner. Nowadays, for many women, having children is simply a lower priority, or even a non-starter.

Not only are more people childless, but more young adults are staying single.

Only 54% of 25-34 year olds are now in a couple, a drop of 12% since 1990 and a trend that has accelerated since 2020. Nowadays, 50% of 18–34-year-olds in the US are not in a relationship. In 1949, 79% of couples living together in the US were married. This figure dropped to 49% by 2020.

In the 1950s and 1960s, there was strong societal pressure on unmarried and childless adults. Being single was seen as a major issue and a red flag that something was wrong and needed to be fixed. Nowadays, however, singles are praised for living their own lives and being independent. The perception and social pressure to marry and have children has completely flipped, with being single and childless being viewed as a great thing and the norm, while having children being seen as a responsibility and commitment that limits your options and impedes women's emancipation and self-realisation. This is an incredible moral and cultural shift within only 60 years or 2 generations. Now, when you are childless, you don't feel left out or singled out; you don't feel ashamed, which encourages others to remain childless.

One surprising aspect of childlessness is that everyone seems to agree on the positive trend of having fewer children, and nobody dares to highlight the terrible threats and outcomes that low fertility will definitely bring to society. This is an incredible taboo and foggy situation where nobody recognises the true danger to the social welfare system at a collective level, to our overall prosperity at collective and individual level. Being single can also lead to increased feelings of loneliness, anxiety and depression.

Many young adults today choose pets over children, or even pets over a human partner. Cats and dogs are a kind of substitute, offering many of the benefits of companionship and caring for a living creature, but none of the negatives: quiet nights, no impact on the mother's body, low budget, low maintenance, no struggle with communication and sacrifice as with a partner. While it may feel good to have a dog at home that recognises and appreciates its owner, a cat or dog will never give you the personality growth of being in a relationship, nor the pride and joy of raising your own child, nor will it provide labour for society in the future.

In Europe, men and women tend to prioritise having a fulfilling and interesting job over having children. Whether it is for financial independence, to climb the corporate ladder, or simply because we are passionate about our work, young adults are not willing to sacrifice their career ambitions for the time commitment and constraints of having children. They usually end up in their mid to late 30s, when they are settled in a solid job and may start to consider having a family, a kind of mid-life crisis, but by then it is often too late to find the right partner or to be able to reproduce biologically.

Work has become such an important part of our identity and values that I wonder how it was possible in the 1950s and 1960s for most women to be happy housewives with 2 to 4 children, with only the husband working and providing for the whole family. I believe that a combination of the increased cost of living, the value of financial freedom and the reluctance to be tied to one person for the rest of one's life are 3 key reasons for this paradigm shift.

Western families in the 1950s

In our society, nobody sells the benefits of sacrificing your free time, reducing your hobbies, seeing your friends less, becoming geographically dependent, putting your career on hold. But this is the reality of having children and bringing them up. Parenthood is all joy and no fun. No wonder young adults today do not put family at the top of their list of priorities.

Our modern Western society promotes individualism, personal achievement and self-realisation rather than the greater good of the collective. We are conditioned to be individualists and to make decisions in our own best interests, particularly those of us in the middle classes. This can only be detrimental to society in the long term.

How many books and training courses exist about personal development? How many social media ads promote entrepreneurship and growing your own business? Or fitness content featuring perfect bodies? How many stories talk about the 100 places on earth you have to visit in your lifetime? How many women denigrate the idea of having and raising children, claiming that women are too talented to stay at home? All our media promotes a high social status, having a great career and earning a high salary. For boys, it's all about fitness and 'body count'. For girls, it's all about the latest dress, shoes or face mask to buy. Nobody encourages the necessary sacrifices, reduction of life goals and difficult life-balancing choices that are required to have children. Nobody cares about the greater good of society or a better future decades down the line. Our social and cultural environment is embedded in a consumerist, childless world. When a society promotes individual options and success over 60 years or two generations and people take advantage of these privileges, it becomes a permanent cultural change and the society is no longer able or willing to return to traditional family values.

On top of that, most Gen Zers (born 1995-2010) grew up as only children, often raised by separated parents. When you grow up without siblings and/or two loving parents at home, the chances of wanting a family with 3 or even 2 kids are close to zero. Single children usually have one or no children, and their vision of life is more individualistic and self-centered. The transition from a fertility rate of 3 to 2 in the 1970s was beneficial at individual, societal, and planetary levels. However, going from 2 to 1.5 or below is only beneficial for individuals for 40 years, until they grow old and become the large chunk of the population dependent on a small working-age people. If the fertility rates remains at 1.5 or below for over 40 years, as it has between the 1980s and 2010s, cracks appear at societal and public budget levels and in the quality of social welfare services. Individuals will inevitably suffer when prosperity and stability erode. Returning from 1.5 to 2 or 2.5 children per woman is now impossible from a structural, cultural and societal point of view.

The emphasis placed on individualism and autonomy in modern society has broken the family bonds and responsibilities that we used to have throughout our lives. Up until the 1960s, before the birth control pill and women's emancipation, people experienced a very short period in their lives without family interdependence. From birth to 18, you depended on your parents; from 18 to 26, you had eight years of independence while still living under your parents' roof; then you had two to four children to nurse and raise for about 25 years. By the time you were 50 or 55, all your children would have become autonomous, but you would then have to care for your own parents in their 70s and 80s if they made it that far. Then in your 60s and 70s, you were dependents on your children to care for you. Overall, you had no period of time free from family constraints in your entire life. We were always dependent on our parents or children, or responsible for them. There was never a time when we were free of family dependence.

Nowadays, young adults live childless for a long time (someimes forever), and people live into their 80s and 90s and are often supported by elderly care rather than their own children or grandchildren in the daily life. Adults have children in their thirties instead of their twenties, if they have any at all. This means that today's people have between age 20 to 30 years old of family independence, and then age 50 to 60 years before they have to care for their parents in their final years. This equates to 20 years of family independence for adults with children and 40 years for childless adults. This prolonged period of family freedom and individual focus is a trait of our societies, which sell and promote this lifestyle. As a mimetic species, the more family independence other people have, the more it detains, propagates and influences the consciousness of young adults, who then decide to live this life and have no children themselves.

Many people claim that financial constraints are the main reason why they don't want to have children. When people in developed countries say they cannot afford children, what they really mean is that they cannot sustain their own comfort, consumption and leisure, personal growth, aspirations, career, while having children. It is not about financial cabilities, it is about unwillingness to make lifestyle sacrifices in order to financialy host a child. How can you explain that sub-Saharan Africans, living in very modest and simple conditions, have 4 children per woman, while Europeans, East Asians and Americans, with social support and all the goods and services at their disposal, have only 1.5 children per woman? It is not about financial affordability, it is about social status, cultural values, priorities, the emphasis on self-realisation over community, and the lack of purpose of generational transmission. People want to have children, but not at the expense of having less space per person in their homes, living further out in the suburbs, or going from full-time to part-time work, which would drastically reduce consumption and living standards.

Evidence from different countries around the world suggests that, once people are wealthy and free enough to make choices, they opt for individualism. Asking people if they want or wish to have children is almost pointless. What matters is whether they want children more than other things, if they are ready to sacrifice other things in life to become parents. Stated desires are not useful unless they are ranked. For example, someone might want to be more successful, but not as much as to sleep until 10 am, have free time to see friends and take holidays. People want larger families, but not as much as they want leisure time, a comfortably sized home, spare cash and time off.

In the 1950s and 1960s, one average salary could feed a family of four, i.e. two adults and two children, albeit with some restrictions. While it is true that nowadays an average salary can only feed two people, rather than four, meaning both parents must work if they want to raise two or more children, it also means that today's average salary, which can feed two people, is more than enough for one person. So, if you could earn a salary that can feed two people but use the money for yourself alone, you would obviously enjoy an irresistible lifestyle full of pleasures, free time, consumption and abundance. If childless adults could earn a double salary for themselves and access all public services (such as public transport, healthcare and pensions), while earning twice the minimum necessary, it would obviously be a very attractive prospect, which is why life as a childless adult is too good to pass up, and DINKs (Dual Income No Kids) are having such a great lifestyle.

Some women believe that if you have a child and you are not totally committed to your child in terms of time, attention, activities and spending, then you are a bad parent. This is a false assumption that puts a lot of pressure on women not to have children because they see children as a huge source of stress, responsibility, but also sacrifice, devotion, commitment and therefore loss of leisure time, freedom and happiness. In reality, you can still go out to dinner with children, you can still travel with them, you can still find time to see your friends, you can still combine work and family. Those moments will be much rarer and will be spent differently with children around, but they will still happen. It's a question of organisational balance, of doing things differently. Also, after the first 2 years, children play with other children, learn on their own, start to relate and feel a bond with other adults that their parents do. It is not all on the parents in terms of responsibility and many things happen in life that are out of our control. The pressure and burden that young mothers, or young childless women, believe they will feel if they become mothers is often exaggerated.

What it means to be a parent and to raise a child has changed enormously over the past 100 years. Expectations of parenting, especially motherhood, and the investment required to raise a child have increased considerably: Parenting now consists of attending to babies every time they cry, breastfeeding for as long as possible, feeding children high quality organic food, spending a lot of time with children on the playground, spending time in nature, socialising, making sure children are entertained and clean any time, ensuring the best childcare and schooling system, taking expensive trips and holidays with children, protecting children from too much tablets, televisions and mobile phones, spend time and effort on homework, let the children discover their talent by introducing them to all kinds of activities like sports, art or music, make the children the best talented and intellectual teenager it can be, provide finances for good looking clothes, big birthday parties and costly private university, etc... That's a lot of pressure, burden and stress on parents today. Back in the 1950s, children simply stayed with their grandparents or relatives, ate regular local food, went to the nearest school, was allowed to dropped out of school to do manual work or help around the house, and there was no real pressure to make the child a genius or a super talent. These raised standards of parenting have grown faster than the wealth of the population, and this could explain why rich countries have lower fertility rates than financially poor countries, simply because the level of expectation of parenting has gone through the roof, and consequently young adults often refrain from committing and investing as much time and money in children.

Young adults who have two or more children are people who absolutely cannot imagine life without children and are willing to make huge sacrifices in their life to spend most of their free time with them. Nowadays, with an emphasis on career success, social recognition and self-realisation, very few people are willing to have two or more children.

Young adults with one child know that having three kids would mean doing ten times the work, and so they don't want to sacrifice their entire life for the addition of a second or third child. If having a child and experiencing parenting was one of your ambitions, then having one child has already fulfilled their dream. Having a second or third child would disrupt their organisational balance and bring more disadvantages than advantages. This is also one reason why many people stop at one child rather than having two or three: you get all the joy, rewards and sense of purpose that come with having one child, while still having plenty of free time and money for work, friends, holidays and other leisure activities. The government could throw as much money at it through child-friendly policies, tax credits and government benefits, but this would not change people's minds.

Then there is the perceived family culture and personal definition of family. If you grew up as an only child, the perception of family for you will be a group of two parents and one child, and so as an adult, you are more likely to want to have zero or one child rather than three. Having three children is not what you perceive a family to be when you grew up without siblings. This means that, over a generation, only people with at least one sibling are likely to have two or more children, while young adults without siblings are likely to have one or no children. Once a generation's average number of children drops from 2+ to 1 or less, it usually does not revert to 2+ the next generation. This trend lowers the fertility rate over a long time.

Countries with fertility rates above 2.5 are mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. These people are not necessarily sad or unhappy, but most of them are poor, and women there tend to be uneducated. They live very modest lives, without gadgets and without over-consumption, with a very local economy. Having 4 or 5 children is necessary for these families to grow and harvest food, to do the housework and to ensure that the children can look after their parents at home when they get sick or old.

When times are hard in a harsh environment, women are incentivised to think short-term, with a fast-life strategy, to quickly find a man with wealth and resources and to reproduce quickly before they could die. In a peaceful and safe environment, women are incentivised to think long-term in a long-life strategy, enjoying the moment and postponing the duty of having children, as they seem to have unlimited time and no urge to pass on their genes quickly.

In poor societies and hard times of the past, women had real needs and intentions to mate with a resourceful man to provide them with basic necessities, resources, security and stability. As society has taken over this role by providing financial benefits, social democratic welfare and freedom of choice, it has drastically reduced women's need to mate with a resourceful man, reducing the incentives to find a good partner and mate.

In all developed countries, we don't need children to survive or to live a decent life. If you are 60 years old and childless, the supermarket is just around the corner for easy access to cheap food, you can have anything delivered to your home or have a plumber come to fix something at home with a click of the mouse, when you are sick you get health care in hospital or from a doctor, and you get money from the state or social security when you are sick, unemployed or retired. You don't need children to live a decent life. The system and society have replaced the need for children and family, and it has given all the benefits of having children without the burden and sacrifice of having and raising children. No wonder nobody wants children anymore.

We have fallen victim to our own success in creating a great society.

But with great power comes great responsibility, and with all our rights to access societal benefits and prosperity comes the duty to have children and provide for society for decades and generations to come. We are enjoying our rights but ignoring our duty, enjoying the present at the expense of the future. Our parents started this trend 50 years ago, and we are already feeling the consequences of this low fertility with flattening GDP growth, an overburdened health care system, a huge pension deficit, labor-intesive services in high demand and short supply, and increased debt issuance.

Urbanization

Industrialisation goes hand in hand with urbanisation. This is one of the few similarities between countries such as Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, Canada, Germany, Italy and Spain, which have very different cultures, habits, histories and politics. The migration of the population from rural to urban areas is clearly a major reason for lower fertility rates around the world. Whether you look at the US or Europe, as shown in Figure 14A below, the trend over the last 70 years has been the same: rapid population growth in urban areas and stagnation or decline in rural areas. Especially for young adults growing up in rural areas, the trend is straightforward: Go to cities to attend university, go to cities for better job opportunities, go to cities for better lifestyle, entertainment, socialising and hobbies options. Young adults will continue to migrate from villages and small towns to vibrant big cities, further exacerbating the effects of an ageing population in rural areas.

Figure 14A: Urban and rural population in the EU and in the US

In big cities, whether you have 1 million or 2 million inhabitants, it gives the illusion that there is an infinite supply of people, as no one realises the dramatic fall and consequences of falling fertility rates, cities always seem overpopulated. Moreover, in cities, the masses provide everything you need for a good life: food, jobs, transport, housing, services, hospitals, etc... whereas in rural areas, children are one source of home maintenance, health care and care for the elderly.

Migration from villages to cities has turned children from a necessity into a burden.

The cities have also broken the family ties, the geographical proximity of relatives. It is much easier to have three children when grandparents, brothers and sisters and some uncles and aunts are nearby to help and babysit when needed. But in big cities, young adults usually move close to their place of work, often in a city far from their parents' home where they grew up, and young adults are left alone with no relatives who are far away and unavailable, which is a factor in the decision to have no children or just one.

The size of the house is big factor in urban adults choosing as few children. Most urban dwellers live in apartments in multi-storey buildings. Having more than 2 children in an 80m2 flat quickly becomes stressful, whereas in rural areas people tend to live in detached or semi-detached houses of 150m2 with a garden or outdoor space, which favours and facilitates having a family of 2 or more children.

Then there is the cost of living. Everything is more expensive in a city, from rent to transport, food and leisure. It is almost impossible for a family of two children to live on a single parent's income unless the income earner is a surgeon, politician, CEO or trader. This means that both parents have to work full time to maintain a decent standard of living, which pragmatically limits the size of the family to a maximum of 2 children, but more likely 1 or zero.

As more people leave rural areas to move to big cities, their population grows faster than the rate at which new housing is built. This imbalance between supply and demand raises the price of both renting and buying apartments in cities faster than the national average, and definitely faster than average salary increases. Accommodation in big cities is taking up a larger proportion of people's income, and finding a bigger apartment to accommodate a couple of children is becoming more expensive every decade.

Whether you own or rent your home, accommodation prices have been rising faster than average salary increases and faster than the inflation rate. As shown in Figure 14B below, rental prices in the USA are only going in one direction: up. The cost of a new mortgage does not move in a straight line due to changing interest rates over the years, but buying a home is now much more expensive than renting, making it almost impossible for young adults to buy their first home.

Figure 14B: Cost evolution of renting and buying house in USA, 1985-2025

One of the known reasons for rising accommodation prices is continuous migration to urban areas. When most people flee to big cities, demand outstrips supply in metropolitan areas. Another reason for the increase in house prices is that the surface area per person has risen dramatically and people's expectations and demand for bigger living spaces has increased. Figures 14C and 14D below shows that the average number of people per household has fallen from 4.5 in 1900 to 2.5 in 2000, while the average home size has increased over the decades. Most households are now made up of one or two people, as many people live alone or as a couple without children.

Figure 14C: Average number of people per household in the USA

Figure 14D: Homes are getting bigger, but they're also getting emptier

Wage increases have not kept pace with rising accommodation prices. Between 2000 and 2024, a median income worker lost 30 m² of real estate purchasing power. Those 30 m² less that they can afford equates to two bedrooms for two children. As fewer young adults are buying houses, they are flooding the rental market, pushing up rental prices faster than median incomes. The same trend applies to renting as to buying: the cost of renting or buying is rising much faster than people's median income. In the 1970s up to the 1990s, it was possible for a first-time buyer under the age of 40 to purchase a home for a family of four on a single income. Nowadays, most real estate buyers are over 40, repeat buyers, and investment companies. For most people, the dream of owning a house is unattainable. Buying or even renting an apartment to support a family of two or more children in a large western city has become unaffordable, which is one major reason why adults have fewer or no children, often against their wishes.

Take a look at the two graphs below on figure 14E to see how housing prices affect young people much more than older people. As shown on the upper graph, in the UK, homeowners spend around 20% less of their income on accommodation compared to home renter. As shown on the lower graph, most homeowners are over 50. This means that homeowners over 50 can save and invest much more of their income, thus becoming even richer than young renters. Young renters have no financial access to their first property due to unaffordable prices (caused by urbanisation trends, low interest rates in the past, speculation and money printing), which makes young adults unable to follow the same wealth path as their previous generation. If your parents don't own a house and you inherit it, chances are that young adults in cities will rent their whole lives.

Figure 14E: Accomodation cost to income in the UK, by tenure and by age

As a result, many young adults are now staying at their parents home because they are unable or unwilling to pay a rent for themself. As shown in Figure 14F below, the number of adults aged 25–35 living with their parents has doubled since 2005.

Figure 14F: Young adults living together with their parents in the USA

Fertility rates are dropping fast as a result of high housing prices in urban areas. Take any country in the world, and the fertility rate in big cities is lower than the national average fertility rate. Below in Figure 14G you can see three maps comparing the share of labour in agriculture, the share of urbanization and the fertility rate. You can see that for most countries the colour code matches: The more people live in cities, the lower the labour share in agriculture and the lower the fertility rate.

Figure 14G: Agriculture workforce VS urbanization VS fertility rate

Cities gives the illusion that they can provide all goods and services we need, so why bother with all the constrains of having kids if we get all we need from the cities? On the contrary, in an isolated house in a village, people tend to need more working hands for farming, local agriculture, and home care, so people tend to make more kids to help the family for food, shelter and household tasks. Where there is a large rural population, children are a kind of free labour, helping their parents on the farms and in the fields, whereas in the cities children are more of a burden and a luxury for the rich who can pay someone for their care and supervision.

Another feature of cities is that a large proportion of their population attends university or other tertiary education institutions. In OECD countries, there are now more women than men attending and graduating from university. Universities tend to be located in big cities, not in a rural desert area, so the proportion of young adults aged 18-25 moving from rural to urban areas is higher for women than for men.

Also, women's occupations are predominantly social and people-oriented, such as childcare, health care, administration, journalism, while men's occupations are predominantly object-oriented, such as engineering, mechanics, construction, industry and extraction of natural resources.

All in all, women tend to work in big cities, either to study or for service jobs, while in the suburbs, industrial areas or the countryside it is mainly men who work there. As a result, women will move from rural to urban areas much more than men. This geographical imbalance between gender of single adults means that rural areas tend to be inhabited by more men than women, making it less likely for single people to meet and date each other, and thus increasing the difficulty for young men to find a mating partner in rural areas.

Before WW2, many families lived in rural areas. Most men worked in agriculture or industry, while most women were housewives. This created clear roles for men and women. Now, thanks to women's education, urbanisation, emancipation and the cost of living, both men and women have jobs and careers. Women usually work in public administration, services, healthcare and education, where jobs are mostly located in densely populated areas like cities. Men, who still represent the majority of workers in agriculture, mining, industry and raw materials, tend to have jobs outside big cities. This has spread the male and female working populations apart, as cities are slightly overpopulated with women (53%), while rural areas are slightly more populated by men (56%). Gender inbalance in urban and rural areas makes it more difficult for everyone to find a mating partner.

Urbanization is definitly a factor in the plummeting fertility rate. People in a city tends to be richer with good life standards and plenty of options, so that the richer a society gets, the bigger the urban population becomes and the less babies the population make. Raising kids in a city is not easy and quite costly.

But in a city without young work force, who will do the agricultural job, who fill the shelves in the supermarket, deliver food at home, treat your desease and assist you physically when you get old? It is the young working force, which is already lacking significantly in industrialised society.

What happens in South Korea is a case study for what is about to happen in Europe in the coming decades:

As the working-age population shrinks in the country due to a fertility rate of 0.7, small towns become less dynamic and young adults decide to move to big cities for better educational and career opportunities. This urbanisation exacerbates the imbalance of the worker-to-retiree ratio in these small towns and villages, as only the older generation who are rooted in the area remain there for their entire lives. On the other hand, young adults are concentrated in the capital, Seoul, where the fertility rate is 0.5, which is even lower than the national average. This further increases the likelihood that these young adults will not have children at all.

In rural areas and small towns, the median age is older than the national average, and these areas lack a young labour force to maintain dynamism and to support the predominantly elderly population. Without a young labour force, infrastructure tends to be less well-maintained. Every house needs electricity, fresh water and a wastewater system, and optionally a gas supply for heating and an internet connection. Who will upgrade the infrastructure and maintain these connections when young labor force is scarce? If only people over 50 live in a town of 10,000 inhabitants, why would you open a restaurant, cinema, phone store, clothing stores or even a hair dresser there? Doctors are scarce and overloaded. These are all reasons why young adults do not move to these places, which exacerbates the ageing situation and the depopulation of small towns. This leads to lower local tax revenue, and when local public funds are limited, bus services, waste collection and road maintenance is reduced or simply stop in these small rural towns. How can public infrastructure be maintained in a small town populated mostly by retired people with no big businesses and little tax income, and with a very small young labour force? A point is reached where small towns with a population of 70% retirees and a very old median age are simply abandoned entirely because they are a public economic drain, forcing everyone to move to bigger towns.

Abandoned rural areas

The city of Seoul hosts 20% of the total Korean population, while the Seoul metropolitan area is home to 48%. As can be seen in Figure 14H below, apart from Seoul and five other cities (Incheon, Daejeon, Gwangju, Daegu and Busan), the rest of the country is almost completely devoid of inhabitants.

Figure 14H: Population density in South Korea

The bigger the city, the more pressure it puts on young adults not to have children: Rent is high, space is scarce, cost of living is high, commuting time is long and laborious, and you get great career opportunity and all the entertainment options, nothing that encourage young adults to have kids.

House prices in cities, whether for rent or sale, have risen relatively much more than median income. This forces young couples to settle in smaller homes, limiting their ability or willingness to have several children, let alone one.

Take any developped country, and you see the fertility rate in big cities lower than the nation average, while in villages and rural areas, the fertilty rate is higher than national average. So when young Korean adults move from a 0.9 averaged fertility rate area to 0.5 in Seoul, it aggravates the situation and bring the national average further down.

Hong Kong has a fertility rate of 0.7, Singapore 1.1, Taiwan 1.25, London 1.35, New York City 1.55, Tokyo 1, Delhi 1.65, Sao Paolo 1.25, Mexico City 1.3, Cairo 2.8. All these cities have a lower fertility rate than the national average.

The trend for young adults to move to large cities in search of better opportunities and a more vibrant life will exacerbate two existing trends: First, small towns and villages will become even older on average, making them less attractive to young adults and exacerbating labour shortages there. Second, young adults who move to large cities will tend to have fewer children than if they had stayed in smaller towns, further exacerbating the low fertility crisis.

That's one reason why the fertility rate is expected to continue to drop down in the coming decades, as rural areas and small towns will tends to loose its young workforce in favor of the bigger cities. An urbinazition trend that self-reinforced intself decades after decades, pushing entire areas to be soon deserted or populated only by aging population anchored in their area. I believe we will see the same phenomena in Europe: First the young people are moving from rural area to small towns, but soon the small towns will also depopulate and only big cities will be attractive to young adults, only the big cities will host the young workforce, and Small villages and towns will become deserted and abandoned.

Other explanations of low birth rates

You could ask a hundred 40-year-old childless adults today why they do not have children and you would get a hundred different answers. There are many factors or explanations for falling fertility rates. Here are some of the main reasons contributing to the decline in the fertility rate:

1 - Not finding the right partner at the right time

Finding the right partner at the right time has become an increasgly difficult thing to accomplish in our society.

You have the well educated people who study for a while, try out different jobs and climb the professional ladder in their first 10 career years, not prioritizing family, and suddenly turning 35 or 38 and feeling the clock ticking to have children, only being too late to find the right partner and living together for a while before making the decision.

You have the couple that have been together for 10 years, happy together, enjoying life, travels, work and plenty of hobbies, postponing family for a while, suddenly turning 35, which make the potential size of their family small.

You have the singles who love their independence, who casually date nice people who are great to be around. However, they are not willing to commit to one person forever or even less to move in together. Having a child, which would be an even bigger commitment, is likely out of the question.

You have the couple together for a while, post 30, with one person of the couple wanting children but the other person not wishing children, or not yet, making the situation very diffucult to handle, leading to very difficult choices: If you want to have children one day, shall you stay with someone you love but does not want children, or shall you force a separation from someone you love only to look for someone else willing to have children?

You have the couples who are young and willing to have children, but who are facing biological fertility issues due to some degree of infertility, looking for the help of a birth clinic, which at the end of the day can work out but might not work.

You have the long lasting relationship from early on, typically high school, from 18 to 30, where partners realize at 30 that they have now a non-matching personality or a different vision of their future, different vision for family, for life, wanting to experience something else, a new impulse in their life.

There are probably as many relationship situation as people on earth. Finding the right partner you love, with both willing to have children at the same time, is more complex than ever.

Women's emancipation and university education has also led to an imbalance in potential mating partners. In OECD countries, more women than men are now graduating from university. Women are studying for longer than ever before, and all those men who have not studied as much are considered incompatible with highly educated women. Those men who are less educated than the highly educated woman are not usually targeted in dating and mating by highly educated women, leaving many men single and out of the mating pool of women, and also many educated women who cannot find the educated man who is willing to commit to a family.

2 - The decline of religion

The massive decline in the importance of the Christian religion in Europe, which used to put enormous social pressure on people to marry and have 2 to 4 children, is now gone, replaced by a more libertarian, individualistic definition of success and happiness. This is not only affecting Christians in Europe, but people of all religions around the world. The more industrialised and convenient a country becomes, the more educated its population becomes, and the lower its fertility rate becomes. A decline in faith and religious traditions and beliefs is also impacting Asia, South America, North America and Africa. Studies shows that the less religiously active you are, the lower the fertility rate, as shown on figure 15A below. The trend has been true and stable over the last 4 decades, as shown on figure 15B below.

Figure 15A: Fertility rate per religious attendance in USA

Figure 15B: Evolution of fertility rate per religious attendance in USA

Nowdays, you don't have to be religious, you don't have to be married, you don't have to have children. You can be single your entire life and nobody would criticize you. Not getting married or not having children has become a perfectly acceptable choice in the society, with noone pointing finger at you for your decision. Although marriage is a symbol of love and commitment to a partner, as well as a cultural tradition, it also has strong religious connotations. As shown in Figure 15C below, the marriage rate around the world has been in decline since 1970, matching the trends of fertility rates.

Figure 15C: Evolution of marriage rate around the world since 1960

Figure 15D below shows that, decade after decade, fewer people in the USA are getting married, and those who do are doing so at an older age.

Figure 15D: Decline in marriage rate in USA

In the not so recent past, only a hundred years ago, people were being made fun of for being single at 30, you were seen at age 30 as past child-bearing age, and life without children would be seen as unfulfilled, disrespectful to the cultural tradition, dangerous for your well-being at home and your income, immoral, and you would go to hell after you die. If you were single past your 30s, people thought you were antisocial or had serious mental health issues. Nowadays, being single at 30 is totally normal, accepted. It is even encouraged to enjoy all the freedom and pleasure that life has to offer. It is appreciated and looked upon favourably. People will give you credit if you focus on your career, self-realisation, travel and other kinds of self-fulfilment.

Religious and cultural pressure were so ubiquitous in the past that for 99% of the people, the only acceptable aspiration was to get married and have two to five children before the age of 35. It was more than a social pressure, it was a no-brainer way of life. Things have changed a lot in 4 generations. With all this freedom of choices and liberalism, nothing is a must, and not having children is perfectly fine, it is even applauded by some for participating to the depopulation and stopping climate change.

Below, in figure 15E, you can see a map of countries where religion is considered very important to people. If you compare this map with the fertility rate in figure 15F, the color correlation is quite good.

Figure 15E: The importance of religion per country

Figure 15F: Fertility rates

When we, as a society, stop to believe in God, we tend to stop acting for the greater good but rather for ourselves, we tend to be less generous, we tend to lack the courage to go the extra mile, we tend to be more pragmatic and less spiritual, we tend to lack a sense of purpose and meaning, we tend to pursue hedonism rater than collective wellness. These missing qualities were absolutely necessary to raise 3 or more children in the past, and the decline of religious belief in the industrialised world coincided globally with the massive use of fossil fuels in the 1950s and beyond, with urbanisation, with mass consumption, and with women empowerment. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the decline in religious belief matches the decline in fertility rates.

In Western civilisation, the most difficult and demanding tasks or rituals that required sacrifice, compromise or devotion to others have been questioned and removed from our society. Examples include going to church on Sunday to pray for good fortune, fasting in devotion to God, eating meat or fish only once a week to appreciate the value of killing a living creature, and devoting plenty of time and energy to raising children rather than to ourselves. We have ended up in a society where it's all pleasure, conveniance and all about me now: maximum entertainment, dopamine and comfort; plenty of rights and pleasures, but no duties or responsibilities; individualism and self-realisation over family and communities. Most young adults are no longer willing or able to make the sacrifices and show the discipline required at all levels to raise a child, so they decide not to have children. The slow 'death' of religion as a strong cultural element and a bond within society, mostly in Europe and less so in America, has pushed forward individualism and left behind the acceptance of sacrifice for family life.

3 - The high level of education

Young adults in the developed world are studying more and longer than ever before. What is a positive at a personal level to get the best out of life has a negative impact on society as a whole: when people are highly educated, they tend to prioritise career over family and postpone or avoid having children. You don't get a PhD to have 4 kids at age 30 or to be a housewife for the rest of your life.

You can see in Figure 15F below the evolution of the terciary education enrollment rate (post baccalaureate or post high school) over the last 50 years, and on Figure 15G that countries with a high level of education generally have a low fertility rate. Examples include North America (1.6), Western Europe (1.4), Russia (1.4), South Korea (0.7), Japan (1.2), Australia (1.6) and New Zealand (1.7).

Figure 15F: Evolution of the terciary education enrolment over the last 50 years

Figure 15G: Share of the population with a terciary education in 2020

Figure 15H below shows that, since 1990, there have been more women than men attending university in most advanced economies.

Figure 15H: More women attend university than men

In the 1950s and 1960s, most men were highly educated, women were attracted to highly educated men with high incomes, and women had 2, 3 or 4 children while either not working or working part-time or full-time in low-paid jobs due to low level of tertiary education: A typical household with traditional roles. Having 3 or 4 children and caring for them part-time or full-time was viewed positively by society and our peers. Today, for the educated middle class, this situation would be a stigma, seen as regression, subordination to the husband, and a missed opportunity for personal career fulfillment.

As shown in Figure 15I below, women's participation in the labour force has gradually increased in all OECD countries since 1950.

Figure 15I: Women's participation in the labour force

Today in the western world, there are more women than men attending university and more women than men graduating at a high level. In urban areas, women under 30 earn more on average than men under 30. In the EU, for example, 90% of girls and 70% of boys enrol in tertiary education after the baccalaureate. As can be seen in Figure 15J, many OECD countries have a higher proportion of young women who are educated than young men.

Figure 15J: Gender education gap

The middle-class is by far the biggest share of the population in today's advanced societies. Highly educated middle class women have less incentive to start a family or have a large number of children. In the best case scenario, both parents find a way to study, work full time and have two children, which is possible and would be the ideal scenario for many of us. But in this case, highly educated adults tend to stop at max 2 children and rarely go on to 3, 4 or 5. And for every couple with 2 children, there is another couple with 1 child, another couple with no children, and other 2 adults who are single for various reasons, which brings the average fertility rate of highly educated adults close to 1. Then there is the phenomenon of hypergamy, where women tend to be attracted to men with at least the same educational background, which leaves a lot of men single, unable to mate, driven to incel, or for the highly educated, ending up with very few children.

If you ask women what kind of man they would like to settle down with and have a family, they will say: Someone who is single, good-looking, athletic or has a healthy body, is 6 feet tall, has a six-figure income, is emotionally empathetic, intelligent and has a sense of humour. They should be about my age, minus two years and plus six years, and live within a 20 km radius of me. If you took 100 men at random from the street, only one of them would match all the criterias. Even if you eliminate the subjective criteria and consider only the tangible ones, only 3 out of 100 of them would match the list. With higher levels of education, the demand for a partner has increased significantly. The criteria for a male partner used to be someone with resources or wealth, or from a good family. Now, you also need to consider high IQ, a sense of humour, athleticism, intelligence, emotional intelligence, good listening and communication skills, a vast social network, acknowledgement and praise from peers, and various other romantic criteria. In this modern society of mostly educated young adults, it is becoming increasingly difficult for both men and women to find a great match with whom to start a family.

Over the last 60 years, women have become more educated (there are now more women than men at university), the gender pay gap has reduced significantly (especially for under-30s, where young women now earn more than young men) and society has offered more jobs suitable for women (most jobs nowadays are in services, management, administration, marketing, finance and social care). This makes it more difficult for women to find a suitable long-term partner because their expectations are much higher nowadays than they were 60 years ago. There are simply too many women with high standards chasing fewer men with similar high or higher standards.

I am not advocating that women should not be highly educated. I am in favour of gender equality. What I am saying is that in societies where the proportion of the population with a high level of education is really high, like Taiwan or South Korea, these societies end up with a devastating fertility rate close to 1. Higher education should be limited to a few people, based on a selection of skills, rather than the 80% vast majority, otherwise, very few people are willing to raise three or more children, which results in fertility rates falling below replacement levels.

4 - The birth control pill and abortion

The contraceptive pill came onto the market in the early 1960s. This contraceptive pill allowed for romantic adventures without the risk of unwanted pregnancy, thus limiting procreation. Suddenly, women could choose whether or not to have children, and when to have them. They could also choose to have an adventurous sexual encounter for fun, or engage in casual relationships, without the risk of becoming pregnant by an unwanted partner or at an unwanted time in their lives. The birth control pill changed perceptions of sex and relationships in society, shifting the balance of power between the sexes and kick-starting the women's emancipation movement.

Although the pill definitely reduced unwanted births and influenced the overall downward trend in fertility rates, it does not explain everything about declining fertility rates. For exemple, the contraceptive pill was introduced in Japan in the late 1990s, but the fertility rate began to fall in the 1970s, before the pill was introduced. Even today, only 5% of women in Japan use the pill, but the fertility rate in Japan is still extremely low around 1.1, so that the birth control pill can't be the only explanation.

Before 1960 and the introduction of mass contraception, if you were in good shape, children just came from having casual sex, leading to many unplanned pregnancies. Nowadays, people have to think about it and plan ahead, making sure that everything is in place, such as having the right partner, the right home and the right job, as well as having a comfortable financial buffer, before choosing to have children, which can delay or prevent having a child altogether. Also, when a young adult thinks about all the disadvantages of having children, they do not have children while still enjoying a good life, sex, a job and lots of free time for themselves. Contraception has certainly played an important role in drastically reducing unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, which is certainly a good thing, but it also contributed to the decline in fertility rates to below replacement levels in the 1970s.

When the birth control pill came on the market in the 1960s, it began to be accepted to have a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and it began to be tolerated to be a couple without children. At the same time, more women were going to university, entering the educated workforce and seeking financial independence from men. This change in attitudes accelerated in the 1970s and is the real reason why the fertility rate started to fall from 2.5 to 1.5.

Paul R. Ehrlich's famous 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which warned of the unsustainable effects of an ever-growing population, was actually written just as the trend was reversing, and the concern about an overpopulated planet was beginning to fade, giving way to the opposite problem in the industrialised world with too few births, and countries depopulating form children and young adults.

Most people think that the birth control pill simply prevents a woman from getting pregnant, but it does much more than that for the whole time a woman is on birth control: The pill affects a woman's hormones, particularly oestrogen and progesterone. This affects a woman's libido, appetite for sex and fun, but also affects her psychology and emotions, and ultimatly alters the kind of partner she unconsciously looks for. Studies show that the contraceptive pill tricks the woman's brain into thinking she is pregnant, which leads women to look for a compassionate partner, a protector, not a risk taker, a partner with more empathy and egalitarian feminist traits. When a woman stops taking the pill, her appetite for sport, sex, curiosity and fun is revived, she has more energy overall. The pill has basically changed the dating market and women's expectations of what kind of partner they are attracted to. The contraceptive pill in the 1970s has definitely played a role in reducing mating, pairing and sexual encounters, thus reducing mating rates by altering a woman's psychology and hormones, in addition to the obvious desired biological infertility effect. It has triggered the attraction of egalitarian males, beta males with less masculinity traits that keep women high in the pecking order, and has left many men single, suddenly unattractive and unsuccessful, having to adapt to the new unconscious modern demand of women.

One idea up for debate: Why not prohibit the birth control pill for people over 25 years of age? We could allow the pill for young adults, who, by definition, are immature and want to experience life and discover various experiences and sexual encounters. But by the age of 25, you should take responsibility and either use condoms or be picky and make thoughtful decisions about your sexual encounters.

Abortion is an interesting polarising issue, with heated debates between the libertarian my-body-is-my-choice side and the conservative you-kill-a-human-life side.

The number of abortions in the world is much higher than people think, it is staggering: the WHO estimates that there are around 73 million abortions in the world each year, compared to 132 million births. That is about 1 abortion for every 2 newborn babies! About 60% of all abortions are the result of unintended pregnancies. Another way to measure the high number of abortions worldwide is to compare it with unnatural deaths. There are 10 million deaths from cancer every year, which means there are 7 times more abortions than deaths from cancer! 73 million abortions also compares to 0.6 million deaths from drug overdoses and 1.2 million deaths from road traffic accidents. All in all, if abortion were considered a death, if we could include abortion in the statistics of non-natural deaths in the world, abortion would account for 40% of non-natural deaths in the world. That's a staggeringly high figure, and it shows just how democratised, safe and accessible abortion has become around the world.

Somehow we like to talk about other causes of death like cancer, overdose, car accidents, but we hardly ever talk about the sensitive, staggering figure of 73 million a year. Those 73 million would have resulted in 70 babies and 60 young adults, but instead those abortions result in 0 newborns, and those 73 million babies a year will be terribly missing from society in 20 years, and all because of the widespread possibilities of safe abortion.

Abortion is one of the many reasons why our birth rate is falling, but not a key factor. Just 100 years ago, there must have been many unwanted pregnancies that had to be carried to term simply because abortion was not available or accessible. Unwanted babies were then part of the newborn population. Nowadays, in addition to contraceptive methods such as the pill, diaphragm and condom, abortion is a low-risk and fairly accessible option for childbearing mothers in the western world. Personally, I'm all for accessible abortion, and I don't think having the rights and the easy access to abortion are a big driver of declining fertility rates. Lifestyle, social medias and finance play a much bigger role.

To be clear, I am in favour of the pill and in favour of abortion. If a woman gets pregnant with an unwanted partner or at an unwanted time, it jeopardises her life, happiness, psychological and emotional stability, and the child would grow up unwanted, which will inevitably be passed on unconsciously from mother to child through education, so that in the end it is devastating for both the woman and the child. I am not at all against the pill or abortion, I think it is a good progress of science and medicine that can change and save the destiny of women suffering for life from unwanted pregnancy. However, it is important to acknowledge the significant negative impact that abortion has had on our current demographics over the last 40 years.

5 - Social media and the smartphone

Most recently, the sharp decline in fertility rates has accelerated since 2015 almost everywhere in the world. Fertility rates were already low and declining steadily, but between 2013 and today (2025) they have fallen even further in most countries, such as China, Turkey or Norway, among other developed countries. What are the latest reasons for this? 3 big reasons: The fear of bringing a baby into a scary world with climate change, viruses and diseases (like the Covid-19 pandemic), the rising cost of living (post-covid inflation), and the most important and long-lasting one: because of the widespread use of mobile phones and social media! Fear of missing out on news, fear of not getting enough likes or feedback, anxiety to read and answer rapidly on everything happening around the world, the lure of quick and easy money, the kick of quick dopamine reward, constant comparison with others, pressure to be like the top 5% shown on social media, etc. Social media devices available 24/7 in the hands of teenagers and young adults are playing with the brain and pushing society towards no children at all.

How socialising for under-30s looks nowadays

The smartphone has given everyone permanent access to a virtual ulimited world that makes you believe in easy money, a career, success, travel, entertainment, fun, personal development and personal success, all of which strongly discourage people from having children. In the 1980s, the only information we had about other people was through newspapers and magazines, television and landline telephones. We were not aware, let alone immediately aware, of all the things that were happening in our communities. The smart phone and social media platforms changed everything for the worst. Additionally, big tech companies can manipulate public opinion and the masses at will, by promoting polarising content designed to generate an emotional reaction, thereby distorting our perception of reality.

The most common addictions for men are pornography, drugs and gambling, while the most common addictions for women are online shopping and social media communication or the availability of their online profile. The rise of social media platforms combined with the smart phone in the early 2010s has made these potential addictions easier and faster to access, putting people's brains under constant pressure and anxiety to fulfil their addictions as much as possible, which has turned teenagers and young adults into self-absorbed individuals who are disconnected from physical socialising.

Figure 15K below shows that anxiety rates among young people aged 16-24 increased around 2013, which was exactly when social media was adopted on smartphones.

Figure 15K: The rise of youth anxiety since 2013

Another negative effect of smartphone, as shown in Figure 15L below, is that many positive personality traits have declined much faster on young people than on older adults since 2014, reflecting the higher usage and consumption of smartphones and social media by the youngest population.

Figure 15L: Positive personality traits have been fading among young adults since 2014

Intense smartphone usage and addiction to screens and social media has also led to an increase in loneliness among young adults. Figure 15M below shows the sharp increase in the amount of time 20–35-year-olds spend alone each day between 2010 and 2023, which is a direct consequence of social media and smartphones.

Figure 15M: Time spent alone per age group, 2010 VS 2023

As a consequence of the quick and massive social media and smartphones adoption, we observe a direct effect on the birth rates around the world. Since 2012, we have seen the fertility rates plummet even further down. 2008 was the beginning of Facebook and the iPhone. From 2015 onwards, every young people started to have access 24/7 to their virtual profile and to follow what other people were doing in their life. The rise of Whatsapp, SnapChat, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Onlyfans and other social media networks made young people addicted to constantly checking their profile online and also to compare themself to others. If you see all day long people on the beach, travelling to NewYork, wearing fancy dress, buying sport cars, travelling in private jets, pretenting to have become millionaire within a year or having plastic surgery on their breast, the natural human reaction is simply "I want this life too". But this life is actually only for the top 3% of the world population, and it does not represent the daily life of most: cleaning, showering, work for 8 hours in an office, cooking, spending time with your kids, etc... While young adults wanted to live the dream lives of other people they saw on their smartphones, having children quickly became a burden, a handicap, an obstacle to all the individual achievements a young person suddenly wanted to achieve. Social media give a sense of virtual reality in which having kids is a clear show stopper to achieving all those dreams. Social media promotes a self-absorbed society and puts the focus on individual achievments and self realisation, and ignores all the collective or familial support or sacrifice a human is supposed to make most of his time: Working hard, cleaning up, caring for others, administrative tasks, commuting to work, etc. These unsexy everyday tasks are mostly absent from social media, and so people feel they could live a life without boring tasks and only live a billionaire's lifestyle. Social media give a false sense of reality, the illusion that consumption and success is within you only and that anybody can achive the life of top 3%, which by definition is not for the majority.

Social media has instilled more anxiety, stress and depression in the brain of GenZ and GenAlpha, and is a clear and undeniable reson why plenty of GenZ prefers to remain single and/or prefer to not have kids: They have too many personal goals and good intentions they want to achive, and having kids would be incompatible with their ambitions. Also, many young adults have too much stress, concern and attention on themself, so that they believe they have no time available to care for another human like a partner or a child.

6 – Biological infertility

Scientists have measured a decrease in sperm count over the last few decades, with a massive loss of around 50% in sperm count over the last 50 years. At this rate, the human race may become unable to reproduce by the end of the century. There is also a notably higher rate of biological infertility, affecting around 5% to 10% of the population today. These issues are most likely due to human contact with endocrine-disrupting chemicals and microplastics in the environment, such as in soil, food, air and water.

Many couples want a child but are biologically unable to conceive, leading more and more couples who want a child but are biologically unable to become parents to seek medical help at birth centres, like IVF procedures, and often in vain. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are everywhere, in the soil, in the food we eat, in the water we drink, and they reduce the sperm count in men. Infertility, affecting both men and women, is becoming a major issue and a major taboo. No one openly admits to having infertility problems in public. It is estimated that 1 in 10 couples wishing to have a child face fertility problems in their attempt to become parents. Low sperm count, or ovarian fertility, and low testosterone levels, which are associated with low libido and low interest in sexual relationships, are decreasing year by year.

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), one in six young couples (15%) in the USA now seek help at a birth centre because they are unable to conceive naturally and have been deemed infertile, likely due to the toxic chemicals, microplastics and other endocrine-disrupting substances to which our bodies are exposed. A couple is considered infertile if they have been trying to conceive unsuccessfully for at least 12 months. 15% is a very high rate, and it is increasing over the years.

Scientific research on fertility rates based on sperm counts show an estimated decline of 1% per year over the last 50 years, mainly due to our bodies being exposed to microplastics, pesticides and chemicals. Yes, people today are 50% less fertile than 50 years ago! Less fertile means that it takes more than a year for a couple to actively try to get pregnant, sometimes indefinitely if people are completely infertile. This is an unspoken issue in the media, but a major risk to humanity in the coming decades, as microplastics and pesticides are now found all over the world.

We simply live in an invisible chemical soup: Birth control pills, antidepressants, cholesterol control pills, antibiotics are classic and widespread voluntary intakes.

In addition, microplastics, fertilisers, pesticides and other chemicals are found in some concentration in every food, soil and drink on the planet, so even those who do not actively take pills end up ingesting chemicals indirectly and inadvertently. Although no study can definitively attribute a health condition to a specific chemical, all research suggests that these chemicals negatively affect our general health, fertility, anxiety, endocrine hormones such as testosterone, our libido and sex drive, and our overall reproductive readiness and biological abilities.

Just for the record: I know several friends and relatives who have struggled for years or simply cannot have children. It is not science fiction, it is happening around you right now. Maternity clinics are a booming business.

7 - The lack of support from relatives due to geographical relocations

In today's labor market, people must be flexible to change location. It is very common to be born and raised in one city, study in another city, find a job in a 3rd city, then move again to a 4th city later in the career for better opportunity, and so on. In the process, you might meet someone who becomes your partner but ends up living in another area, pushing people again to move and gather if they intend to live together and/or have children.

This means that the family support system of having grand parents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sister all in the same area is no longer there. The modern, urban, mobile society in which we live today has broken the geographical link between us and our relatives. In the 1950s, there was a great chance that you would spend your entire life in the same area with all your relatives, which encouraged and facilitated having kids because of the family structure around you and the support system from your relatives.

This has make parenting nowdays more of a burden because less relatives are available around young parents to help out.

8 - Scary geopolitical outlook and doomed environmental future

The fear of putting a baby in this world with geopolitical tension, climate change risks and murky societal future is only a thing since the Covid-19 pandemic, so this is also only an aggravating factor in declining fertility rates but not the main reason. The birth rates started to decline in the 1970s, and at that time almost nobody cared about climate change. Nowdays, some people claims that the geopolitical tensions and climate change in 2050 is so doomed that they don't want to put an additional human on earth.

This sounds more like an excuse or alibi to me, a false explanation on why they actually do want to enjoy current life and not make the sacrifice required to have a family. Because when you are 30 years old today, you are expected to still be alive in 2060 when the future is murky and terrible, so if you will face this supposed doomed future yourself, why not have a 30 year old child by your side who can be there to support you in your elderly age and maybe make the world a better place? Again, it sounds like a false excuse masking a selfish decision.

If the bleak future were a real concern, we would not have had any babies in the last millennium. There has not been a single moment in the last 2000 years without social inequalities, without the risk of war, without the risk of economic slowdown, without consequence on the environment, without the risk of unemployment, with a job guarantee for 40 years. If you look back over the last 200 years, the last 40 years of those 200 years have actually been the best time to be alive, with new technologies, a decent social system, low mortality, high education, affordable access to food. The best decade to have children is actually now, the 2010s and the 2020s. Birth rates have fallen, while life has become easier and more comfortable. This means that the argument of a hypothetical terrible future cannot be valid, it is a mental pessimistic assumption or a false excuse hiding another reason for not having children. Political risks, war, environmental risks were always with us in the past, even in the 1960s and 1970s, so if fear of the future was really the reason for not having children, nobody would be having children at all at any time in the past. These are fabricated ideologies to give ourselves a justification or a sense of behaving well by not having children, a kind of confirmation bias to feel good about our childless lifestyle, while we are actually engineering a disastrous future precisely by not having children. What an irony!

It's absurd to fight for a better future planet if you don't have children to live in it. Becoming a parent refocuses our moral priorities on our children. It makes us think ahead 20 years and motivates us to create a better future. Having children diverts our attention away from self-fulfilment and consumption-driven pleasures, and turns it towards simple things: time spent with children, and respect for nature. Having children makes adults more ecologically responsible and less likely to be over-consumers.

For decades, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the narrative was that the population was growing far too fast and we would not be able to feed everyone. In the last two decades, the narrative has been that the Earth is overpopulated, beyond its carrying capacity, which is a major factor in climate change and environmental degradation. The fear of a grim climatic future is one reason why some parents do not want to have children who will live on a decimated planet.

So the story of the last 60 years has always been that there are too many people on the planet, not too few. What an irony! It will take some time for people to realise that we are actually having too few children, and that has been a truth since the 1980s with birth rates falling below replacement rates, and it has been an issue since the 2010s or 2020s with a declining working population. It takes time for mentalities to change and trends to be set. If you look at the facts and figures of demographics, the next 30 years are a very predictable destiny: Too few children, not too many, in the industrialised world.

If you are a young adult and are not having children deliberately because you are really worried about the bleak future, consider this scenario: As you grow into your 60s and 70s, you still expect the public transport to run, the rubbish bins to be taken away, the restaurant to take your order, the doctors to attend to you, the roads to be maintained, etc... and who is going to do it if not the labour of our grown-up children?

Climate change could be a big problem, or humans could adapt to it, or we will use new technology. Geopolitics could be a problem, we could have WW3, or not. These doomed futures are probable. But if we do not have children, our future is a surefire, guaranteed miserable place, with no public services, no health care, abandoned cities and infrastructure, social unrest, government bankruptcy due to huge debt. This will certainly happen if we stop making babies. And so, between a likely terrible future with children, or guaranteed inevitable societal collapse without children, if you think twice and are honest and wise, going against children because of climate change or geopolitical tensions is stupid and not well thought out.

Also, if you choose not to have children, it will affect your own life as a retired person, because no children and grandchildren will be there to support you if you need them, but it will not affect the less developed countries that will keep growing their economy and carbon emissions in the coming decades, nor will it affect the population of African and some Asian countries that will keep making many children with a fertility rate of 2,5 or more. So your personal choice will hardly affect the fate of humanity positively, but it will certainly affect negatively your personal fate or the fate of the country you live in.

Feminism, women emancipation and empowerment

Before I start discussing feminism, I would like to make a quick disclaimer: when I refer to 'men' or 'women' in this chapter, I am referring to 'the average man/woman' or 'most men/women'. I fully acknowledge that the distributions of populations overlap. For example, when I say 'men are taller than women', I mean that an average man is taller than an average woman. However, there are obviously plenty of women who are taller than many men. Every individual is different, and it is impossible to categorise all women under one label. I am talking about trends and the majority of people here, trying to find an explanation for the evolution of our societies, not to paint all men and women with the same brush.

Women emancipation started in Europe in the 13th century with the right given to women to consent or to veto her mating partner. It evolved in the 18th century with the freedom to chose your partner instead of arranged marriage from the parents or community deciding for you. Then came infancy mortality progress to reduce drastically the infancy drath rate, removing the incentive to have many children, followed by effective contraception in 1970, together with massive economic growth linked to fossil fuel consumption the last 2 centuries.

From the 1960s, women expectation and request to the men and to the society grew rapidly, not only on partner selection criteria but also on childcare and financial support requested to the society (social democratic welfare), as well as individual material resource accumulation before mating. Rather than being victims of a patriarchal system in which women had to mate with wealthy men to survive, women started to become independent, receiving public money from the state and getting their own jobs and income. They also became involved in all areas of society, such as justice, politics and the media, thereby reinforcing the women's empowerment movement at cultural, legal and financial levels.

The need of women to find a wealthy man for survival turned into the optional desire for a romantic partner.

The classical view of mating ideology is based on emotional and romantic relationship, where each individual is an incomplete half that needs to find its matching soulmate to become whole, leading to complementary and defined roles of women at home caring for the house and children, and men working to bring food, which led to gender inequality.

After WW2, it evolved into a mating ideology of confluent love, gender equality, conveniance, reward, individualism and self realisation, where people dont mate for love for the rest of their life, but mate for a period of time where we benefit from each other and move on to the next mating opportunity when a partner does not fit our profile, interest or our timeline.

Ordinary or average women have incredibly high expectations of their mating partner: He must be tall, muscular, at least the same level of university education of higher, high income, solid social network, funny and smart with a sense of humour, emotionally intelligent, passionate and kind, etc... Expectations are so high that 80% of women are targeting 5% of men. These 5% could date almost any woman and have a new partner every night, so these successful men have no incentive to settle down in a long-term relationship, let alone with an average girl. Eventually, most girls will be looking for the same unattainable big fish in their late 30s, and most men will be ignored by women, so no one will find a mate, making the situation for the average boy and girl depressing and unsuccessful. We end up with a society of frustrated singles, unable to find the right partner, even if we have the desire to mate.

Let me be clear here before I continue talking about women: I am a middle-class white European father in my 40s living in Germany. But if I were a young woman in my 20s or early 30s, I would want no children or maybe 1 child in my late 30s. I would want a solid career with responsability and good salary, after the birth of my child, I would want to be financially independent. I would want my husband to share equally all the housework and parenting with me. I would want to take a year off to travel around the world or to look after my child and then return to work. I would like a balance between time for myself, time for my child (if I have one), time for my friends, time with my partner. I would like to have a big modern flat near the city centre, I would like my husband to be intelligent, rich, attractive and with a big social network. I would like to have my own car, a lot of different clothes, healthy food. I would take the birth control pill until I was ready to have a child, experiencing short and long term relationships and different sexual encounters. I would take time off and government support money once I became a mother, etc. .... If I were a young woman, I would want it all! I'm not blaming young women today. I'm blaming the system, the modern society and the lack of incentive and urgency to have children. I blame the governments at the top, who thankfully offer so many options, rights and opportunities to women, but do not enforce the duty to provide newborns for the future of this society. This is self-sabotage, this is social suicide, to have all those options especially for women but not to enforce the duty to have children. Politicians don't care about the consequences 10 or 30 years from now, because they won't be in power and won't be associated with future good trends. Politicians only care about the next 3 or 4 years. Women do what is best for themselves, given all the options available to them. I can absolutely understand why many of them don't want children, and I don't blame them at all. I'm simply looking for a rational explanation for the decline in fertility rates.

Since 1950, women's education (university attendance) and labour force participation have increased steadily, as shown in Figure 16A below. This was one major reason for the high GDP growth from 1960 to 2000, simply more workers in the economy, but this was a one-off period that we can not reproduce again in the coming decades.

Figure 16A: Women's participation in the labor force in USA 1955-2005

The other reason for high growth in the 1960s to 1990s was the high use of fossil fuels to power economies, which replaced a lot of physical work requiring human muscle with machines, and turned these jobs into "machines administration" jobs such as sales, coordination, project manager, finance, etc. The rise of fossil fuels and the rise of female labour force participation go hand in hand. This can be seen from the fact that since 2000, GDP growth has slowed, fossil fuel use in the developed world has slowed down, and women's participation in the labour force has also plateaued. GDP growth since 2000 and especially since 2008 came mainly from debt and money supply, pumping money into the economy and the service sector. GDP growth since 2000 has not come from an increase in the size of the labour force, as women's participation in the labour force has not increased.

Nowadays, in most developed countries, the difference in labour participation rates between women and men is just 10–15%, as shown in Figure 16B below. Women have jobs like men at the same rate, in the same positions, which makes it more difficult for them to sacrifice professional opportunities for childbirth and balance family duties with work obligations. Some countries, such as Turkey, Mexico and Italy, have notoriously low rates of female labour force participation.

Figure 16B: Men and women labor force participation rate

Another development for women over the last 70 years is that the income gap between men and women has narrowed. The gender gap, i.e. the difference between women's median earnings and men's median earnings, has been slowly decreasing over the last 50 years, as shown in Figure 16C below. Nowdays, Women earn on avearge only 10% to 20% less than men for a similar role, while the difference was rather 30% to 40% in the 1980s.

Figure 16C: The gender median income gap is reducing

According to EU data, in 2024 women in the European Union received an average of €0.88 for every €1 men earned. These figures represent the median 'unadjusted' pay gap, which is calculated on an hourly basis and takes into account all job roles and seniority levels. However, it does not take into account the 'birth penalty' faced by women, whereby their future career earnings diminish after they give birth.

In the USA in 1960, the median woman income was 39% lower than the median men income. In 2023, it reduced to 18%, as shown on figure 16D below.

Figure 16D: Gender median income gap in USA

More women than men are now graduating from university. Women in the industrialised world are now more skilled and better qualified for high responsibility and high income jobs. Of course, women are getting top management jobs and often the same pay as men, as they should. The drive of most women to be financially independent, to control their own destiny, to have an interesting job with responsibility, the drive not to remain a housewife stuck at home without a job, has been remarkable and has really changed women's lifestyles and consequently the size of the economy and the growth of developed countries over the last 70 years.

A very interesting statisticI found is the disparity between country with regards to the proportion of women working part time jobs. It varies from 5% to 50% of all adult women, depending on the country, showing significant cultural differences in women labor among European countries, as shown on figure 16E below.

Figure 16E: Share of women working part-time jobs in 2022 in Europe

For a woman, working part-time is a great way to combine family duties with social involvement and income generation. It strikes a great balance that benefits all parties: the employer retains a qualified and experienced female staff member, the economy and fiscal system benefits from an active workforce, the mother participate in the active life, is involved in a professional role and enjoys a diverse and balanced life, and the children have a flexible and available mother who can help with school duties.

However, when you look at countries with the highest and lowest proportions of women in part-time employment, it becomes clear that part-time work is a privilege of wealthy countries, with Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany at the top and Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria at the bottom. On the one hand, adapting society and labour conditions to allow part-time work is a sign of a very advanced society. However, it also shows that having a family with children while the mother works part-time is only possible if the father has a high income to support the whole family, which is only possible in richer countries. In countries with a lower GDP per capita, women either work full-time or stop working altogether when they become mothers, relying on their husband's income.

It is worth noting that the proportion of women working part-time has no correlation with the fertility rate. Rates are hovering between 1.3 and 1.7 everywhere in Europe. Having a high proportion of women in part-time employment does not imply a high or low fertility rate. It is just a stunning cultural and societal difference to observe between the European countries.

While greater participation in the labour force and better incomes are undoubtedly a great achievement and progress for women and for societies as a whole, it has had a side effect: it has made men less necessary and less attractive as a partner to women and thus reduced the proportion of women in a couple relationship, which is ultimately a key factor in declining fertility rates.

Studies confirm that today, much like a thousand years ago, men are still primarily attracted to women by their physical attractiveness or consensus beauty, and women are still attracted to men by their income and wealth. It may not be the key criteria for attractiveness, people may deny it or not acknowledge it, but the trend is still very much present today as a psychological evolutionary trait of humans.

The problem is that over the last 70 years this trait of 'male attractiveness' has been declining: The median income gap between men and women has narrowed, middle-class women now earn almost as much as middle-class men, and most women now work and earn very well on their own. Women are now better educated than men, and since women still tend to be hypergamous, looking for a man at least as educated as themselves, this leaves a lot of men single, lonely and struggling to find a mate. This is one explanation for why men today are less attractive to women as mating partners, why many men remain single or turn to isolation, incel or rejection of any woman, and why so many young men and women today find it difficult to find a suitable partner.

Nowdays, young women below 30 in urban areas are more educated and better paid than men on average. This reversal of the imbalance poses a double dating problem: The first due to hypergamy, whereby women seek men with a higher social status, hence wiping out lots of men as candidates on the potential mating market. The second problem is that women don't necessarily look for a man with a higher income than themselves, but rather a man with at least the same income as their father, the norm or reference in their eyes. They are looking for security and insurance, whether that be a man who owns a house, can protect his partner physically, or can provide an income, presence and companionship when the woman gives birth to a child. The fact that young men are becoming less educated and earning less than young women, and significantly less than older men, is a big reason why they are not getting married and having children. A woman's father is the reference point for status and income. Over the last 30 years, older men have gained a lot in terms of real income or net worth compared to young men. This puts young men earning a median income for a 30-year-old at a disadvantage when it comes to presenting themselves as husband material compared to the median income or wealth of a 60-year-old father of a young adult woman. On average, young men earn much less than older men, and the gap has grown tremendously over the last 30 years.

Some women have taken their independence to the extreme, rejecting any pairing, any commitment to any man, and having a family is out of the question, like the 4B movement in South Korea. These ultra-feminist women claim that men are unworthy, a burden in their lives, taht men do not want to share household chores, that men see women as sex objects and so those ultra-feminist women do not need men presence in their lives at all, let alone children.

I totally understand where the ultra-feminist movement is coming from, I mean the women who refuse to even date and commit to a partner because the constraints of a life with a partner is not worth it. As a 30 year old woman, why would I want to commit to a man who would impose on you at home with demands and instructions, a man who has no emotional empathy, who does not clean the house or cook, who watches football and drinks beer, who is not a good communicator. Obviously this is a caricature of a man, but many women feel that most men are like this satirical portrait. As a young woman, I would rather live alone or with flatmates, free to do whatever I want every night. Unless the real pearl of a man shows up, I would not give in and commit and lose my freedom for a man who does not deserve me. Because many men put themselves first and are unwilling to make the commitments and sacrifices to be in a serious relationship, feminist women are unwilling to surrender their bodies for the sexual pleasure of men.

The consequences of an ageing population are now being felt, 60 years after the start of the great era of women's emancipation. Young women today are the second or third generation to experience emancipation, feminism and women's empowerment. These changes have become ingrained in modern culture, and no woman would accept a return to traditional gender roles as they existed in the 1950s. Any cultural or political attempt to reinstate patriarchal gender roles would be doomed to failure. We will never return to the traditional gender roles of the 1950s, and I guess it is a good thing, but it has its bad consequences.

In fact, in all western democracies, women are more and more at the top of governments and legislatures, so there's never been any intention of going back to a "family and children first" mentality. The women in power over the last 40 years have pushed for more empowerment and independence for women, and less of a traditional domestic role for women. This can only increase over time and will not be reversed any time soon. It is far too late to right the ship. By 'righting' the ship, I mean encouraging women and men to bring back children as the center of our life, to feel that having children is absolutely great, part of being a human, and should be the norm for most people, and that people should experience this life-changing event.

It is not only women who are affected by this new attitude and culture of "my turn to get all those rights" that is at odds with having children. Men are also affected. There are as many men as women who have chosen not to have children in order to pursue other pleasures in life (career, entertainment, travel, friends, hobbies, etc...) It is not a women's issue at all, it is a societal and cultural issue that affects women as much as it affects men. Life is simply better, easier and more enjoyable if you do not have children, whether you are a young man or a young woman.

The difference between men and women is that for centuries the man's role was to provide food and shelter for the family and the woman's role was to look after the children and do the housework. The role of men has changed a bit, but the role of women has changed drastically, and if men today were told that they only had to play with the children for 30 minutes a day, and that the mother would take care of them for the other 23.5 hours, I think a lot more men would want to have children. But today, because a couple shares the financial burden, shares the household tasks and also shares (unevenly) the time spent looking after children, men tend to refrain from having children because children would be a burden and a huge obstacle to their usual activities like working hard and relaxing in the evening, watching football, meeting friends, doing sport, drinking and partying, etc... Modern society does not encourage neither men nor women to have children because both men and women have been placed in a luxurious and comfortable position, spoiled with so many good opportunities, occupations and entertaining distractions that children are mostly seen as a headwind to all the things we enjoy as young adults. Women having acquire so much freedom and equalitarian status since 1950s will never surrender it back. As the lyrics go, girls just wanna have fun.

Why am I focusing on women having gained too many rights and opportunities through feminism and empowerment? Simply because in the past, with a classic role model, fertility rates were way above 2, enabling economic growth and enough young adults to support the elderly population. Society was sustainable in the long term, from a demographic perspective. Since 1970s it has not been sustainable. Before 1960, men studied or worked and brought home money. Women made babies and cared for them and did the housework. We have proven in the past that this model works in terms of maintaining society with a constant population. Every other model, with more equality, more empowerment of women, more participation in the labour force, has failed to deliver a stable population or rising living standards over the long term, and a secure existence for future generations. I am not advocating a return to old patriarchal models, or saying that women should not enter the labour force at all, and I am not saying that in the 1950s and 1960s women were more happy with their lifestyle as housewives than they are today. I am just stating blatant facts and observations, not claiming what is right or wrong. In the 1950s and 1960s, women were expected to take care of the home and the children, and they had an average of 3 or 4 babies. Women today are expected to enjoy life, be free and independent, become the best they can be, have a good job and plenty of leisure time for their personal life fulfilment. At the same time, making babies is either seen as optional and neutral, or even detrimental to women's success. While this model provides great results and excitement for the first 40 years, it will prove disastrous when the elderly population balloons and the working population shrinks. This process started in the 2010s or 2020s and will worsen over the next four decades.

If we go back in history, you had WW1, the Great Depression of the 20s, then WW2. After a long, gruelling world war, in the late 1940s and 1950s, people were just happy to finally have a peaceful life, no bombing outside, no gunshots, no hyperinflation, no food rationing, and solid jobs earning good money. Women were happy to be the housewife at home providing to their husband and to their 3 children and finally have a peaceful life with enough goods and services to live decently. Life was good with simple and low expectations. Nowadays all this comfort, abundance and peace is taken for granted, people take for granted that they can have a job, earn their own money, buy a TV or mobile phone whenever they want, travel freely at weekends, have a car, etc... all this is taken for granted and does not bring any satisfaction or happiness in life. A good standard of living in the West has become like air to breath or sunlight: it is taken for granted that it will be there every day, so expectations, ambitions and demands are now much higher, people imagine being in the top 5% wealthiest, be a successful entrepreneur, date as many people as possible, travel the world, consuming more goods and services, becoming wealthier, etc.... Household life with 3 children is seen as archaic and diminishing, a sign of poverty, people think they are better than that and can get a happier life full of entertainment and distraction and dopamine kicks without all the suffering and sacrifice of having and raising children. Times have changed and expectations have risen dramatically, especially for women.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a cultural shift towards greater freedom and choice for women, with a focus on career, earning, achievement and personal pleasure. This was driven by the feminist and women's empowerment movements. This has turned parenting into a part-time job, an activity among several other activities. Babies are left in day care for most of the day before they are three years old, whereas before the 1960s, mothers would usually stay at home and care for their children until they were six and went to primary school. Also, parents now spend much less time with their children, paying them less attention and showing them less dedication than they did 60 years ago. Young parents simply spend more time at work and on personal activities in the evenings and at weekends. Consequently, many children born in the 1980s and later were not nurtured by their mothers' (and fathers' to a lesser extent) constant presence and devotion. More children grew up with separated parents or with a single parent. This has resulted in children growing up fearful and stressed, lacking the unconditional love of both parents and experiencing a fear of loss and rejection, as well as having lower self-confidence. It's no wonder that when those children turned into young adults in the 2000s and beyond, they were emotionally less stable, more prone to anxiety and depression, and more concerned with fixing themselves and their childhood trauma than with caring for the life of a child. They also have more difficulty maintaining long-term relationships and were less inclined to have children themselves. There has been a huge rise in mental health issues since the 2000s, which is linked to how children have grown up. Parenting has become a lesser priority in life, and children have missed out on the family cocoon, sacrifice and dedication that comes with daily parental presence and a dedicated full-time mother. On top of the trend of women's empowerment since the 1970s, the rise of smartphones and social media in the 2010s has further shifted our ability to pay attention to others, be it a partner or a child. This all points to even more young adults in the 2030s and beyond being unable and unwilling to maintain stable relationships and have children. Mental health issues are most likely to rise and birth rates are most likely to continue to plummet over the next 20 years at least.

Let's try a thought experiment. Take any child in the world and put 10 different toys in front of them. Do you think the child will just look at the toys and not play with them? of course not, the child will immediately play with the toys and enjoy them. Do you think the child will choose only one of the 10 toys and be satisfied with that one toy? of course not, the child will definitely play with many of the 10 toys. We are human, we always want more. The same is true for young adults when faced with all these options: a great career, more income, concerts, travel, shopping, cinema, a big apartment, more time spent with good friends, restaurants, hobbies, sports, body care, etc... People want a lot of these nice things, to the detriment of having children, which is seen as a sacrifice on all sides, a sacrifice of time and effort and a burden on an adult's personal life.

Of course, not all young adults are like those I have described here. Some do want children since they were teenager, mostly two or three. However, there has been a growing and accelerating trend in recent decades for young adults to choose not to have a family of their own, instead focusing on achieving individual success and happiness. The statistics tell the story of the average adult, and they show that fewer and fewer adults are having children. The trend is real.

Sub-Saharan Africans and Muslims around the world tend to have more children wherever they live than white Caucasians (Jews and Christians). One reason is that women accept (or are forced to accept) and embrace (or tolerate) their role as housewives, raising 3 children and not working. This role is rather seen as diminishing or as a punishment for white Christian women who seek emancipation, shared roles with the father and participation in the workforce. But over 4 generations of a fertility rate of around 1.4, each age generation is reduced by a third, so that the population of white Christian children in 2100 will be divided by 10 compared to 1980. That's the definition of ethnic collapse. I am not saying that women should all stay at home and be forced to have 3 children and never work, not at all. I am just saying that our libertarian emancipated society with high expectations of women today compared to 1960, while pleasant for both men and women at the moment, will lead to societal collapse, ethnic extinction, while other ethnicities with a fertility rate of 2.5 or higher will survive and take a larger share of the world population, becoming the majority, coming into cultural and political power, and then impose their value and vision to the nation.

Communism and feminism are destroying our societies and they will lead us to a societal collapse.

By communism, I mean when the state is heavily involved everywhere in subsidies, social welfare system, actvities and business with bureaucracy and administration, with high taxation level on both individuals and businesses, with complexified regulations and policies, many layers of redundant administration, high tax on salary income, company tax, subsidies everywhere in the economy preventing free markets to work via law of supply and demand, and the distribution of various large quantity of social benefits like rent, children, health care, pension, start-ups, student loan, public health care, unemployment, etc... I am not against all public benefits, and I love the original idea of a public social welfare system, but we have reached a point in Europe where almost everyone depends on the public spending, expect the government to do wonders and come to the rescue, with everyone blaming the governments when prosperity erodes. Governments choose to spend a lot, more every year, to appease the population, but this put unsustainable pressure on the financial system, and this puts a lot of pressure on the tax payers, the working age population, which is now shrinking, and that is endangering the stability of our nations. If you depend on something that is diminishing fast, how sustainable is your situation?

By feminism, I mean giving to women all the options of choice in their life, more power and control over their lives, all those rights to chose the life they want, empowering their individuality, while not promoting family and babies as the central value and key role of women, not ensuring that community and society does not suffer from induvidual choices like not having babies, or essentialy not penalizing the childless adulthood. If feminism means equal rights for men and women, then I am all in favour of it. However, if it means allowing hedonism to corrupt our societies and encouraging people to prioritise individual pleasure over the grind of raising children, sacrificing the future of society by not having children, then I hate feminism because it has brought us to the brink of collapse. What I blame here is letting women and men chose delibaratly not to have children, pretending it is fine, without penalty on them. I am not criticising the women, they are doing what is best for them at the time being, because we allow them to remain unpunished by their choice of not reproducing, which act as an incentive not to have children and rather to enjoy the best personal life as a young adult. I am criticising the system, the policies that allow this to happen without any control, without any concern, without any strong policies to save society from existential disappearance. This is utterly irresponsible and long term suicidal from a society and governmental perspective. I am obviously for women's education at university, women's participation in the labor force, equal rights, equal pay, equal share of children education with men, equal household tasks sharing. I understand the gays and lesbians, the biologically infertile and the people who do not have this inate nurturing willingness in them. The aim is not to impose and force everyone to have babies. But by giving all those options to women that they did not have in the history of humanity before 1950, it has moved away their focus from reproducing, from raising kids as THE biggest thing to do in life, moved them away from the traditional household wife, caring for home and caring for the children, and turn women focus to more individualist ambitions and personal fulfillment and mostly turned off their desired to have children, which was a no-brainer in the 1950s but has now become a burden in women's life. As the saying goes, once the genie is out of the bottle, it can't be put back in.

If feminism means equal rights for men and women, and an equal share of household tasks, then I'm all for it. Why should women be dependent on a man's income? Why shouldn't women be able to study, work, vote or choose a partner? People who are pro-patriarchy and want to return to the gender roles of the 1950s are unfair, selfish and delusional. All genders, skin colours, religions and sexual orientations should have equal rights. Every single human being should have the same rights in a given country.

However, if feminism means giving women more choices, options, rights and freedom, while society does not enforce duties, obligations and penalties on those (men and women) who do not contribute to society by having children, then the feminism we have pushed to our societies since the 1960s is simply the slow and certain destruction of our societies and civilisations. I hate it because it's a slow death spiral that nobody realises, nobody wants to admit to and nobody wants to change.

For all those promoting women empowerment and arguing that women shall have less or no children, that it is time for more feminism and woman emancipation and equal rights, they are right in the short term. More childless adults lead to an enjoyable personal life and a booming economic period for 30 to 40 years, which women had since the 1970s, but it leads to a catastrophe 40 to 80 years down the road, when their missing children are now missing in the working labor force while those claiming more feminism are retiring and in need of social support from tax payers and from the working class, but the working class is small because we had very few children back in the days. The trend started in 1980s. you can do the math where we stand today: Exactly at the start of the demographic payback, the start of an economic and prosperity collapse, the start of massive protests and social unrest, and it will last at least 40 years. Again, going from 5 to 2 children per woman is absolutly a great things for women and for the planet, but going from 2 to 1 or 0 children per woman has devastating consequences 2 generations later. We are entering this phase now.

I am not advocating a return to 3 or 4 children per woman. 2 on average is perfectly fine and ensures a constant population for generations. The planet is being destroyed by a growing population anyway, and having three or more children is really complicated in our modern, urbanised lives.

I am not advocating stopping women from going to university and working. Of course women should work like men and be paid the same for similar positions.

I am not advocating against birth control, nor that abortion should be illegal. Of course, if a woman has an unexpected pregnancy with an unwanted partner or at an unwanted time in her life, she should have the right to abort.

I just wish that having multiple children was the first priority in the lives of men and women, simple as that. I think all the pleasures in life, like taking care of your own body, spending time with friends, having a solid career, eating out, travelling, going to the cinema, hobbies, shopping... all of these can be done in your early twenties, and, if done in a measurable way, are compatible with being a parent.

I understand the many pressures and factors that lead people to remain childless, I fully acknowledge all the burdens and difficulties of having children. But after 40, I don't know how adults without children can stay excited and happy about life. I think young childless adults in their thirties don't see the big picture, they enjoy the childless moment, but many of them will regret not having children when they are 40 or older.

My real concern and fascination is: How could society take away our basic need and desire to reproduce? We may be the only species on earth that has deliberately stopped wanting to reproduce, that sees children as a problem for the planet, as a problem for the parents. All other animals, mammals, insects, fish, they continue to reproduce as they did 1000 years ago, but humans have stopped recently. Something really strange has happened to our civilisation in the last 50 years. This is the hardest part for me to understand because having a child is an instinct, I always knew I would have children, whether I was 5, 20 or 35, I never had a doubt in my life that I would become a father and spend a lot of time with my children. No matter what the circumstances, having children was always a foregone conclusion for me. But what happened to all of you, who have no desire for children, or not strong enough to make difficult decisions to have a child?

There are roughly two types of women in the Western world, and the two types are not mutually exclusive:

The first type requests increased spending on healthcare, pensions, childcare, elderly care, education, climate change, infrastructure, unemployment benefits, immigration support, housing for the homeless and mental health services. They want a better, fairer society where no one is left behind.

The other type of woman wants independence, a brilliant career, good earnings, quality goods and services, lots of consumption and pleasures, and independence from men and children so that she can enjoy all the good things in life, with kids viewed are optional and rather as a burden in life. They are looking for maximum pleasure, fun, individual success and self-realisation.

Again, you can have the 2 types of women in the same person. If you combine these two traits on all women in the population, and empower their vision over 50 years, and put them at key positions in the media, in politics, in the justice department, at school and university, you end up with a society that promotes and expends those values and this culture. You end up in today's world, where governments spend more and more each year to satisfy the citizens requests, way above their means, on all kinds of support, and an ageing and shrinking workforce that can no longer grow its economic output and provide the tax revenue for the mass spending.

You end up with a civilisation where people expect a lot of public services and subsidies, but there is neither the money nor the workforce to provide them. You end up with massive budget deficits, growing national debt and rapidly declining quality of health care, pensions and social support. This is where most developed countries have ended up in the 2020s, and there's nowhere to go but down: the missing 10-year-old children and 20-year-old adults can't fall out of the sky any more, women wouldn't accept a traditional patriarchal role as they did in the 1950s, spending cuts would lead to massive protests and riots, and more people want to enjoy more leisure and consumption in general, leading to even lower fertility rates and an inevitable societal collapse in the coming decades.

The modern man

In this world of abundance, where machines do the physical work and there are plenty of work and leisure opportunities, men are also failing to adapt to rapid societal changes. Many men prefer to focus on their own achievements and pleasures, such as career, money, sports, leisure, rather than the duty and sacrifice of fatherhood, or struggle to adjust to the modern needs of women as a partner. There are a lot of young male adults today who simply do not want to sacrifice their great, well-controlled and fulfilling lives for the burden of having children. For many men today, the vision is still "lots of money with a great lifestyle, and mum will take care of the children". Parenting seems to be culturally and socially endoctrinated as a woman's thing, and men traditionally seem to be relieved of these responsibilities. Is this mentality still viable today? What is expected of a modern man? If modern women are willing to have children only under the condition that the parental duties are shared equally with the man, why can't the man adapt to the new modern reality?

A modern man in the modern western world

A large proportion of young men definitely do not want children in their lives, and another large proportion of young men would only be willing to have children on the condition that the mother does the parenting 23 hours a day and the father only 1 hour a day. Whether it is conservatism, individualism, patriarchy, selfishness or simply a lack of confidence in their own parenting abilities, many young men are simply unwilling to put in the time and effort to raise children. This leaves potential female partners with the choice of either accepting this traditional imbalance of roles or refusing the sole burden of raising children solo, which may lead them to decide against having kids. Nowadays, because of women's emancipation and equality of roles, many women are not prepared to accept this role of mother-do-it-all, and it leads many well educated couples to simply not have children: The woman would only be willing to have children if the parenting tasks and time off work were shared equally between the man and the woman, but the man rejects the idea of sharing the parenting task and being involved too much into raising the child.

This is a consequence of feminism and women's empowerment. You can blame women for gaining too much control and options and being too demanding on men, or you can blame men for not evolving into modernity, for remaining "old school" macho and conservatism, for being reluctant to share parenting time and for refusing to balance work, family, leisure and couple time.

You could blame both sides, depending on your point of view. I am simply observing that before 1960, generations were reproducing above the replacement rate of 2.1, the culture, system and paradigm used to work in terms of ensuring a continuous stable population, economy and social system. But since 1980, due to some developments in the "modernity" of society, with more options and more freedom of choice, less religious and conservative family pressure, fertility rates have been dropping year after year, people do not want to have families, and this brings our civilisation to the brink of collapse.

It seems that we have to go through a really hard time for things to change. In 2040 and beyond, we will see what happens to fertility rates. However, I believe that only a collapse in prosperity, mass poverty and the end of our democracies could shake things up and increase fertility rates to 2.0, driven by a desperate sense of survival and securing one's own family's future. Otherwise, all trends point to a continued drop in fertility rates in the coming decades.

In all industrialised countries, 80% or more of jobs are in the service sector. Today, very few jobs are in agriculture, energy and mineral extraction or raw material transformation, and few jobs are in actual construction on site or farming in the fields. That leaves most jobs in services, health care, education or office jobs of all kinds, and women are just as skilled as men, if not better, at these jobs. With women now having slightly more education and higher degrees than men, there are not many legitimate arguments against a strong female participation in the labour force or a lower paid position if held by a woman. The time when men were the only indivisuals to go to work because of their superior physical abilities is long gone with the high level of automation and machineries. For women, the high level of education and the high participation of women in the labour force naturally postpones the childbearing age of women, and sometimes the desire to become a mother is completely suppressed when women are fully invovled and focus on their career, so that the women can flourish in their intellectual, social and professional environment. Women are now on an equal footing with men in terms of intellectual (education), professional (job position) and income. The gender gap has completely disappeared in an equal and balanced status of men and women. So how can men adapt to this new situation, which is new from an evolution perspective and has only existed for 2 or 3 generations and is therefore extremely recent in human history?

Men are not prepared to work part-time, or to spend a whole five-hour evening with kids, or a full 12 hours on a Sunday with a toddler, to stay and look after children constantly, on top of doing 50% of the housework and financing 50% or more of the couple's expenses. These old privileges that men have had for millennia, embedded in our psychology and characteristics, are here to stay, at least for several generations. Our Darwinian evolution has made us hunters, gatherers, competitors and less social care givers than women. Our biological and mental evolution cannot cope with the pace of social change in the last 3 generations. Men want to have time to work and time to relax alone or with friends, and this is one reason why men are reluctant to share 50% of the care and education duties with their female partner, forcing women not to have children to avoid the sole burden and responsibility on them. Women know that they will have to do everything at home, look after the children 23 hours a day and sacrifice their careers. Why should men's role evolve towards a more 50-50 parity with women? Men's roles have been too comfortable for too long, and it is hard to give up some privileges.

The will and desire to remain childless is not just among women, but also among men. More and more men prefer to keep their options open and enjoy the good life, just like women. Whether it is sport, dating and hook-ups, a drink with friends, time for a passionate job or a solid career and a bigger payday, time for hobbies, men have also prioritised personal leisure and 'distractions' and other priorities over having a family and spending time with their children.

A big reason, probably more important for men than for women, is that their job is much more part of their identity than for women. While women value the relationships they build at work with other colleagues, men value their work and their achievements, what they build up. Since the origins of homo sapiens, whether you were a priest, a farmer, a soldier, an aristocrat, a shaman, a man's job or role in his society was what defined him as a person. Even today, climbing the corporate ladder or working overtime for a job you love is an important part of who you are as a human being, how you are perceived as a man.

As a result, the idea of men sacrificing careers for things like coming home at 5pm every afternoon to look after a child, spending time at weekends looking after children, or doing the housework of cooking, cleaning and shopping, is seen by many men as a burden and a limitation on their potential, their fulfilment in life and their added value to society. Simply put: The expectations and demands placed on men by feminism are mostly incompatible with men's evolutionary background.

Also, before the 1950s, men were always the ones who brought food and money into the home, while women were the ones who looked after the children and did the housework. This is a patriarchal tradition, a culture deep in our genes and education, which has only recently started to change towards a more balanced role of men and women since the 1950s. For generations, men have had the ancient privilege of being the only gender in the workforce and responsible for providing food and shelter at home. That's why work is deeply ingrained in men's genes and brain as a responsibility, an imperative. Men are judged by their professional status in their own eyes and in the eyes of women. Now, only recently, the roles of men and women have begun to flatten and balance, but men still have the stigma and pressure of being the one who go to work: Provide, protect and procreate. In a couple, if the woman works full time and the man works part time or not at all to take care of the children, this is perceived as degrading and unacceptable by most men in industrialised countries.

Some men want to keep this privilege: They do not want to work part-time and earn less, or spend less time at work to spend more time with children. These old traditions, which men tend to stick to, are a big reason why women feel insecure about having children: Women know that for many male partners, women are expected to do everything at home and sacrifice their careers. Why should men's roles evolve towards a more 50-50 parity with women? This would be a condition that many women expect men to meet in order to start a family and ultimately increase the fertility rate in our nations. It may take generations, but the traditional patriarchal man is not ready to become the modern egalitarian man.

Figure 17A below shows that a modern society in which women are empowered and men do little of the household work and childcare leads to a very low fertility rate. In contrast, modern societies in which women are empowered and men do their fair share of household tasks and childcare duty lead to a higher fertility rate.

Figure 17A: Fertility rates VS share of household tasks done by men

Many women who want to have children end up childless because they have not found the right partner, the daddy-material kind of partner, because many men just want to have sex or superficial relationships without commitment and without sacrificing their careers and free time.

Men are almost as much to blame as women for the decline in the birth rate since the 1970s. The conveniences of modern society, such as apps on smartphones, the internet, getting cheap things without effort, are key factors that have led young adults under the age of 40 to not want to make any sacrifices in life, to not want to make any effort to raise children. This trend affects men as much as women, probably more than women, who have an innate caring and social behaviour in them.

A man's role, which used to be as simple as providing food and shelter for his family and being kind to his partner, has been transformed into a huge list of must-dos and to-do's, adding burdens and pressures on men who are not built for the demands. It has pushed men more than ever to incel and isolate themselves as much as possible from social contact.

In general, and this applies to most of us, women feel like victims of society, of men, of their biology, of social media, of everything, and they need all kinds of support: attention, empathy, support, etc.

Men are supposed to fix every external problem: women's moods, technical challenges, politics and organisation, building bridges, being attractive, being a good relationship partner and a good sex partner, helping with the housework and being involved in childcare and education. It's just a lot of pressure and expectation on men to be right, to be perfect, to behave correctly, to improve, to have solutions for the outside world without having any shortcomings or insecurities themselves.

In the eyes of a woman, if something is wrong, it is the fault of others or of the system or of society. In men's eyes, it is their own fault and he needs to change and fix it. This has led many men to incel, to stop socialising, to give up on women and relationships and to isolate themselves in a virtual world of the internet, games and computers.

In the past, the lives of men, especially children, were much riskier. More males would die before the age of 25 than females, which would result in a female-to-male ratio of around 2:1 at reproductive age. 50% of men would die before reaching reproductive age. However, today, with supervised day cares and schools, without war, without the need to hunt for food, and with easy access to food, the ratio of young adults is the same as the natural birth ratio: 105 boys to 100 girls. This means that there are more men available for women, whereas in the past, two women would compete for one man, hence men were more desirable than they are today from a numerical perspective.

As a consequence, more and more men are struggling in our current society, suffering from loneliness, anxiety, depression and a lack of self-esteem. While feminism and the rise of women in terms of education and employment have contributed to the loss of male dominance, I believe that economic factors are the main reason for the blurring of gender roles.

Firstly, all blue-collar jobs are now undervalued and underpaid, and are being outsourced to developing countries. Even in white-collar positions, women are now as likely to be in those roles as men, and many white-collar positions are outsourced or about to be replaced by AI. Our modern society produces mostly tertiary jobs in services, administration and management, in which women are as well-equipped as men, if not better.

The direct result of this transition to women-led service jobs is that women no longer look to men as providers of income and resources, because they can provide for themselves. Even if a man has a well-paid job, this is no longer sufficient to attract a woman. The traditional role of men — providing for the family — has become neglected, undervalued, unrewarded and unattractive. This role used to provide men with a sense of value, pride and purpose in life, and it no longer exists in the middle class. It's no wonder we're seeing an increase in incels and single, depressed men across the globe.

Figure 17B below shows that the number of unmarried adults and single-person households in the USA is growing faster than the overall population growth.

Figure 17B: Single-person households and unmarried adults in USA

Figure 17C below illustrates this more clearly, showing that the proportion of single adults without a partner increased from 29% in 1990 to 38% in 2019. Today, there are more male singles than female singles.

Figure 17C: Share of unpartnered US adults

Some statistics illustrate best that women's emancipation has swung the pendulum completely in the other direction:

- While 61% of single men are looking to date, only 38% of single women are.

- It is projected that, by 2035, 45% of women aged 25–45 will be single in the developed world.

- Women initiate 70% of divorces in the USA.

Those kind of stats demonstrate that women have greater economic power and freedom of choice, and are no longer trapped in relationships. This is a positive development for women. However, men have been destabilised or rendered less able to adapt in the face of women's acquired power.

Take any male category, such as suicide, anxiety, depression, video game addiction, gambling addiction or drug addiction, and at the top of each category, the vast majority have no partner and/or no children. Men without love, close emotional relationships or children are the ones most at risk of mental health issues.

Men are becoming less needed and less wanted by women. Many feel useless or worthless. Men have lost their necessity as providers and protectors. Many have lost their sense of worth as they are no longer seen as fathers. They have been removed from the labour force. Most risky or physically demanding jobs have been lost to machines, many office jobs have been lost to computers, and most jobs in industrialised countries are in services or management, for which women are also competing. Meanwhile, the primarily male blue-collar jobs have been outsourced to other countries.

If men are no longer needed at work, if men income is no longer necessary for partnership or family, if their masculinity is no longer desired, if women are better off without men, if men personality and traits are not good enough for partnership and if they are not required in relationships as childless adults, what remains of men's role in society?

Modern society also expects men to be more feminist. The danger is that we treat men as malfunctioning women: If you are a man, you are not caring, nurturing or sensitive enough; you are not vulnerable enough, and so on. This undermines men's role and makes it unclear, contrasting with the old expectations of being a provider, protector and procreator.

Chris Williamson put it well: << Men want to aim high without feeling insufficient if they fall short. Men want their suffering to be recognised and appreciated, but not to be pandered to or patronised, nor to be made to feel weak. Men want to believe that they can become more without feeling like they are not enough already. Men want to be able to open up without being judged. Men want support without feeling broken. Men want to be loved for who they are, not for what they do. >>

The world and people's health would be better off if men and women had more clearly defined roles and fewer options available. This is somewhat contradictory to the freedom and control over our lives that we all wish for, but that's the paradox of having acquired so much freedom and rights.

The role of men and women

The ageing population of our western civilisation, and soon the depopulation of the planet, is mainly due to the evolution of women's culture and the change in ideology: Women want to be better educated, to be part of the active life, to make their own decisions, to be independent, which sounds good for them in the present, but the consequences are that having babies and families has become a secondary need, not a primary one, or even to the point where having babies is a huge brake on women's aspirations and a burden on women's lives, so eventually women either choose not to have children, or want children but not at the detriment of other things and end up not having children. The consequences are being felt indirectly and decades later. Three generations after the baby boom started in 1945 and two generations after it ended around 1970, we have now entered the era since 2015 when the baby boomers are now retiring or retired, and when the entire society suffers from the decisions of having less kids: An economic disaster, a shortage of labour in social jobs, a public health system and a pension system that will slowly collapse. Societal standards of living related to people, such as firefighters, police, public education, doctors, psychologists, nurses, will decline enormously. Same with the public infrastructure requiring lots of young labour force on the job, like construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, buildings. Immigration will not be able to cover this massive gap and lack of young rlabor force. It has helped in the past and will continue to help the economy, but the gap of missing young adults to provide for the social welfare system is getting so big every year that immigrants can not bridge it anymore, as more and more countries are now below the replacement fertility rate and will not be able to provide the supply of young workers that most Western countries are looking for. And if the social system is in jeopardy, the democracy and stability of a country is at high risk of turning into an autocratic, authoritarian regime met with civil war.

A return to the more traditional roles of men (providing food and shelter and protecting the family) and women (caring for the children and the home), back to the religious Christian culture we had in our Western civilisation, would be needed to reverse the trend. Or at least we would need both men and women to share all duties with equal weight and balance, but having a family should again be the greatest goal in life. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen, especially with smart phones and social media showing and selling how fun it is to be independent and to consume.

Our social contacts, parents, friends and colleagues, tell women that they are too smart to stay at home to look after the baby, that women should go to work and leave the baby to a nursery or to day care. There is also added pressure from those around women to pursue a career, to be independent, to earn their own money and to fulfil their intellectual potential, and this pushes women to decide not to have children or to delay them until it is almost too late to find a suiting partner and to reproduce.

This change in the perception of women's roles is linked to the feminist movement that started about 3 generations ago in the 1960s. Before the Second World War, no one would have objected to women staying at home and taking care of several babies. This was a given pattern and a generally accepted role for women for centuries. As a woman, it was generally a good thing to have 4 babies and devote your life to raising them. Women had a purpose in life, a goal bigger than themselves.

Our world is monetised at every level, and the more money you or your company makes, the better. The value of nursing children cannot be quantified in financial terms. It is impossible to properly value in financial terms what nursing and educating a child for 18 years is worth, neither at individual level, nor for the society once the child becomes a working adult. Since you don't technically participate in the economy when you nurse a child, caring for children at home is seen as disgraceful and a downgrade today. It is not valued or recognised by our peers as one of the hardest and most valuable jobs in the world.

If someone asks you in public what you do for a living and you say you spend three to six years at home caring for your children, people will turn their backs on you. They will not look up to you and will see you as a boring person, a loser, someone with low potential in the workplace and economy. They regard you as almost a failure in modern society. We have denigrated motherhood, parenting, and adults who spend a long time at home caring for their children.

All my self-confidence and achievements in life stem from the love, affection and dedication of my mother, who spent seven years at home nursing my sister and me every day. Thank you, Mum. You're the best!

With more and more machines doing the work and making our lives easier, and an emphasis on personal achievements such as career earnings, consumption and possessions, lifestyle, pleasure, self-actualisation, social media followers and likes on our posts, our industrial society has turned humanity into individualists rather than collectivists. People strive for personal goals, but the ultimate top of the pyramid of needs, missing from Maslow's original hierarchy of needs, has been lost in translation: Living for something greater than ourselves, helping others achieve self-actualisation, devoting one's life to others, to God, to our family or community, to spirituality, to love and to a sense of purpose. Having children and seeing them grow into adults is truly special and fulfils this sense of spirituality and dedication.

See Maslow's original Hierarchy of Needs and the expanded version in Figure 17D below.

Figure 17D: The hierarchy of needs

I am not advocating a return to the classical role structure prior to the 1950s. I am simply observing the evolution of society and the consequences for our population, our workforce, our mental health, our overall happiness in life, our priorities as individuals and as a couple, our dating experience today, the economy, the pension and welfare systems.

In a perfect world, women's number one priority would be to have several children, followed by having a job (part or full time), while also enjoying some of the pleasures and hobbies that modern society has to offer. But it seems that individualism, feminism and the pursuit of personal goals with a lack of willingness to sacrifice for others has led women to have fewer babies or no babies at all. Historically, men have never had to sacrifice anything significant for children, so they are not willing to take on that role from women. Ultimately, the best compromise is for both men and women not to have children so that they can continue to enjoy other aspects of life, such as their jobs, leisure activities and free time.

Ideological views on the roles of men and women have diverged among young adults in recent decades, from East Asia to Europe and the US. While young women tend to be more liberal, seeking equality and parity, financial independence and freedom to choose their marital status, young men tend to be more conservative, with a more traditional view of men going to work and making decisions for the couple, and women taking care of the home and family. This divergence is widening and polarising our societies, and social media tends to exaggerate the narrative by showing only one side of the movement, depending on your profile, to push young people towards more extremist thinking and more radical political views. See Figure 17E below for a study by the Financial Times on the widening ideology of young adults. The growing ideological divide between men and women is a real threat to the social cohesion of a nation.

Figure 17E: Young adults ideological gap between liberal and conservative

In a modern Western world, as envisioned by women, all household tasks, jobs, child care and education, financial income, are expected to be shared equally and fairly between men and women. Some also urge to say, if some mothers with 2 or more babies stay at home for years to take care of the children and the household, why couldn't some fathers take over this role while the mother goes to work? Why is it unthinkable that a man stops working for 1 to 5 years while the woman works in a high position, simply reversing the historical roles?

The answer is in one word: hypergamy.

Hypergamy is having a relationship with a person of superior sociological or educational background. And from a psychological and evolutionary point of view, hypergamy is extremely present in women, but much less so in men. Women are attracted to men of at least the same social status, educational background and/or income class, and usually attracted to an upper level partner. It is rare to see a middle-class woman with a university degree in a long-term relationship with a low-income man without a university degree. For men, hypergamy is less of a consideration. Physical beauty, being easy-going and caring about other people are more attractive qualities in a woman than her income or degree. Chances are that if a man becomes a stay-at-home dad for years while the woman has a great career, the woman will meet other high-profile men through her work and network, will tend to be attracted to them, and will see her partner at home more as a flatmate or a nice companion, but not worthy of her standard. Everyone is different and I don't want to generalise too much, but this is clearly a trend and psychological trait that we have acquired over generations, when securing food and shelter from a male partner was the ultimate goal for women for centuries in order to have children. To think that we can reverse our psychology, which has taken thousands of years to develop, is simply an unlikely assumption. Even the idea of sharing all the tasks and responsibilities in the family equally is a daunting one for most men.

The desired ideal man of emancipated women

Ultimately, women have gained more freedom of choice and independence by asking men to share household and parenting responsibilities if they ever have children. Men are reluctant to give up their careers and/or leisure time for half of the parental duties, and so young adults end up either single or in a couple without children, so that both genders can have a fulfilling life with a good balance between career, finances and leisure time. Not having children is the best compromise to maintain a good lifestyle for both genders. All good options lead to people not having children or stopping at just one instead of going for 2 or more.

Since the end of WW2, our society has been promoting more and more freedom and hyper-liberalism to everyone: Women have gained privileges and control over their lives while in parallel, men have lost many of their duties. There is now freedom to have sex for fun outside of marriage or a relationship, and without the risk of pregnancy thanks to the birth control pill. There is freedom to choose where to live, to study whatever you want for however long you want, and to stop and start again new studies on a new topic along the way. There is freedom to remain single for most of your life, not to have children, and to be highly regarded by your peers for that decision, while still receiving all public services. This essentially makes childlessness the accepted moral choice. There is an aquired freedom from many obligation or moral or legal binding to each other, as divorce has been democratised, as have relationship breakups, workplace resignations, house rental contract terminations and buying and selling anything.

Ultra-liberalism of gender cannot accommodate motherhood because motherhood is the most constraining and binding form of relationship and obligation. It strips you of all your freedom in terms of time, responsibility and financial independence. The only thing that restricts your freedom more than motherhood is being sent to jail. That is literally the only act.

It seems we cannot reconcile women's freedom with motherhood. This is why more and more people in our hyper-liberal society end up rejecting motherhood and remaining childless. We have acquired too much individual freedom and abandoned our collective sense and family duties and pride.

One model that has worked for centuries is the pre-World War II model, where the man married a woman young enough and the woman had social pressure to bear several children by her partner for life. This was really a survival need, where children were the free labour in rural areas for all kinds of household and domestic tasks, the health care when parents were sick and the pension when parents became too old to work. Children were the social system of a family back then, but we have delegated this role to the state and society. However, we have completely forgotten to incentivise what feeds the social system: workers that come from children.

Unless we can prove that a society can have husbands take over the former role of the wife, such as staying at home for 3 to 5 years to look after the children while the women work full time and bring home money, this model has never been proven to maintain a stable population, not even in some progressive attempts in Norway.

Another model that works is arranged marriage, parental assignment of partner and family pressure and expectation to have children. In some cultural traditions, such as India or some African countries, parents decide for their children who they will marry and spend their lives with. There is no try-out, probation period or sexual encounter before the decision is made. The assigned couple is expected, or forced by social pressure, to have children with a partner they have not chosen. Again, nobody in Europe or in North America would want to go back to arranged marriage and forced pregnancy. Absolutely nobody. But this is a proven model for ensuring reproduction and maintaining the population of an ethnicity. In this model you have no choice: you have to stay with your chosen partner for life and can not divorse, you have to have children and you have to stay in the geographical area where you grew up. This is further evidence that having too many options when choosing a partner makes us more reluctant to commit to one, and having children is a big commitment to one partner, which makes more people indecisive about having children. Many people simply prefer to keep their options open rather than commit to one partner and one place for 20 years.

The model promoted by Western societies since the 1970s has been a more egalitarian marital regime in which both spouses work, earn similar incomes, share household responsibilities, and share the upbringing and education of children. This sounds great on paper, but this modern Western model is very recent in historical terms, has only three generations of experience in 10,000 generations of Homo sapiens, and has only led to fertility rates below replacement in its 60 years of existance, so it has led to a shrinking working population and an expanding retired population which is utterly unsustainable over the long term. Apart from the specific case of Israel, there is no proven model of an egalitarian marital role model that is sustainable over a century. This model is only sustainable if people would lower their standard of living decade after decade and accept a drastic reduction in the public welfare system and public infrastructure spending, and even then this model will lead to this society becoming the minority and marginalised compared to other stricter models such as in sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East. Many people, especially women, advocate this egalitarian model, myself included, but unfortunately this model does not work in the long term with the standards of living we expect and demand, as shown by the declining fertility rates in all industrialised countries in Asia, Europe or America, and the rising public debt to finance a broken social welfare system. I think human nature needs some kind of coercion through authority, regulation and cultural pressure to force us to do things we don't like to do, because all this accessible abundance of leisure and opportunity, including the freedom to choose our role as a woman or a man, where each individual decides their own role in society, does not lead to a sustainable collective society. Ultimately, we may need a scarcity of resources to return to our survival habits, which include reproduction and large families.

Men seek status, social recognition, authority and influence. This makes most men unwilling to give up their steady jobs and careers, or their passions and hobbies, to spend time nursing children. Men rely absolutely on women for the upbringing of their offspring, as has always been the tradition for millennia in most civilisations. This is in our genes, our psychology and our instincts. While many men are willing to participate more in childcare, some see a 50-50 division of duties, time and responsibility for raising children as perfectly acceptable. However, plenty of men either want nothing to do with children or only minimal involvement (an hour per day), and are not willing to give up their career aspirations, hobbies or passions for children. Asking all men to suddenly take on 50% of childcare duties is daunting, inadequate to men's skills and against men's psychological drives.

Women have an innate inferiority complex, probably stemming from their inferior physical strength compared to men, or from their monthly menstruation that reminds them of their vulnerability. Men tend to overestimate themselves, while women tend to underestimate themselves. This leads most women to subconsciously request more understanding and emotional support from their peers, more social welfare and government support, and more equal rights. Women will request gender equality in legal rights as a consequence of being biologicaly and physically inferior to men. It also leads many women to make more emotional decisions than men. Women's emancipation is a driving force and a reason to live for many women, and when half of the population is fighting hard for more rights, freedom of choice and recognition, society tends to bend in their favour.

Don't get me wrong. I believe women are as capable and intelligent as men and should have the freedom to pursue a high level of education and access high-level jobs and CEO roles. Women should also have the freedom to choose whether or not to have children and to be paid equally for the same position as a man. Any man who argues against this in order to maintain the patriarchal regime is simply selfish and is viewing the world through a male perspective. Any man who abuses women's physical inferiority through violence is a sign of male weakness and immaturity. What I am trying to say is that if we listened to all women's requests and applied all their wishes, there would be an explosive public spending and a loss of economic competitiveness. On average, we would work three days a week, have fertility rates well below one and everyone would work in services while no one would do the dirty work in industry and infrastructure. We would spend excessively on education, healthcare, psychological support, pensions, childcare, immigration, and we would embrace childless people, pretending that 'the others' will provide goods and services for society and pay for our pensions and healthcare when we turn 65. However, 'the others' is a very small pool of people, as very few women would have children anymore for 40 years, and the system would collapse. Women's empowerment leads to more people receiving welfare and social support or government benefits, and fewer people giving, such as workers and taxpayers. Yes, women should have equal rights to men, but with power comes responsibility, and with rights comes the duty to procreate and make sacrifices so that future generations can care for the elderly.

It is utterly irresponsible to have given women so many rights and freedoms without enforcing duties and penalising selfish behaviour such as not having children. That's why we should penalise the natural tendency not to have children, or to have only one, whether you are a man or a woman. Otherwise, the quest for 'more' women's emancipation cannot be met by the givers and providers simply because we lack young adults. Women's emancipation is a temporary illusion because if societies that promote women's rights stop having children, there will be no women in the future to carry on this society of free women. The women's emancipation movement is sabotaging itself and will disappear in a few generations due to a lack of people ompared to other societies without women emancipation and with fertility rate way above 2 and a growing young population. Societies with clear roles and duties, and where the mojority of women have 2 or more children per woman, will simply outnumber pro-feminist societies, leading to their extinction.

Women have gained all the privileges through emancipation — great for them! But now we are asking men to lose their identity and patriarchal privileges for a more equal society, which is a hard ask. It's easy and widely accepted to give women access to education and solid jobs, and to choose their partners and whether and when to have children. It is much harder to ask men to pause their career ambitions, give up sports, socialising with friends and watching TV, in order to spend more time cooking, cleaning and taking care of children. Adding privileges and options for women was easy, but restricting and constraining men's lives is much harder. Traditional male roles as protector, provider and procreator have become redundant: women don't need protection as there are fewer wars and less crime, and women definitely don't need providers as they have jobs, earnings and careers. And the need for procreation has been replaced by public social welfare, as families no longer support the elderly.

Evolutionarily speaking, men are better at taking risks, competing and dealing with stressful environments, while women are better at looking after children and the home. It is evolutionary selection and generational survival that have led humanity to this point today. We are the surviving generations of past evolution. Those men who were best at competing in stressful conditions and those women who were best at taking care of newborns and children have survived over thousands of generations by being excellent at these skills and passing them on to the next generation. Even though today's working and childcare conditions are much easier than they were just 10 generations ago, putting women in demanding senior position at work and men in childcare roles is not the best use of our capabilities. I am not suggesting that equal gender roles would make all women and all men unhappy or unsuccessful. Some men love being around children, and many women excel in high-end jobs. People are adaptable and multi-talented, and can always learn new skills. I am just saying that we have evolved to be best at traditional roles for thousands of generations. Asking for equal gender roles to be spread evenly within just two generations (since the 1970s) is bound to result in many people being less adapted, less capable and less willing to take on new gender roles. We can see the results in the form of many women in high-level jobs choosing not to have children in order to focus on their careers, and many men not wanting to have children because they reject egalitarian gender roles and wish that the mother would do 90% of the childcare. A gender-equal society with freedom of choices, similar roles and expectations is mostly incompatible with having a large family and raising many children. This is particularly true for men. While many women are capable of combining high-end office jobs with family life, many men are not willing or able to sacrifice their careers, earnings and social status in order to care for children extensively. The abandonment of traditional family roles has contributed greatly to the decline in fertility rates around the world.

The birth rate plummeted below the replacement rate of 2.1 in the 1970s in most of the developped countries for a variety of reasons. One reason is that a far higher number of children survive into adulthood, reducing the need for multiple births. Another reason is that the birth control pill has allowed us to separate the joys of sex from the burdens of child-rearing. Urbanisation and the absence of relatives in geographical proximity to provide childcare support are other reasons. Furthermore, one working adult is no longer sufficient to feed a family of four, and two full-time jobs are not compatible with two or more children. Another factor is that people came to prefer a few 'quality' children, investing more in each than they would in a large quantity of them. All of these factors contribute, but there is also another major reason for declining fertility rates: It is women emancipation, the integration of women into the labour force and institutions (justice, education, politics, journalism), and the gender equity promoted by most women and feminists, which pushes for free options and choices for women.

When women have more autonomy and options, the relative earnings of college-educated female workers increase and their options become more valuable. The opportunity cost of having children for more educated women has risen. Educated women who end up with full responsibility for childcare for multiple children have relatively more to lose than their non-college-educated peers. A significant factor in women's decisions to have children is how they expect their husbands to behave. Women need greater assurances that childcare will be shared with the father, but many men are unwilling to relinquish traditional patriarchal privileges and are not biologically or psychologically inclined to perform childcare duties. Men still cling to patriarchal norms of traditional societies, either by choice or due to a lack of instinctive skills.

Women enjoy the liberation offered by the modern economy and choose a more hedonistic lifestyle. When women are no longer willing to sacrifice their lifestyle for childcare and men are not willing to contribute 50% to childcare, nobody is willing to make the necessary sacrifices to raise children. What's the result? Women with academic degrees often have few children, often one or none at all. Children from single-child families grow up being nurtured and 'spoiled', taught to be economically successful and independent. They never experience having plenty of siblings while growing up. They are likely to reproduce this model as adults and have zero or one child themselves. The large family is becoming a thing of the past, generation after generation, and one of the main reasons for this trend is the women's empowerment movement that started in the 1970s, combined with men's reluctance to do their fair share of childcare.

When I claim that many young adults nowadays don't want to have children, I am referring to only one section of the population, not the whole population. In fact, a significant proportion of young adults do want to have children one day, but have not yet found the right partner to settle down and have a family. The search for "the one true love forever" often remains unfulfilled, which is a reason why people don't have children. Many young adults are in relationships that they enjoy in the moment, but they don't see their current partner as marriage material or as a good potential parent. Alternatively, their partner may be unwilling to have children, which creates a dilemma: should they stay in a relationship that won't result in children, or should they split up now and hope to find someone else who wants children? In reality, however, adults don't need to find 'the one true love' to have children. The common expectation in modern society that children can only be born out of a strong, loving relationship is a myth that is affecting our fertility rate.

I am a proud dad and am responsible for raising my son 50% of the time, while his mother takes care of him for the other 50%. After four years together and three years living under the same roof with a baby, we split up and live in 2 distinct households. When we were together, I felt that I did not have enough independence and freedom to do what I wanted: see my friends, do sports, or nurse and play with the toddler in my own way. Now we have split up, I have the best of both worlds. When I am with my son, I am a proud and happy dad who is fully committed to parenting. On the days when my son is with his mum, I have the freedom to do what I want and enjoy a single life living on my own again.

My situation is truly the best of both worlds, and I love it. If my son were to spend 100% of his time with his mum, my life would feel empty and pointless, and my son would not have a father figure in his life, which is important for his mental development, self-esteem, curiosity and exploration. If I had full-time responsibility for raising my son, I would be physically exhausted and feel mentally constrained by not having enough free time, as a child requires a lot of dedicated time and attention, leaving me with very limited spare time for other activities. It is also better for my son, who no longer experiences arguing parents, difficult conversations or unhappy parents. Instead, he now has two distinct, loving and caring parents with whom he has a strong bond, and who provide him with attention and security. This is also the best situation for him: My child still sees both parents regularly and has strong attachment bonds with both and stll receives regular love and attention from both the mother and the father. What I am trying to say is that you don't need to be in a forever-lasting, pure love relationship with your partner to have children. Having a child involves a commitment of at least 20 years to your child, but not necessarily a lifelong commitment to your partner. If people realised that becoming a parent doesn't mean you're committed to your partner forever, maybe more young adults would have children earlier in their relationships, instead of waiting for years to be sure the partner is the perfect match. Having children is absolutly possible without the pressure to find the perfect partner to spend our life with.

Looking back, I realise that my situation is the best for me and for my child with the child-raising duties split 50/50 with the mother. I did not need to be in love with the mother, share the same roof or have an emotional relationship with her. I did not need her to be "the one love of my life", nor did I need to marry her or commit to a forever relationship. The only things I needed were the feeling that she would be a good mum and the trust that we would communicate well and help each other out with the logistics of caring for the baby. She could have been any woman: a friend, a stranger — any woman I trusted and felt confident she would raise my son well. In my personal case, she is a great mum, even though we are now separated.

My point is to show that most people set prerequisites for having children, such as living together under the same roof, being in love, the other partner being great in a couple relationship, commitment to spending the rest of their life in a monogamous relationship with the partner, having a good income, being good-looking, intelligent and having a sense of humour. These are quite high expectations and conditions to have a baby, and the chances are that this perfect setup of conditions might never happen, while in reality, people do not need all of that to have babies. Cultural and social pressure to find "the one love" and have a stable, loving relationship under the same roof forever before having kids raises the bar extremely high, making it more unlikely to happen and thus pushing down the fertility rate in this modern world of high expectations and an abundance of mating and leisure opportunities.

Too many rights and not enough duties

Today, in the industrialised world, there are no societal expectations of people: We are basically free to choose our own path. We have no duties, only many rights: Individuals can choose to go to university or not, choose their job, choose to quit their job at any time to take a sabbatical or another job, choose to get married or just to be in a relationship, choose to remain single, choose to have children or not, choose to change partners every few years, choose to move to another country at any time, etc. As a result, people got used to these freedoms of choice. Having a child is one of life's biggest commitments, as it makes you a parent for decades. This is why many people are reluctant to make this decision. This is a key factor that has driven birth rates falling to now below 1.5, which means that our social system is slowly eroding and our ethnic groups will almost disappear and become minorities on Earth by 2100.

If you put three plates containing sweets, biscuits and carrots in front of a five-year-old child, which food do you think they would choose? Obviously 95% of children will choose the sweets or the biscuits, almost no child would choose the carrots. That's what happened to Western society: We choose what we like, not what we need. We sacrifice our future for a better present. Baring a few exceptions, if their is no authority, governance force, incentive, penalty or punishment, children don't choose the carrot plate and adult don't choose the restrictive enduring, hard lifestyle of having 3 kids. We have been given too many choices of entertainment, career, mating, and it has made our society sick: Too many people suffer from depression, anxiety, stress disorder or mental illness because of the pressure to please everyone and the amount of choices available that we are going to miss out on. Very few people see the benefit of eating a healthy carrot: having a family and children. And very few realise the unavoidable tragedy of a large retired population with a slim and shrinking workforce. If you give people lots of options and choices, the freedom of choice seems enjoyable in the moment, but because of human nature it makes the future and the rest of society worse because people tend to maximise their individual benefits to the detriment of the group. We have had too many options over the last 50 years, not enough duty, constraint, religious or social pressure to do the right thing for the greater good of society as a whole. We have emphasised individual choices over societal choices, and we are now beginning to pay the price: a shrinking workforce, an ageing population with unsustainable pensions and health care, too many jobs in finance, sales and management, not enough jobs in services such as nursing, nannying, hotels and restaurants, organic farming. We are beginning to pay the price for this individualistic empowerment and freedom, coupled with the illusion of the "great life" sold by the social media.

There are two ways to make a donkey move forward: a carrot or a stick. Either make the donkey seek pleasure or make it fear pain, and it will move. Some people are better motivated by focusing on the reward for good behaviour, while others find courage and motivation in avoiding pain and terrible situations. Both approaches are fine and can coexist. Parenting is exactly that: finding the right balance between love and protection, while also pushing children out of their comfort zones and forcing them to do things they don't want to do. Society works in the same way: it needs incentives and penalties to encourage good behaviour and avoid putting the collective into terrible situations. You earn a salary at the end of the month as a reward for your work and contributions; you pay taxes so that the rubbish bin is collected from the streets; if you drive through a red traffic light or drive under DUI, you might be arrested and fined with a ticket for endangering other road users and pedestrians. All of these rules make sense in the context of a better society.

However, when a society allows adults to not have kids and not be penalised with a high tax level, while kids are the bedrocks and foundation of the future society; when you can work for six months, stop working voluntarily and receive six months of solid unemployment benefits without working; when you can visit the doctor, claim you are tired or stressed and receive a week of paid sick leave, and repeat it every 2 months; when a foreigner comes to a host country and immediately receives a minimum income, rent subsidies and child benefits without having worked in the host country; and when all of these privileges are given without incentives or penalties, the result is a system in which each individual takes what they can for themselves, and society ends up in ruin with fewer workers, fewer young adults, fewer contributors and more elderly people receiving benefits. A complex system or diverse society without an incentive and penalty system is bound to erode and die; it is bound to bankruptcy and collapse. The lack of enforced duty in our social system and progressive cultural beliefs is simply destroying our prosperity and any chance we have of maintaining social cohesion now.

Incentives for adults with children and penalties for childless adults do not restrict freedom. People can freely choose whether or not to have children, but the societal consequences should be very different. It's similar to choosing between a 9-to-5 job and being an entrepreneur. Anyone can choose one or the other; each option has its pros and cons, and the consequences are very different. With a 9-to-5 job, you get a secure and consistent income and quite a lot of free time in the evening, but you have limited opportunities to achieve great things and you have to follow your boss and your company's instructions. As an entrepreneur, success is difficult to achieve, income is not guaranteed and the chances of failing are high. However, if you succeed, you can make your dreams come true and become a millionaire, plus you are your own boss. It is not possible to have both the stability of a good income and the freedom to create your own business. If you choose to be an entrepreneur, you are free to work independently, but you know the consequences are no regular income and no 9-to-5 schedule. That's the price you pay to be your own boss. If you choose to be a regular employee of a company, you know the consequences: you will be given instructions and policies from above; you can't do whatever you want; you have to follow your company's mission and business interests. There are consequences on both sides. You can't have the best of both worlds. People can choose between the consistency of a regular job or the high satisfaction and motivation that comes with being an entrepreneur. Two paths, two different lifestyles.

From a collective, fiscal and social perspective, it is absurd to treat adults with children in the same way as adults without children, given that children are the only thing keeping the social system running in 30 years' time. It's like guaranteeing a job for life with a regular income to an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs pay the price for hard work and a stressful life, but they also reap the rewards in the long term. If you don't contribute to the future of society by not having children, why should society reward you when you turn 60 and need public welfare support, funded by young adults — the children of other people who made the effort to raise children — while you enjoyed 40 years of adulthood without children?

It's nonsensical and self-destructive, yet nobody has dared to address the fertility crisis in any country for the last 40 years for fear of being perceived as restricting freedom, enforcing conservative patriarchal values and provoking civil rebellion and social unrest. By failing to act as true leaders of society, our leaders seeking short-term popularity have postponed an inevitable crisis we have already entered in the 2020s. The free lunch of enjoying social welfare without promoting and enforcing a children culture will collapse our societies in the next 2 to 5 decades.

The ongoing strikes in Europe, which are calling for better salaries, healthcare and living standards, will only increase in the coming decades because our social prosperity will only deteriorate. This is all linked to the low fertility rate the last 40 years, resulting from the absence of incentives and penalties in our governing system. Nobody likes to be punished or penalised; people prefer to be rewarded. If a politician proposed a programme of punishments and penalties, nobody would vote for them and he/she would never be elected to implement those measures. That's why no rules have been passed in the last 40 years to target high fertility rates, and it has led our society to the brink of disaster.

In a world of free choice, with no morals, rules or restrictions, you end up with people naturally taking the best for themselves and for the moment, to the detriment of the future collective. If you let rapists and murderers choose their punishment, no one would go to jail and the collective safety would be overthrown. If you let children choose their agenda, they would never eat healthy food, never go to school, never go to bed and never tidy their room. You cannot give full freedom of choice to a population without enforcing collective rules, otherwise everyone will take the selfish easy way out and the collective part will not work, bringing us back to the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest.

Let's make an analogy to a social interaction between givers and takers. Consider this situation: Take 100 people randomly in a city on a blind date, not knowing each other, who voluntarily get together for a picnic, and repeat this event weekly with anyone who wants to join. The only rule is that out of the maximum of 100 guests, some can choose to bring food or not, but all share the meal and eat together. Each guest can choose to come with free hands or to come with homa-made cooked meal. For the first few events, you will probably have the vast majority bringing food, maybe 90 of the 100 guests will be showing good will and generosity and wanting to contribute to this great event. If 90 of them bring food, there will be enough for all 100 guests. But if you organise regular rounds of these events, once a month, the word will spread quickly that there is a "free food event" in town, and over time you will tend to get more and more people turning up with their bare hands to get some free food. You may only reach 50% of the people who bring food, which means less food for each guest. I bet that over time, at the 10th picnic or the 30th event, only 20% will bring food and 80 will turn up just to get a free lunch. That leaves very little food to share among 100 people, basically not enough for a decent meal, everyone will be desatisfied and find the event not worth it and won't show up again the next time. In the long run, people will spread the bad vibes that most people come for the free food but don't play the game of bringing food, and nice people who are willing to bring food will stop coming because they feel cheated and don't want to be the only stupid people bringing food to the community, so eventually fewer and fewer guests will attend the event, which will eventually turn off the "free lunchers" who won't even show up if nobody brings food. The events will simply stop because no one will come.

In this analogy, food represents children, and when very few food is there on the table, the guests will complain and dislike it, probably will quit coming to the events forever. This analogy is exactly what is happening with our degrading social welfare system and with our declining fertility rate. Over time people tend to contribute less with fewer children, everyone is used to enjoy the benefits of public infrastructure, public hospitals, public pensions, some live on state support, paid sick leave, public support for rent, benefits for public transport. Everyone enjoys their free time, their own leisure and pleasure of childless adulthood in the present moment without contributing to the future survival of society simply because no one is forced to have children and there are literally no civil, fiscal or social disadvantages to not having children in this society: As a childless adult, you can get any job, any home, you can go to the doctor and being attended, you can get a state pension without any disadvantage, without penalty for not having children... You end up with a society of mostly takers and very few givers, driven by the human nature of "me now" and our tendency to accumulate stuff based on our cognitive survival traits.

If we let people choose for themselves, and over 40 years we now have people showing up at the retirement dinner without food (the analogy for children) but everyone is expecting and demanding food to be brought from other people, everyone knows the dinner sucks because there is not enough food on the table, but no one wants to change the rules because everyone is enjoying the current benefits of free food.

Men and women today have too many good options and things they like to do in life: spending time with friends, travelling, restaurants, sports, career, earning money, watching TV, etc... This makes it difficult to co-exist with a stable long-term partner and their own individual interests, not to mention the time, courage and sacrifice to have children.

People have high expectations of their partner: good looks, high income, intelligence, sense of humour, attentiveness and empathy, willingness to share housework and childcare, etc... This makes finding the right partner quite unlikely.

Add to this the anxiety, stress, depression and mental illness that plagues our GenZ generation, and add to that the social media on smartphones that unconsciously pushes for more consumption, more self-actualisation, giving the impression that we all deserve a better life.

You end up with young adults aged 20 to 40 remaining single or not in long-term relationships, and even when they do find their mate they are not prepared to sacrifice free time, the good life and all the distractions and entertainment for the time-consuming burden and commitment of raising children.

The fertility rates have been falling since the mid-1970s, with a particularly sharp decline since 2013. With more digitalisation, AI, more electronics around us, more divorce, more social media, fewer people from the age group 26-38 having children, the fertility rate will only continue to fall. I wouldn't be surprised to see Europe and other developed countries go from 1.6 to 1 in the next 10 to 15 years, essentially halving the baby population every 35 years. I see no reason against this coming collapse, there could even be a snowball effect: With more geopolitical instability, more social unrest, more climate change, more inflation, I see more and more young adults not wanting to have children in the coming decades, and that's simply because having 2 or more kids is expensive and very difficult to combine with a job and leisure in a modern digitalised and urbanised world, but it is also because we allow people to have fewer children without penalty, without punishment of any kind, essencialy pushing people toward individualism, self-realisation and hedonism. A world full of entitlements and rights, but devoid of duties and obligations, is a circus world where everyone tends to be self-interested in the moment, rather than sustaining the good of communities in the future. Without collective pain now, there is no future gain.

Nobody wants to take people's freedom away. However, too much freedom without structure can be harmful. People need external authority and social discipline to behave properly towards the community in the long run; otherwise, the 'me now' mentality takes over our behaviour patterns. In traditional roles, both men and women had privileges and responsibilities. However, with women's emancipation and digital technologies, both men and women now want only privileges and none of the responsibilities. You end up in a disaster of a society.

If you give a teenager the free choice of playing with friends, playing video games or watching TV instead of doing their homework, and there are no consequences or punishments for their choice, of course the teenager will pick any option but doing their homework. If, as a society, we do not limit, punish or penalise childless adulthood, most people will prioritise their own best interests and choose not to have children, which will be detrimental to society as a whole. Providing more options and freedom of choice for both men and women has only encouraged people to prioritise their own lifestyle over having children and future workers to sustain a functioning society.

Not penalising childlessness is an irresponsible societal suicide. Leaders have never cared about the consequences because the price to pay is delayed by 40 years, and they care only about the next 4 years, but the trend started in the 1970s and we are now experiencing the negative effects of low fertility in the 2020s and 2030s.

With great power comes great responsability. A world where people have rights but no duties leads to everyone claiming their rights while no one fulfils their duty to provide for the sustainability of those rights. By ignoring our duty to reproduce, by not enforcing the duty to reproduce with strong policies, our society will collapse and lead to the destruction of all our rights. It will lead to anarchy, chaos and civil war and authoritarian regimes.

The impact of smart phones and social media on GenZ and GenAlpha

According to the OECD, 15- to 18-year-olds in Europe and the US spend an average of six to eight hours a day in front of a screen, whether that be a smartphone, laptop, video game or TV. At least two third of this time is spent on a smartphone. This is an incredible statistic that has changed the mindset, habits, psychology and mental health of younger generations entirely, and this change has happened extremely quickly when you consider that people aged 45 and over only had access to TV for a couple of hours a day when they were teenagers. Studies show that more screen time directly increases anxiety and depression and affects body image, with young women being more affected than young men.

Social media, where younger generations spend most of their time

This statistic alone explains why young adults are condemned to fail society. In the last 15 years we have gone from playing video games to being addicted to our social profile, from meeting friends in person to communicating with them at a distance via a smartphone. It is completely destroying the younger generation's awareness of the present moment and the time it takes to make human connections and build face-to-face relationships.

The teenage years are supposed to be a time for socialising, forming bonds, discovering your personality within society, making friends and finding love, forming romantic attachments, all before the responsibilities of adulthood set in. However, social media has precluded this natural human sociological development, creating an environment in which teenagers are immersed in radical, polarised ideologies that frame the world in terms of victimhood and oppression on the one hand, and liberal self-realisation on the other. Social media platforms constantly stream issues in the world and society, such as war, radical thinking, systemic oppression and trauma. These platforms reward emotional content and polarising topics that you either hate or love, without any balanced, moderate stance in the middle or exposure to different perspectives. As a result, teenagers grow up with the illusion that society is crazy and broken, and experience anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. In this perceived terrible world, committing to a partner and relying on them for intimacy, commitment and stability becomes very difficult and unlikely. The thought of bringing a child into this world tends to be viewed as inconceivable, irresponsible and suicidal. Gen Z are more concerned with their own well-being, emotional stability, social acceptance and belonging, so they have no room for devotion to a child, for nurturing and giving up time and attention to a child. They are the immature child themselves, in large part because of the social media and the vast screen time.

The younger generation of under-30 is much less prepared to have solid and lasting relationships with intimacy, ups and downs, devotion, a sense of sacrifice for the other and a willingness to devote time and energy to babies. The GenZ generation, born between 1995 and 2010, and the GenAlpha, born between 2010 and 2025, may be the best equipped to deal with the ultra-digitalised and networked world, the electrification of things, living with AI and robots, but they are the least prepared for a sudden loss of living standards, poverty, hard work and a sense of sacrifice or giving back to the community, because all they have known is a world of abundance, ease and direct answer to any request.

More under 35s than ever before live with their parents. More under 30s than ever before say they have not had sex in the last year. More under 35s than ever before remain single. More under 35s than ever before remain childless. More under 30s than ever before attempt suicide. Only 54% of 25-34 year olds are now in a couple, that's 12% fewer than in 1990.

GenZ (born 1995-2010) and especially those who turned 10 after 2012, grew up during their teenage years with the widespread adoption of smartphones, social media, and screen time. This has pushed youngsters out of socialising and interacting with others, and away from experiencing conflict and real-life human interaction, in favour of a virtual life online. We used to learn about friction, conflict and the social dynamics of a group or of a relationship by playing outside and interacting face-to-face. Modern society avoids conflict, with everyone communicating, planning and making group decisions indirectly via smartphones. When this generation reaches their twenties or thirties, they will be completely unprepared for long-term relationships or for resolving differences in the workplace or partnerships. This makes stable romantic relationships less likely to last, as people are less prepared to adapt, argue or manage conflict, disagreement and differing needs. You can't learn how to make a relationship last long on a screen. It's no wonder that happy, long-standing relationships are becoming rare these days, that more people are remaining single, and that the divorce rate is now over 50%.

GenZ is the generation with the less family ambition ever. They want to do good things in an ethical way, things that make sense in their lives and give purpose to the world. They have great ambitions for a better world. GenZ are competitive, don't want to rely on anyone for their success, want to be independent. That's why they tend not to rely on or depend on a partner. Their marriage rate is the lowest ever. Although they enjoy networking and being in contact with others, they would isolate themselves and break bonds if others got in their way. They have a tendency towards solitude, loneliness, and that's why their fertility rate is the lowest ever on record, which explains the plummeting birth rate since around 2015 and the adoption of social media on smartphones. Birth rates on average in developped nations are expected to remain extremely low between 1.6 and 1 for the next decades, leading to an even bigger population crisis in the 2030s to 2050s.

As can be seen in Figure 18A below, the fertility rate in the USA took a sharp downturn around 2008 following the financial crisis. This was mainly driven by job insecurity and a poor economic outlook, as well as the fact that children are expensive in American society, especially compared to Europe. For most other industrialised countries, the downturn occurred around 2015, coinciding with the widespread adoption of smartphones and social media apps that came around 2010. There is definitely a causal relationship between spending more time on social media platforms and the reduction in fertility rates across the developed world.

Figure 18A: Fertility rates going down recently in the high income countries

Since the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, fertility rates have continued to fall around the world. GenZ, born between 1995 and 2010, are the most affected by the damage caused to human psychology by the overuse of online social media and addiction to screen time. This is because they grew up as teenagers when smartphones and social media apps were already available and widely spread, and also because of the societal trauma of the lockdowns caused by the pandemic. Their lives are now filled with a combination of anxiety, high expectations of life and relationships, a broken dating market, and the ideological indoctrination of modern Western feminism. All of these factors clearly discourage people from having babies, and promote messages such as 'Carpe diem', 'Enjoy the moment', and 'Make the most of your life'. Figure 18B shows the rise in anxiety around 2013, particularly among the young population, which is a direct effect of social media and screen time.

Figure 18B: Anxiety per age group in the USA since 2008

Shown on figure 18B above is the proportion of the US population experiencing anxiety and stress symptoms or disorders since 2008. As you can see, it took off in the 2010–15 period, which was exactly when smartphones and social media became mainstream and widely adopted. You can also see that younger age groups, who use social media on smartphones the most, are the most affected by anxiety disorders. There is clearly a direct correlation between social media use on smartphones and high levels of stress and anxiety. When a person is anxious, they are neither ready nor willing to commit time or responsibility to children, as they are more focused on looking after themselves. This is the main reason why fertility rates have fallen further worldwide since 2015, affecting all developed countries as their populations now all have smartphones.

Mental health issues have also impacted labour force participation rates over the last 10 to 15 years, particularly since the rise of smartphones and social media, and the lockdowns driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been accompanied by an increase in the number of people defined as 'long-term sick'.

The young generation of GenZ are filled with anxiety, high expectations, willingness to do the right things, environmental consciousness and geopolitical instability, depression symptoms and childhood trauma, are often the children of separated parents, live in a broken dating market, believe they are entitled to abundance and ease without hard work and sacrifice, and simply have too many good options like long studies, good jobs, entertainment like restaurants, cinema, shopping, travel, etc. .... All good reasons for not having children. Many of these mental problems are linked to the addiction to smartphones and social media, the use of which exploded around 2010-2015. This is reflected in fertility rates around the world, which began to fall around 2015 after 10 years of steady or slight increases.

When GenZ are socializing

Almost everyone in the world now has a mobile phone and access to social media. What social media shows is the minority, the outrageous, the extraordinary, the polarizing, the eye-catching, the click bait, and the less likely to happen. Basic, boring tasks like cleaning, working hard, sleeping, daily housework do not sell or attract attention on screen time, and are not displayed on social media, giving the illusion sacrifice and boring tasks are no longer part of life.

So you tend to see good looking girls making $10.000 a month with 2 hours a day of pictures and videos, regular people becoming millionaires within 3 months through crypto investing, how to build a profitable business with no effort and instant success, people telling you to quit your 9 to 5 job because it doesn't pay well enough, people living in Dubai one week, South Africa the next and Paris the week after, bling bling lifestyle with big cars and luxury clothing line, how to open an online buisiness and live from passive income, how to get 1 million followers and be rich and famous with no effort etc....

Our society encourages maximising pleasure and minimising responsibility, such as having children.

If these ideas are put into the brains of teenagers and young adults, how will it prepare them for hard work, working with other people, keeping quiet and doing what their boss tells them to do, working diligently and hard for a company or for your family, thinking about personal sacrifice, hard work and the long term goal instead of immediate individual rewards?

Who is going to do the hard duty and lower paid jobs like hostel/restaurant work, child care, elderly care, cleaning staff, inventory and logistics preparation, construction work for streets, roads and buildings, nurses and health care assistants?

If everyone thinks they are going to be very successful, be a team leader, have a great career, who is going to do the backstage work for them? If everyone wants to be a millionaire, how will GenZ react when they are actually poorer than the previous 2 generations and have drastically lost purchasing power already compared to the young adults in the 1980s and 1990s? How will they react when public services, infrastructures and benefits won't be there when they need it in the future? Reality will be a hard slap in the face.

My point is that social media sells an easy, unattainable pipe dream and people believe they are going to be part of the 5% most fortunate in the world, ruling out any possibility of just being average. Nobody aspires to be average, but most of us have to be average or below in order for the very few to be successful.

Social media has created a false world of unrealistic expectations, and most people will be disappointed by not meeting those expectations, adding more stress and anxiety, depression and lonelyness to our normal daily lives, as well as mental health issues.

Social media on our smartphones has made our society selfish, shallow, self-absorbed. Social media shows the worst of humanity: greed, luxury, money, power, stupidity. We have become unhappy, lacking a general purpose or simple pleasures. Young GenZ adults are having a crisis of adulthood. It seems no one wants to be an adult with responsibilities to others and sacrifices to their own lives.

With social media, all teenagers today are faced with conflicting double binds. The kind of stress that puts teenagers in a situation where they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. For example, if a male classmate asks in a group chat that each girl shows a picture of herself in a bikini, the girls have only bad choices: If they send a picture of themselves in a bikini, they may be treated as prostitutes, easy to get and submissive, while if they refuse, they may be treated as religious nuns and fear rejection by the group. It is a lose-lose situation that only creates anxiety and fear in teenagers. If someone asks for all the boys to cut their hair very short just for fun, it's also a lose-lose situation. If you do, you will be made fun of and your classmates will point the finger at your ugly haircut. If you don't, you risk being excluded from the group, being seen as a boring conservative guy and fearing social exclusion.

It's insane that social media is unregulated. It is as addictive as gambling or hard drugs, and yet it is completely legal to advertise, commercialise and use it on a seven-year-old brain or a teenager for 8 hours a day without restriction, with unrestricted access to uncontrolled content at any time and anywhere through a smartphone 24/7. There are legal procedures and regulations to handle toxic pollutants, restrictions on dangerous, addictive substances and strict access controls to casinos. People are sent to jail for selling hard drugs, yet somehow uncontrolled, unregulated social media is free and accessible to children of any age and is actively advertised to them. It's a crazy and suicidal situation for humanity.

There are various ideas and proposals aimed at addressing the mental issues surrounding the impact of social media on teenagers. One suggestion is to prohibit smartphones on school premises during the day. Students would deposit their smartphone in a locker during the day and retrieve it in the afternoon when leaving school. Another idea would be to ban under-18s from accessing social media platforms/apps on smartphones, such as WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, etc. You should be over 18 to be allowed to connect to these platforms on a smartphone, with strict ID checks. Under-18s could perhaps access these platforms at home from a laptop or PC.

Another major impact of social media is on dating. Online dating has changed the world of dating forever. During the first years, online dating allowed people to meet other people outside their social circles that they would never have met otherwise. But in the long run, online dating has brought out the worst in both men and women: men looking for conquest for fun with no commitment, no sensitivity or no caring. And women who were pathologically picky and raised their standards for men to unreasonable levels.

We ended up with women having a horde of potential suitors, being picky, demanding and entitled, all targeting the same top 10% of men, being frustrated by all the men who just want quick sex with no emotional attachment, and being frustrated by the rejections of the top 10% who couldn't care less. And you end up with most men frustrated at not being in the top 10%, not being chosen by women, staying single and going incel, while the top 10% of men have just expanded the available horde of women at their feet. Nowadays, most people are frustrated by online dating and have stopped believing in or using dating apps.

The broken dating market

Dating apps require little investment or effort. Nowadays, you have access to a dating market that is 100 times bigger that your real life market, and so people do not make an effort to be nice or considerate of others' feelings on dating apps. With so many options and an abundance of potential partners, women have raised their standards and expectations. This makes finding a satisfying partner much more difficult today, both for women who can't get the 'big fish' or reliable commited man that every woman desires and for the average man who receives very few matches or conversations or get ghosted on. This is a kind of Jevons' paradox or rebound effect: Online dating has become a much better, bigger and more affordable means of meeting people, which has led to people using the apps more, thus lowering the value of the matches and the effort required to really meet people.

Dating apps are like shopping apps, where people swipe through potential partners based on data, as if they were goods to consume. Attraction has become data-driven: a picture, height, profession, hobbies, etc. However, the phenomenon of attraction and falling in love is actually quite mysterious and irrational. Most of us cannot really explain why we fall in love with a specific person in a tangible and rational way. Online dating has transformed the subjective magic of attraction into a data-driven algorithm. This data-driven approach dehumanises people. People pass on potential candidates they would actually appreciate or find charming in real life, only because they don't match the desired tangible criteria. Love and attraction are not maths. Unfortunatly nowdays, more than half of every couple met only via an app. The online dating adoption has been extremely fast and dwarfed the classic former way of meeting a partner like bars, club, through friends or through work, as shown on figure 18C below.

Figure 18C: How couples met in the USA

Evolutionarily speaking, we know how to love and be loved. It is in our genes and has been part of our culture forever. However, evolutionarily speaking, we do not know how to date. By dating, I mean choosing the right partner that fits well long term among a large pool of candidates. We do not know how to chose the fitting partner among a large pool of candidates. We have only been free to choose our own partner since around 1850 or 1900; previously, we were assigned a partner from the chief of the tribe or from our parents. So, unlike nurturing a child, which is instinctive, dating is not something we have mastered evolutionarily. We are not designed to choose from a pool of thousands of potential partners. Mating was based on economic factors rather than personal preferences, romance, attractiveness, emotional intelligence, self-realisation, empathy, and cognitive connection. It was about sharing resources: a deal about what each mating partner would provide the other with (camels and horses in exchange for land and a house, for instance). Mating was a way to increase our chances of survival. Now, mating is about romance and emotions, and falling in love. This is all new to humankind; we are not wired for this task. Evolutionarily speaking, we are not optimised to make the right choice.

Porn, the monetisation of sex and its broad and easy accessibility via the internet has changed many teenagers' perceptions of sex.

Many teenagers watch porn before they even have their first kiss. But it should never have happened. Sex is sacred: a divine pleasure and a fusion of bodies and souls; the most profound act of intimacy; and a miracle of bio-engineering that enables conception. However, pornography and the entire industry surrounding the sale of semi-nude bodies has corrupted the minds of young people, creating unattainable expectations for men and women. Teenagers who watch porn believe that sex must be a world-class acrobatic performance with no limits on body exploration or boundaries. This denigrates the personal intimacy and limits that each human has and skips the body discovery that should come naturally. The sex industry is so monetised that attractive women can easily earn a lot of money on social media platforms such as Instagram or OnlyFans, providing them with temporary financial gain until they are past their prime. Sexual fantasy is supposed to be creative and personal, but watching porn at a young age is like watching the world champion of ice skating and trying to replicate their performance without training: you are bound to fail and be disappointed with yourself. The internet, smartphones, social media and apps like Instgram or OnlyFans have democratised and monetised sex in a very modern and recent way. This phenomenon has only been widespread for about the last 20 years, so the long-term consequences for the emotional stability of people under 25 who regularly watch porn are still new and premature to evaluate. However, all signs point towards porn having a negative effect on your mental and emotional stability and your ability to form strong romantic bonds. Today, many young adults have seen 100 sexual encounters on a screen before they have their own first sexual encounter. On the other side of the spectrum, many others have had 50 sexual encounters themself before deciding to settle down in their late 30s, which makes the task very difficult. This makes settling down almost impossible to choose a partner that has it all you look for, and to suddenly become sexually satisfied in a monogamous relationship.

As a result, more GenZ men than ever before are remaining single or becoming incels: People who are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner, despite wanting one, and are frustrated at not finding a mate with whom they can have a family. And more GenZ women than ever remain single, still looking for the right partner that never shows up.

Young men form loose and large social bonds through some sort of competition (challenges, games and sports), while women form small social bonds based on emotional support, empathy, and sensitivity to inequality. This makes girls more fearful of rejection and social exclusion than boys. The psychological and social frameworks of men and women have never been more divergent, making pairing and bonding in the era of social media extremely difficult and unlikely. This leads to more young adults being single than ever before and many rejecting relationships with the opposite sex altogether.

As shown in Figure 18D below, each generation is shaped by its environment, technology and worldview. Significant events such as World War II, the emancipation and libertarian movements of the late 1960s, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the high growth of the 1980s and 1990s, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of the internet in the 2000s, the advent of smartphones and social media in the 2010s, and the lockdowns imposed in response to the early 2020s COVID-19 pandemic have shaped generations and altered their beliefs and aspirations in life. Each generation has a tendency to share common traits of personality. There is a big difference in mentality and expectations between the Boomers (born 1945-1965), the GenX (born 1965-1980), the Millenials (born 1980-1995) and the GenZ (born 1995-2010), and a lot of that difference has to do with the growth of social media since 2010. GenZ are much more demanding than the Millenials in terms of their job expectation. As every trend, this is a generality not applicable to everyone, but to most of us.

Figure 18D: Values and traits of the different generations

GenZ want their job to be a passion, want their job to give sense and meaning to their life and to the people, they demand good working conditions, like home office or no unpaid extra time, thy expect the highest salary available on the market. They tend not to be ready to work the extra mile to please their boss or reach a company deadline. GenZ care about their employer diversity, carbon emissions and role to make the world a better place.

Millenials tend to do what their boss expect of them, fit in the company values and mission, aspire to a a "Head Of", team leader or VP position, and seem to be more maleable to the company needs, ready to do whatever the instructions they are given.

I am not trying to pretend that one generation is better than the other, each has pros and cons like everything in life. What I want to paint here is that the high expectations of GenZ will be completely in contradiction with what GenZ will face in 10 or 20 years during the meta-crisis of the western world: GenZ tend to wish to not work in the transport of goods, hotel, restaurant, hospital, elderly care center, ambulance, heavy industry, military and defense... but those might be the most vacant job openings in the future.

In a world with more robots, computers and AI, and less human labor force, but more pensioneers to take care of, the job expectations of GenZ will likely not be met. Not everyone can be a day trader, a rock star, a professional sportsman, an influencer, a model, or a millionaire, a successful entrepreneur, work in an NGO, or work remote from anywhere in the world.

This means that some current productions of goods and services might face difficulty to find replacement workers for the retiring population, especially in the "polluting" industries like chemical or maufacturing industry, oil and gas industry, construction, etc... This will lead to supply chain disruptions and inflation in some areas of goods and services, or to relocations of the job offers to other countries.

That is mainly due to the rise of social media that has shown to everyone that a great life with an attractive job is possible, and now nobody wants to work the "dirty" jobs. When social media consistently show you the life of the successful top 3% of the world, it manipulates your brain and tends to make you believe that having a life of a top 3% is achievable, while by definition it is only achievable by a minority of us, creating depression, sadness, obsessions, anxiety and overall life meaning crisis.

People from GenX and Millenials who turned 18 before 2010 did not grow up in the social media era and are much more influenced by their parents, their friends and their teachers on what a solid job and a good life looks like.

In addition, GenZ wants more independance, they want to be fully responsible for ther decisions and actions, they don't want to depend on anyone for they success, don't want to depend on any government support or social system, they want to thrive on their own terms. Millenials are more ready to be one of many other in a team, ready to take any personal, social or financial support being offered.

This reflects on the relationship situation of the GenZ, where more people remain single and retain their entire freedom of choice and actions every hour of the day. GenZ don't have this typical Babyboomer, Millenials or GenX feeling to be a half soul needing the other complementary half soul to be a complete person.

And obviously, more independance and being single goes again commiting to a long term relatonship and having children, which is another reason why GenZ have less children than Millenials at the same age.

Social media show personal body care and a good fun life. This is a tool that aim for more screen time, more attention, click bait and advertisments. Social media pushes the narrative for biological and social coercion to not have children.

The difference between high expectations and reality is sadness, self-inflicted stress, unfulfilled lives or depression. Since 2010, social media has shown the seemingly unattainable lives of the top 1%, such as being a Kardashian or flying in private jets. This has led to depression among youngsters who feel they cannot achieve their dreams, putting them under stress and pressure at a young age. They realise that life is not as easy as it appears on social media and suffer from not fulfilling their dreams. They also live in a corrupt and polluted planet and are much more likely to be bullied online than previous generations were in real face to face life.

People who grew up without social media in their teenage years (those aged 32 or over as of 2025) did not experience these disappointments, depression or anxiety. In traditional societies, people were supported by family, community, marriage and religion — structures that left little room for isolation. In the modern West, however, these bonds have weakened. The old protections are gone, while loneliness and depression have reached epidemic levels.

The Silent Generation (born before 1945) and the Baby Boomers (1945-1965) would be much better able to cope with the catastrophic and difficult times coming ahead in the next 4 decades, with a better ability to work hard, be less demanding, accept their poor situation, accept restrictions and losses, and be satisfied with a simple job and a simple lifestyle. But the youngest generation GenZ and the upcoming GenAlpha (born 2010 and beyond) have only known a peaceful and functioning world, powered by fossil fuels and computers, where life is pampered, easy and pleasant with little effort. Not really the generation ready to cope with less comfort and a lower standard of living, not to mention the mental health and anxiety issues plaguing this young generation due to social media bullying. Good luck to them in coping with the future we have given them and the sum of the crises humanity faces.

The curious case of Israel

Israel is a very interesting case, a special and unique country that does not follow the rule of declining fertility, as the only developped country in the world with a fertility rate far above replacement rate at 3 although it is clearly a developed and industrialised country. Although Israel is a developed and industrialised country, ranked 25th best in the world in terms of infant mortality and 34th richest in terms of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, it has maintained a high fertility rate of around 3 since the 1980s and has a fantastic demography.

Figure 19A: Israel fertility rate evolution and demographic pyramid

Israel has the demographic characteristics of a poor country, while it is clearly an industrialised country. What makes Israel a single case in the world is its history and location: The uniqueness of the people is that they have always had to fight for their existence, to fight for survival as a Jewish people surrounded by Arabs. This struggle for existence and survival is similar to that of poor countries with a fertility rate of 3 and above. The trauma of the Second World War, in which six million Jewish victims died, still has an intergenerational impact and give the Israeli people a sense of unity and survival. Israel has also over the years maintained strong religious and family values, a patriotic and proud identity of belonging to Israel, as well as a 2-year mandatory military draft, again promoting unity and patriotism, unlike other industrialised countries which are more influenced by feminism and women's empowerment, individual success and more libertarian values.

The real secret of Israel's fertility rate seems to be cultural. The family is the absolute centre of Israeli life. Getting married and having children is the highest cultural value. Two factors are often cited as contributing to Israel's high fertility: the cultural aspect, which is rooted in the historical experience of the Jewish people, and special policies that make it easier for Israeli women to combine work and family life, such as leave for sick children, reduced working hours after returning from maternity leave, and part-time, flexible jobs.

High levels of education and ageing of first-time mothers do not seem to be an issue in Israel as they are in the rest of the developed world. By the age of 40, Israeli women with a university degree have the same number of children as those whose highest level of education is high school. As a direct result of these fertility patterns, a higher percentage of children in Israel are born to older and more educated parents than is the case in other developed countries.

The case of Israel shows that it is possible to combine a modern and advanced lifestyle and technology with a traditional family culture. But it is also because Israel is culturally surrounded by neighbours who do not share the same values, religion or belief, and are sometimes oppressive, that Israel has maintained an edge and a high sense of family and reproduction, rooted in the fact that the more children you have, the bigger the army of tomorrow you will have to defend your country against invasions or attacks.

Figure 19B: Israel in red is a tiny Jewish country surrounded by Islam countries in green

If Israel was located in the middle of Europe, and Europe was mostly Jewish instead of Christian, I doubt that Israel would have maintained a fertility rate of 3 and followed the general trend of declining fertility. For example, if we compare Jews in Israel with their counterparts elsewhere in Europe or North America, despite sharing the same history, fertility among Jews in every other developed country is significantly lower, including among Jews living in Europe, where welfare policies are more generous than in Israel.

If we break down Israel's average fertility rate of 3 by religion, as shown in Figure 19C below, we see that, while the national average is around 3, the fertility rates of Christians and secular Jews are only around 2, and the fertility rate of Muslims is around 3. The nation's average is actually propelled upwards by religious Jews with an average of 4 children per woman and especially Haredi Jews with an average of over 6 children per woman. Haredi Jews are ultra-Orthodox with strong faith and devotion. They adhere strictly to traditions and customs and live in self-imposed religious enclaves quite separated from the rest of society. Both religious Jews and Haredi Jews are highly religious and devout, with many restrictions on modern, abundant life. Overall, it seems that religious Jews have more babies than anyone else for the purposes of tradition, survival and to outnumber people of other religions.

Figure 19C: Israel birth rate per religious group

6 million Jews were exterminated during the holocaust of the Second World War, and this has given Israelis a sense of unity and survival, with family and children at the core of their values and survival traits. The Nazi era still has a profound effect on the Israeli mentality today. Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist, said: "The collective fear of annihilation continues to haunt us, and children are seen as a symbol of the continuation of life and of survival".

Furthermore, since the end of the Second World War, extreme Islamists such as Hamas, who aim to regain lands that were part of Palestine before WW2 and to eliminate Israel and its people, have posed a permanent threat to Israelis. Israelis have lived with the threat of hostile neighbours for generations. The sense of defending themselves and their nation is deeply rooted, making it much more important to pass on their genes through reproduction. The children of today are also the protective soldiers of tomorrow. Having children is a conscious or unconscious way of defending the country and the people of Israel in the future, as reflected in the mandatory two-year military service of every Israeli. Elly Teman, a medical anthropologist, said: "We hear that if we don't have enough children, we won't have enough soldiers, and people act on these messages whether they are aware of it or not".

Israel's fertility anomaly is an exception that cannot be replicated in other industrialised countries. No other country in history has been as humanly and psychologically decimated as the Jews were during the Second World War, and no other country is a tiny piece of land of one majority religion surrounded by massive land of another religious people, together with a history of hostility and aggression in both directions. The single case of Israel is unique and simply not replicable in other developed nations.

Other factors contributing to the high fertility rates in Israel include:

- Israel is a small, densely populated country where grandparents are never too far away. Grandparents often pick up the children from kindergarten while their parents are still at work. A survey found that 83% of secular Jewish mothers aged 25–39 said they were supported by their children's grandparents, compared to only 30% of German mothers for example.

- Fathers are also very involved in raising their children, to the same extent as mothers. Israeli fathers push the stroller alone, know their child's favourite foods, friends and teachers, and change nappies. They are of equal role to the mother.

- IVF is free for all women under the age of 25. This has enabled Israeli women to delay childbirth without consequence or to conceive when it would otherwise have been difficult or a long process. Around 5% of births in Israel between 2014 and 2018 occured through IVF technology. Today, the rate is higher, probably around 7%.

- Humans are mimetic species and tend to copy the behaviour of others. Seeing lots of children around you, and people in their thirties with two, three or four kids, has a psychological effect on young adults, making them all want to have a large family and several children too.

Israel has many factors favouring high birth rates, band many are unique to Israel, so that the collection of conditions cannot be reproduced in other countries. The key takeaway about Israel is that unless a population is under constant threat of existence, fighting for its survival, it won't reproduce beyond the replacement rate. Other industrialised countries have experienced such a phase of prosperity since 1945 that our societies have become way too comfortable, effortless and predictable. Our societies have lost the sense of unity and urgency to reproduce for survival. When the enemy is not external, it is internal, arising from societal division, overreliance on public systems and procrastination.

Immigration as a solution against declining birth rate

While some parts of the world, such as Europe, will clearly have a shortage of active workers in the 20-65 age group in the coming decades, other parts of the world, such as Africa, have very young populations and not always great economic prospects at home, or wars, political oppression or unbearable climate conditions. The natural answer to the ageing of the industrialised world population seems to be immigration, a win-win situation where young adults in need of a change of location for various reasons move to a new country in search of better opportunities abroad.

Contrary to what most people believe, there are fewer migrants today than three centuries ago. Worldwide, we currently have about 3% to 4% of migrants (people who have crossed a border to live in another country), whereas a few centuries ago, this figure was 8% to 9%. The two main reasons for this are that, in the past, there were more dictatorships and people were forced to move due to factors such as slavery, colonisation, coercition and war. Another reason is that, as resources such as wood and water were depleted in one location, people had to move frequently to other places. Nowadays, however, infrastructure such as water, heating and electricity maintains basic supplies over time, meaning people can stay in one place for their entire life.

Immigration has always been a part of world history. There has always been, and always will be, population movement. It is an inevitable human trend. The pressing questions are which countries migrants are coming from, which countries they are going to as preferred destination, and how many people migrate each year or how quickly. Figure 20A below shows the annual net migration in 2023, with countries in red indicating a net loss of emigrants and countries in blue indicating a net gain of immigrants.

Figure 20A: Annual net migration rate in 2023

On the one hand, there are refugees, asylum seekers, migrants fleeing war and bombs, those fleeing political oppression or climate change. These migrants make up the largest proportion of migrants worldwide. These migrants move because they have no other choice; they are forced to do so in order to survive. On the other hand, there are young, highly educated skilled adults who decide to move abroad voluntarily for great career and lifestyle opportunities. They make up a tiny proportion of migrants, but they are an essential part of what makes the USA, Canada and Australia such rich and attractive countries today, as shown in Figure 20B below.

Figure 20B: Where skilled graduates want to move to

As a result of migration, not all countries have the same share of foreign population. Figure 20C below show the share of foreigners in each country.

Figure 20C: Share of foreign born per country

Looking out over the next few decades, we know that the pool of potential local workers in industrialized countries is both ageing and declining overall. National pro-natalist policies have had little or no success where they have been tried. And even if birth rates were to double tomorrow, they would not provide workers for two decades. Ageing and low fertility will put downward pressure on labour force participation. Countries and companies will increasingly compete for scarce workers. Countries that can attract immigrants and integrate them productively will be at a distinct advantage.

The main imperative will be the development of human skills and cultural adaptation. This is critical globally, but especially so in developing regions. In two of the largest and youngest parts of the world, India and sub-Saharan Africa, a quarter or more of the population is illiterate and a significant percentage lack even basic academic skills, setting a low ceiling for the productivity of these immigrants.

Before I continue on the subject of immigration, I would like to tell you a little about myself and my background. I am the grandson of political migrants, and I am an economic migrant myself. My grandparents were Italian and moved to France in the 1940s. I moved from France to Germany when I was 22 and have lived in Germany ever since, with a 4 year break in Spain. My child is half French and half German. I lived in the south of Spain for 4 years and loved it. I embrace the diversity of cultures, I love to travel and interact with people from different backgrounds. I embrace diversity. My various travels aroud the globe and my encounters with people from different origins have made me pragmatic and realistic about the huge differences in people's attitudes and expectations of life. Our differences are great for diversity and enrichment of culture, but they make us quite etherogenic and incompatible sometimes. Like a fish out of the sea or a bird in the water, when people are taken out of their usual environment where they grew up and put into a completely different environment, culture, geography or system, they find it difficult to adapt.

Now back to immigration: Immigration is only a win-win situation if the immigrant is given a chance to integrate in the host country. The further away the immigrant is culturally, religiously and in terns of habits and way of living to the people of the host country, the more difficult integration of immigrants is. A Dutch person moving from Amsterdam to Berlin will have very few hurdles to overcome. But a person from Bangladesh coming to New York, or a person from Libya coming to Norway, that's a different story: The migrant will have to learn a completely new language, new habits, a new culture, a different religion, a completely different lifestyle, and let's face it: Because this immigrant looks different simply by the colour of his/her skin, not all the doors will be opened for him/her, not everyone will welcome him/her with open arms.

Figure 20D below illustrates the proportion of the foreign-born population in each OECD country from 1990 to 2024. As you can see, almost all of the world's wealthy countries are becoming more culturally diverse with an increasing foreign-born population. Countries that are very homogeneous, such as South Korea, Japan, Mexico, Poland and Turkey, have fewer than 3% of their residents as foreigners. These countries enjoy better social cohesion and unity of culture, and have fewer immigration integration issues and less insecurity. However, they will become less attractive to foreigners in the future, and will have more difficulty dealing with the decline in the working population that is certain to occur in the next few decades due to low birth rates.

Figure 20D: Share of foreign-born population from 1990 to 2024

Figure 20E below illustrates the flow of immigrants to Europe, categorised by their country of origin. There has been an overall increase in the number of migrants entering the EU over the last decade. The majority of migrants entering the EU come from Ukraine, Belarus, India, Morocco and Syria. This is either due to war (Ukraine), political turmoil (Syria), or better career and lifestyle opportunities (Belarus, India, Morocco, China).

Figure 20E: Inflow of immigrants in Europe

Europe has long been a continent of immigration. In 2022, 7.03 million people have immigrated to the EU, while only 2.73 million Europeans have emigrated from the EU, giving the EU a total net immigration of 4.3 million people in 2022, which is about 1% of the EU population. That's a significant increase, especially given that the natural local population remains constant, as determined by the difference between total births and total deaths.

Those leaving Europe are mostly skilled and talented young workers. Europe is losing some of its highly educated young people in search of better career opportunities, a phenomenon known as 'brain drain', while receiving many immigrants for social reasons such as family reunification, war and political refugees. Without condemning any nation, person or profession, the reality is that people with potentially high incomes and high economic value-added are leaving Europe, while incoming immigrants are often non-workers or low-paid workers, which actually weakens total tax revenues and reduces our available public spending. To be clear, I am only talking about tax collection from a government financial point of view and targeting public health and pension systems. Immigrants who work in restaurants, hotels, as truck drivers, in health care, in child care, in home deliveries, as cleaners or in construction are absolutely essential for the well-functioning of a society. A Europe without immigration would collapse very quickly, and immigration is probably a net positive in economic terms. My point is that these immigrants cannot provide enough labour and taxes to support the current health and pension systems of an ageing population.

Although foreign workers represented only around 9 per cent of the total labour force in Europe in 2022, they have accounted for half of its growth over the past three years. Without this contribution, labour market conditions would be tighter and output would be lower. In the coming decades, attracting workers to fill labour shortages will be essential in keeping growth on track, despite rising populist pressures and souring public sentiment on mass immigration.

There will also be a battle of attractiveness, with many industrialised countries competing with each other to attract a limited number of skilled migrants. Population ageing will lower output and risk pushing up inflation and shortages, as workers will be able to demand higher wages in a labour-shortage environment, and human-intensive services like health care will be in short supply.

Figure 20F below shows the natural decline in the under-70 population in some EU countries if there were no immigration at all. As can be seen, some countries with very low birth rates and a rapidly ageing population, such as Spain, Poland, Ukraine and Italy, are expected to lose 10% to 20% of their population each decade from the 2020s to the 2050s without an influx of migrants. This highlights the imperative for countries to accept and welcome more migrants in order to fill the jobs left by retirees, maintain a taxpayer base, and provide economic stability.

Figure 20F: Change in under-70 population per decade without immigration

If you consider the EU and its 450 million people, there is an annual influx of 4 to 5 million immigrants from outside the EU, while the population of a given age group, such as 18 or 22, is also around 4 to 5 million. This means that each year, the number of new adults from the local population (17-year-old european turning 18) is equal to the number of new adults coming from outside the EU. If the current rate of recent years is maintained, half of the European population will be non-Europeans in a few decades. While this is great for diversity and opportunities for foreigners, how can a region maintain its identity, culture and values when half of its population is foreign? Immigrants are no longer a minority among young people; they make up half of the population. This will certainly lead to drastic cultural, behavioural and political changes for Europe in the coming decades, for better or worse.

If you have an immigration culture that dates back a hundred years, like the USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, it is easy to absorb more immigrants today because the local population is used to it and is itself descended from immigrants. But for countries like Japan, South Korea, China, or even Germany or Scandinavia, it is much harder to get someone from a different background accepted by the locals, who tend to be more reluctant to accept other cultures.

Also, these social migrants tend to be young males, not a mixed parity of males and females, which helps with the labour force but not much with the fertility rate of the country long term.

If Germany wanted to maintain its active workforce over the next 10 years, it would need about half a million immigrants every year for the next 30 years. Germany would need need 3 immigrants aged 15-25 year old for each 2 natives aged 15-25 year old living in the country, which is extremely unlikely and would create huge socio-cultural difficulties to welcome and integrate them all. By 2040, the country would be unrecognisable, losing its original identity, values and culture, which would make it very difficult for the locals to adapt. And if Germany stops immigration entirely, for each 3 workers aged 55-65 about to retire in the next 10 years, there is only 2 young teenagers aged 12-22 entering the labor force in the next 10 years.

Immigration is a fine act of balance, you can not do without, but it creates tension if you do too much.

In the EU, approximately 1 million more people turned 64 than people turned 20 in both 2023 and 2024. This means that around 1 million people left the labour force to retire each year. By comparison, the EU has seen around 4 million immigrants arriving from outside the EU each year. This means that Europe is replacing one local European of working age with four migrants, or supporting each new retiree with four migrants. Bear in mind that the social system was designed and sustainable with a ratio of 5-to-1 or 4-to-1 from 1960 to the 2000s, so we are right around the natural balance for our current welfare system. While this is great for the personal opportunities of migrants and for Europe's economy, it will severely alter Europe's identity and values. I also doubt that all of these migrants will be able to find jobs quickly in Europe and contribute to society as workers and taxpayers. Reliable demographic projections for the coming decades also point to a yearly decline of 1.5 million in the working-age population over the next 20 years rather than 1 million per year. This would mean we would need 6 million immigrants per year. I doubt this ratio of 4:1 can be sustained in the coming decades, given that most advanced countries are experiencing a decline in the 20–40 age group and in need of migrants. If the current trend continues, the EU would welcome around 100 million migrants between 2025 and 2045, accounting for around 40% of the current working-age population of approximately 260 million. Replacing 40% of your workforce with foreigners from different backgrounds, cultures, traditions and values within 20 years is going to be extremely challenging, not to mention unlikely to find that many migrants willing and able to come to Europe to work for wealthy retirees from a different culture.

The reality for Europe is that we must accept and integrate more migrants in order to counterbalance our shrinking and ageing population. However, most of the migrants arriving in the coming decades will be from different religious and cultural backgrounds and will not have the adequate educational qualifications or skills or adaptability required to integrate into an active society. While immigration is necessary, it does not solve the issue of an ageing and shrinking active population.

Here is my personal view: In a hypothetical perfect world, we would have strict border controls and criteria for which migrants we want to accept and welcome, depending on labour needs and migrants' skills. We would also have an annual quota, depending on the local population and the host country ability to integrate migrants with housing, language courses and skill development programmes. Migrants would have to demonstrate good behaviour, a willingness to work, and an embrace of local cultures for a year or two before they could obtain permanent residency, a visa, and other public benefits.

The reality is that every developed country is competing for economic migrants, those looking voluntarily for a stable job and a better life abroad, and it's usually the same destinations that attract the best talent, like the US, Canada, Singapore, Dubai or Switzerland. Europe can no longer afford to be picky about skill level or profile, but that does not mean accepting all asylum seekers and refugees fleeing war. We need a quota for each country to determine how many asylum seekers and war refugees we can accept, because they cannot remain in limbo for a year while the authorities determine their fate. These migrants are in urgent need and in a distressing situation, so having a large backlog of asylum seekers is a significant issue. They need financial support, psychological help, education, training and integration. If we leave their cases unresolved for too long, they tend to become aggressive and desperate, which puts the host country at high risk of insecurity. These migrants are a net negative for a society, the more you take them in, the more it costs the local population through tax and spending. Not every migrant is the same, without any racial or religious judgement or discrimination. It is simply true and a reality.

In order to attract and retain more economic migrants, those who freely choose to go to greener pastures, we also need incentives to lure the migrant and not let him/her go to a more attractive destination, such as subsidised housing, free language and cultural integration courses, personal relocation assistance, etc.

That's my view: We absolutly need more migrants for economical prosperity long term, and we also need strict border controls, incentive policies and more spending for all migrants, quick resolution of asyl seeker, and quotas for social migrants. The acceptance criteria will be linked to skills, what kind of labour a country needs, the willingness of migrants to stay in the host country long term, etc... a bit like Australia and the US do with their border controls.

The question of quota seems so obvious to me, but very controversial in Europe. It is about giving the immigrant a chance to integrate into the society and not to be segregated in a special refugee area without a job and without a feeling of belonging to the host country. If too many immigrants join a host country too fast, there is no way to integrate, accept and incorporate the immigrants as part of the host country population, so it has to be done slowly and continuously, in a controlled manner.

I'll give you an example: Imagine a small village of 300 inhabitants. The mayor decides to take in a family of 4 immigrants, 2 adults and 2 children. They are given a small apartment and the local population helps them to integrate. It is perfectly fine. Now imagine that 20 similar families arrive in the village of 300 inhabitants. Do you think you could find decent accommodation for them all? Is there enough food in the village for such a sudden increase in population? Where are these 80 people going to learn the language and cultural habits of the village? Is there any job for the 40 new adults? It would be unmanageable and would lead to non-acceptance by the locals, loss of village identity, fear of crime andinsecurity, and it could anger the migrants who would not be given a decent life. A lose-lose situation.

On the other hand, we have to be honest about the current situation in Europe: Most of the low-paid, physically demanding jobs in hotels, restaurants, health care, cleaning and driving are done by foreigners because the local population does not want these low-paid, unattractive jobs. Most people without a migrant background refuse to do these jobs for the low pay, believing they deserve better and denigrating these positions. And these low-paid jobs, often held by immigrants or people with a migration background, absolutely keep society afloat, nothing would work without these foreigners. Immigrants literally keep our society going. If we only had well-paid office jobs, society would not produce any goods or services, nothing would work, the supply chain and the economy would not function at all, we would not have fresh water from the tap and electricity, roads and streets would be not naintained, and all prices would skyrocket.

Foreign workers are essential to a functioning and affordable western society.

The idea of immigration from countries with high fertility rates to countries with low fertility rates to make up for the declining labour force can only work for one generation. Firstly, because all countries in the world are experiencing rapid fertility decline, including sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, so there won't be an excess of young adults in those countries forever. But also because everywhere in the world we have statistics showing that immigrants tend to lower their fertility rate when they move to a more industrialised country, then their children will tend to have a fertility rate close to the local population. If a Nigerian with a fertility rate of 5 in his country comes to Spain with a national rate of 1.4, the chances are that the Nigerian will have about 2 or 3 children in Spain, not 5. And those children, if they stay in Spain, will be much more adapted and adjusted to local habits, and will probably have something close to 1.5 children themselves on average, because they are born and grew up in a country with this kind of fertility rate, so that the children of migrants end up usually very close to the local average, making migration a one-off wonder that does not solve the fertility rate issue in the long term.

I recently took a taxi and the driver was from Afghanistan in his 50s. He told me that he came to Germany 25 years ago with his Afghan wife. He has only two children and wishes he had three or four. I asked him how many children people usually have in Afghanistan. He said that having five or six children is normal over there. I quickly checked the demographics and he was absolutely right. In 2023, the fertility rate in Afghanistan was 4.5, down from 7.5 in 2000. Last year, 1,5 million babies were born in afganistan, accounting for 3.6% of the population. That's an incredible growth rate! For comparison, Europe added 0.8% of its population in babies last year and the USA added 1%.

Figure 20G: Demographic pyramid of Afghanistan

The point of this exemple with a taxi driver is that when two young adults from a country with a fertility rate of 4.5 move to a country with a fertility rate of 1.4, the couple ends up having a number of children closer to the destination country's average than the origin country's. People adapt to, emulate and copy the local trends.

Even if immigrants have fewer children than expected when they settle in a country with a lower fertility rate than their own, they still have more children than people born and raised in that country. So why do immigrants tend to have a slightly higher fertility rate than the local population?

I can think of two main reasons. Firstly, immigrants are a minority in their host country, so if they want to maintain their community, culture and traditions, they have to reproduce. Even if immigrants are not poor or in imminent danger of dying, they clearly feel an existential threat as a minority community and need to reproduce in order to survive.

The second reason, which is particularly relevant in Europe, is that the majority of immigrants are Muslims from the Middle East, or Christians or Muslims from Africa. These two ethnic groups share a strong sense of family. Children are an integral part of their traditions, and most of them see having two, three or four children as the norm. These two ethnic groups, who place family at the centre of their lives, are also much more willing to make personal sacrifices for their children than local Christian Europeans, who value individual achievement more. Immigrant men in Europe, who come from the Middle East or Africa, are less reluctant to sacrifice some of their free time for spending with their families rather than on personal hobbies and leisure. Hedonism is really a western culture, but not a dominant trait of people from Middle-East or Africa. Immigrant women are also much more willing to sacrifice career goals and personal income for spending more time at home with their children, compared to local Christians, who value lifestyle, convenience and self-realisation much more than immigrants do.

This is why people of migrant origin in Europe have a much higher fertility rate than the national average, while the locals have a fertility rate that is even lower than the national average. However, if you take a migrant's children who were born and raised in the host country, they will tend to have the same number of children as the national average. Fertility rates are not conserved when migrating. After one generation, young adults who are the children of immigrants adapt to local traditions and habits, including having fewer children.

Ultimately, it is up to the local population to reproduce and maintain the population size. Economic migration is a short-term solution that won't continue forever due to plummetting birth rate all over the world, and it will not solve the fertility issue in the long term. The majority of immigrants of the next 4 decades will be politalcal or war migrants, and climate migrants later this century. If nothing is done by the natives to get back the fertility rate to 2.1 or above, nothing can stop the population decline, and immigration is just a band-aid only for some priviledged countries and only for 25 years, but not a sustainable solution over 50 years, if we leave aside the special cases of micro-labour centres like Dubai, Qatar, Singapore, Luxembourg, etc...

Immigration policy cannot address demographic decline when integration fails, social tensions rise and the flow of immigrants must increase to compensate for a larger retiring cohort, while the global supply of educated young people or economic migrants is declining due to consistently low birth rates all over the world. Our massiv demographic decline cannot be countered by some minor immigration waves. Family policies have undeniably failed to increase the birth rate over the last 4 decades, and the alternative of mass immigration creates a political backlash and a societal conflict.

The tragic and frightening reality is: Where will migrants come from in the future? 80% of humans live in countries with a fertility rate below the replacement level, meaning there are fewer young adults aged 15–25 every decade.

In 2024, Europe's fertility rate was well below the replacement level at around 1.5, with fewer and fewer children born each decade. Turkey's fertility rate is 1.5, the USA's is 1.65, Canada's is 1.3 and Russia's is 1.4. Most of Asia is below the replacement rate, with India at 1.95, Thailand, Japan and China at 1.1 and South Korea at 0.7. Outside of Africa, Only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia are quite populated countries with growing young population, with fertility rates of 3.4, 4.8 and 2.15 respectively. Latin America, a major source of migrants to the USA and Europe in recent decades, is also experiencing a rapid decline in its young population, with a fertility rate of 1.8 in Mexico, 0.9 in Chile, 1.2 in Colombia, 1.5 in Argentina, and 1.6 in Brazil in 2024. This leaves only two regions capable of supplying the world in volume with a young labour force: India for the next 2 decades only, Pakistan and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. If we are honest about our societies, our economies, our prosperity and our wish to retain decent standards of living, there is no alternative but to accept, embrace and integrate mass migration from these two regions of the world. If you are personally opposed to this, then you will have to accept a slow loss of social benefits such as pensions and healthcare over the coming decades, with some high inflation or shortages of lavor-intensive services. A declining young adult population simply cannot maintain the same standards of living alongside a growing over-55 population — it's basic maths. Either embrace migrants or gradually give up your social welfare system.

According to reliable demographic projections, India and sub-Saharan Africa will account for half of the global population in 2070, provided that a nuclear war, an AI apocalypse or a climate-related doomsday scenario does not occur, each of which is possible. Where will the skilled labour come from when most countries have labour shortages and are looking for young migrants from abroad, but most of the young population is either unskilled for the jobs required in the modern industrial world, unwilling to migrate, unwelcome in a host country, or from a different culture and therefore difficult to integrate into a new social environment? The days of easily and cheaply importing labour from neighbouring countries with a similar cultural background are already numbered, and skilled workers will be in high demand and in short supply due to fierce competition between countries. This will lead to a recession in economic output, and shortages in the supply chain of all goods and services that require high human capital and cannot be replaced by machines, like hospitality and health care services.

Do we need to reach the critical point where, by 2050, white European Christians will be an ethnic minority in Europe, with Arabs and black Africans in the majority, in order to rekindle the desire for family for the Western white Christian world and South East Asia? Maybe that is the way we have to go. What is certain is that if immigration is part of the solution, the vast majority of immigrants will be sub-Saharan Africans, Middle Eastern Arabs and Indians, as shown by the population projections by continent on figure 20H below.

Figure 20H: Population projections by world region

Look at the population projections by world region in Figure 20H above. Most migrants will come from Africa, followed by India. By 2100, 38% of the world's population will live in Africa, up from 19% today. An even larger proportion will be Africans living on other continents, or descendants of Africans with African DNA.

An easy conclusion you could draw is that if Africa has "too many" young people and the developed world has too few, either the work will go to Africa or the Africans will come to the Western world. Well, in the grand scheme of things, neither is true.

Most jobs today are services and local: housing, infrastructure, sales at shopping centres, hospitals, restaurants, healthcare, hairdressing, childcare, cleaning... these are local jobs that cannot be outsourced. South America (Brazil, Mexico and Chile) and Asia (China, Vietnam and Indonesia) mostly provide raw materials or manufacture simple goods for export around the world. Europe mostly assembles complex goods such as cars and aircrafts, for which it depends on many other countries for the supply chain. My point is that, in a service-based economy, not all services can be outsourced to other countries, and it is very difficult from a resources, skill and knowledge perspective to relocate goods manufacturing, so that over the next 50 years, many jobs will not go to India or sub-Saharan Africa, and those people will not come in large numbers to the rest of the world to take the vacant service jobs.

And then to think that a lot of young adults from Africa will move to Europe is foolish, people are not interchangeable. People belong to their environment, their communities, their land, their friends and family, their culture. There are very few economic migrants who have moved for a better life on their own choice. Most migrants in the world are social migrants and move because of war and political oppression in their origin country. You cannot assume that a young adult in a small town in Angola will deliberately pack his bags and move to Italy. That person is rooted in Angola, has friends, family, customs and a shared culture with its community. Why would he move to a place where he does not know anyone, does not speak the language, does not know the traditions and history? Even if a young Angolan could earn 10 times more money, most of them will not migrate. To believe that mass migration of voluntary migrants is possible is to deny the reality that people belong to a culture, a community, a land, an environment. Most people are rooted and not interchangeable. You cannot extract or force people to move voluntarily to places where they do not belong. Again, very few people are willing and able, financially and with a passport (see figure 20I below), to move to an unknown place without family or friends. Mass economic migration is not going to happen. Some adventurous and skilled young people will migrate, but most will stay with their community, where the belong culturally, spiritually and physically. Not every European is moving to the US, Hong Kong, Dubai or Singapore, so why should people from Africa and the Middle East move to Europe? Mass migration from Africa will not happen at the scale needed to cover the coming demographic collapse.

Figure 20I: Share of the population owning a passport

Most immigrants to Europe are Muslims and Arabs from the Middle-East, or Christian or Muslims African, compared with the original local majority ethnic group of white Christians. These Muslims tend to have more children than Christians in every European country, as shown in Figure 20J below. What is happening over time and over 2 or 3 generations is that the descendants of Muslim immigrants are or will slowly become the majority ethnic group of Europe, as the white European Christian had an average fertility rate of 1.6 compared to the muslim European of 2.6 in 2015-2020. I am not judging whether this is a good or bad thing. I personally think it is a survival necessity for Europe to welcome immigrants of all countries under certain conditions if they are willing to work in the host country and not commit crimes. I am just stating the obvious that Europe by the end of the 21st century will either disappear from population collapse or become a majority Muslim ethnic group. Europe will become a mixed racial melting pot with different cultures and values, which will cause a difficult transition, some anger towards accepting and welcoming this change by some conservative Christian groups.

Figure 20J: Muslims in Europe

The frightening reality about future immigration is that, in the last 50 years many countries had fertility rates above 2 and could 'export' labour to rich countries with falling birth rates. But today Latin America is slightly below 2, India is also at 2 and will not have a "surplus" forever. China, South Korea and Japan are in clear deficit and need to retain their young labour force, and many of the countries of origin of emigrants, which have provided the human capital for the migrations of the last 50 years, will not be able to support the declining labour force of most countries in the world. Where is the human "supply" going to come from when most countries face a labour shortage in 10 to 30 years?

Traditionally, immigration came from countries with a large young population that migrated to countries with a relatively old population, as shown in Figure 20K below.

Figure 20K: Impact of classical migration path on demographic pyramid

However, what will the future of global immigration be when very few countries are in stages 1 or 2 of their demographic transition and have an abundance of young people under the age of 25? I believe that young adults from an ageing population in stage 5 will tend to migrate to countries with a younger, more active population in order to avoid the social and fiscal burden of an ageing welfare system and aiming for a country with a younger population and lower overall tax levels. Don't be surprised if, in the next 20 years, many skilled young Europeans go to India or sub-Saharan Africa to seek better economic opportunities, which would represent a complete reversal of the migration flow of the past 50 years.

Rich and attractive countries like the US, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates or Switzerland will always attract young workers, so these countries can remain rich and their social systems very strong: few cost of pensions, few health care costs as the majority of the people are in the 20-50 age group, few costs of child care, because many workers are immigrants who came after their infancy at a mature age, and sometimes even returns to his country of origin to retire there with a lower cost of living, so the host country doesn't have to pay for the health and medical care of the retiree. This is absolutly all positive and a huge gain for the rich host country.

Look at the demographic pyramid of Switzerland, with and without immigrants, in Figure 20L below. As you can see, about a third of the population are foreigners (in grey), and the vast majority of immigrants are part of the active labour force between the ages of 25 and 55, giving a huge boost to the country's economic prosperity and functioning social system. Very few foreigners remain in switzerland past 65 after they retire, which also help tremendously the public finances.

Figure 20L: Switzerland demography

The demographic pyramid of the UAE (see figure 20M below) is fascinating because it is pushed to the extreme with a huge amount of immigrants workers. There is a massive spike in the number of people aged 30 to 40, the vast majority of whom are male foreigners, and an imbalance in the male-to-female ratio among the population.

Figure 20M: The UAE demography

On the other hand, countries in decline, such as Italy, tend to experience more "brain drain", where young italian adults leave the country in search of a better quality of life abroad, meaning that the country's workforce and active population shrink of its best skilled residents and it becomes a net exporter of highly qualified labour, putting even more pressure on the local social system.

Some rich and attractive countries in terms of where people wish to emigrate, such as the USA, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, will get the lion's share of the braindrain, the young skilled adult workforce, while other 'undesirable' countries, such as China, Japan and Italy, will not be able to attract enough skilled young workers to compensate for their declining workforce. As a result, the projections for the working-age population of China and the US over the next 30 years could not be shifted further, as shown in Figure 20N below. Over the next 30 years, USA is expected to keep attracting migrants and keep growing its working population, while China, never a prefered destination of emmigrants, will see its native working population decling sharply due to its terribly low fertility rate of 1.

Figure 20N: China VS USA workforce projection in 2050

The immigration fate of some "importing" and "exporting" countries will only intensify and accelerate in the future.

If a country has a "bad" demographic situation with a lot of ageing people, the economic and social situation of the country will be so difficult that the pressure to get more labour and more income tax will force the ageing country into mass immigration.

On the other hand, young adults will continue to move to "attractive" countries with better opportunities. Typical examples: Polish people moving to the UK, an Indian moving to the US, an Italian going to Switzerland, etc.

This has a self-reinforcing effect: the host country gets a more young and active population, generating wealth and a good standard of living in the host country, as well as a solid labour force and new thriving businesses, making the host country more attractive to immigrants in the future.

On the other hand, the immigrant's country of origin suffers from a declining labour force, putting even more pressure on the ageing local population. Businesses will struggle from both low manpower supply and low demand, the economy of the country will struggle, and it will make the country even less attractive to immigrants and deplete the finance and labour force, accelerating the downturn in the demographic collapse.

I am afraid that some countries in Europe will suffer massively from emigration and poverty, while young people will flock to the hot spots like London, Madrid and Paris, which offer the best opportunities for a vibrant city, economic opportunities and good, albeit expensive standard of living.

A declining working population will exacerbate and amplify the demographic problems in some regions of the world. This phenomenon will also occur within a country, from low-density to high-density areas. Large cities will continue to attract young adults, while small towns and rural areas will retain only their ageing and established population, leaving these remote areas in an even worse demographic situation than the national average.

This is already happening in some small towns in Portugal, Italy and Eastern Europe: Because of the lack of opportunities and the very old local population, young people are moving to the nearby cities, increasing the average age of the local population. This trend will continue at national level in the future.

In the long run, you can only have 2 of these 3 facts: A buoyant economy, low birth rate, and low immigration with ethnic continuity and homogeneity. You can have only max 2 of those facts over four or five decades, and each country will choose its own path.

Some of the devolopped countries have chosen the first 2, economic growth and ethnicity continuity, like Korea, Japan, China, and those countries have thrived in the past 40 years but are now facing demographic collapse.

Some countries like USA, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore have long chosen the path of immigration and "brain drain" to attract dynamic young adults to boost their economy and compensate for the low local fertility rate. But those countries are the outliers rather than the norm.

Most of the countries in Europe like France, Germany are trying to stay afloat economically but are actually in degrowth economically, while openly welcoming immigrants, but soon there will be only a very limited amount of origin countries that can be the source the young immigrant labor force, limiting our pool of available candidates. Soon, only sub-Saharan African countries will be able to provide to a host country for immigration. I am pro-immigration, but when no country has any excess young labor force to offer, host countries will struggle to replace their local retiring population with a qualified immigrant workforce. Immigration is an obvious and necessary tool to compensate for the ageing population, but because the pool of candidates is reducing, the immigration will not be big enough, impactful enough to compensate for the decreasing labor force, and if done too fast and too numerously, it causes minority ethnies to become significant part of the host countries, raising all the integration and acceptance issues, like we are observing in Europe nowdays.

The times of Eastern European going to Western Europe, asian coming to Australia or USA or Indian coming to the UK will be over rapidly in the coming decades because there is simply not enough young people in those origin countries.

Immigration and integration in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is much easier than in Europe.

In the USA, immigration is an easier process than in Europe for many reasons: All Americans basically have immigrant ancestors, so it is part of the culture and tradition to come to the USA to work and have a better life. The country speaks English, which makes integration easier. The majority of immigrants are Latinos from the southern border. Both Latinos and Americans are mainly Christian, so they share similar values about life, family, role of men and women, and integration is easier. Finally, the US has only 2 borders and 2 oceans, so it is much easier to control the flow of immigrants and to set immigrant selection rules and apply an immigration policy, compared to Europe with open borders and a multitudes of neighboring countries, including African and Asian countries.

Europe is very different: Each country has its own language, culture and tradition, is somehow proud of its heritage and has 2000 years of history, which makes the integration of immigrants more difficult. Immigrants often feel unwelcome and distant from their home countries. Moreover, the majority of migrants come from Africa and the Middle East, which makes most of them Muslims in a Christian environment, leading to clashes of values, cultures and family patterns. Then there is the EU's lack of borders, which makes it impossible to arbitrate and regulate immigration rules at the national level european countries have given up their immigration policy to the EU institutions, a group of not appointed not soveriegn "leaders" that decide on behalf of 27 countries. Finally, the modern European vision of embracing values such as diversity, feminism, democracy and climate protection is seen by some immigrants coming from non-European cultures as a sign of weakness and lack of a strong patriarchal and authoritarian regime, which clashes with the ethnic background of most migrants.

In the end, this European policy of open borders for the integration of migrants and refugees in Europe has led to a growing immigrant population. About a fourth of Europe is of immigrant background outside of Europe, and the trend is rising. But we have often failed to integrate them all properly with hospitality, failed to provide them with quick paperwork settlment and prompt participation in the labour market, and failed to provide them with social housing in a district mixed with the local population. First and second generation immigrants tend to live in segregated housing within their communities or with other immigrant communities, only very few of them are dispersed and mixed with the native population. People prefer to live near other people of the same ethnicity, and this creates a gap between the values of the natives and the values and culture of the immigrants.

In Europe, the unemployment rate is higher for immigrants than for the native population. In 2021 in the US, the employment rate for the native-born was 5.3% compared to 5.6% for the foreign-born, which is not a significant difference. But in the EU in 2021, the unemployment rate was 8% for the native-born and 13.5% for the foreign-born, a huge difference. This reflects the fact that most immigrants are not selected for their skills and labour needs but for asylum and social protection, that too many are probably admitted compared to Europe's absorption capacity, and that they are not given solid opportunities to integrate into society through jobs.

Immigrants also have many more children than the local population, which will increase the proportion of people with a migrant background in the coming generations. Most people prefer to be surrounded by people who are similar and close to them, and this does not mean that they hate others, are racist or intolerant.

What I am trying to illustrate here is that the integration and assimilation of migrants with very different cultural backgrounds is very difficult, costly and takes years, which tends to lead to ethnic segregation of societies. The first year(s) of immigration is difficult, painful and costly for both the immigrant and the host population. While immigration is polarising, a heated debate, and a very painful process for both immigrants and hosts to integrate into the local population, immigration remains a necessary demographic survival need for nations, and history has shown that nothing can stop people from migrating to greener pastures. Migration is part of human history and will remain so whether we like it or not. While immigration helps to fill the gaps in the labour shortage, especially in the low-wage sector, it does little to sustain our social system of intensive health care and pensions to support the large over-60 cohort.

One personal suggestion for Europe: Why not launch a massive immigration campaign targeting young, black, Christian Africans? They are one of the few remaining abundant source of young population. Many of them would be willing to come to Europe for better life opportunities and career prospects, and they would integrate into Judeo-Christian European culture relatively easily due to their similar religious and cultural heritage. Also, many of them speak English or French, which could be used as a first language for communication in Europe.

The bottom line is that the industrialised countries must integrate millions of sub-Saharan African immigrants, along with some migrants from the Middle-East and from India, in the coming decades, or we will be sliding into more poverty year after year, soverigh debt crisis, inflation, social unrest, civil war and the extinction of our civilisations. The successful integration of immigrants is our only hope and only way to avoid the collapse of civilisation. Let's do it, let's prepare and plan it, let's discuss how to do it and set an immigraton policy, let's get the population to accept and embrace migrants, plan job opportunities for them and let's finance it with public money from the over-60 public money flame thrower called public pension and health care. The structurally low and declining birth rates of the last 50 years have left us with no other choice for survival than to accept mass migration of a different ethnicity and culture.

The only remaining question is: Will mass immigration be enough to save our civilizations? Can immigration compensate for the fertility crisis ?

In 2000, the United Nations published a study entitled "Replacement Migration". Like climate change, global warming and rising national debt, these problems have been known for decades, and the UN in 2000 tried to warn the world that with declining fertility rates, immigration would be far from sufficient to replace the missing young workers due to low birth rates, even 25 years ago it was obvious.

The 2000 UN publication made projections of future migrations between 2000 and 2050, based on actual migrations between 1980 and 2000 and on fertility trends in 2000, which have continued to fall ever since. They then assessed whether these migrants would be sufficient to maintain the working-age population in 2050 at the 2000 level and the old-age dependency ratio in 2050 at the 2000 level. Let's have a look at the publication on Figure 20P below, and add some actual data based on the actual 2000-2020 period.

Figure 20P: Can migration solve the declining fertility, UN publication of 2000

A few comments on this report:

- If we compare the yellow column with the green column, the actual total migration from 2000 to 2020 has far exceeded the projections of 2000 based on the past decades. So far in the 21st century, we have seen many more migrants than expected moving to developed countries such as the US, Europe or Russia. Those migrants are a mixed of economic migrants (brain drain) looking for better career opportunities, political or war migrants fleeing precarious countries, and social migrants coming to benefit from generous social welfare system. Japan, China and South Korea have, as expected, remained very closed countries and have not opened their borders too much to foreigners, which is why these non-diverse ethnic countries will suffer the most in the coming decades.

- What is most interesting is when we compare the green column with the blue column, the actual net migration over the last 20 years compared with the migration required to maintain a stable working age population. Due to higher than expected immigration between 2000 and 2019, many advanced economies have been able to maintain a stable working-age population. This enabled them to keep their economies afloat, maintain positive GDP growth and keep their social welfare systems running and budget deficit in pretty low deficit during the 2000–2019 period. France has done a pretty good job of attracting young workers, the UK and the US have exceeded expectations and have actually grown their workforces size through migration this century, while Russia and Europe in general have only 'recruited' half the number of migrants that would have been needed to maintain their workforces in 2000. And this has had a direct impact on the economy and growth of these regions this century, while the US has been booming. Since the blue column was the projection based on fertility rates in 2000, which have continued to fall since then, the real figures in the blue column, if we now project to 2050, are likely to be much higher, meaning that we will need even more annual migrants than shown in the blue column to maintain our working population to 2050.

- The last important comparison is between the green column and the pink column, which is the actual net migration over the last 20 years compared with the migration required to maintain a stable dependency ratio between pensioners and the working population. Here you can see that every country is between 8 and 20 times below target. This means that the old-age dependency ratio is not being compensated for by either births or migration. Something will have to give in the coming decades: Less state pension, more taxes, higher retirement age, lower quality of health care (probably a mix of all of these), but the social system of 2000 will not be maintained in 2040 and beyond.

More recent publications from McKinsey show the difference between actual migration during the 2015–2019 period and the amount of migration required to maintain our current economic situation. You can view the report in Figure 20Q below.

Figure 20Q: Migration needs against actual migration

The first thing to note from Figure 20Q above is that if those advanced countries maintain the same rate of migrant incorporation speed into the labour force (red compared to blue), we will require between 1.5 and 5 times more migrants every year than the annual migration rate in the recent 2015–2019 period, due to the shrinking young age cohort resulting from low fertility rates in recent decades.

Another key finding is that even if all migrants were workers contributing immediately to the economy and to the tax payer base, all those advanced nations would still require more annual migration than in the 2015–2019 period.

This figure shows that we need to accelerate the migration rate and the speed at which migrants are incorporated into the labour force; otherwise, our economies will slow down and our social welfare systems will have to reduce benefits.

To put that in a simple graph for Europe, as shown on Figure 20R below, at its current migration pace, which is much higher in the last 25 years than in the 1980s and 1990s, we would need to double the immigration rate in the coming decades to keep our economies stable. Otherwise, with the current migration rate, we will start to see a decline in the total EU population, a sharp decline in the working population, and a sharp increase in the elderly social burden of a nation, also known as the old age dependency ratio.

Figure 20R: EU population projections based on migration scenarios.

To maintain the economic and social welfare status quo of the past decade, the immigration rate will have to double over the next few decades. It will be extremely challenging to find migrants, incorporate them quickly into the labour force and gain the approval of our local residents. Good luck with doubling the annual immigration rate in Europe!

Germany has the largest proportion of its population in the 55-65 age group, who will retire within the next 10 to 15 years. However, only 2 native 22-year-olds will enter the German labour force for every 3 elderly Germans retiring. In order to maintain its old age dependency ratio — and thus its economy and social welfare system running as well as today — Germany would need to welcome around 1.5 million immigrants every year for the next 30 years. By 2050, native Germans would be in the minority in their own country. As you can imagine, this poses obvious identity, cultural and social issues.

Let's look at the implications of a higher migration rate:

The ideology coming from European institutions and the European elite is that local white Christians should enjoy their childless adulthood as much as possible through emancipation, hobbies, consumption, careers and freedom, while other people should have children or immigrants should come and replenish the workforce. When we grow old and stop working, a large influx of young adults from Africa and the Middle East will support our ageing population. We will all coexist peacefully and our public welfare system won't change. Our prosperity and social welfare system will continue, while our values and identity will evolve with the share of migrants.

Let's be honest: the chances of this happening peacefully are close to zero. The chances of our democracies surviving the next 50 years are pretty slim. Given the history of European colonialism and the exploitation of other countries for their resources and cheap labour, the situation in Europe is not likely to end well and peacefully. The immigrant workforce will probably not remain silent about their low wages and high taxes, which support a wealthy, mostly elderly and ethnically diverse population. Throughout history, we have seen the consequences of wealthy white Christians exploiting poor Asians, Muslims or Africans for their own comfort and prosperity, and it never ends well. When Muslim and African workers, or the sons of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, become the majority of the workforce in Europe later this century — and it's a matter of when, not if — the elderly white Christian minority will struggle to impose its political will on society.

An integrated and cohabiting mixture of ethnies can only be achieved over several generations and centuries if all ethnic groups are given the same jobs, roles and wealth. The task required to save Europe from its demographic decline between 2010 and 2060 is so huge that it won't happen, both statistically and in terms of societal cohesion. After 50 years of not having sufficient children since the 1970s and a worsening fertility trend decade after decade, it's too late now to draw a realistic positive outcome. Mass immigration is required, but it will only soften the pain; it won't solve the issue, and mass migration will cause other societal issues.

Impact of low birth rates on the public pension system

In a pay-as-you-go pension system, contributions from current workers are used to pay the retirement benefits of current retirees rather than being invested for the contributors' own future retirement. This creates an intergenerational contract which relies on a sufficient number of active workers to support retirees. The level of benefits received becomes unsustainable when the population ages continuously, especially when the ratio of workers to retirees decreases.

The current public pension system by repartition, or pay-as-you-go pension, was put in place after WW2. At that time in 1950, life experctancy was 65 years old, and the share of the population above 60 was unsignificant. You were supposed to work from 18 to 60 years old, and then you would get 5 years of public pension on average. There wer 8 workers on average contributing for the welfare of 1 pensioneer. The system was design to compensate a minority of over-60 for only 5 years of retirement. Fast forward to 2024 and the life expectancy is now around 81 years old, as shown on figure 21A below, which means on average every adult who worked for 40 years receives a pension from the state for 16 years, 3 times longer than when the system was designed for the same length of working time.

Figure 21A: Evolution of life expectancy

As a result of longer life expectancy and diminishing working age population due to low birth rates, the ratio of over-65 benefits receivers compared to the contributors in the age group of 20-65 is growing decades after decades, which means there are less and less workers and tax payers to suport more and more pensioners or tax benefit receivers. In the EU in 2023, out of a total population of 450 million, about 200 million is working, while about 100 million is retired. That's a ratio of 2 to 1 today, and it's expected to be 1.6 to 1 by 2050. The pension situation is truly unsustainable as constructed.

A public pension is not an achievment of societal progress or an acquired human right that is universal and everlasting. Public pensions are just a generational privilege that we are about to lose.

The Silent Generation (people born between 1928 and 1945) enjoyed this privilege because life expectancy up to 1970 was 70 years old, and because the subsequent Baby Boomer generation (people born between 1945 and 1970) was so large that it could provide the necessary workforce, taxpayer pool and high level of consumption required for economic growth between 1970 and 2010. When public pensions were introduced around 1950, they were often seen as a reward for the elderly because they had fought and survived WWII. This is certainly a compelling story, but the reality is that it was only possible because of the large number of baby boomers and the short duration of the expected annuity of public pension benefits. The problem is that we took it for granted and assumed that a public pension at the age of 60 would be enshrined in the constitution and that retirees would receive a decent pension for life in the next centuries, whatever the state of the demography. What was missing from this narrative was the fact that the retirement age and pension benefits depend entirely on the ratio of workers to pensioners, and if this ratio changes, the public pension system must change too. When life expectancy was around 65 in the 1950s, providing a state pension at 60 was obviously not a burden on the working population. However, life expectancy is now 81 years, meaning that even if we retire at 65, there are still 16 years of pension benefits to be distributed in a world where the largest cohort, the baby boomers, are now retirees, while Gen Z and Millennials aged 20–45 are in short supply. The social model that we thought represented human progress is absolutely bound to demographics, and with worsening demographics, we have no choice but to reduce the privileges and benefits of the public pension system.

In the past decade or the coming 2 decades, the population aged over 50 in many country is becoming the most populated age group. Most of European countries are expected to have half of their population over 50 years of age by 2040 or by 2050. The old age dependency ratio, which is the number of people aged 65 and over in a country for every 100 people of working age (15-64), is expected to rise sharply in the coming decades, as shown in Figure 21B below.

Figure 21B: Old-age dependency ratios

This is non-sense to believe you can get public benefits to pay for 100% of your cost of living for 20 years or retirement without working, while having worked 40 years, and while people stopped having kids hence having a shrinking working age population. The public pension system as constructed is only possible if you have 5 to 8 workers for 1 pensioneer, as it was designed in the 1950s. But nowdays, with a ratio of 2 workers for 1 retiree, soon to be 1.5 worker for 1 retiree, this is utterly unsustainable, from a financial point of view but also from a labor workforce point of view.

The ageing population and the shrinking workforce

Figures 21C and 21D below show the proportion of the population aged over 65 and over 80, respectively, in several countries in 2019, alongside projections for 2050. These projections are extremely reliable because the current number of people aged over 40 and over 55 is well known and will not be affected by immigration, which tends to involve people in their 20s. Also, the people who will enter the workforce in the next 20 years are those aged 1–20 today, and this number is known and fixed. Additionally, birth rates exhibit minimal volatility and variation, with trends remaining constant or evolving slowly over decades. This makes the demography of the next 30 years highly predictable, barring a nuclear war or meteorite apocalypse.

Figure 21C: Share of the population over 65 in 2019 and 2050

Figure 21D: Share of the population over 80 in 2019 and 2050

You can see that all advanced economies, without exception, are expected to have a growing proportion of over-65 retired people in their populations, as well as a growing proportion of people over the age of 80 requiring special attention, medication and support. This will create an economic and productivity drag, a financial unsolvable equation, and a labour shortage for services related to the health and care of the elderly.

In the 1970s to 2000s, the large middle class of the working population (Babyboomers and GenX) could afford to buy a house, could afford to have only one income to feed a family of 2 parents and 2 children, saw a booming economy and where able to grow their wealth. In the mean time, the pensioneers had relatively poor standards of living, received some pensions benefits but were supported by their children and grandchildren. Fast forward to the 2010s and 2020s: The middle class of the young generations of under-45 (Millenials and GenZ) can not afford to buy houses, both adults must work full time if they want to have a family of 2 kids, and both individual incomes and corporate revenues are taxed heavily to support the massive elderly population. On average, pensioneers of today have much better standards of living than young working adults of today, simply because they were able to accumulate and grow wealth than young adults can no longer achieve.

The fact that the average retiree lives in better conditions than the average young adult is reflected in the poverty risk level, which is defined as the proportion of the population with incomes below 60% of the national median. Figure 21E below shows that young adults are the age group most at risk of poverty, and retirees are the age group least at risk.

Figure 21E: Poverty rate by age group in Europe

If you look at the evolution over the last 3 decades, you can see on Figure 21F below that poverty has mostly affected young adults while pensioneers ar the age group the less at risk. This is not something new, as shown for France but the fact is the same in all European countries, or advanced deocracies with a public pension system by repartition.

Figure 21F: Evolution of poverty rate by age group in France

Today's pensioners have accumulated much more wealth over their lifetime than those in the 1960s and 1970s, who endured WWI, the Great Depression of the 1920s, and WWII. Take a look at the chart below on Figure 21G showing living standards in France, which include property ownership and pension benefits. While pensioners in the 1970s and 1980s had a lower standard of living than the average working adult (as would be expected in an ideal world), pensioners since the 2000s have had a slightly higher standard of living than the average working adult when property ownership is taken into account. This trend is likely to be the same in all other developed countries with a public pension system.

Figure 21G: relative standards of living of pentioneers, France

As shown on figure 21G above, the average living standard of a French pensioner in the 2020s is about 5% higher than that of the average worker. For comparison, french pensioners had living standards that were 30% worse than workers in the 1970s, 20% worse in the 1980s, and 10% worse in the 1990s, 5% worse in the 2000s and 3% higher in the 2010s. It is projected that this will return to 10% worse than workers in the 2040s. How can we come up to a system that taxes companies and working people so heavily to fund high pension benefits for inactive pensioners, allowing them to live better than workers on average? How did we allow this to happen and do nothing about it? Throughout the past 2000 years of world history, there has never been a time or a civilization where elderly inactive people had a higher standard of living than active workers. The elderly should always live modestly, either through the social system or directly from their children, but never better than the next generation, on average. It is absurd, and the fair and easy way to address this is to cap and limit all pensions to a low level while maintaining a decent minimum pension, so that no elderly person is homeless.

Retirement duration expectancy favours the rich, as the richest people tend to live much longer than those working difficult and exhaustive jobs on minimum wage their entire life. For example, in France, the top 5% earners of the population live until an average age of 85, while the bottom 5% earners live until an average age of 72. If you retire at 62, the wealthiest receive pension benefits for 23 years, but the poorest only for 10 years, that's 2.5 times less in duration. Moreover, the longevity gap is growing decade after decade. When you consider that the wealthiest people receive 2 to 4 times more pension benefits than the poorest, the ratio of total benefits received is 1-to-8 in favor of the richest earners. Consider that in the context of a social system: The wealthiest pensioners, who have plenty of assets, savings and real estate, receive on average 8 times more public pension benefits than the poorest people, who are the ones who are desperately in need. What a shameful system! Rather than calling it a social system, it should be called an intergenerational forced redistribution, in which elderly asset owners receive public benefits at the expense of impoverished elderly people and at the expense of overtaxed workers. What a disgrace!

Pension money does not fall from the sky. You cannot get all these pension benefits for 20 years if the elderly people are the majority of the population. Benefits and privileges and subsidies are by definition intended for a minority. If it is distributed to the majority, it is not sustainable for the minority who are actually funding the system. It's so obvious, such a blatant fact, that I can't even understand people who assume that the current pension and health care system will continue for the next 20 years. It will definitely crash. I guarantee you that in 2040/2050, pensioners in Europe will not be able to live decently for their 20 years of retirement based on public pensions alone. It will not work. I also believe life expectancy will reduce a bit due to poverty and lack of human support of the elderly without savings. But because it is a sensitive issue, a beloved system that everyone enjoys, no politician will even raise the issue publicly, and no one is willing to make tough changes and sacrifices and be hated by their own fellow citizens for trying to change a beloved social system. So what is going to happen is that we are going to face the wall of public debt and soaring interest rates, and we are going to crash into the wall and suddenly abandoned a large chunk of the social welfare system. The future of the state pension is bleak and it will be paid for by more national debt, more poverty and loss of purchasing power for everyone, to the detriment of the working population nad to the detriment of lower birth rates, which is an aggravating and reinforcing negative force on the future pension system. It is absolute nonsense, we are all spoiled and brainwashed from the last 60 years, believing that good things are eternal, not looking at the facts and figures of today. What worked in the past was only possible because the majority of the population was working and under 50 years old. That will no longer be the case.

To better understand the impact of an ageing population and a shrinking working-age population, let's consider a population of ten people evolving through three different decades. In the first decade (equivalent to the 1980s and 1990s), the population comprises 2 retirees, 5 workers and 3 children. In the second decade (representing the 2000s and 2010s), fertility rates declined, some children turned into adults and some workers retired, resulting in a population structure of 3 retirees, 5 workers and 2 children. In the third decade (representing the 2030s and 2040s), fertility keeps declining, the children missing from the second decade now represent a missing labour force, while many workers retire, resulting in a population of 3 retirees, 4 workers and 1 child.

The table 21H below provides an overview of tax contributions level and social benefits level over three different decades and in three different scenarios: The first scenario is favourable to retirees, assuming they maintain the same level of benefits throughout the decades. The second scenario is pro-worker, assuming that the tax burden on the working population remains constant over the various decades. The third scenario is a compromise in which both pensioners lose some benefits and workers pay slightly more tax. Obviously, this oversimplified calculation assumes that only income tax contributes to the public pension system and that no public debt is incurred to fund the pension system.

Figure 21H: Impact of low fertility on pensions over 2 generations

In the first decade, let's say that each retiree received a package of healthcare, pension benefits, public transport and other social benefits valued at 100. This is the total retirement benefit received from an inactive retiree, which is entirely possible via the contributions of the workers. By contribution, I mean manpower, goods and services delivered, and taxes paid. In the first decade, if each retiree received 100, then each worker would have contributed 40 each (2x100÷5).

In the second decade, society can take one of 3 paths: Path #1 in light blue: Society decides to maintain the same level of 100 per retiree. In this case, each worker needs to contribute 60 each (3x100÷5). This represents a 50% increase in the burden on each worker. Path #2 in yellow: The society decides to keep the burden on workers stable. In this case, each retiree receives 67 (40×5÷3). This would mean a 33% decrease in living standards for each retiree. Path #3 in pink: Society finds a middle ground. Each worker contributes 50, which is a middle between 40 and 60. In this case, each pensioner receives 83 (5x50÷3). That's a loss of 25% for the workers and 17% for the pensioneers.

In the third decade, let's continue with these 3 paths and add a third where both workers and pensioners make sacrifices. In Path #1 in light blue, the society maintains the same level of 100 per retiree. In this case, each worker needs to contribute 75 each (3x100÷4). That's an additional 25% burden on each worker compared to the second decade, and almost double that in the first decade. In Path #2 in yellow, the society decides to keep the burden on workers stable. In this case, each retiree receives 53 each (4x40÷3). This represents a 20% decrease in living standards for each retiree compared to the second decade, and is almost half the living standards of the first decade. Path #3 in pink: Society goes the middle ground. Each worker contributes 55, which is neither 40 nor 75 but in the middle. In this case, each pensioner receives 73. In only two generations, the workers' burden has increased from 40 to 55, and pension benefits have decreased from 100 to 73. Consequently, both age groups have experienced a 30–40% reduction in their living standards compared to the first decade.

The point of this simplified example is to show that whichever path we choose, whether to maintain good living standards for retirees or to ease the tax burden on workers, all paths lead to suffering and a reduction in living standards overall. The question is which generation shall suffer the least and which generation we should protect the most. We have chosen to keep giving retirees a solid pension, which has made it more difficult for young adults to finance their life and finance children, thereby aggravating the situation for the next generation. High corporate tax has made Europe uncompetitive to other continents. By allowing all retirees to vote and have a say, go demonstrate and protest to keep their social benefits, and by becoming the largest voting bloc, the over-60s now dominate the political spectrum and force de-facto our leaders to protect the pensioneers standards of living, hence at the detriment of the working middle class and low wages. Pensioners don't really care if civilisation collapses in 2050 amid civil war, but today's young adults do. Humans are short-sighted and can only plan for this year or next year; nobody plans 10 years ahead or 30 years ahead. This short-term mindset has led us to mortgage the future and sacrifice future generations in order to maintain good conditions for the elderly population today. This will turn out to be the biggest error of modern civilisation. In the coming 2 decades, if we finally shed light on the situation regarding demographics, public debt and tax levels, we will realise the obvous: Societal choices were irresponsible and we should have sacrificed the elderly population.

There is an important detail that people often get wrong:

The social redistributed pension, or pay-as-you-go public pension, is not a reward for past work. It is a government subsidy, a financial support given to pensioners in a given month for the taxes and services provided by the work done by workers in the same month. It has nothing to do with the last 40 years. The state pension is not a reward for your past 40 years of performance and diligent work. It is a live and dynamic redistribution of current goods, services and taxes from workers to pensioners at a given moment. Whether a pensioneer of today is awarded 1000€ per month or 3000€ is a purely arbitrary choice, not set in stone, and it should be changed any time to reflect the average contribution of workers today. The pension benefits have nothing to do with the past 40 years, whether you earned well or not, or whether you worked 30 years or 45 years. This idea that pensions revenue depend purely on past earned revenue is wrong, it is a false belief, and it will trigger the destruction of the pension system.

To understand this better, imagine a society that suddenly stops having babies overnight and never has any more. All the children grow up and all the adults work diligently for 45 years. After 65 years, the entire population of this society would be aged 65 or over because no babies had been born in the last 65 years. Consequently, there would be nobody under the age of 65 in that society. Do these elderly people "deserve" a pension? Yes, they have all worked for 45 years, so they should deserve a pension. But will they actually get a pension? No, because there are no more workers under the age of 65 in that society. Without a working population, the society would collapse immediately: there would be no goods or services to provide, no taxes to collect, and no redistribution to make. Everyone would die within days because nobody would be working to provide goods and services, or support the elderly. Working for 45 years does not guarantee any pension privileges. The pension privileges you receive are entirely based on the number of working-age adults, which is why the number of children you have in your early adult life should determine how much pension benefit you receive. Your work annuity contribution should not count, but rather your breeding and your contributions in putting young people into the social system should be considered.

Figure 21J below shows how much in public benefits and social contributions a person receives from the state depending on their age. It illustrates that people over the age of 60 receive the lion's share of all taxes in the form of public pension benefits and healthcare services. This graph is shown for France, but any European country with a strong social welfare system has a similar distribution, in which people over the age of 60 receive the majority of taxes paid by workers aged 20–60.

Figure 21J: French government spending by beneficiary age

In France, 56% of all spending is allocated to child support, healthcare and public pensions. This leaves very little for infrastructure investment, defence spending, education and other government budget requirements, as shown on figure 21K below.

Figure 21K: French government spending in social welfare

While healthcare for children and workers can be seen as an investment that generates present and future goods and services, most of the spending is on the over-60 population, and this is purely consumption spending, with no return expected in 5, 10 or 20 years. If this spending were to be funded through a balanced budget, without placing heavy tax burdens on workers and businesses, this redistribution pattern could be acceptable. However, the reality is that all this spending, primarily on the over-60s, is funded through public debt and a growing deficit, a growing government debt spiral, as well as heavy taxation on the working population and private companies, which either become uncompetitive, unable to hire workers or relocate offshore if they can. Social policy is ruining the current and future working populations for the benefit of a wealthy retired population enjoying unsustainable balooned privileges.

France is one of many countries with deep-rooted social welfare systems that were great in the 1950s to 2010s, but can no longer be maintained due to demographic reversal. With baby boomers retiring and fewer young adults joining the labour force, spending on the elderly is rising in many countries, taxation is up high, while public investment is stuck with a diminishing budget, as shown in Figure 21L.

Figure 21L: public investment VS old-age spending

The public pension system is so deeply rooted in our culture that it is an irrefutable assumption, a non-negotiable fact. Nobody dares to question how much public money pensioners receive in the form of pension benefits and healthcare. Most people deeply believe that if you work and pay pension tax for 40 years, you deserve a well-paid pension for the rest of your life with free health care, like a gift from god or a universal human right. As if health care and public pension would fall from the sky. People don't question who pays for the pension or how unbalanced the system has become over the years between taxpayers and benefit recipients. Everyone assumes that providing solid public pensions and free healthcare to over-65s is a universal good thing, and that it is acceptable to maintain the privileges that have existed for 70 years, without realising that there is not enough tax money being collected in that redistribution system anymore. Europe is completely under the sway of a utopian and idealistic cultural belief, much like a religion, and no one shall contest it.

The public pension system (or "social security" in the US) is a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is a system where earlier participants are paid solely from the contributions of later participants, with no exchange or production of real value.

A Ponzi scheme

The most famous Ponzi scheme was perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, a financial criminal who stole $65 billion from his clients over the years and was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009. His method was simple: Promise investors an attractive and stable return of, say, 10% on financial investments, and use the money of the latest participants to pay the profits or dividends to earlier investors, while the money was never invested anywhere and never used to earn value or create anything. He was caught during the so-called "bank run" of the 2008 financial crisis, when many investors wanted to withdraw their original money, but the money was no longer there because it had been used by himself or to pay annual benefits to previous investors.

The state pension system is very similar: A young adult enters the workforce and starts paying pension taxes (social security taxes in the US) every year for 40 years, but this money is not invested anywhere, it is immediately redistributed to today's pensioners. After 40 years, when it is time for the adult worker to retire, he/she expects the new workers to contribute to his state pension. In the pension Ponzi scheme, the profits paid out depend on the number of retirees, and the contributions of new entrants depend on the size of the labour force. And similar to Madoff's Ponzi scheme, but much slower than a bank run, we are in for an ageing population and a shrinking workforce (not in the US, but almost everywhere else), with more people demanding a payout and fewer people contributing to the system.

There are some differences between Madoff's Ponzi scheme and the state pension system:

- Everyone with a job must participate and pay the pension tax, we don't really have a choice by law.

- Profits or dividends are not redistributed every year, but only after 40 to 45 years of work, and a lot can/will happen before we retire, whether you are 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years old now.

- The bank run on the public pension system is happening very slowly, not within months like B. Madoff, but over decades. But it will certainly happen in the next 3 decades. Not that all pension money will disappear, but it will probably be reduced by half or a third per pensioner by 2050 in many industrialised countries.

- A Ponzi scheme can be widely accepted and beneficial to everyone, and it can last for as long as there are new entrants to the Ponzi scheme. However, it requires a constant and surplus inflow of new participants compared to previous ones in order to supply the latter. Since the 2010s, there has been a decline in inflows compared to outflows, and this situation is certainly going to worsen over the next 20 years. This means that the Ponzi scheme of public pensions is about to collapse before our eyes. It is just a matter of time.

Decisions about when to retire, how much to tax workers and how much to give pensioners are arbitrary rules that politicians can and should change to balance the system. But one rule is universal: The sum of those tax payers contributing and paying for the pensions must equal the sum of those receiving pensions. If there is an imbalance, which is compensated for by debt and money printing, it is unsustainable in the long run and leads to currency devaluation and inflation, because the supply of output does not change (money printing does not create tax-paying workers), but the demand grows (more pensioners and fewer workers year after year). This is what is going to happen, we are heading for a civilisation crisis, and everyone is passive, hardly talking about it, more concerned with buzz news topics like local wars, immigration, AI and tech innovation, irreversible climate change and other celebrities. I don't get it. Why aren't we talking about the lack of children and young adults every day as the biggest risk of our industrial civilization? An ageing population with a low birth rate is the most dangerous threat on a planetary scale since the asteroid hit the Earth and killed the dinosaurs 60 million years ago. It really is a massive global societal collapse happening everywhere at the same time when all our societies are globally interconnected, and nobody seems to care. I am stunned. Low birth rates should be the hottest topic on TV, in social media, in political debates and at school and university.

To understand the reality of our current social system, consider this simplified analogy:

Imagine that in the 1960s and 1970s, our population was made up of 10 people: 2 retirees, 6 workers and 2 children. Each worker produced 3 potatoes, making 18 in total. We would distribute 2 to each retiree, 2 to each worker and one to each child. This system would redistribute 4 potatoes to the 2 retirees, 12 potatoes to the 6 workers and 2 potatoes to the two children. In this analogy, the potatoes represent the total amount of tax collected, which is mostly produced or paid by workers through income tax, corporation tax and VAT.

Now, in the 2020s and 2030s, the demographic setup has changed dramatically: Our population is still made of 10 people, but we now have 4 retirees, 5 workers and 1 child. As pensioners have been receiving two potatoes each for 70 years, we continue to give them 2 each, assuming they "deserve" it for their hard work in the past. Let's assume the five workers produce now 3 potatoes each instead of 2, thanks to productivity improvements. This gives a total of 15 potatoes. The four pensioners get 8 potatoes, leaving only 6 potatoes for the 5 workers, which is almost 1 potato per worker, a significant decrease from the two potatoes per worker received 60 years ago. In this unfair system, retirees are getting twice as many potatoes as workers. Essentially, despite productivity gains, workers' reward or purchasing power has been halved over 60 years for the same quantity of work. A fairer distribution would be to give everyone 1.5 potatoes, including retirees. However, by keeping high pension for everyone in the current system, young adults receive less for their work and feel poor and are short of money. They can no longer afford to buy a house or have two or more children, which will further aggravate the situation for the next 20 to 60 years, aggravating the situation generation after generation. All this pressure on workers is caused by our persistence in providing generous public support to retirees, even though the population of pensioneers is growing fast and the working population has been declining slowly since the 2010s. Our unwillingness to reduce pensioners' welfare benefits is having a detrimental effect on the population, the economy, the government budget and our prosperity. We have to print new money at a rate of 7% per year to continue providing public benefits, which would result in debt and inflation, with the top 5% benefiting the most from this new money supply, and 95% of the people losing purchasing power over time. Providing the same public benefits to retirees today as we did 60 years ago exacerbates inequalities, creates unsustainable debt that will lead to high inflation and mass poverty, causing the economy, our prosperity, and our civilisation to collapse. This is the unfortunate reality.

Impact of low birth rates on the health care social system

With the general decline in birth rates over the past 50 years, the population of developed countries is ageing rapidly, and it is expected that by 2040 or 2050 most industrialised countries will have a median age of 50, meaning that half the population of OECD countries will be over 50. And the older you get, the more healthcare, treatments, interventions and drugs you consume on average. As a rough guide, when life expectancy is around 81 years today, about half of the total healthcare costs of your life are incurred in the first 60 years of life, with the remaining half being spent after the age of 60 in the last 20 to 30 years of your life. When a society has a predominantly elderly population, the cost of the healthcare system skyrockets, not only in money terms, but also in manpower and labor to physically support elderly, and all related health care jobs required.

The public health care system will face similar pressures to the pension system, with growing demand and shrinking supply: More public spending and need for health services, but a declining working population, which means less labour available for health services and fewer taxpayers.

An ageing population means an ageing workforce, which results in more sick leave and treatment, and less productive working time on average, or more cost for the society while less output is produce. Figure 22A below illustrates the evolution of the proportion of 'unhealthy' working-age adults in the UK over the past 15 years, as determined by various surveys and various definitions of 'unhealthy'. All trends indicate an increasing proportion of unhealthy working-age adults, primarily due to population ageing.

Figure 22A: Rate of unhealthy working age people in the UK

Similar figures showing increased healthcare costs over the last five decades are evident across all nations, as the median age is rising rapidly in all advanced economies. Figure 22B below shows that the proportion of individual income spent on healthcare in the US has grown from around 7% in 1960 to around 23% today — a significant change, mostly compensated for by a substantial decrease in grocery costs — reflecting both increased healthcare service costs and the increased volume of healthcare received per person due to population ageing.

Figure 22B: Evolution of household spending in healthcare in US

The total cost of healthcare for an ageing population increases exponentially with age. If we break down healthcare spending by age group in the US, the difference is staggering: In the US, the average annual healthcare spending is $4,700 for people under 45 years of age, $9,600 for people aged 45–65, $19,300 for people aged 65–85, and $34,800 for people over 85.

Take dementia, for example. Dementia is a general term for a loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking skills that is severe enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia. The relative increase in the number of people with dementia will be particularly burdensome. Unlike many other diseases, such as cancer or cardiovascular disease, dementia does not shorten life expectancy. Rather, it incapacitates people and requires large human resources to care for them.

Figure 22C below shows current rates and projections for 2050. I fear that in the coming decades not everyone with dementia will be cared for due to a lack of human and financial resources, and that some older people, especially the poor, will simply be left alone. There will be neither the money nor the human labor to attend for every elderly people in need.

Figure 22C: Dementia, current rates and projections

The difference between the public pension system and the public health care system is that, in the pension system you are either a taxpayer (under 65) or a beneficiary (over 65), clearly on one side or the other, but in the health care system everyone from a baby until death is on the beneficiary side and at the same time the working population between 20 and 65 is also on the contributor side. I am both a taxpayer and a recipient of health care. The health system is a kind of insurance: People pay a flat rate based on their income when they are working, and everyone, including children and pensioners, receives health care according to their needs.

As with any insurance, the rate usually depends on the value of the good you want to insure and also on the risk of damage. A $1 million Ferrari will cost a lot more to insure than your second-hand VW Golf car, because the cost of repairing or replacing the Ferrari is much higher than that of the Volkswagen. A house in Miami costs a lot more to insure than a house in Munich, because the risk of a hurricane in Florida is much higher than the risk of a storm or flood in Bavaria.

And here is the problem: why does a 30-year-old pay the same tax for his health "insurance" as a 60-year-old with the same income? Between the ages of 20 and 35, you hardly ever go to the doctor, you are hardly ever seriously ill, you just need regular check-ups, you are a low-maintenance type. But when you are 60 or 80 years old, you need a lot of assistance, medicines, drugs and treatments, interventions, public services support, etc. When you are over 60, you are a real cost to the health system because you need expensive health services and you need them more often. It makes no sense at all for young adults to pay the same as old adults when we are talking about public health care. People in their 60s who are covered under a private health insurance pay much more than privatly insured people in their 20s or 30s.

So why does the public system do things differently? Why don't we have a very low flat-rate health insurance cost for everyone aged 20–35, a quite low flat-rate insurance cost for the 35–50 age group, a high flat-rate healthcare tax for the 50–65 age group, and a very high monthly insurance cost for those aged 65 and over? That would create a fairer healthcare system, as it would avoid the problem of young adults paying a lot while the elderly receive most of the benefits, as is currently the case with the pension system. Within a given age group — for example, 35 to 50 — you would pay a flat healthcare tax of a set amount, such as €300 monthly. In return, you would receive treatment and medicine depending on your personal needs. This would be a true social system, where each taxpayer pays as much as the average cost of healthcare services received by people of their age. The amount of healthcare you receive would have nothing to do with your income, but would be far more related to your age. This would make much more sense and be fairer for everyone.

I can already hear the answer: << It is solidarity, it is good manners for the elderly. Pay now while you are young but later on, when you grow old, other youngsters will pay for you >>

Well, it is one thing to be generous and show solidarity when there are 20 working people paying for 3 pensioners, as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s, but it is another thing when there are only 6 working people paying for 3 pensioners, as is the case today. By the time I retire around 2050, there will only be 4 workers for every 3 retirees, so it's delusional and irrational to think I'll receive a decent pension. I am paying in now, but nobody will pay enough for me in the future. Like everyone under 50 years of age, I am screwed.

In the EU in 2023, out of a total population of 450 million, about 200 million is working, while about 100 million is retired. Today, the ratio of total population to working population is 2.3-to-1, and it is expected to be 1.6-to-1 by 2050. The system, as originally constructed at the end of the Second World War, was designed based on an 8 to 1 ratio, and functioned quite well later on in the 1960s to 1990s with a ratio of 6 to 1. However, with a ratio of 2 to 1 nowdays, there simply aren't enough taxpayers and workers to sustain a public healthcare system, at least not to the standard we have become accustomed to. Without any major tweaks since its creation, the public health care system in reality a fraud, a drain of money from the working young generations to the less productive or unproductive old generations, and adding public debt each year. A sacrifice of young and future adults generations to the benefits of current over 50 people. A robbery of the quality of life and a burden on the young adults for the benefit of the privileged and the spoiled older adults. This is all to the detriment of young adults, which is why financial stability is a key factor for those who choose to remain childless, and a major reason why we now need 2 full-time salaries to support a family with children, whereas in the 1960s or 1970s 1 salary could cover the living costs of a family of 4. Young adults pay far too much health tax for the low amount of benefits they receive on average, while older adults pay far too little for the high amount of benefits they receive.

A fair system, even a public one, is one where you pay on average for what you get on average. Why should you pay $300 a month to go to the doctor once a year, while a 70-year-old also pays the same $300 a month but gets a wheelchair, monthly scans, MRIs, radiographies, 20 pills a week, blood checks, ambulance services and rehab treatments? It is unfair and it is crushing the young workers. A 30-year-old should pay $50 a month in health tax, while a 70-year-old should pay $500. If the over 60s paid fairly for their real average health care costs, they would be forced to live modestly as they should, they would live more on their own savings instead of on government support as they should, and they would stop living in exuberance as many do, with trips to a few sunny places and resorts, regular restaurants, pottery and art classes, theatres and exhibitions, and so on.

I have nothing against the over-60s, I am all for some solidarity with some minorities, but the minority has become the majority and it is to the detriment of the under-40s who cannot afford to pay the rent downtown, orbuy a small apartment, and cannot afford to have children. Something is wrong and needs to change immediately. If you see a homeless person, would you give him $5? Probably, and that's great, you're a generous and good person. But if you see a homeless person every 20 metres on your Sunday walk, are you going to give them $5 each? No, you wouldn't, because by the time you get back home, you'd be broke and have no money left for yourself. Not that you're a bad person, but you can't help that many people. So why are young workers taxed so heavily and forced to feed the welfare system for older people who, for the most part, have already accumulated so much wealth during their 40 year carreer through the golden era 1960s-2010s? The health care system is broken, it is breaking society, and it is affecting the consumption and purchasing power of young adults, and it is driving down the birth rate, which is a self-reinforcing act of social system destruction. When fertility rates are at 2.1 or above, the labour force and taxpayer base remain constant, enabling the healthcare system to function well indefinitely. However, we have had fertility rates below the replacement rate of 2.1 since the 1970s. This means that, since around 2010, our local labour force and taxpayer base has been shrinking. With the shockingly low birth rates of the last 15 years, the next two decades will see an acceleration of the demographic problem, with a very low influx of new young taxpayers and health care workers, meaning that the healthcare system will not be able to sustain the quality and quantity of services it offers. In fact, for each 22-year-old native entering the labour force, we would need an additional 22-year-old migrant, ready to work immediately, simply to compensate for the ageing population and low birth rates. This won't happen, and something will have to give.

Not only the pension system will collapse soon, but also the public health care system. Consider this: 50% of all the money you spend in your life for health care is done after you turn 60. Europeans and Americans spend half of their health bill in the first 60 years, and the other half during their last 20 to 25 years. Now imagine Europe in 2040 or 2050 with half of the population over 50 years old. How can you believe that we will still have free health care for everyone? How can doctors, hospitals handle this massive inflow of over-60 years old that demand health treatments? Imagine if the overload and gigantic influx of patients during the Covid-19 pandemic became the norm every year from 2040 onwards, with hospitals and doctors overwhelmed by the number of patients requiring healthcare treatment. How can the heath care system simply maintain its labor force and capacity when the working population shrinks?

As long as we consider our welfare system, including free and unlimited public healthcare, to be a universal right that cannot be negotiated, we will be heading towards disaster, poverty and collapse. Unfortunately, we must refrain from providing unlimited and free healthcare services to everyone. We have to impose restrictions and limitations on who receives public healthcare, set priorities of patients and how much of services and cost each one is entitled. This is the unfortunate consequence of simple demographic mathematics: As the population ages and the birth rate continues to decline, there will be more people over the age of 50 or 60 and fewer young workers aged 20 to 40 who are rarely sick and contribute greatly to society through work and as taxpayers. There are more healthcare recipients for fewer healthcare providers and contributors (tax revenue). The system becomes more imbalanced every year. You can already see the cracks in the system when you go to the emergency room at the hospital and often have to wait 5 or 8 hours just to be approached by a doctor. There is simply an overflow of people requesting healthcare services because we are an ageing population with a declining workforce of young people. Our non-negociable attachment to unlimited, free healthcare for all is akin to a religious belief — we all enjoy it and no one is willing to give it up or drastically alter the healthcare system. This is a mistake that is incompatible with the reality of our demographics. We need to limit access to healthcare services based on how often they are used, how much workload and cost the service require, the age of the patient and whether the patient is a student, worker, unemployed or retired. Otherwise, not everyone will be able to receive the minimum vital healthcare, or healthcare will become fully private and extremely costly, thus limited to the upper tier of society.

Our reluctance to alter and weaken the public healthcare system, like the pension system, is the reason for our impending societal collapse. By trying to maintain a social system similar to that of the 1980s, we are raising tax levels for individuals and corporations, driving companies out of business and causing multinationals to relocate their activities to countries with a younger workforce and a more advantageous tax system. This results in job losses in ageing economies, putting a financial and economic burden on young adults, which further reduces fertility rates and creates a vicious circle that worsens the situation two decades later.

Once again, our demographic reality leaves us with no choice but to make drastic cuts to the healthcare system and abolish our free, unlimited healthcare services. With an ageing population requiring more healthcare and fewer adult workers, a social healthcare system based on free and unlimited services is simply unsustainable from a supply and demand perspective. Unfortunately, we must impose restrictions, rationalise and select, and limit health care spending. Priority should be given to workers, young mothers and children or students, at the expense of unemployed and retired people. I know this sounds terrible; I wish we would'nt have to make a selction and restrictions, I wish we were still in the 1980s and 1990s, when there were plenty of workers and few retired people. However, this is no longer the case. Restricting access to public healthcare is a much better option than an economic downturn, high inflation, supply chain shortages, and generalised poverty.

The public health care system as presently constructed is going to collapse: Waiting time to visit doctors will be extremely long, the quality of the care you receive will decrease tremendously (it has already started in fact), and it will definitly no longer be free for everyone. There is no way the current public health care system can continue to work when you have half of the population demanding constant treatments, a growing share of the population requiring more health care services due to overall ageing, but on the other side you have less tax payers and less nurses and doctors. This is simple math. In the 1950s, most over-60 were living with their kids and grand kids provding first care, and the population of over-60 was insignificant due to the life expectancy being 65 to 70 years. But in today's society, the public health care system as constructed is doomed to collapse. Another reason why to have children today, so that you can get the family care you need in the 2040s and 2050s when the public system surrenders.

Impact of low birth rates on the overall economy

There is no existing economic or political model that can cope with a shrinking working population. The demographic situation that we entered in the 2010s and that will continue and worsen for at least the next 3 decades is unprecedented. We are entering uncharted territory.

The only model we know of is the war economy during the world wars, but even that model never had a large and growing retired population. There is no record in the past of human history of a slow decline in the active population while the elderly population grows massively. It has simply never happened in the past in any civilisation at any time in history. We are entering uncharted territory, a first time experiment on a world scale in a globalised world with massive debt everywhere and worldwide interdependency at every level, while birth rates are falling drastically everywhere at the same time. All the ingredients are there for a social, political, economic and humanitarian disaster. We may experience a miracle in the coming decades, but realistically all the data points to a massive collapse of all industrialised civilisations in the next 4 decades.

Figure 23A below shows the share of the working population in different countries and regions of the world. We call this the dependency ratio, which is the ratio of the working-age population (15–65 years old) compared to the total population. As you can see, the most industrialised and wealthy nations, including those in Europe, North america, China and Japan, which are known as the 'first wave', have already peaked in terms of their working population, reaching this peak around 2010. The 'second wave', including India, Indonesia, Latin America and the Middle East, will peak in terms of working population around 2035, after which it will decline. Only the 'third wave' Sub-Saharan Africa will continue to grow in terms of manpower and labour force past 2040. 2040 is approaching fast, so the coming decline will be global and very soon, with Sub-Saharan Africa being the only exception.

Figure 23A: Share of the working age population in 3 clusters of the world

In our "first wave" countries, the low fertility rate of the last 40 years, the period of demographic dividends, has been a boost for both public and private finances, as well as the social welfare system: the state had to support less childcare, young adults had more time to work and consume, and they had all the money they earned for themselves, not to spend on their children.

But now the demographic dividend we have had for four decades is turning into a demographic payback: The largest cohort of baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1965, started retiring in 2010 and will continue to do so until 2035, putting enormous pressure on the health and pension systems. And neither the babyboomers nor the following GenX generation are replaced 1:1 by new young workers, but rather 2 retirees are replaced by 1 worker, sending a country's entire economy into a slow death spiral. Retiring adults go from being taxpayers to being public benefits receivers. The natural decline of the working population will be too steep to be replaced by immigrants: If 2 people retire for every 1 person entering the workforce, it means that to maintain a stable economy, for every 20 year old native youth entering the workforce, you would need a 20 year old migrant coming into the country ready to work. This is not going to happen, the scale of the need for immigration is too massive. Especially in Europe and East Asia, the two worst regions in the world in terms of ageing populations, there's just too much of a void to fill, especially when 80% of the countries have declining populations and can't provide vast migrant labour force.

On top of that you have this massive over-60 population that needs and expects free health care and a fat pension that comes from public money and taxes, but the sum of taxes collected is about to shrink because real economic output is going to shrink. It will be an economic and social bloodbath in the coming decades.

Growing debt in a shrinking active workforce is a death sentence. Let's use an analogy to illustrate the threat posed by a rising debt-to-workforce ratio. Imagine you have five flatmates living in a big house with a monthly rent of $5,000. Each flatmate would pay $1,000 a month. In this example, the rent is the interest of debt servicing to be paid, and the flatmates are the workers or active population. If one flatmate suddenly dies, the remaining four flatmates have five options:

1. Hire a new flatmate to replace the missing one, or

2. Increase the individual rent to $1250 each to cover the full $5000 rent.

3. Stay in the current house and take out a bank loan to cover the missing $1,000 per month, paying only the interest on the loan.

4. The remaining 4 flatmates move to a smaller house with a total rent of $4,000 instead of $5000.

5. Continue paying $1,000 each, get evicted soon and end up living in poverty on the streets.

Option 1, getting a new fifth flatmate, is immigration in this analogy. When 80% of countries are shrinking or will soon shrink in terms of their active population and the only abundant source of young adults is regions with undergraduates who are accademically uneducated, unskilled for industrial culture, and unable to move and adapt rapidly, such as most people in sub-Saharan Africa, immigration will hardly be able to provide the quantity and quality of workforce needed to power the collapsing economies of industrialised countries. Where will the migrants come from, and why would they choose your country over another? Economic migration will be much more limited in the coming decades and cannot cover the scale of the upcoming shrinkage of the working-age population in industrialised countries.

Option 2, paying higher rent of $1,250 each, would be in this analogy a higher tax level in the economy, which would lower everyone's purchasing power, especially that of young workers without assets.

Option 3, getting a bank loan to cover the missing $1,000 per month, is the analogy for an increase in the budget deficit and the money supply. This involves printing more money and devaluing the currency, which leads to inflation and a loss of purchasing power. Meanwhile, asset prices inflate and the rich get richer. This solution has been chosen over the last 15 years.

Option 4, moving to a smaller house, is not an option for states with public debt. You can not erase public debt by renaming your country. The closest option is defaulting on debt servicing or state bankruptcy, but this won't happen on purpose for a large economy that controls its own currency.

Option 5, stopping paying the full rent, is defaulting on public debt servicing. Technically, it could happen on selected and targeted international lenders, such as the US deciding not to pay the interest on US bonds held by China. However, the consequences would be disastrous and earth-shattering: There would be no more trust in the country, interest rates would be extremely high, there would be a massive reduction in international trade, and there would be geopolitical sanctions, etc. Similar to living on the streets, defaulting on public debt would cause widespread poverty and social unrest. This is a last resort, and as long as sovereign countries can print their own currency, they will inflate the debt away through money creation.

In the coming decades in Japan, South Korea, China, Spain, Italy, Germany, Thailand, you will have in a given year about 2 people retiring for 1 person entering the market. Let's assume that both of the vacant jobs are considered to be kept and filled. What will happen? the 2 companies will struggle to attract this 1 young person entering the labour force and will have to pay a higher salary to attract the young adult. This is good for the young worker, but it is inflationary.

What will happen to the other job vacancy? I see 3 options: it will have to be filled with a less qualified person, maybe from abroad, if you can find them, or the vacant position will not be renewed and the workload will be shared among other workers, worsening working conditions and putting more pressure on labour productivity. Or the vacant position is closed and not renewed and the work is not done at all, reducing productivity and causing shortages in the supply chain, leading to overall inflation. AI is a necessary big hope arriving just in time, but not all job poisitions can be replaced by AI computers and AI robots.

This is what a shrinking labour force looks like: high inflation, higher debt levels to plug the financial holes, labor-intensive supply shortages, public services degrading, but better compensated workers.

With the falling birth rate since the 1970s, you now have fewer cohorts of younger age groups: there are fewer 40 year olds than 50 year olds, fewer 30 year olds than 40 year olds, etc... and far fewer children under 10 than in any previous decade, which is a terrible prospect for the 2040s and 2050s. With a shrinking young adult population, you not only have fewer workers to produce goods and services, you also have fewer people to buy them. Fewer workers means an increase in labour costs to attract or retain workers, to fill vacancies, or to increase salaries or compensation, and this makes your business uncompetitive compared to countries with stable or growing workforces. A diminishing 20-45 year old population, the age group the most consuming, means the demand and total consumption will reduce, leading to reduced real economy. Businesses lose on both the supply and demand side, with a reduced workforce and a reduced consumer pool. Things could soon get ugly in countries with terrible demographics, and this is likely to exacerbate the trend of the brain drain, the highly educated young workforce of Europe, Korea, Japan, leaving for better opportunities abroad, worsening the overall situation of the countries affected. Why would a skilled 25-year-old stay in Italy, Germany, Chile or Japan and pay high taxes for the social welfare of the elderly when they could go to Singapore, Dubai or the USA, where there are great career opportunities and lower tax rates? Young, adventurous people tend to move from countries with heavy social systems to countries with more liberal policies and a younger, more vibrant population. Only the elderly are stuck at home, dependent on the working population. Expect to see more economic migrants in the future.

The overall population of industrialised countries will remain constant or shrink slightly. However, the population aged 15–45 is declining rapidly, resulting in a decline in net consumption. This age group consumes goods and services from private companies and businesses. The over-50 population, which consumes mostly government services and basic needs like food and shelter, will increase. Once you turn 50, you have usually acquired a house if you could, a car, furniture, clothes, and so on, and you tend to save more and spend on daily necessities and services such as food and healthcare.

An economy is based on production and consumption. For the first time in history, we are entering a period of prolonged total consumption decline due to a reduction in the number of consumers. This is uncharted territory in terms of businesses, the employment rate, and inflation or deflation, as well as asset valuation. You could argue either way: Either inflation will pick up due to a lack of labour force, or deflation will occur due to lower demand as there are fewer consumers. The unemployment rate will either rise due to lower consumption and reduced business operations, or remain at full employment due to the declining workforce and the need for healthcare and support for the elderly. Asset prices (gold, real estate and stocks) could rise due to increased money printing, people moving to big cities and gold being seen as a reliable store of value when currencies are devalued. Alternatively, you could argue that land and houses will become cheaper due to depopulation and businesses selling less to fewer consumers, which would lead to a loss of valuation. Either argument could make sense. Again, we have never seen a voluntary population decline of this scale for that long outside of war in the history of humankind, so anything is possible. The only certainty is that comfort, prosperity and life standards will fade in the coming decades. This is unavoidable.

Another factor to consider: People do not suddenly stop being productive once they reach their early 60s and retire. People's health and productivity slowly deteriorate once they turn 55. While life expectancy in the industrialised world is 82 years, healthy life expectancy — when people can work full time and do not require social or health support, and are free of cancer or other debilitating diseases — is actually 63 years.

If you look at average weekly working hours in the early industrialised and ageing economies, you can see on figure 23B below that a person's weekly working hours start to decline from 32 hours in their 40s to 30 hours in their early 50s, 27 hours in their late 50s and only 20 hours on average in their early 60s. This is mainly due to sick leave, medical treatment, part-time work or early retirement. This has some implications for countries where the bulk of the working population is aged 50-65: these workers will be less productive, in terms of hours worked per week, than the same people were decades ago in their 30s and 40s. And with most advanced economies having a median age above 40 and approaching 50 by 2050, it is reasonable to assume that productivity per capita will decline simply because of age, innovation and technology notwithstanding.

Figure 23B: Older people work less in their 50s

From 1970 to 2010, the growing labour force was the main driver of high GDP growth in the 5% range. The baby boomers, born after the Second World War, flooded the labour market, providing an abundance of workers competing for cheap labour, pushing down salaries. During this period, the economies of the developed world grew enormously. But since 2010, the active/working population has started to decline, reducing economic output and forcing governments to borrow and print money to keep the economy growing. Figure 23C below shows the annual growth rate of the working population per region from 1960 to the present and the projection to 2050. It shows that the working population started to decline in Japan, Russia and Europe around 2010, in South America around 2020, and in China from 2030 onwards. This decline will accelerate in the coming decades. Only by pumping new printed money via debt into the economy has Europe been able to maintain a positive GDP growth of between 0% and 1% over the last decade, but if we look at the projections for the working population, we will definitely enter the degrowth territory.

Figure 23C: Annual growth rate of the working age population, past and future

For Europe, on top of a shrinking working population, there is the burden and cost of healthcare, social security and public pension systems for an ageing population. In addition, with gas and electricity now 2 to 4 times more expensive in Europe than in the US or China, Europe is outsourcing all heavy industry or energy-intensive activities such as metal refining, chemicals and industrial thermal processes like glass or steel making. Europe is losing jobs and losing in balance of trades to other continents. Not a good outlook for Europe over the next 3 decades!

The impact on the labour market and the unemployment rate has been apparent since 2010, when the working-age population began to decline. Imagine that, in a given year, 10 older people retire when only six younger people join the labour force. Two things happen: Firstly, the total unemployment rate goes down as businesses and the economy try to find any person to fill the four vacant positions. Figure 23D below shows that the unemployment rate has been falling significantly since 2010 in both Europe and the USA, apart from the Covid-19 related spike in 2020.

Figure 23D: Unemployment rates in USA and Europe since 2000

Secondly, when only 3 candidates are found for 4 open positions, the remaining open position remain vacant. Businesses have a real customer demand and a real desire to hire, but there are no qualified candidates on the market, creating a missed opportunity to grow the economy through company revenue and generate income tax revenue. Figure 23E below shows that the number of job vacancies in Europe doubled between 2013 and 2023. This is not the unemployment rate, but the rate of open positions that can not be filled because of a lack of qualified candidates.

Figure 23E: Job vacancy rate in Europe since 2013

Based on demographic projections, I expect these trends to continue in the coming decades. I am not concerned about the job perspective of a qualified or skilled labour force, especially among the under-50s. People will always find decent jobs in the coming era. Unemployment should not be a real issue in the decades ahead. The problem will be the slowing of economies and businesses not growing as much as they would like due to a tight labour market, particularly for social jobs and jobs that cannot be outsourced, such as healthcare, elderly care, fresh food production, immigration centres, the police, infrastructure and construction work, etc.

The majority of people in the Western world, especially in Europe, believe that their ancestors fought for social welfare rights and benefits. They believe that, in the past, the rich and corrupt CEOs, lobbyists, billionaires and politicians exploited poor workers in bad working conditions. In the 1950s to 1990s, strikes, protests and debates led to new universal rights, such as a pension at 60, six weeks of paid holiday per year, unlimited paid sick leave, a 35-hour working week and unemployment benefits. That's what most of us think.

The reality is that social welfare laws were a generational privilege, not an acquired human right that would last forever. From 1960 to 2010, we could enjoy these social privileges because there were many workers (the baby boomers) and few pensioners, with an average of 4 to 6 workers for 1 pensioner. However, since the 2010s, the large cohort of baby boomers has become the pensioner generation, and the working population (Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z) is smaller due to low fertility rates since the mid-1970s. Consequently, there are now only two workers for every one pensioner, and this ratio is expected to reach one to one by around 2050. Our social welfare system was only sustainable with a high worker-to-elderly ratio, but it is now utterly unsustainable. Nobody dares to face the reality, question our generous social policies and change them, because doing so would trigger a civil war. No pilitician dares to bring this reduced social welfare proposal to the agenda, because this politician would not be elected or re-elected. Citizens prefer to blame scapegoats such as politicians, lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry and billionaires. This is a classic example of the psychology of blaming someone else for our own problems, in order to avoid making painful changes ourselves, instead of taking responsibility and making unpopular and difficult sacrifices.

By maintaining generous and early pensions that are unaffordable, free healthcare for an ageing population paid mostly by the younger adults, and other social benefits such as unemployment or paid sick leave, not to mention generous working conditions like only 7 hours of work per day, we are sacrificing the future by creating more debt to finance the present. We are also sacrificing the population that contributes to the welfare system: workers and taxpayers, to the benefits of the eldery that are already the wealthiest and most priviledged ones. This is because, whenever something or someone lives beyond its means, someone else must pay for it.

Those who pay more and more every year for social welfare costs are the under-40s who are rarely sick and seldom visit the doctor, yet pay high health care taxes; the 50% of workers who earn below the median wage and are hit hard by inflation and high tax levels, seeing their purchasing power decline over the years. Entrepreneurs and businesses, who are taxed a lot as soon as they make a profit, forcing companies to make financial and accountant tricks, or to relocate to countries with more business-friendly policies, or simply to close. The result is that hard work is not incentivised, and laziness and abuse of the welfare system to obtain public benefits is encouraged. Success as an entrepreneur is penalised, and many people would rather live off state assistance than work a full-time low-wage job. Money from under-40s is drained via tax to sustain the pensions and healthcare of the over-60s, making the cost of having a child a serious economic burden and pushing the fertility rate down. Each decades, the situation worsen because the demography worsen, creating a ticking time bomb until our sovereign debt crisis explodes. Our society is completely screwed for young people and workers, so that a privileged chunk of the elderly continue to receive benefits beyond what the country can afford, further burdening the country with debt and unavoidable misery in the future. Our demographics do not allow us to continue distributing generous social welfare benefits, yet we persist in doing so without question simply because we have been accustomed to a generous welfare system for over 60 years. The next 30 years are doomed, but we need to make drastic cuts to pensions, healthcare and other social welfare benefits immediately if we are to have any chance of prosperity by 2060 and beyond through a revival of the fertility rates now.

Since the 2010s, our society has been living beyond its means, which has only been technically possible via increased public spending, deficits, debt and inflation. This will not be sustainable for much longer because every country is asking lenders for money, so interest rates are rising everywhere and servicing the debt will become unaffordable. In the past, only the USA and a few other countries like Italy and Greece asked to borrow money. Now, however, France, the UK, Germany and Japan are among many other countries that need to borrow money, so competition is greater and lenders demand higher interest rates, making debt servicing an increasingly heavy burden that consumes a portion of the budget that would otherwise be allocated to education, investment or welfare.

There is nothing we can do now in the short term to resolve the situation where many people are retiring at around 65, while very few young people aged 22 are entering the labour market. Politicians and central banks can print all the money they want, they cannot print 20 year old people. Money will not solve the problem, it is not a problem of money, price levels or incentives, nothing can solve our situation. 10 year old children and 25 year old adults don't come out of the factory, don't fall from the sky and don't grow on trees. The missing young population will be missing for the next 5 decades.

With an ageing population, as more public money is spent on protecting ageing citizens, less will be available for the working generation to spend on boosting consumption or investing in infrastructure or subsidies.

As lower productivity starts to affect output in some sectors, countries may be forced to increase imports to meet demand in those industries... This could have a significant impact on innovation and entrepreneurship, which in turn may further reduce productivity.

In addition, there is evidence that the peak of a person's innovative activity and most productive output occurs between the ages of 30 and 45... Current demographic trends are therefore likely to stifle technological progress and innovation. At the same time, studies suggest that entrepreneurship is negatively affected by population ageing, as the proportion of young people is positively associated with entrepreneurial activity. This hampers economic dynamism and innovation and contributes to slower economic growth. See below, in Figure 23F, the trend in the percentage of new technology patents granted by Japan since 1990, which is clearly declining as the labour force ages.

Figure 23F: Percentage of patents filled by Japan since 1990

A shrinking workforce will lead to falling economic output and tax revenue. This will result in reduced public spending on infrastructure, education, schools, streets and the welfare system. There will also be more debt, as well as increased spending on servicing past debt.

Refer to my chapter "Governments Debt Trap" for more details. Here are the key impacts of a shrinking workforce on public spending. I am showing the USA, but Europe is in a worse position actualy. It is expected that US spending and the US deficit will increase further, from 7% to 10% of GDP by 2035, as shown in Figure 23G below.

Figure 23G: US budget deficit forecast

These projections do not take into account any 'black swan' events, such as an unexpected financial crisis, major geopolitical conflict, pandemic or terrible natural catastrophe.

A growing budget deficit means an increase in public debt to finance the fiscal budget every year, as shown in Figure 23H below. Public debt is expected to grow from 110% of GDP in 2024 to somewhere between 150% and 200% in 2050.

Figure 23H: US federal debt forecast

Such a high level of debt will lead to higher interest rates and inflation, as well as increased spending on servicing the debt.

Let's examine federal budget spending of USA in Figure 23I and UK in figure 23J below, as examples.

Figure 23I: US federal spending allocation in 2024

Figure 23J: UK federal spending allocation in 2023-2024

If we look at either the US or the UK government spending on the social welfare system on figure 23I and 23J above, we can see that 64% for US and 53% in UK is spent on various public welfare programmes, such as pensions (social security), healthcare, medicare, unemployment benefits and support for military veterans. 64% is an outrageously high proportion, especially considering that the USA is seen as more liberal than Europe, which is seen as more social. The USA also currently has quite a good demographic situation, with many talented young adults moving there regularly ("brain drain") and a current fertility rate of 1.65, which is bad but not that disastrous. Now imagine the increase in spending that will be needed in the next three decades when the population really starts to age, and consider that Europe has an even worse demographic situation. Note also that debt interest is the third or fourth biggest area of spending, sometimes exceeding education or defence. In the coming years, debt servicing will take up a more significant share of budgets, reducing the government's ability to spend on relevant things like infrastructure, education, and migrants integration.

How do we find the necessary room to increase both welfare spending and debt servicing spending in the coming years? The only solution is to print money on a massive scale, injecting it into the system and maintaining high inflation, which will gradually lower the living standards and purchasing power of ordinary citizens. This will also lead to a serious deterioration in the quality of all public services, such as hospitals, schools, public universities and public infrastructure.

The situation in Europe is even worse than the last 3 charts showed for the USA. Europe is no longer a superpower. It is a declining giant with a rapidly ageing population and infrastructure. It has no mineral resources, a more catastrophic demographic situation, much lower economic growth and no modern tech giants in areas such as cloud computing, software, AI or semiconductors. Its population is absolutely addicted to public subsidies and social support, and people rely on state pension and state health care entirely. Public finances are set to deteriorate more quickly than in the USA due to our severe lack of people under 30 and our unattractive reputation as a destination continent. People come to Europe to study or for social benefits, whereas they go to the USA or Canada for work opportunities.

Another issue that will be negatively impacted by the declining fertility rate and shrinking young workforce is public infrastructure. Consider the permanent need for infrastructure in industrial countries: housing construction and renovation, street and road maintenance, public gas pipeline network renewal, electrical grid maintenance, water and sewage pipeline maintenance, and railway maintenance, for example.

Now consider who does these kinds of jobs: the vast majority are men, eliminating almost 50% of the working population. These jobs are physically demanding and exhausting, so they are assigned to workers aged 20–40, which eliminates two-thirds of the working population because this age group is exactly the one shrinking due to low birth rates for 50 years. These jobs do not require long studies or a difficult degree, which eliminates another two-thirds of the population who are overqualified. Furthermore, these jobs pay low wages and require physical presence on site; many low-wage workers would rather work in better conditions. Let's say that 4 out of 5 of potential candidates are not willing to accept these jobs and would rather work in private industry, healthcare, sales, stores, or elsewhere, because the working conditions are better. Overall, this means that only 1 in 100 workers is a potential candidate for these infrastructure jobs. So where are we going to find all of these workers? Many of these infrastructure projects will be delayed because we won't be able to find the workers, and the situation will worsen in the coming decades as the 20–30 age group continues to shrink year after year.

This is the reality of our highly educated and ageing workforce in all our industrialised countries. The government will invest heavily, but ultimately, many roads, streets, railways, buildings, and basic water and electricity networks will not be renovated within the expected timeframe or at the expected cost. Prepare for the public infrastructure to degrade massively in the coming decades as a direct consequence of the demographics.

No matter how good things look economically today, or how impressive our economic growth and rising living standards have been since the 1950s, these are things of the past, and they won't last forever because of the demographic collapse: With the working population starting to shrink since the 2010s, there is no way to avoid an economic collapse: Fewer workers means less total output, less taxes and labor services for a growing elderly population, and less ability to service the national debt. We will face a prolonged economic crisis for the next three decades, with no possibility of recovery, and this will lead to a massive drop in our living standards.

Over the next 30 years, the ratio of retirees to workers in Europe and China is set to rise from around 4 to 10 today to approximately 7 to 10, representing an 80% increase in the burden of costs and labour required for pensions and healthcare for the elderly. The situation is similar in many other industrialised countries. Even if society were to accept a peaceful transition involving an increase in taxation of around 20% and a reduction in pension benefits and healthcare services of about 40% — which I doubt, as this would be extremely painful and lead to mass poverty, tremendous social unrest and civil protest — that would not be enough to balance our social welfare and tax system in the very long term: According to reliable projections based on current fertility rates, the ratio of retirees to workers is set to rise from around 7:10 in 2050 to 10:10 in 2090 in Europe (a 40% increase) and from 7:10 in 2050 to around 16:10 in 2090 in China (a 120% increase). This would require a further 30% cut to public pension benefits in real terms in the second half of the century, as well as drastic reductions to healthcare services for the elderly (and by extension, everyone else) on top of the massive restrictions to undergo over the next 30 years. See Figure 23K below. Note on Figure 23K that the proportion of children compared to retirees will be so insignificant post-2050 that the old-age dependency ratio will be almost equal to the total dependency ratio shown in the figure.

Figure 23K: China and Europe dependency ratio projections until 2100

Even if everyone makes an effort in the coming decades and accepts much higher taxation during working life and more poverty during retirement over the next 30 years, the following 30 years (the second half of the century) will be impossible to manage at a societal, fiscal and political level. And that's not to mention the issues with debt and GDP. The working population in Europe is set to halve between now and the end of the century. How can a level of economic output be maintained with half as many workers? How can a high level of public debt (80% to 150% of GDP) be serviced when the total workforce is halved? Even if AI and automation double our productivity per capita, who will consume goods and drive the demand if the under-65 population is halved?

Let's take an exagerated example so that you can get my point: Imagine a factory with 100 employees that currently produces 100 laptops per day. If, in 50 years' time, there are only 20 employees in the factory, chances are it will produce about 30 laptops a day if we consider a productivity increase, but not 100. Even if the 20 employees produce 100 laptops a day thanks to AI, automation and other advances, in which society would you expect to sell five times more laptops per person that in the past? Who needs 5 laptops per person? How much would you need to tax the company to make up for the missing income tax from the 80 workers who are no longer employed at the company? If there are only 20 taxpayers instead of 100, how will the public welfare system and basic infrastructure be financed with only 20 high consumers under 65 and only 20 income tax payers? How would you service a public debt if the physical output of a country shrinks from 100 units to 30 units? Unfortunately, the only answer is high inflation, mass poverty and a drastic loss of living standards.

This is the reality that we are facing. Even if we make tremendous efforts, sacrifice our comfort, accept fewer public benefits and live closer to the poverty line, we will still have to continue our self-restrictions until the end of the century. At some point, earning 800 euros a month in Paris won't be enough. Working a full-time job and being paid £1,000 a month in London won't be enough. Retiring at 70 and receiving a pension equal to half the minimum salary won't be enough. There simply won't be any public money. Protest and anarchy will ensue, the state will pull the rope and print tons of money, police will try to stop the civil war, and there will be high inflation. We will return to the original pension system, where your own children and own grandchildren take care of you, both physically and financially. The top 5% of the population will be able to afford a good standard of living, private healthcare and a private pension, but the vast majority will be in complete poverty. There will be no more iPhones for everyone, paid vacations, paid sick leave or unemployment benefits, nor any form of relevant public pension. There is no way to avoid this outcome, as demographic trends are highly predictable and affects the entire world now. The financial and economic systems will endure a major crisis, slower but much bigger than the 2008 crisis, and we have entered the crisis since 2020 with rising inflation rates and the effect of the post-Covid inflation as a taste of what will come. We will experience a prolonged period of depression lasting decades until our fertility rate rises to 2.0 or above, which is not happening anytime soon the next 2 decades at least.

I know that my predictions of an ultra-pessimistic near future and my doom-and-gloom scenario seem unlikely, irrational and counterintuitive. This is because of two things: Firstly, since the end of WW2 ended 80 years ago, our prosperity and living standards have improved every decade. Everyone on Earth today has only ever experienced an improved lifestyle each decade: more belongings and gadgets at home, access to potable water and electricity is a given, better sanitation and life expectancy, higher level of education, a better welfare system and greater overall prosperity. The natural reaction to this last 80 years is to expect growth in living standards to continue forever. Nobody under the age of 100 has ever experienced a prolonged period of decline in living standards over one or two decades, so my prediction of a gloomy future is not intuitive at all. Secondly, we started going below replacement level about 50 years ago, so the last 50 years have seen economic growth boosted by the demographic dividend period. With fewer children, people have had more time for a good lifestyle, more work, more production, more money and more consumption, as there has been less need to raise and educate large families with three or more children. The last 5 decades have seen a significant increase in living standards, largely due to the decline in births, allowing individuals to prioritise their careers, financial comfort, leisure and free time. Consequently, we experienced significant economic growth and a notable improvement in living standards each decade of the last 50 years because in large part because we had fewer children. However, this was a form of credit, buying better times now for repayment later. The 'latter' is now, in the 2020s and beyond, during the demographic payback period, when a large proportion of the population is in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Forty years of demographic dividends are now followed by at least thirty years of demographic payback. Because the fertility rate has plummeted over the last 15 years well below 1.7 and will remain very low in the foreseeable future, we will face an even more challenging economic, fiscal and societal situation in the 2050s and beyond. If you take the last 50 years and project our growth straight forward on a straight line, most people would believe that the next 50 years will be great. However, demographics are highly predictable and very accurate: the imbalance between workers and retirees will worsen over the next 50 years, whatever we do now. We have entered a cycle of continuously lowering our living standards for the next 50 years. People are not used to this, nor are they mentally prepared for it or willing to accept it or react to it by accepting harsh restrictions on our lifestyle.

People will blame the state and the government for mismanagement, but the reality is that, given the demographic situation, there is nothing anyone can do. If neither Xi Jinping nor Vladimir Putin were able to address the fertility crisis in their respective country over the last 15 years, nobody will. I think our demography will lead to as much suffering as WW2 because it will last 50 years, not 6 years, and most people are not aware of it and are completely unprepared mentally. This will lead to social unrest, massive protests, civil wars, and the end of our democracies. I'm sorry for all the AI optimists and green tech utopians. Life is about to become much worse, not better, and peaceful times and prosperity are about to disappear, not because of nuclear war, geopolitics or climate change, but because of a lack of children and young adults. The demographic collapse will trigger the collapse of our economies, the financial system, our prosperity and our democracies.

Can we follow the survival of the japanese model?

Some might argue that Japan, which was the first developed country to have a below-replacement fertility rate in 1957, about 20 years before the other developed countries, is doing quite well today, so the outlook for the world in 2050 is not so bleak. Can we all duplicate and follow the japanese model, a rapidly ageing society with a shrinking active population that still has solid standards of living today? Yes, Japan's population is old, but living standards are still high, there is no inflation, on the contrary there is deflation, and society is still functioning, infrastructures are in excellent quality, GDP per capita has been rising the last 20 years, so why should other countries worry about their fate if Japan is still doing well 20 years ahead in terms of demographics?

Japan was roughly 20 years ahead of every other country in terms of its fertility rate falling below replacement level. This happened in the late 1950s for Japan, compared to the 1970s for the rest of the world. This means that what happens in Japan in a given decade is likely to be experienced by the rest of the developed world two decades later. That's why Japan is such a fascinating case.

While Japan is still doing well, with solid living conditions and a strong economy, many of its past events won't be reproduced in other developed countries. I doubt that the current good state of Japan will be reflected in Europe in the 2040s due to different variables that won't be in Europe's favour for exemple.

Japan was able to do it because it was the only country suffering from an ageing population and shrinking workforce: The japanese working population peaked in 1990 and declined ever since, being 16% smaller now in 2025. Between 1990 and 2020, Japanese companies learned to outsource supply chains and labour to other countries to compensate for the declining local workforce. During this period, this was possible because all other countries were reaping the demographic dividend: few retirees, massive working population with little time and money to spend on few children in other developed countries. Japan has been able to use its small labour force only for nationally relevant activities and coordination of outsourced activities, and was able to use the large labour force of other countries to import cheap goods and services, de facto importing deflation. In addition, the Japanese 25-45 year old cohort has declined rapidly. This is the age group driving the consumption base, pushing the demand for goods and services in Japan. Overall consumption has been declining the last 25 years, leading to a deflationary price environment, which has alleviated the local labour shortages. Nevertheless, Japan is now at a very critical juncture, with a large proportion of the 60-65 age group about to retire, a colossal accumulated debt of 260% of its GDP, as shown on figure 24A below, a devalued currency compared to the US dollar or the euro that is no longer able to import cheap products, and a very critical shortage of young labour.

Figure 24A: Japanese public debt to GDP evolution since 1990

Japan has been able to maintain growth since 1990s and a solid standard of living from 1990 to 2020, but had a stagnant or only slightly increasing per capita growth. The survival of the japanese economy, despite a decline of working population, came via debt, massive puublic debt, and via massive foreigh investment due to positive net export for decades in the 1970s to 1990s. Japanese public debt has risen dramatically and because its working age population has remained fairly stable, from 75 million in 1970 to a peak of 87 million in 1995 and back to 75 million in 2022. In essence, while the population was ageing from 1990 to 2020, the economy was still doing well because the total number of people in work remained quite stable over those 30 years, and the higher spending on social welfare was done via rapid increase of public debt, with little impact on overall productivity and economic output. The high public debt was sustainable so far because of low inflation and low interest rates, and because Japan is holding masive amount of foreigh capital, foreign bonds and assets, which collects a lot of US$ income for the japanese government and people.

But the real battle of the ageing population has now begun since the early 2020s, with the working age population projected to fall from 75 millions in 2022 to 60 million by 2040 and 50 million by 2060, while the retired population will remain at around 40 million from now until 2060. Things are going to get very ugly in terms of the economy, social welfare and prosperity in Japan, especially in the context of a debt to GDP ratio of 270% with a shrinking workforce. Since 2020, we have seen Japanese inflation finally pick up after so much debt and liquidity was injected into the social system, as shown in Figure 24B below. The long-term interest rate at which the government must service its debt-to-GDP ratio of 260% is also rising rapidly, as shown in Figure 24C below, demonstrating that investors have lost trust in the japanese society to be able to service its debt. This is accelerating the debt spiral and the unsustainable burden of a shrinking economy with rising social welfare costs, and the sole root cause of the japanese economic and financial trouble is the lack of children since the 1960s.

Figure 24B: Japanese inflation the last 10 years

Figure 24C: Interest rate payment on the national japanese debt

Other factors that Japan used to their benefit in 1990-2020 that other developped countries won't be able to use or replicate in 2025-2050 are:

- Japan was extremely successful and wealthy when its working population started to shrink in 1995. This is not the case for some developed countries whose labour force has already started to shrink before they became wealthy.

- The Japanese lifestyle is very healthy, having one of the highest life expectancy in the world of 84 years, which reduces the cost of healthcare for the elderly retired population and working over-50s. Many over-50s in the Western world suffer from high cholesterol, obesity, smoking or drug addiction, poor nutrition due to fast food, and daily medication.

- The Japanese are an extremely hard-working population. Individuals are fully dedicated to their job and treat their employer like family. They often work 10 to 12 hours a day, sacrifice their lifestyle for the greater good of their company or country, live in 20 m² accommodation and often need to commute for over an hour. They do not go on strike nor complain about their living conditions.

- Since their working population stopped growing in 1990, Japan has had to endure massive debt, rising from 70% of GDP in 1990 to 240% in 2015. This debt has essentially been used to finance a welfare system and service past debt in a non-growing economy. The same fate awaits every developed country within the next 30 years.

- Japan has extremely low immigration and high national pride, high sense of individual sacrifice for the collective, meaning strong social cohesion and very few protests in difficult times. This is important when we need people to show solidarity and when the quality of public services tends to deteriorate. Japan experiences very little social unrest or protest, which is not the case in the Western world, where the population is spoiled and addicted to government support, and is more selfish and individualistic in its search for personal success and public benefits.

- Japan has accumulated vast foreign assets and foreign exchange reserves through decades of being a high-export country with a trade surplus. For instance, Japan is the country with the largest holding of US bonds. These foreign assets and currency reserves generate cash revenue. Many rapidly ageing countries, such as Thailand, Chile, Italy and South Korea, do not have such substantial foreign assets.

- Japan could benefit from outsourcing jobs and importing cheap products because, from 1990 to 2010, there was still a growing working population worldwide — a trend of globalisation which was deflationary. The rest of the world won't be able to outsource jobs in 2030 to 2050 like Japan did between 1990 and 2020, when every advanced nation will have an ageing and shrinking working population.

Those who say that Japan has been in a bad situation for 30 years and is still doing well, so the western world will be fine for the next 30 years, are being misled by a surprisingly robust Japanese economy so far in the context of rusty labour elsewhere, globalisation and a deflationary context. The industrialised world will not be able to replicate the favourable conditions that the ageing Japanese society enjoyed in the 2000s and 2010s. Also, the Japanese economy has been in decline since 2022, and the financial system is deteriorating rapidly. It would not be surprising if Japan were to enter a massive financial crisis involving currency devaluation within the next 5 years, one that would have seismic consequences around the world.

Japan has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 260%, by far the highest in the world. This forces the Bank of Japan to keep interest rates close to 0% in order to service this huge debt. It is striking that a 0% interest rate for decades has not led to inflation. There are two explanations for this: First, the world as a whole globalised massively between 1990 and 2020, which increased competitiveness and lowered the prices of goods, which was deflationary for all countries, including Japan. Second, inflation did not pick up in Japan because the population of 25-45 year olds was declining. This population of young adults are the biggest spenders of the population, they buy houses, cars, consumer goods, holidays, etc. When the population of big spenders declines, it reduces overall demand and pushes prices down. By comparison, if you look at Europe or the US in the 2010s, interest rates were low, but the consumer population remained quite stable, and yet we had some significant inflation, which manifested itself in the form of assets such as house prices, gold prices, and stocks, rather than real economy goods and services. If you look at the US over the next 30 years, deficits and debt will continue to rise, but because the country has always been an attractive destination, it is predicted that the 20-45 age group will remain stable or even grow slightly via immigration of skilled talents, so that the total demand should be sustained over the next few decades, unlike Japan between 1990 and 2020. This is likely to lead to inflation, either in asset prices and/or in the prices of real economy goods and services.

Overall, the case of Japan in 1990-2020 will not be replicable for other industrialised countries in 2020-2050: Firstly, Europe and other industrialized countries will not benefit from this peaceful globalised world, with prices going down through optimised supply chain, and outsourcing of manufacturing activities to lower wages countries. This time of 5% GDP growth is gone, replaced in the coming decades by a modest 0% to 2% growth per year on average for OECD nations. Second, developed countries will not benefit from the low dependency ratios over the next three decades as Japan did with the young baby boomers in their prime in the 1990s and 2000s. All developed countries will begin to see a decline in the working population and face a shortage of young workers. Japan will also suffer enormously from its demographics in the next 30 years, it is not immune.

We will not be able to outsource most of the supply chain and labour as all countries face the same problem. China will no longer be able to be the factory of the world past 2040. Real growth will stagnate. Debt will be unavoidable to keep the welfare system afloat, but money cannot replace labour for the older population. We will face a fall in demand, via a reduction in the 25-45 year old consumer cohort, and a fall in supply, via a reduction in the working population. Money will depreciate in real terms, but it will not be just one currency against other currencies like the Japanese Yen against other currencies, it will be all currencies depreciating and losing purchasing power as all countries go into massive debt. I believe that goods and services that can be done by machines, robots or computers will become cheaper, but labour intensive goods and services such as food, healthcare will become very expensive. A mixture of deflation and inflation, depending on the type of goods and services.

Finally, not all countries have a culture like in Japan. Not all countries are like Japan, a wealthy and technologically advanced country, culturally cohesive, of homogenous ethnicity, society-first nation with a collectivist outlook that emphasises group well-being over individualistic needs.

France has riots and massive protests and goes on strike when the price of petrol rises by 30%, when the retirement age goes up from 62 to 64, when France wins or loses the World Cup. How will France react in 2050 if the proportion of the working population falls by 30% and the proportion of pensioners rises by 30%? When the debt-to-GDP ratio rises from 120% to 200%?

If the social contract is no longer sustainable, if the population can no longer rely on public services and state support, if living standards fall, violence, rebellion, protest and social unrest will set in. Civil war is unavoidable, because people will not accept a severe decline in the public social welfare system. Europe does not have the "keep my individual ego in check" mentality of Japan. Europe does not have a trillion Euros sovereign fund. Europe does not have foreign assets and holdings. Autocratic countries like China or Russia don't protest for new elections, but in Europe every bit of loss of public services is met with protest against the government in power. It will be a civil war, as the citizens will again blame the politicians, when the problem is their own: Citizens have not made enough babies in the last 50 years, have prioritize their own lifestyle instead of the constraints of reproducing, and we have only ourselves to blame. No one can wave a magic wand and magically fix the demographic catastrophe.

A massive, structural, slow and lasting crisis is inevitable.

The argument that AI robots will solve the labour shortage may be true. AI will improve our overall productivity tremendously, but AI and robots don't solve the other part of the equation: they don't consume, they don't buy things and they don't pay taxes. Where is the demand for goods going to come from if the 20-45 year old generation is constantly shrinking? Who will pay to support the elderly in this fully automated vision of the future? AI and robots will increase margin of companies, but it will not solve the issues of the social contract.

Can productivity gains and AI save us ?

It is commonly assumed that the decline in the working population can be offset by increased productivity. However, the last 30 years have demonstrated that, regardless of a country's wealth or the size of its economy, and despite new technologies and innovations such as the internet, cloud computing, smartphones and social media, which were all supposed to drastically boost productivity, the average productivity per person has increased by only around 1% per year. No huge productivity boost has been observed in the last three decades, so we should not anticipate more than 2% productivity growth, even in the age of AI and robots.

Productivity is not universally defined correctly. One simple way to measure it is to divide a country's economic growth by its working population, those who provide goods and services measured in GDP. See figure 25A below for the evolution since 1990 of various countries and regions around the world. All trends are constant at around 1% growth per year. There has been no exponential boost from the internet revolution in 2000s or the smartphone era in 2010s, nor have any specific countries performed much better than other.

Figure 25A: GDP per employed person at constant PPP

For almost the entire post-war period in the USA, labour productivity has been declining. Between 1950 and 1973, this measure of productivity, based on output per hour worked, increased by an average of 4% each year across developed economies. However, this rate halved to 1.9% between 1973 and 2009. Since the financial crisis, it has slowed further, averaging just 1.2% between 2009 and 2025. Upcoming productivity gains from AI will have to be significant to alter the 70-year trend, bringing higher productivity growth and compensating for demographic decline.

As shown in Figure 25B below, the most advanced countries have experienced minimal productivity improvements per hour worked over the last 20 years, despite significant advances in internet technology.

Figure 25B: Productivity per hour worked over the last 20 years

The USA's GDP per working capita has increased by 1.6% per year since 1990, compared to 1.2% in Europe and 8.3% in China. China has shown outstanding productivity growth because, from 1990 to 2020, it industrialised and urbanised at the fastest pace of any country in history, also going from 2.5 children per woman in 1990 to 1.2 in 2020, which contributed to the productivity per worker. By comparison, Europe and the USA were already largely industrialised and urbanised in 1990.

This measure of productivity is clearly dependent on a country's overall economic state. When India and China's economies are growing at a rate of 5% or 7%, all employees contribute to this level of growth. When Europe grows at a rate of 1.5%, you can expect employees to produce a similar growth rate.

In order to measure productivity gains more accurately, i.e. the evolution of value added per worker per hour, it is necessary to take into account both the total working population and the average number of hours worked by each worker. Labour productivity per person per hour is the best indicator of how technology and innovation have improved our production output.

As can be seen in Figure 25C below, the USA has experienced significant productivity growth since 1960. Some decades have seen growth of 3% per year, while others have seen growth of 1% per year. Overall, there has been growth of around 2% per year over the last 60 years.

Figure 25C: US productivity since 1960

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the USA's productivity gains are worse than those of the developing world, which is to be expected when USA is higly competitive already and other countries start from behing and are developing fast with GDP growth of around 5%. However, the USA remains better than all other industrialised countries, with productivity growth of around 1% per year from 2008 to 2015, as shown in Figure 25D below, while productivity gains were around 2% per year between 1990 and 2005. For the Euro zone, productivity gains wer about 2% per year in 1990 to 1998, about 1% per year from 1998 until 2008, an around only 0.5% per year from 2010 to 2015. If we look at the entire world, the GDP growth of about 3% per year the last 10 years can be attributed to 2% productivity gains and 1% population increase.

Figure 25D: Productivity gains around the world since 1990

If we take a closer look at recent history, we can see that Europe experienced a productivity growth of only around 1% between 2000 and 2020, as illustrated in Figure 25E below. Productivity gains were only around 1% per person per year. This is an extremely low figure, especially considering that this period saw the rise of the internet and smartphones, which we would assume would lead to huge productivity gains for businesses. Essentialy, in industrialized countries, you can take any period of time and the GDP growth is roughly equal to the working population growth plus the productivity gains. Since 2022, Europe has gained 1% in yearly productivity but lost 0.5% of its working population each year. This results in an economy or GDP growth of 0.5%.

Figure 25E: Evolution of labour productivity in the EU since 2000

In reality, Europe's total productivity output increased thanks to a larger labour force from 2000 to 2010. From 2010 to 2020, more corporate and government debt was used to pump liquidity into the system, while the labour force stagnated or slowly declined. Since 2020, in the post-Covid era, we have continued to accumulate massive debt. We are losing an active population year after year, and structural inflation is now the only solution for the financial system. If the working-age population shrinks and productivity increases are low, the economy essentially stands still and there is no growth. The working population is expected to shrink by about 0.5% per year from 2025 onwards and 1% per year from 2035 onwards, which will largely offset the 0.5% to 1% expected annual productivity gains, if trends continue as of the last 25 years. If you have 10 workers, each producing 10 units per year, your total output (also known as GDP or tax revenue) is 100 units. However, if productivity per person increases from 10 to 11 units per year but the number of people in the working population decreases from 10 to 9, the total output will be 99 units (9 × 11), which is lower than before. Productivity gains are offset by the shrinking working population. For this reason, AI may be our only hope to mitigate the case for workforce shortage, and we would need it to be the miracle that some claim it will be.

If we compare the growth rates of only the largest industrialised countries of the West since 2015, we can see that the USA's growth rate is around 1.5%, whereas most other advanced economies have seen productivity gains of between 0% and 0.7% per year, as shown in Figure 25F below.

Figure 25F: labour productivity in major western economies since 2015

When you think about it, over the last 10 years there has been tremendous technological development: cloud infrastructure, online businesses, smartphone apps, home offices, video conferencing, AI, and other modern technologies and innovations that have facilitated our lives and modernised companies. I believe many people would assume that we have experienced productivity gains of around 2% or 3% per year over the last decade. However, in reality, apart from the USA, these gains have been marginal at around 0.5%, sometimes even close to 0%. The USA is ahead of the pack for two main reasons: Firstly, they have invested heavily in R&D, new technology and modernising workplaces. Secondly, they are leaders in the Western world in digital technologies such as the cloud, AI and social media.

I do not expect AI to generate a huge leap forward in productivity, but rather a leap similar to that seen with the introduction of cloud technology and smartphones, at around 1% per year (or 2% in the USA). In Europe, the active population is expected to decline at a compound rate of 0.6% over the next 35 years, falling from 487.4 million in 2020 to 382.9 million in 2060. If productivity gains are 0.5% or less, as they have been over the last 10 years, I expect a structural decline in real GDP output and per capita GDP, as well as a decline in purchasing power. Only strong productivity gains of 1% or more can offset the decline in the total active population and the ageing of the working population. AI will be absolutely critical in the coming decades. This is why a decline in the working population, which may not be offset by productivity gains, could lead to economic and social distress.

The common claim to minimise the impact of a shrinking workforce is that it's not a problem because we'll get productivity gains from robots and AI, and that many of the jobs vacated by retiring people can be replaced by AI robots or AI agents.

Well, that may be true for some jobs that produce digital output or do repetitive physical tasks, the AI bot or robot can deliver the goods or services instead of a human. But it is definitely not true for complex and customised tasks, improvised movements, and for all social, coordination & human care kind of jobs. One aspect of the human worker that optimists overlook is the 2 other roles of a human in an economy: paying taxes and consuming stuff.

A robot or AI computer does not buy goods and services, does not contribute to demand or consumption. Nor does an AI bot or robot pay income taxes that benefit society as a whole in public spending.

AI bots or robots will only increase the productivity and profit margin of the companies that use them, and will therefore pay minimal taxes to the government, compared to a human employee who would pay 30% to 50% of his or her income in taxes.

Remember the basics: In the capitalist system, private companies have only one purpose: to maximise profit and shareholder value, and AI and robots will soon be ubiquitous, and that's because they increase the companies' profit margin. The fact that companies create jobs for people is actually a side effect, not the main purpose of a company. The fact that AI is going to cut jobs is also a side effect, and company directors do not care about that either.

AI and robots will transform the labour market

Will AI and robots solve the impending labor shortage issue? Or turn it into a labor oversupply with other societal issues?

Let's imagine a hypothetical world in which all companies run without employees or with an extremely limited number of employees to manage the intelligent robots and AI agents, because the robots, computers and AI have replaced our jobs, and also because of the rapidly shrinking young population. Let's say a company with 100 employees in 2020 has only 10 employees in 2040 for exactly the same output. The company is very profitable. What would the other 90 human beings do then? How would people make money or earn money?

Several scenarios are possible. These are more science fiction than projections.

Scenario 1- The job vacancies are so rare that they put downwards pressure on wages. As many people apply for very few jobs, we get paid $5 an hour and struggle to make ends meet. Most of us live in poverty and have a very low standard of living, while the top 1% of CEOs own 90% of the world's wealth through corporations and AI agents. We can no longer protest in the streets because it is now a moral battle of humans against machines.

Scenario 2- We work only 10 hours a week and that is enough to earn a decent salary because the world is so productive and automated that we get all our goods and services without effort. What will happen then is that some workers will gladly accept this situation with a good income and a lot of free time for leisure. But some people will say "let's work 3 or 4 jobs in parallel, I'll make a lot of money", and when people have a lot of money, they will spend a lot of money, which will lead to inflation similar to the 2021-2022 post-Covid era, so that people who chose to work only 10 hours a day for a decent salary will struggle to pay all the bills and will go back to working 20 or 30 hours a week.

Scenario 3- The companies using AI are so productive and efficient that the companies shareholder collect most of the money, to the detriment of the workers. The government passes a law to force the redistribution of wealth from the companies owners to the people via a universal income that a human can live on comfortably. This social safety net is so great that we see an influx of migrants from developing countries that do not use AI and robots on a large scale, and these migrants rush to the high tech countries to get this universal income benefit, which over time will erode the value of the universal income benefit so that it becomes nothing more than a little financial support, but not an income that you can live on.

You can do 10 different plausible scenarios with the emergence of AI, nobody knows the future. My point was that even if you take various positive scenarios to the extreme, even if AI leads to massive productivity gains, in none of them would it solve the demographic problem, the social inequalities, the inflation or the loss of purchasing power that is coming.

Generally speaking, the economy of a country is defined by the total amount of workers, multiplied by the average hours they work per year, multiplied by the average productivity they achieve per hour. This calculation represents the country's (or the world's) total output for the year. However, we have started to lose on all three fronts in the industrialized world:

- The working population started shrinking in the 2010s and 2020s, due to a lack of children the last 40 years.

- As the working population ages, with many workers over 55, the average number of hours worked per year tends to decline due to more medical appointments, sickness and diseases, time off to recover, and pre-retirement part-time or reduced working hours.

- Productivity per hour also declines with age. A worker's productivity increases from 18 to 35 years of age as they learn the ropes and gain experience. They reach their peak and plateau from 35 to 50. However, biology then kicks in and productivity starts to decline from the age of 55 to 70. Older workers past-55 have reduced concentration and memory, start loosing in dexterity and agility, take longer to complete common tasks and require more time to learn and apply new skills. On average, a 60-year-old worker is less productive per hour than a 40-year-old worker.

Therefore, we are going to lose out on all three fronts in the current and coming decades, which will drastically reduce our total productivity and ability to maintain a social welfare system when so many people are old and in needs of support.

Having an ageing workforce is detrimental to productivity. When the average age of your active population is 35, productivity is at its peak. However, when the average age is 50, productivity cannot be as high. As an over-55s worker, your productivity slows down. You think and act more slowly, are more often absent due to medical appointments or illness, work fewer effective hours per week, have less ability to adapt to new technologies, struggle with breakthrough changes and technologies, have less flexible work habits, are less mobile and more reluctant to work shifts or in harsh weather conditions, are less innovative and creative, are more risk averse, etc. As most advanced economies have an ageing working population above 50, their economies are weakening and they cannot be as productive as they were during the prime years of the baby boomers in the 1980s and 2000s. Expecting a productivity boost in industrialised countries in the coming decades is foolish. AI and robots are the ultimate and only alternative to an ageing workforce.

The decline in productivity is a worldwide phenomenon and a consequence of an ageing population. When a worker transitions from the age of 25 to 35, their productivity improves due to experience. However, as workers get from 50 to 60 years old, they tend to decline in productivity due to a combination of slower mental and physical abilities and a higher rate of sickness. As the median age of the population of industrialised countries moves past 45, considering the workers' prime productivity years (35 to 50), overall productivity tends to decline. While raising the retirement age from 60 to 68 is a good and necessary adjustment to longer life expectancy and to lesser the pension burden, it is not a miracle solution for boosting the economy, as it decreases the average worker productivity and increases the number of injury- and sickness-prone workers.

Migration as we know it from the 1980s to 2000s, a young labour arriving and immediately ready to work due to minimal cultural, social and religious differences, is mostly a thing of the past. Looking ahead to the next 50 years, the vast majority of migrants will come from India, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, and will be heading for Europe maybe, definitly North America and Eastern Asia, countries that differ drastically in terms of culture, traditions, language, habits and social behaviour. Migration will continue to happen, but integration will be much more difficult than in the past 50 years and will come at a huge societal cost, so we cannot count on migration to solve the coming labour shortage in social and human-intensive jobs, considering the scale and the huge gap we would need to fill. Social migrants may actually require more of the local labour force than they can work and produce goods and services themselves.

AI is our only hope of maintaining or growing our productivity. While AI seems very promising, there are too many uncertainties and risks to predict where productivity will be in 10 years' time in a world in which AI has been adopted at all levels. AI will definitely help productivity tremendously in some areas, but it may be completely futile in others. AI also poses many risks to the internet in general, to mental health, to creative content and artists, to the business of digital ad revenue, and so on. There are many open questions and no one has a crystal ball.

AI will undoubtedly boost productivity. However, the main beneficiaries will not be people's salaries or purchasing power; rather, it will be the profit margins of companies that offer or use AI the most. Although AI is essential for addressing the impending labour shortage, it can only fulfil one of the three economic functions of a person. It can help to increase production, but it will not increase total consumption or income tax or VAT collection. In this respect, AI and robots do not replace humans.

An increase in productivity thanks to technologies such as AI, robots and automation will not solve the impending demographic collapse. I'll give you an example. Imagine a factory with 10 employees manufacturing 10 cars per month. The following year, 3 of those employees retire due to the ageing population, but because the factory and its workers use new technologies, productivity increases and the remaining 7 workers can still produce 10 cars per month. The company makes the same revenue. Margins are more or less the same: the business has 7 salaries in the headcount instead of 10, but has had to invest to achieve better productivity. Ultimately, the company pays a similar amount of corporate tax. There are also now only seven income taxes from the seven workers instead of ten previously. For VAT, 10 cars are still sold per month, so the same amount of VAT is collected. Therefore, if we sum up corporate tax, income tax and VAT, less tax is being collected although we have a 30% increase in productivity. However, we now have three more public pensions to pay because we have three additional pensioners. This example shows that even though productivity has increased by 30%, there is less public money available for public spending.

Productivity gains will be captured mostly by internet cloud companies, tech giants, computer manufacturers and chip manufacturers, but not by public taxation. These large companies are the best at evading or lowering their tax bill. Also, as most leading companies are American or Chinese, worldwide revenues and benefits will mostly end up in US or Chinese taxes for their governments, leaving almost nothing for European governments. The result is that, even with large productivity gains, there won't be enough public money collected (especially in Europe) to meet this increased demand for pensions, healthcare and public debt servicing.

Political solutions to boost up the fertility rate

Ultimately, any solution to the socio-economic problems caused by demographic changes will require reforms across all areas of society, including political structures, the constitution and laws, education, social values, migration policies, gender and family policies, technological change and lower social welfare standards (fewer healthcare services and pension benefits, and longer working hours). There is no single silver bullet.

Governmental solutions to raise the fertility rate have been largely unsuccessful in all the countries concerned, where the fertility rate is well below 2. Whether it is paid time off for parental care, financial incentives or tax breaks, free public kindergartens and child day care, these initiatives certainly help, but they have not slowed the trend we have been seeing since the 1970s.

Countries with a pro-natalist culture or policy environment, such as Hungary, Italy and Denmark, have failed to deliver high fertility rates closer to 2, with fertility rates of 1.55, 1.2 and 1.45 respectively in 2024. Countries with financial incentives such as Norway, Germany, South Korea or Japan have also failed miserably. No matter what politicians claim or what kind of public money you throw at it, young adults still choose not to have children. Financial incentives do not work when people have the freedom to choose between a great childless life or the burden and constraints of having 2 or more children.

One thing is for sure: we will not recover the past and the lack of population between the ages of 1 and 40. Children or young adults do not grow on trees, fall from the sky or come out of a factory. The low number of people under 40 and especially under 10 years old is what it is, and there is nothing we can do about it now, which creates social and societal pressure to support the large over-60 population.

Nobody can predict the future, but the trend over the last 50 years suggests that fertility rates will remain very low and are likely to fall further in the coming decades, especially with the GenZ coming of age, a generation fully immersed in smartphones and social media since puberty. There is no technical bottom to the decline of fertility rates.

Even if, by some miracle, we were to return the fertility rate to 3 from tomorrow, this would put enormous and unmanageable pressure on the working population, a minority, to support a majority of both the over-60s and the under-25s. The lack of workforce and the lack of taxpayers to support these two populations by a very limited working population of 20-65 would be such a burden that the entire social system would collapse, leading to hyperinflation and labour disruption.

It is important for societies to recognise that retiring and then expecting to live on welfare for decades is simply not sustainable with a shrinking working population. Raising the retirement age, reducing pension benefits, increasing the tax rate on pensions or accepting more immigrants - all these unpopular solutions come at a high political and social cost.

As a politician, to solve the pension problem associated with low fertility, you can either accept mass migration, mainly from Africa and the Middle East over the next 30 years, raise the retirement age, but human biology has its limits, or encourage people to have more children, and good luck to communicate that political wish to women. None of the three is popular or appealing, which makes the debate more of a heated, polarising one, or simply an unspoken taboo. No one wants to propose a a difficult and unpopular measure because public opinion will backfire on any proposal.

Ultimately, forcing all women to have children if they do not have the nurturing gene, the willingness to raise children, is detrimental to both the adult woman and the unwanted child born. I don't have a problem with some people realizing that their best destiny and best life is without children. Nurturing children is not an inate ability we are all born with. To have children or not to have children should remain a personal choice. But society should offer a very different menu and very different social priviledges for those with children and those without.

The developed world will never go back to 3 or more children per woman, that's for sure, and it's not a good thing on average for women or the planet as a whole. Nobody wants a fertility rate of 3. Having too many children would drastically reduce a country's productivity and economy, it would collapse the social system, it would take most women out of the labour force. This is not realistic. But what could we do to bring the fertility rate back to a sustainable average of 2 children per woman?

Common social ideas are a combination of:

- Promoting the values of family, the stability it brings, the meaning and purpose it gives life, and the joy of seeing children grow, rather than promoting consumption and freedom of choice.

- Free and available childcare to help reconcile work and parenthood.

- A financial incentive or basic income for young parents to remove the stress of financial prospects, combined with some government guarantees and an easier way out if parents split or divorce, by financially protecting the parent(s) who will take on the responsibility of parenting after separation.

- Household and parenting tasks to be taken on and shared by both men and women, whether it is housework, home-schooling or simply spending time at home with the children.

Classical financial state policies or incentive measures I support and that do have a slight impact are:

- All young parents are entitled to one year off, with a total of 12 months to be split at will between the father and mother. This is paid at the minimum salary via a compensation from the state.

- Free childcare in nursary center (kindergarten) for toddlers from the age of 1 until primary school age (6 years old). During this period, part-time jobs will receive upgraded compensation from the state as if they were full-time jobs.

- The financing of these measures comes from the following other measures: Tax on childless adults, a ceiling on all public pensions, and a healthcare tax based on age group.

These common ideas have all been tried without real success around the world. Offering money and support, as well as more rights and entitlements, is not enough to increase the fertility rate. The fertility is much deeper embodied in our societies: If you haven't found the right partner, are biologically infertile, lack the natural instinct or appetite for nurturing, or enjoy your childless lifestyle more than anything else because you aspire to a great career and enjoy your leisure time, free money will not change your mind and the final outcome on having babies or not. What we really need is tougher policies on childless adults, we need to enforce some duties and obligations related to the family, we need to penalise or punish people in the form of financial repression or lesser access to public spending to all childless adults for not having children and thus not producing the workforce needed in the future to keep our social systems and economies going. If the donkey will not move with the carrot, it is time to switch to the stick.

Human psychology will always maximise its own resources, comfort and individual benefits to the detriment of others. If you can get all the benefits of something without putting in the work, people will take shortcuts and take all the greatness of modern childless adulthood, while counting on "the others" to provide welfare support when they turn 60. But when everyone is enjoying the freeride, there are no 'others', and the entire system of contribution and redistribution collapses. That's why we need public policy and government intervention to regulate our societies, to regulate our human nature and tendency to take as much as possible while giving as little as possible. If you leave people free to decide for themselves, they will take the best and the maximum from the social system for themselves, while giving the minimum to the collectivity, and will destroy the system in the process. I am not saying that we should force every single adult to have 2 children. People should be free to choose if they want children and how many children they want. But the policies and the system in place must ensure that those who have less than 2 children are penalised and suffer more than those who have 2 or more children. Those adults with less than 2 children should not be entitled to the same social benefits and government support as those adults with 2 or more children, like free unlimited health care and solid pensions, especially in the future when the childless adults turn 60 and need more social support. Top-down persuasion is the only alternative, because a bottom-up approach where we let the people express themself and vote for what they wish, will always end up in more public spending while less future workers are born.

Nobody likes or wants punishments, penalties or less entitlements, but it is our only chance to save our civilisations from total demographic collapse.

In an ideal world, if you decide to go the individual way, to live a life centred around yourself without children, you should not be entitled to a state pension, or at least a very low state pension. And if you go the individual route without children, you should not get free and unlimited health care when you retire. If you go the individual way, that's your choice, you depend on yourself and take responsibility for financing your own old age.

If you go the collective way and have 2 or more children, then when you retire you should be entitled to a public pension and free public health care from the collective society, based on your contribution to the society by adding young workers and tax payers to the social system. The more collective your life has been (the more children you have), the more you should be able to rely on the welfare of the collective society. If you have 4 children, you should get more pension and better access to free health care than if you have only 1 child, simply because you have contributed more to the collective society by having more children becoming young workers. Again, in an ideal world in which incentives are placed in the sustainability and self-regeneration of the system.

If an adult does not have children, the adult has plenty of time for extra work, no expenses for child care, food and clothing for children, no expenses for education.... Note that this also applies to gays, lesbians and infertile people, so those people don't have an exemption or a free pass. So if you go the individual route, you should save some money for 40 years and retire on your own, individually, as it is your life choice. If you go the collective way and spend time and money bringing up children, the collective society should give you something back when you retire in the form of public pensions and public health care.

In past centuries, your family was your only social system. Your children and grandchildren were there to provide food, healthcare and support when you grew old. Only 2 centuries ago, childless adults had no one to support them in old age and would suffer and die in poverty and misery as soon as they were unable to move or work. So why should the modern social system reward you with public welfare benefits if you haven't contributed to it by not having children?

In essence, it makes perfect sense, it is not rocket science. If we had to write the policies and regulations of a brand new society from scratch, this idea would seem logical and fair, right?

Because we have a loophole in our social system, people can benefit greatly from an adult life without children, while at the same time at retirement age they can benefit greatly from the society of people who did have children. No wonder everyone goes this way: you win in terms of personal lifestyle and comfort, both now and later. You enjoy your childless life from 20 to 65, and then you rely on other people of your age that have raised kids to adulthood to provide for you when you retire. Great for you. But a disaster for society if everyone follow the same path.

Unfortunately, there is no free lunch in life, and because we have allowed people to abuse our system by not having children but receiving all the public benefits, our entire civilisation and society is now broken.

Ultimately, society will never be able to influence an individual's choice between having no kids, 1 kid, 2 kids or more than 2 kids if the individuals do not have a personal interest in the choice themselves.

If you own a bike, a motorbike or a car and there is public transport in your city, you will probably choose public transport on Saturday night because you don't have to worry about finding a parking space and you can come home drunk without risking being arrested for driving under influence. Your choice of public transport rather than a car is not made because of traffic congestion or environmental concerns; it is made because it is the most convenient option for you as an individual at this specific moment.

If you can choose to live in a 50 m² or a 100 m² flat. If all costs were equal, 99% of people would choose the larger apartment. However, as the larger apartment is probably twice as expensive as the smaller one, people make decisions based on what they can afford, and you end up with people choosing the 50 m² so that they can afford groceries, a car, clothes, etc. The price penalty on home size force people into decisions they would not make without penalty.

In a society where having no children, one child, two children, three or more children is treated almost the same, with no significant benefits for having three or more children, nor any added costs, penalties or restrictions for having no children or only one child, then most people will choose to have fewer children because it is in their best interest to have the best quality of life. Telling people through the media, by politicians or in books that fertility rates are collapsing and that we need more children will not change anything. We have been warning people about global warming and climate change for 30 years, yet every year we have more carbon emissions and a rising global temperature. Warning people is not effective. What we need is a system of penalties and rewards so that, when people make choices within the rules of the system, most of them will choose to have two or more children. The only way to encourage people to choose to have two or more children is to penalise people having fewer than two children.

Harsh policies such as forcing all adults to have children would be met with a furious backlash from 99% of the population.

You cannot ask a woman to lower her standards and mate with any man, because human psychology does not work that way, it would be counter effective and strengthen her defensive position.

You cannot ask a man or a woman to sacrifice their private lives to have children in order to increase the birth rate for the benefit of society as a whole, because incentives only work at an individual level, nobody cares if their child is going to help society in 30 years time.

You cannot ask people to go back to the dark ages of patriarchy where sex before marriage is illegal, and marriage is once and for all, set in stone with no legal way out. Once we get used to dating, exploring life with and without a partner, and having the freedom to end a relationship and choose another partner without consequence, no one wants to go back to the patriarchal, ultra-conservative society.

Until the 1950s, the prevailing norm was to be heterosexual, married and to have children. People who deviated from the norm were stigmatised and persecuted in one way or another, even today in our societies. The stigma has been drastically reduced in recent decades and this is obviously a good thing. If you are a gay, lesbian or unmarried with children, you are no longer marginalised in modern western societies, and that's real progress. Every personal situation should be accepted and recognised: being gay, being childless for whatever reason, should be tolerated without discrimination, without backlash or people pointing fingers at you.

My point is that if you happen not to have children, for whatever good reason, a fair society should penalise you not for your sexual preferences but for not contributing to the social system when you grow old. It's not a punishment for bad behaviour. It's a punishment for taking goods and services from society, taking public benefits, taking all the benefits of the welfare system, but not contributing to the future workforce and the future tax base by not having children.

Some people choose to work 7 hours a day and enjoy their free time, others choose to work 10 hours a day because they love their work or simply need the money. Both are fine. But everyone expects to earn more by working 10 hours a day than by working 7 hours a day, right? everyone agrees that earning more money for working 10 hours a day compared to 7 hours a day is fair, right? It is simply fair to reward the extra work done.

If someone robs a bank, you expect that person to go to jail or pay a fine, right? Again, it's fair justice by incentivising good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour for everyone's safety.

The same should apply to having children who turn 20 and start working, you should be rewarded for providing these young adults and penalised for not providing them. Economic policy should make childlessness quite difficult, if not miserable, at 50 and 60 and beyond, as it was in the past, before the Second World War, and this should be well known to all young adults who choose deliberately not to have children. It is unfortunately the only way out if we are to survive as a civilisation, because if we do not punish and penalise childlessness, the birth rate will continue to plummet and our society will completely collapse and then all social systems will disappear and everyone will be completely miserable.

Let's have a look at some of the "soft" policies (not coercitive, not forcing any woman to be pregnant by law instead of choice) or relatively feasible incentives to restore the fertility rate to 2 or above:

Idea #1: Financial incentives for parents

Bringing up a child, including time off to care for the child, nursery and pre-school care and health care, can be quite expensive, depending on the policy incentives in place in a country. On average in OECD countries, after public benefits, childcare cost 12% of an average salary.

Scandinavia and Germany have a great economic incentive and social support to have children, with income, maternity and paternity leave, health care for children, everything you need to encourage people to have children, and yet the fertility rate is down to 1.4 in Norway and to 1.2 in Germany. Having a great economic and social policy that favours children is not in itself the ultimate solution to bringing the fertility rate back up.

Child support policies can vary drastically between countries. Figure 26A below shows the OECD countries with the highest and lowest spending on childcare for toddlers. While the average fertility rate of those industrialised countries is around 1.5, it is clear that spending a lot on childcare has no significant impact and does not bring the fertility rate closer to 2, as seen in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Germany. But on the other hand, countries that spend little on childcare definitely discourage people from having children or large families, and those countries tend to have extremely low fertility rates, such as Spain, Chile and Lithuania.

Figure 26A: Annual state spending on toddlers

After all, financial incentives don't really work that well and have a limited impact at best: In Finland, Japan or Germany, new parents are offered about 1 year of paid leave, yet the fertility rate is still below 1.5.

In Germany, parents receive 14 months' paid leave at 60% of their original salary, to be divided between the two parents as they wish, to stay at home and look after the baby. Toddler day care between the ages of 1 and 6 is subsidised by the state at 80% of the total cost: Parents pay around €250 per child per month, for a total cost of around €1,200 per month for a full 35 hours per week, with around €1,000 subsidised by the state. Even with all these financial incentives, Germany has a fertility rate of only 1.3.

In South Korea, adults are offered a huge package of financial incentives if they have a child, up to $70,000. Yet people do not have children and the fertility rate remains below 0.8, the lowest in the world. Money does not encourage people to have children, although it helps and makes it easier, this strategy alone does not work.

Finland offered $1,000 a year for 10 years if they stayed in the Nordic country.

China has offered free fertility treatments, Hungary large tax exemptions and cash, and Singapore grants for parents and grandparents. A Danish travel company even ran a "Do it for Denmark" advertising campaign. In Japan, the government is funding AI-assisted matchmaking, while the Tokyo metropolitan government is offering employees a four-day working week to encourage people to become parents.

Policymakers around the world are grappling with the same problems: no matter what incentives they seem to offer, people are not having more babies. Governments are still searching for policy options to counter the looming economic crisis as the elderly population grows and the pool of workers shrinks.

Figure 26B below show the same trend over the last 40 years in several countries. While incentive policies and government spending increased, the fertility rate has declined, showing that money and child care assistance only do not fix the birth rate issue. Even if the social environment is favorable to having kids, it hardly affects the decision of young couple to have kids or not. Fertility rates are trending down in all countries with increases pro-natalist policies.

Figure 26B: Government spending does not reverse the fertility trend

Nevertheless, governments should not only introduce stronger policies that favour and incentivise having 2 or 3 children, but also penalise those who have 0 or 1 child. What if adults over 40 were taxed 20% more on their income if they had no children, 10% more if they had 1 child, and 10% less if they had 3 or more children? Wouldn't that encourage childless adults to reconsider starting a family? Unpopular penalty measures on childless adults have not yet been tested due to fears of a massive public backlash. Therefore, there is no precedent for measuring the effect of anti-childlessness policies.

Pension benefits should be drastically reduced or even denied if you have no children in order to balance the pension system's budget. Why should the government or the taxpayer support a retired person financially if that person has no children and therefore has not contributed any human resources to the taxpayer pool? It makes no sense. There is no free lunch. If you have no children and no descendants actively working and contributing to the system, why should you benefit from the system?

On the contrary, any kind of incentive for young parents, such as free parental leave or financial benefits, should be encouraged to ensure that our societies have a support system and an existential future, even if the financial incentive has a limited impact. Any increase in the birth rate is welcome for the future of our civilisations.

Unfortunately, the lawmakers at the top who make the decisions are closer to retirement than to having a newborn child. Their biggest voter base is over 50 years old and in favour of more pension benefits. Politicians only aspire to be popular for the next 4 years, not the next 40. I am not naive. For things to change at the top, we would need a major rupture in the economy or debt and bond markets, or a WW3 or massive pandemic, or simply the end of our democracies and their replacement by an authoritarian and totalitarian regime.

Idea #2: Parenting time off with basic income

One solution to the declining birth rate would be to offer economic stability to parents by providing them with a guaranteed basic income for one to six years after childbirth. This can take the form of fully paid parental leave for one year, with guaranteed reinsertion into the labour force with your previous employer. Alternatively, part-time jobs can be topped up and compensated by a state benefit, as if they were full-time jobs, until the child turns six and starts primary school. This offers a great balance and flexibility between professional work and childcare.

Of course, the benefit would have to be restricted to people who have been studying or working in the country for at least 3 years to avoid a mass migration of foreigners coming to this country just to get the benefit from the local government.

One of the reasons why working women with career ambitions may hesitate to have children is that their expected earnings once they become mothers decline significantly compared to women who do not have children. Figure 26C below shows that the loss of earnings for mothers in the first 10 years after childbirth varies from 20% up to 60% of the earnings of a woman without children. The definitive loss of future earnings is one of the main reasons why some women decide against having children.

Figure 26C: Loss of earning after motherhood

The idea of paid parental leave and returning to the labour force in a part-time role while being paid as a full-time employee would also reduce the burden and delay of finding the right and secured partner, by providing an income for the family in case of a split up after birth. This would incentivise procreation and remove the fear of short-term financial distress in the event of a split between the couple. However, it would increase national debt and be perceived as unfair to lesbians, gay men and infertile adults, to name just a few.

The problem with financial incentives is that they only work for young adults who have found a suitable partner and have a desire for children. However, many adults simply prefer not to have children and are happy with their childless lifestyle. No matter how much money you throw at them, it will not change their minds. Incentives only work for a minority — those who want children and have the right partner — to tip the balance in favour of starting a family. But incentives and pro-natalist financial policies do not work for the majority who either do not want children or have not yet found the right partner. Based on what has been tested and incentivised in countries such as Hungary, South Korea and Germany, financial incentives are ineffective because the main reason people do not want children is cultural: life is good without children and they do not need children to fulfil any life purpose. Even if the government offered money, paid parenting time and free childcare, young adults would still not have children and would prefer to keep their freedom as childless adults.

Idea #3: Pension benefits depending on the number of children

300 years ago, your family was your only social support system: you had to have children to look after you when you were ill or old. Nowadays, society has replaced this system with national social security, healthcare and state pensions.

So when you grow old and do not work anymore, when you stop contributing to the social system, if you do not have children to ensure that future generations will benefit from it, why should you benefit greatly from it? Why is the current public pension system based on your past personal income rather than the number of children you have brought into the world? Why should you be entitled to a great pension based on your past high income if you have no living children who are contributing to the pension system as young adults?

The biggest misunderstanding about our social system is that you don't get access to public healthcare, doctors or a public pension just because you pay health care taxes and pension taxes now or have paid them in the past. People assume this, but it's not true. You get access to doctors, public hospitals and public pensions because some people gave birth to babies 40 years ago. These children are today's workers, providing goods and services and paying taxes. The missing children of the last 20 years will be the missing workforce of the next 40 years. However, the socio-cultural assumption is that you get all those public benefits because of your money contribution via tax. That's wrong! I can give you an example to help you understand.

Imagine if everybody literally stopped having children overnight. All the one-year-olds today would grow up to become adults and work for about 40 years. They would all pay healthcare taxes and pension taxes for 40 years and work diligently for 40 years. Then, at 65, they would retire, and there would be nobody under 64 in society because 64 years ago, we all stopped having children in this imaginary world. There would be nobody working because noone would be under 65 years of age: no doctors, no construction workers, nobody to pay taxes for your pension. You would end up with a society of only over 65-year-old with no doctors or health care workers, and no taxpayers to pay for pensions. The 65-year-old would claim, 'I have worked for 40 years and paid my taxes for 40 years; I deserve a pension and healthcare', but practically, this person would not receive anything. Society would collapse. While this is an extreme and utopian scenario, my message is that we do not receive public welfare benefits because of our past contributions. We receive social welfare benefits because people are working and paying taxes today. The social welfare system is not related to the past; it simply redistributes the current public labour and taxes collected from society this month. The idea that our past 40 years of service entitles us to public benefits or that we deserve anything today because of our past taxes is simply false. The taxes we pay today fund the welfare benefits of today's elderly, not those we should receive in the future. The only thing that guarantees a labour force and taxpayer base to support the future social welfare system is having children.

By promoting high salaries — and the associated high tax contributions — as the determining factor in how much pension benefit you receive upon retirement, the system is biased and imbalanced, sending the opposite signal to that which it is intended to promote. It encourages people to pursue high-salary jobs, rather than compromising our income level to raise children or working part-time to care for a toddler. Especially women are incentivise to work full time their entire adult life, because having children is currently associated with lower pensions benefits in the future. But the real incentive and backbone of a public social system is future workers, not income level. By not incentivising having children today, people are not contributing to future workers and future social welfare. If you allow childless people to receive the same amount of public benefit, you are not incentivising the social system to sustain its ability to provide for people in the future. Worse still: Women who retire after spending years off the labor market in order to raise children are penalised for not having a full-time salary for 40 years, receiving lower pensions when they retire. Essentially, we are sending the message that we will penalise women for raising two kids or more and being out of the labour force for five to eight years by reducing their pension benefits, when they should actually be rewarded for providing future workers to support the pension system. What an idiotic system! What a shame on our lack of praise for the hard work of young mothers. We have such a silly public pension system.

Public benefits should be based on the number of children you have, not your prior tax contributions. Tax rates should be the same for everyone and pension benefits should be low for the elderly without children and generous for people with two or more children. As it stands, society incentivises a world in which people have no children in order to maximise their income and lifestyle, with no impact on how much social benefit they receive over their lifetime. This is absolutely detrimental to the existence of the social system. People end up choosing what is best for themselves, not having many children, and expecting the welfare system to magically keep going. They blame politicians or the rich of this world when it starts to crack and breaks down like now in the 2020s. We are sending the wrong signal by offering the same level of pension benefit whether you have no children or 3 children, and by not priorising young parents and workers on the access and priority to public health care system. This fatal failure will bring an end to the social welfare system within the next three decades, and our overall prosperity will disappear with it.

Charlie Munger used to say: "Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". If high salaries and long careers are rewarded with generous pensions, adults — especially women — will prioritise this scenario over having a family. This is what has happened over the last 40 years. Today, we have plenty of retirees receiving high pensions, and many people over 55 who we promise a high pension in the near future. Meanwhile, very few people are under 40 because of low birth rates, and extremely few children below 15, meaning that very few are contributing to the social system through work and tax payments. These perverse incentives will lead to the downfall of the current social system.

What if the pension model was based on the number of children living in your country? for example, if you have 3 children, you can retire at age 60 with a full pension. but if you have no children, your legal retirement age is 70 and you get a very reduced pension. This would encourage people to have children and would be fair to the social system as it is currently designed: It would reward those who contribute most to the system.

The proposed solution is to incentivise high fertility by drastically reducing the state pension for those retiring without children. In Europe, pensions are a social system where the working people pay for the retired people, unlike in the US where it is a capitalised system: what Americans have saved during their working life, Americans get it when they retire. In a socialised pension system, why reward someone with a pension if they do not contribute to the system by not having children? It makes no sense in its current form.

Good luck though formulating the law and implementing it gradually. It seems an impossible task. How do you tell a 60-year-old childless adult who thought he would be entitled to a pension in 5 years' time that he will not be entitled to a respectable pension in 5 years' time, with little savings, no financial preparation and no time to react? There is no good solution. And any drastic solution proposed by a government would be met with popular backlash, protests, strikes and riots. When you have been given privileges for 70 years and people are used to priviledges, it is almost impossible to give them up or accept losing them for the greater good of society as a whole.

For example, a fair pension system would be one in which every pensioner earns a base of 70% of the national minimum wage. Then add 10% for each child and 5% for each grandchild. For example, if you have 2 children and 3 grandchildren, you would be entitled to 105% of the minimum wage (70+10+10+5+5+5). The perceived state benefit would be dynamic, meaning that if you get a new grandchild when you turn 75, you would get an additional 5% benefit from that point onwards.

I like to include grandchildren in the equation because it incentivises raising your children in a family environment, it incentivises family behaviour, loving and caring for children, traditions in upbringing, being a good and loving parent so that your children have the desire to become parents themselves. The ultimate proof that you are a good parent is when your children want to have children themselves. But in today's world, many men have one or more children with sometimes different women, they split up the relationship with the mother, but they do not spend time with the children, they hardly see them and do not participate in their upbringing, leaving single mothers to raise the children alone, and the children grow up to be young adults, usually with a bad experience and perception of family, and usually do not see themselves as future parents and do not want to have children themselves. Bringing up 14 children to the world like Elon Musk but not being present personaly daily or weekly to take care of them and raise them should not count. Only the upbringing of a child should count in pension benefits.

Again, the intention of such a system is not to discriminate against or persecute lesbians, gays, alcoholics, drug addicts, biological infertiles, or anyone else in the world who happens not to have children. The aim is simply to have a balanced system with a fair return for what each of us provides to society: If you have children and grandchildren, they will eventually become young working adults and contribute to society through jobs and the tax payer pool, so you should get some benefits or rewards for your participation and contribution to the social system. If you do not have children for whatever reason (be it a valid one), when you retire you will be totally dependent on the social system and neither you nor your missing offspring will be contributing to the social system, so you should be penalised. If you think this is unfair to all childless adults, you are wrong about the current system: As a pensioner, you do not deserve a pension because you worked and paid taxes for 40 years. No, you deserve a pension because right now there are some taxpayers paying your pension. This is the reality of a public social system through redistribution. It has nothing to do with the last 40 years. In a hypothetical country with a population of only people over 65, no one would get a state pension because there would be no workers and no taxpayers, and so no one would get a state pension. Children and young workers are the bedrock of the social system, not your past career and past earnings.

This proposed system obviously has some limitations: what if your children move to another continent and work there? What if you adopted children, do they count? what if you raised a child but he/she died at the age of 15 or 20, does that count? I don't want to go into the details and complexity of such a system. My point is that the current system does not incentivise having children at all, the current social system takes money from young adults to feed older adults. My ideas and proposals are radical alternatives that would rebalance the system and make it self-sustaining. My intention is to start discussions about doing things differently. I do not pretend to have all the solutions, on the contrary, I only want to start a debate on other possible ideas to save our civilisations from inevitable collapse.

Idea #4: A ceiling or cap on public pension benefits

The idea is to set a maximum public pension benefit that is low enough to be around the minimum income, and low enough to about 20% below the median income. Nobody should receive public pension benefits at or above the national median income.

Before 1900, anywhere in the world, if you were old enough (60 years old) and no longer able to work, you had only 3 options:

Live in your children's or grandchildren's home and be cared for, or spend on private labour for personal care if you were wealthy enough, or struggle mightily in poverty.

The public welfare system was set up around 1950 because life expectancy then was around 65 and there were about 8 workers for every person over 60, the original retirement age.

We have now gone way too far to the other side, the side where pensioners are a huge cohort of the population, about 3 to 1 worker and soon 2 to 1, but also the elderly take so much money and labour away from workers through the public pension and health care system. Many pensioners are now living decently, while those under 40 are struggling to make ends meet. The young workers are taxed so heavily for health care and pensions that the working population with below-average incomes is now struggling financially at the expense of the cosy and comfortable pensioners. And this is a major factor in young people not having children.

When people imagine a retired person, they tend to visualise someone elderly and modest, living a simple, minimalist life close to the poverty threshold. This was actually the case until the 1970s, but as people started to live longer, medicine and healthcare became more widely available and affordable, and the baby boomers were able to provide social security for retirees, life for pensioners improved significantly. Nowadays, if you are in good shape when you retire between the ages of 65 and 75, you can enjoy a very decent life supported by the public pension system. You can go to restaurants, travel on all-inclusive tours and cruise ships, and attend exhibitions. Of course, some low-income retirees will receive a very low pension and struggle to live a decent life without any accumulated savings. We must ensure that former low-income earners enjoy dignity in retirement, but the reality is that most retirees have paid off their mortgages and have plenty of savings. Baby boomers really are the golden generation. They have experienced rising living standards throughout their working lives, and now enjoy generous pensions and a better quality of life than many current workers under the age of 40.

Many retirees live comfortably on their public pension and still manage to save a significant amount of money, which is absurd because a 'social' system is supposed to help those in need, not enable those who are already living comfortably to save even more.

Pensioners are having a much better life than they should. On average, pensioners save more money than people under 30. Only 10% of pensioners are in a precarious situation below the poverty threshold, which is defined as having an income of less than 60% of the country's median income. Conversely, 50% of people under the poverty threshold are under 30 years of age. The older you are, the less likely you are to be in poverty.

60% of retired people in Europe own their own home, while only 10% of those under 35 have bought a home with a mortgage financed by their own income. That's the biggest inequality here, and it affects young adults and their global ability to start a family.

How did we get to this point in the social pension system without major changes? It is one thing as an active person to have solidarity with the elderly, to be generous to the elderly when workers vastly outnumber the elderly population and when the pensioneers are living only 5 to 10 years of pension. It is quite another when there are only two active people for every retired person, when the retired people subsist on social benefits for 20 to 25 years before their death, when most of them own their homes without a mortgage, and when pensioneers receive public benefits equivalent to more than the minimum wage, and when, as a worker, you have very little money left at the end of the month after paying your rent, food and energy bills.

In our minds, we think of the retired person in the western world as a poor person, living in humble and modest conditions, disabled by physical and/or mental handicaps, usually staying at home all the time, in need of social support, usually lonely and without a high standard of living. But let's be honest: Most retired people earn a pension well above the minimum wage, they own their house outright, they live in an oversized 100m² for 2 people, they go out to restaurants and events with relatives and friends, they have all the possessions and gadgets in the world to live comfortably, they have a ton of savings, they go on holidays on all-inclusive tours, They eat high quality food, they employ many people directly or indirectly to support or care for their health and lifestyle, they actually live stress-free and enjoy life much more than a 30 year old parent who struggles to work, raise children, pay the bills, balance time for children, self, friends and couple and is constantly under stress. Not everyone retires rich, but the reality is that any middle class person retiring today will have a much better standard and quality of life than the same middle class person with a similar income in their 30s. This should not be the case, this has never been the case in past history and past civilisation, and this should absolutely stop immediately. We need to lower the standards of living of pensioneers and the over-60 generations in order to redistribute puclic money to give better standards of living to the under-40 generations. To me, this is the greatest social inequality. Not between the rich and the poor, because there have always been social inequalities in the past, often greater than today, and that is inevitable. But the social inequality between generations, between the old and the young, is what is really bringing our civilisation to the brink of collapse.

The system is totally rigged in favour of the older people, we should have changed it decades ago. Now that half the population will soon be over 50, the majority of voters are against any drastic reduction in pension benefits, and without drastic change our civilisation will continue with lower birth rates and lead to societal collapse.

In our current context, and for at least the next 30 years, our GDP and, by proxy, total revenue from taxation will remain stagnant due to a stagnant or shrinking active population. Conversely, public spending needs will increase due to an ageing population requiring more pension benefits and healthcare services. This will lead to a growing gap between tax collection and spending, resulting in an increasing budget deficit.

In an ageing population, the only viable solution is to reduce the average benefits received by elderly people: lower pensions and fewer healthcare services. This is the only way; it's arithmetic math based on the number of people, the givers and the takers, the tax payers and the tax receivers. This is in physical terms, not financial terms. It is obvious and undeniable.

You can't tell businesses to pay more tax, nor can you increase income and VAT taxes on the working population. You could do it as a one-off to cover three years of need, but you cannot do it continuously for thirty years, burdening the people and businesses that deliver goods and services and make society work with the burden of an ageing, economically useless population of retirees. This is absurd; it will cause workers and businesses to rebel, either through civil war or by moving to destinations with more favourable conditions (Switzerland, Singapore, Dubai, etc.).

It's as if you have two pedestrian workers carrying a trailer with three gentlemen in it. A fourth gentleman climbs on and tells the workers, 'Please make an effort for me.' Then a fifth gentleman jumps on the trailer and asks to be transported too. Then another man jumps on the trailer. At some point, the 2 pedestrian workers will stop carrying the trailer, complain, and ask one or two of the gentlemen to get off the trailer and walk on their own. The two workers cannot carry an infinite number of people. In this example, the workers represent people under 50 and the gentlemen represent people over 60. The picture is perfectly understandable. We need to reduce the social privileges of retired elderly people. It's plain and simple.

You don't need a PhD in finance to understand that when the ratio of workers to receivers goes from 8:1 in 1970, to 4:1 in 2020, then to 2:1 in 2050, either the workers will struggle more to support the elderly, or the beneficiaries will receive fewer services and benefits.

In order to guarantee a decent pension for everyone, we need to limit pension benefits to something around the minimum wage. There is no way that a person who earns twice the average wage for 40 years is going to get also twice the minimum wage when he/she retires from government support: That person has been wealthy and privileged all their life, probably has some savings and has bought a house, so why should he/she gets more than the minimum wage from the state pension if they are not in need? This is the true meaning of a social system: You give according to your means, but you receive according to your needs. By reducing the high pensions that some already wealthy people are entitled to, it would ensure a minimum pension for everyone at about 80% of the minimum wage, even in the coming decades when the number of pensioners will approach the number of workers.

The level of pension benefits varies greatly from country to country. Public pensions can account for a small proportion of a government budget or be the largest area of spending. As shown in Figure 26D below, the proportion of GDP spent on public pensions can range from 3% to 16%.

Figure 26D: share of public spending as percentage of GDP

The pension benefits received by pensioneers on average also varies drastically between the developped countries, obviously linked to Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and the overall price level in a given country. In Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, a pensioneer receives on average $150 a month, while in Norway, the average pension benefit is $2000 a month, as shown on figure 26E below.

Figure 26E: Average retirement benefits in different countries

The pension replacement rate, which is the percentage of a person's income before retirement that they will receive as a pension benefit, is what truly defines whether a state offers generous pensions. The differences between OECD countries are striking, as shown in Figure 26F below. While some countries, such as Greece, the Netherlands, Turkey and Portugal, are very generous to pensioners, offering more than 90% of their previous salaries, others, such as Lithuania, Australia, Estonia, Ireland and South Korea, have definitely not prioritised elderly welfare by awarding less than 40% of the last salary.

Figure 26F: Pension replacement rates in OECD countries

Let me give you a personal example of why limiting the maximum public pension benefit to around 20% below the median wage is a solution that enables everyone to receive a public pension, reduces overall spending on pensions, and is socially and morally fair to younger workers.

My father is in his 70s and retired. He worked as an electrician for the same company for 40 years, earning a decent but not overwhelming income. He receives a state pension of about €2,000 a month, while he owns a fully paid for 3 bedroom apartment in the city centre, which he was able to finance quite easily over 20 years on an almost single income in a family of 4 with 2 children. He does not need this large pension, he is well off and has a lot of savings. Giving my father more than the minimum wage of €1400 a month is simply wasting public money on those who don't need it.

My sister is in her late 40s and works in a bakery, coming to work every day for the minimum wage of €1400 a month. She struggles to pay for rent, food and basic expenses. She is supposed to get a pension of €1000 a month when she has no savings, no property and no savings.

It should be the other way round! In a fair redistribution, my sister should be entitled to a pension of €1400 a month, like her minimum wage now, and my father should also get €1400 a month and dip into his own savings for his pension. When you think about it, how fair or social is a system where a full-time worker, who works and pays taxes, earns significantly less than a retired person who lives on a state pension from taxpayers' money? How can an inactive pensioner get a better monthly income than a full-time worker? It's ridiculous! Don't call it a social system. Call it a wealth drain via the tax system, in which workers are hit hard by tax while old fat cats reap public money rewards. It's a screw-the-young workers system that takes money from the young workers to feed the old workers and pensioners, most of whom live decently. There is clearly something wrong with the current system: low wages are too low and/or pension benefits are too high. Public money should go to people in need, like my sister, when she works for a misery of salary because of high taxes burden, and when she retires with no savings and no real estate. Public money of a social system should not go to overfeed comfortable people who have had an excellent salary and wealth accumulation for 40 years.

And please don't tell me that 40-year-olds who are currently in work just have to wait for their turn, because in 2050 they will retire and receive great pension benefits. That's not true; there aren't enough children under the age of 15 today to ensure the continuation of pension redistribution in 20 years' time. Today's workers are screwed now and will be screwed as pensioners in 20 years' time. Only pensioners from the 2000s to the 2020s will have it good, but the pension system is about to collapse in the next decade due to the demography and the extreme low birth rates all around the world since around 2010.

I am an engineer, I earn very well working for a big company, about twice the average national wage. The German government sends me a report every year saying that I am expected to receive a public pension of €3600 gross per month or €3000 netto per month when I retire at the age of 67 in 2048. For comparison, the minimum net salary for a full-time job in Germany is around €1,600 per month, and the median net salary is around €2,200. I am supposed to receive €3,000 netto a month for being inactive and unproductive to society? And we call this civilisation and progress? What a shame! I don't need all this money from taxpayers! As a pensioner, I should receive the equivalent of a minimum income of €1,600, which would be enough for me. Giving me double that amount is wasting public money, not allocating it to those in real need, increasing the country's public debt, burdening young workers with high taxes and thus forcing them to have lower birth rates, inducing the future self-destruction of our social system. The social welfare system is being sabotaged; it's suicidal, and all advanced countries are allowing it to happen.

Let's do a quick calculation to demonstrate the absurdity of the challenge facing the German government. The median German income is around €2,200 net per month, the median pension tax paid by a worker is approximately €300 per month, and the median pension benefit is about €1600 gross per month or €1200 net. This means that we need the pension tax payments of 4 median workers to support a median pension, and we need the pension tax payment of 12 median workers to fund my anticipated gross pension! The 4 to 1 required ratio of the median is about to be 2 to 1 in reality in Germany in 2035 due to the ageing population, so that the currently constructed pension system is about to be highly in debt very soon, like in most other advanced economies. 12 median workers are needed to support me in 2050, whereas in twenty years' time, the ratio of workers to pensioners in Germany will be close to 2:1. That's completely unrealistic! The government is making promises that it cannot fulfil, yet it is not acting accordingly by drastically altering the policies of the pension system. €3,600 gross or €3,000 net per month is ridiculously high. When I retire, I should receive a maximum of €1,600 net per month (if that is ever feasible, which I doubt). The reality is that I will receive a pension of maxium €1,000 per month in the current system, because there will be two workers for every retiree, each paying an average of €300 per month. This is unfortunately the reality that we are facing. If you don't have substantial savings or children who can support you in your old age, you won't be able to survive on public pension benefits in Europe in 20 years' time. In my case, I should live off my career savings, I don't need public money, I'm wealthy enough. This money should go to the low-paid pensioners, to the integration of immigrants, or to increase the minimum wage workers who should get an almost tax-free income, and to public health care and pensioners who have no savings and really need support. This is the proof that the system is rigged to make the rich like me richer and to steal earned money from the working class to redistribute to the privileged older generation, often not in need and certainly not productive for the social system.

At the moment, entitlement to a pension depends on the income earned during one's working life. But the reality is that when we retire, we don't get a pension based on the merits and hard work of the past, we get a pension based on the current sum of taxpayers of the current working population. The state pension system is a balanced social system, not a capitalist individual savings account.

I currently pay about €700 per month in pension tax. When I retire in 23 years' time, I am supposed to receive €3600 gross per month in pension support from the government. This means that 5 workers in a given salary bracket will support a pensioner in the same bracket. But as of 2025, there is only about 2.5 workers for each pensioneer, so that the pension system isalready in huge deficit. Worse: Starting from 2035, the ratio will shrink to 2 workers for each pensioneer, and in 2050 an estimated ratio of 1.8 workers for each pensioneer. How can my pension be payed when I retire in 25 years' time, when in 2050 there will be an estimated 1.8 workers for every pensioner in Germany, instead of the required 5:1 ratio needed to pay my promised high pension benefit? You would have to tax every worker in my income bracket around €2000 per month in pension tax just to be able to pay my pension of €3600 gross per month. This is simply not feasible. It's just maths. We must immediately stop giving away huge pension benefits to the top earners who are not in any financial stress. High pensions are ruining society, the solvency of nations, and putting a huge burden on young working adults who then tend to get into financial difficulties and often decide not to have children. High pensions benefits are forcing low wage earners to receive very low pensions and end up close to poverty when they retire. The current pension system is totally unsustainable. For the system to be sustainable, we should either work until 74 instead of 67, or I should pay €1800/month in pension tax to receive €2700/month when I retire, or I should receive only €1400/month in pension, which is about 10% below the current minimum wage in Germany. The only feasible and less painful option is that I receive "only" €1400/month in pension at the most. I am not targeting Germany only. Every industrialized country will have to make drastic pension cut latest in 2035.

In most of the western countries, pension benefits are calculated on the basis of years of service. You have to work a certain number of years, say 40, to get your full pension. If you work for only 30 years, you will only get 75% of the pension you are entitled to.

This rule is complete nonsense for all parents who have taken a few years off to look after their children or have been working part time for a decade or two. First of all, how can raising children not be considered work? It is probably the most exhausting and relentless job in the world! In addition, many low-income women are reluctant to have children because they know that they would have to stop working for 1 to 10 years and these years would be missing in the calculation of their already low pension benefits. This is another reason why low-income women don't have children or only one child.

What a shameful system. If you think about it, you have a public pension system that feeds on new young workers and therefore on babies, and the rules of the system are designed to punish those who actually "work" at home to take care of large families with 2 or more children. Those who feed the pension system with future taxpayers are penalised for bringing up children. What an upside-down world! The current calculation of state pension benefits is a self-sabotaging system that encourages people not to have children so that the system breaks down over time. What a mess, what a shame... How did we get there without fixing it?

The state pension system is fed by as many taxpaying workers as possible when a person retires at 65, so the system should reward you based on your contribution to young workers (children) you put into the system, not based on your personal income over the last 40 years.

The simple solution is a flat rate pension based around the minimum wage for all adults at retirement age, regardless of their earnings during their working years and regardless of their annuity. And the final pension benefit one retiree receives would be adjusted in a span of -20% to +20% around the minimum wage equivalant, and would be determined not on your past income but on the number of children and grandchildren you have, e.g. 80% of the minimum wage if you have no children, 90% of the minimum wage if you have one child, 100% of the minimum wage if you have two children, 120% of the minimum wage if you have three or more children.

A pension based on the nation's minimum wage is a win-win for everyone:

If you have worked all your life on the minimum wage, you will continue to earn the minimum wage when you retire and will not be worse off financially.

If you worked 30 years instead of 40, because you took time off to bring up your children and look after your grandparents, or for whatever reason, like mental health issue or physical illness, you still get a minimum wage pension to live on.

And if you had a successful career as a high middle class or above, like a senior at Google earning 200k/year or a CEO earning 500k/year, you also get "only" a minimum wage pension because you don't really need more money from the state, you are rich enough with your savings and assets of the last 40 years.

That's why a minimum wage pension is a fit-all solution that would reduce the overall cost to the state and ensure survival money for everyone. A truly "social" system. It's time to make the social welfare system "social" again.

Idea #5: A tax penalty on childless adults

Take Norway as a great exemple of incentives that fails: Even as a very wealthy nation, strong gender equality, with great childcare amd welfare system, with financial and social incentive policy for mothers, the birth rate of Norway went down from about 2 in 2010 to about 1.4 in 2024. This shows that there is no incentive we can put in place in any induatrialized nations to counteract the trend of people having less and less children and the demographic collapse. Note that 2010 marks the start of social media and people seeing other people's life and comparing themself, wishing another kind of better life, which completeltly reinforce the feeling of individualism and self-realisation.

In a society of abundance we had last 40 years, human nature tends to be selfish and take the most out of the system, tends to take advantage of all the social support while finding loophole in the system to get the most out of it, and tends to get all the public benefits and all the fun entertainments while not making babies to contribute to the society down the road. We need laws and regulations that protect us from our own predicament to take the most from society while providing as few as allowed. If everyone tends to take as much as possible from the society but gives as few as possible, then we need to design a system to counter our natural behaviour and tendancies, a system that incentivze making children and penalize those not having children. Otherwise, if you let people choose freely without any consequences, people will mostly chose hedonism, to enjoy a great lifestyle, take public benefits, all entertainment options and will not make babies to ensure a workig society 20 years from now. By not puting regulations like incentive and penalty on child birth, the society is simply doing a delayed suicide.

Most of the financial and societal incentives to entice people to have babies do not work. The next step is to turn incentives for parents into penalties or punishment for childless adults. Why not have a general high tax for every childless adult past 25 years old? Like a default tax equivalent to 20% of the minimum wage to any adult above 25 pays until this adult becomes a parent, otherwise for the rest of their life if the person remain childless.

I know incentive are much more popular and accepted than penalties, and people prefers benefits rather than punishments, but incentives do not work and the society is collapsing, many people don't care what the government could offer as a parent, people prefer their life without babies. We need drastic changes. When the carrot does not work to move the donkey, you need to use the stick. We should feel the common societal burden of not having children. It is unacceptable from our leaders to tolerate a fertility rate below 1.8 without action, without punishment on childless citizens.

I hear the criticism from some people around me about punishing childless adults: "What if you are gay or lesbian, why should you be penalised for your sexual orientation? What about biologically infertile adults who want to have children but biologically cannot, it is not their fault or their own choice, why should you punish these people". I get you. My sister is lesbian without children, so I understand.

It's not about your personal orientations or choices, it's about your contribution to a system and the benefits you take. If you don't have children, you don't contribute to the future welfare of society, you don't contribute to your own pension, so you should be penalised with a high childlessness tax. Whether it is a choice or an unwanted fact forced upon you, not having children should be treated the same, regardless of the reason. It is a simple balance between supply and demand. You can still choose not to have children, but in that case, because you are not supporting the future tax payer base, you should pay extra taxes for the lack of future tax revenues. There is no free lunch, whether you are a carnivore or a vegetarian, no lunch is free, someone has to pay for it.

I am glad that we have many rights, such as the freedom to choose one's partner, the freedom to choose one's job, the freedom to change one's job or change a partner over time without negative consequences, the right to be openly gay or lesbian, and so on. But with more and more rights that people have acquired, these rights should always come with some duties, including the duty to work and contribute to society, and the duty to reproduce to ensure workers for the next generation.

When you reach 70, you're glad that younger people are around to treat you well, look after your health, and pay taxes to fund your pension. As a 70-year-old, you are glad to receive support from younger generations. Those who have no children receive a lot from younger generations, but they do not contribute to it. Therefore, in a fair system, they should receive less support and face a penalty for not contributing to the support they receive. Since you want the incentives to work while people are of childbearing age, the penalty should apply during the childbearing years of 22–45, not only after the age of 65. All childless adults over 22 or latest 25 years of age should be penalised quite severely to incentivise them to have children for the future sustainability of our society.

Having all these social rights and no duties is like having an all-you-can-eat party with an open bar. People would rush to eat and drink more than they actually need, and no one would replenish the buffet and bar for the next party. If we want to maintain these rights to choose a partner, to choose a job and to have a social system for health care and pensions, we have to enforce the duty to reproduce for the next generations. On a societal level, when a society's fertility rate falls below 1.8, it is simply suicidal to continue without a duty to reproduce, an enforced policy to incentivise having children, and one form of enforcement could be a penalty in the form of taxes and reduced access to the social system.

I am simply looking at a pro-natalist solution that is not coercive and imposing on women, where people are incentivised to have children and value and cherish having a family, any solution that brings back children as the number one priority of young adults. But a solution that does not take away or confiscate all the rights and freedom of choice for women to study, to participate in the labour force, to choose their work, to choose their mate and to have the same rights and the same pay as men. This is my wish.

Unfortunately, the more choices and options you give people, the less attractive it becomes for people to have a family, the more children are seen as a burden in life. And that creates the coming collapse of our society. That's why a financial penalty in the form of taxation is an effective way of making people aware that not having children is not OK for society as a whole, even if it remains a possible free choice at an individual level.

Idea #6: A public health care tax rate depending on your age bracket

For most young adults under 40, a lack of economic stability and financial security is one of the major reason for having no children or stopping at 1. I previously suggested introducing a high tax on childless adults as soon as people graduate, which would put further financial pressure on young adults. So how can we relieve young adults of the tax burden they face? By adjusting the health care tax rate so that it is no longer dependent on income level, but rather on age bracket. This would result in a very low health care tax for those under 40 and a high health care tax for those over 60.

The national public health care is an insurance policy. You pay a flat rate tax every month in return for health care services, whether you go vistit the doctor once a year or have an operation to repair a ligament, you pay the same every month. This is by definition an insurance, but a public one, not a private one.

The main difference with private insurance is that the tax bracket you pay does not correlate with the estimated average cost of the benefits you are likely to receive.

If you want to insure a $1 million Ferrari, you will definitely pay more than if you insure an ordinary $30,000 car. If you are a 40 year old driver with a history of accidents and car wrecks, your insurance company will most likely charge you much more than a 40 year old who has driven for 20 years without a single accident. If you want to get home insurance against hurricane, it will probably cost you more in Florida than in Italy.

So why on earth does a 25 year old pay the same health insurance tax as a 60 year old, assuming both have the same income? It is ridiculous. On the one hand, you have a young adult who visits the doctor on average once a year and is in the prime of life. On the other hand, you have an elderly person who, on average, takes several medicines a day, has monthly treatments or check-ups for a fairly serious condition, and is likely to have symptoms that require expensive tests and expensive treatment. Making young adults pay as much as older adults for health care is a joke, a globalised scam, a transfer of wealth from the young generation to the old one, and a major reason why young people cite "insecure finances" as a reason for not having children, as well as a major reason for the public deficit every year.

If a 30 year old receives on average 4 times less health care than a 60 year old, then it makes perfect sense that the 30 year old pays 4 times less health care tax than the 60 year old. Anyone who argues this logic is confused and misled by 7 decades of injustice in which the health tax rate is calculated on income, not on services received.

Whether you define a social system as taking money from people who can afford it and redistributing it to those who can't, or you define social as everyone paying according to their means and receiving according to their needs, what we are doing today is exactly the opposite. It is an asocial system. Under-50s are definitely paying way more for health care services than they receive, even though they are the age group with the least wealth and the greatest risk of poverty. Over-60s, on the other hand, receive more healthcare services than they pay for, even though they are the wealthiest generation with the most savings and the least risk of poverty. It's a scam orchestrated by law to keep the system as it is, favouring old leaders and older people at the expense of young adults. This pushes many to have fewer children due to financial insecurity and precariousness.

Idea #7: Priority given to workers for health care services

Half of your lifetime healthcare costs are incurred after the age of 60. As the population ages, there is an increasing demand for healthcare for the over-60s. Essentially, an increasing amount of people will require more frequent health care services, so demand for public health care will continue to grow rapidly. What can you do as a doctor or hospital if 12 patients show up, but you can only attend to 10? You either lower the quality of the service by spending less time, attention and money on each patient, or you turn patients away by delaying the moment you attend them, attending to them hours or even days or months later for a specific appointment with a specialist, or you simply do triage: You decide arbitrarily which patients you will treat and which you will not. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, when beds and respiratory devices were in short supply, internal decisions in hospital was made that priority would be given to patients with the best chance of survival, i.e. young people with lower body fat. This was an unofficial, unpublicised decision due to the ethical backlash, but hospitals had no other choice as the inflow of new patients was growing faster than the outflow of recovered patients, and the decision to 'sacrifice' old and overweight people made absolute sense when they were unable to treat all patients.

Public hospitals, doctors and healthcare services in general are slowly reaching this point of low budgets, low workforces and growing patient demand due to the ageing population. Whether we like it or not, we will have to perform triage and set priorities on who we attend. The best way to prepare for this is to define the rules and set the official priority list now. Retirees and non-workers (students excluded) should be at the bottom of the priority list and should receive treatment after all workers in the queue have been attended to. If you are a worker and you arrive at the doctor's surgery and there are three retirees already waiting, you should be attended and treated before the retirees, even if they arrived earlier. This may sound unsociable, immoral or even barbaric, but this is what will happen to our society and the kind of policy that should already be in place. This happened naturally during the peak of the 2020–21 pandemic. Why retirees? First, they have a limited number of years left to live, so any health treatment would offer a lower return on investment. But also because workers are the ones who make society work by delivering goods and services and paying taxes for children, workers and retirees. If a 30-year-old worker breaks their leg and takes 6 months to recover instead of 2 months because the healthcare system is overloaded with plenty of other patients over 60, society technically loses 4 month of productivity that could have benefited everyone. Pensioners live off public spending and savings and are simply consumers, not providers of goods and services, so they should be regarded as low priority. Long-term unemployed people and students over 18 years of age should also be given a lower priority in terms of attendance, in order to make more room for the active working population. On the other hand, children, pregnant women and young mother should be handled by the health care system with priority.

Idea #8: No voting rights for the retired and non-working population

If you think about it in the purest form of democracy and fairness, only the people who pay income taxes (or company tax, if you are an entrepreneur), those who contribute to financing the public budget and social system should decide and vote on what happens with their tax collection and public spending. By taxpayer I don't mean VAT on goods or passive income from real estate or owning businesses stocks. I mean income tax from active work. If you are a student, you are totally dependent on the public system and your parents for your income. If you are retired, you are financially totally dependent on your state pension (and personal savings). If you are out of work and receiving unemployment benefit or some other form of state support, you are dependent. As a state dependant person, why should you have the right to decide how the money is redistributed if you do not contribute to the creation of that pool of money? This is essentially silly. Non-working people should not have the right to vote because they do not produce goods and services for society, nor do they contribute to the tax collection system. This restriction should include minors under 18, students, unemployed people and retirees. By letting any adult vote in a country, it gives the power to the elderly people, who are actually the ones receiving the most of the social welfare benefits. The lucky ones who were supposed to be a minority are now the majority asking politicians for more social benefits from a minority of over-taxed young workers.

When a pedestrian walks down the street, crosses a beggar and decides compassionatly to give him a donation, the pedestrian choose how much he gives to the beggar. The beggar might get $1 or 5$, depending on the giver or the moment. Imagine if the beggar would have the power to decide how much he receives: He would ask for $100, maybe for 500$, and quicker than you realise, everybody wants to be a beggar, all the working pedestrain get broke and most workers give up and become non-productive beggars dominate the world, the society would break down and nothing would work.

If only workers were able to vote, we would have different results and trends in politics, I can guarantee you that. We would elect politicians who have the best interests of workers aged 20–65 at heart. This age group is the backbone of society and prosperity. This would encourage lawmakers to allocate incentives appropriately and reward those who keep society in good shape. Just look at the election results in any industrialised country, broken down by age group, and you will see that most of those under 35 tend to vote for the far right and far left, demanding major changes, and most of those over 60 tend to vote for the centre and conservatism, demanding to keep the system as it is because they benefits from the generous health care and pension system that continuously drains the wealth of young adults.

Let's make an analogy to better understand why giving the vote to non-workers is unfair and will ruin society and drastically affect negatively the decline in the birth rate.

Imagine a bar with 20 customers. In this bar there is a rule that you can decide whether or not to pay for your drinks. Let's say that the majority of them, 15 of them, order beer but do not pay for it. Drinks are free. Only 5 people pay for their beer.

Unfortunately, the bar owner has to charge $20 per beer to make enough money and be profitable. If all 20 customers would pay, the beer would probably cost $6 to $8, but to compensate those who do not pay, the bar tender must raise the price to $20. At the end of the day, the bar owner does not lose any money and the majority of customers drink for free. Only 5 customers overpay for their beer to compensate for the 15 customers who decided not to pay for their drinks and abuse the generous system.

Now ask all 20 customers to vote, if they have the opportunity to change the rule of this establishment and return to the classic everyone pays for his/her drink. They are asked if they would rather keep the rule as it is, with people deciding whether or not to pay for their drinks, or if they would rather change the rule and enforce a mandatory $6 payment per beer. What would be the outcome of this survey?

Obviously 15 answers would be status quo, we want to keep drinking for free, and 5 would say yes, we want the beer to be fairly priced and cheaper, the system is unfair, but we want to keep paying for it because that's the nature of all businesses, nothing is free. If you let the majority decide, if the majority have an unfair advantage, the majority will always decide to keep their unfair advantage to the detriment of a minority.

The real price of a beer for the business owner to make a positive margin would be $6 or 7$, but because so many people abuse the generous system, the owner has to raise the price to $20 for the few who pay.

And this situation happens with the social system, health care and pensions, which unfairly benefit the majority of people over 55 to the detriment of those under 40.

The under-40s pay far too much tax for very little or no benefit, to their detriment and in favour of the over-60s, and as a result the under-40s cannot afford houses and a good life in general, and therefore most of the under-40s cannot afford to have children, which will only make the whole situation worse in the decades to come. Obviously, if you let the beneficiary of a system decide how much they receive, they will ask for more and more until the system goes bankrupt. You can't let the beneficiaries run and rule the system. You need governance that represents the system's contributors to decide on the best distribution, so only workers' representatives should administer the social welfare system.

Only the working population should be entitled to vote.

You could argue that in a democracy, the majority shall always prevails, and if the majority of people are now over 60 and this majority is demanding high pensions from the few workers, that is democracy, it should count as it is, we should follow the majority, right? Well, first of all, if you really want to follow the democratic rules, you should only spend on pensions what you collect in taxes, and all pension systems in Europe are already in deficit before the real ageing happens in the next 20 years. So even if the pensioners are the majority and decide to keep their "high" pensions, if the public pension system was financialy balanced without debt, "high" pension would much lower than they actually are with a current ratio of 2.5 workers for 1 pensioneer, probably much lower than the minimum wage equivalent. But the real question is: Why should we follow the sayings of a minority? well, we have really bad examples in the past showing that the majority of the population benefited from a totally unfair system to the detriment of minorities. I'll take another extreme example: During the time of slavery in the USA, if you had a referendum of all adults, including slaves, asking whether people were in favour of slavery or whether they wanted to abolish slavery, I think the poll would have shown an overwhelming majority in favour of continuing slavery, simply because the slave adults were a minority compared to the non-slave adults. Does this mean that slavery was right? No, absolutely not, every human being has a soul, no one is worth more than another, and now we all see the abolition of slavery as a universal good progress.

Today above 50% of the voters in Europe are already over 50 years old, and by 2040 in several western countries a third of the population will be retired. The above-60 voters outnumber the unter-40 voters, and outnumber the under-30 voters twice. This large amount of people benefit from the generous health care system and the generous pension system, and these people are either affected or concerned about their retirement, so these older people vote for the status quo, the central concervative political parties, and are strongly against a redistribution of wealth from the older generations to the younger generations, maintaining this drain of wealth from the struggling under 40 workers to the over 50 people who are often already much wealthier.

Half of the voters in Europe are already over 50 years old, either already retired or concerned about their imminent retirement. As politicians are almost always over 50, they are reluctant to pass laws that would reduce pensions and lose the support of the largest group of voters. And this trend is not going to stop any time soon as the population gets older and richer at the top of the age pyramid and thinner at the bottom. "The carrots are cooked", as we like to say in French.

Although the majority of people has benefited from the social system over the last 40 years, while most people have been working, it is now unbalanced at the expense of those under 40 and at the expense of our future via public debt, because those under 40 have too much financial burden to support the social system, which many of them can't afford to have children, which will aggravate the crisis in the coming decades. In 10 to 20 years' time, everyone, regardless of age, will suffer from the imbalance between workers and pensioners and the current welfare system will crumble. The longer we wait to take drastic measures and make changes, the more financial pressure we put on the budget deficit and on young workers, encouraging young adults not to have children and making the situation worse in the decades to come. I am devastated by the inaction of our leaders and media over the last 20 years, watching birth rates plummeting since 2012 mostly because of social medias on smart phones, and to see no major changes in the social welfare system. That's why I'm writing this book. I know the saying goes 'if it aint broken, don't fix it'. The social welfare system already broke down in the 2010s. The problem is that the low birth rate has a negative economic impact 20 to 50 years later, so by the time we feel the cracks, it will be 20 to 50 years too late, and whatever action we take today for the birth rates, we would not see any benefit in 2050. However, for the social welfare system, we can still act now to reduce expenditure on the over-60s and balance the system with the reality of a shrinking taxpayer base. The system is showing signs of cracks with low growth, high structural public deficits and debt, lower quality health services overall, and we know for sure that it will collapse in 10 to 20 years and there will be no solutions in 2040 because nobody dared to fix the broken social system between 2010 and 2025.

In our current world, giving voting rights to pensioners, long-term unemployed adults and students is like the following situation:

Imagine you are a pedestrian and you see a beggar down the street asking for money. You might give him or her $2 or $5 out of generosity, which is a good thing. Now imagine the beggar is asking for $50 and you are mandated by law to donate. You no longer have the choice of whether to give money, you have to, as it is a tax. Every beggar you pass by is entitled to a $50 donation from you. And because there are more beggars than pedestrians, the beggars vote, are the ajority, win elections and pass laws to force all pedestrians to give them a bag of money. Pedestrians would struggle to make ends meet and could no longer afford to pay their rent or have children.

That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Well, that's exactly the situation we are in now with the public pension and health care system, at least in Europe and maybe in some pro-social advanced countries. The social welfare system was designed with seven contributors for one beneficiary in the 1950s, and we are now at three to one with no significant alteration on the original construct. Today, there are more voters over 50 than voters under 40, so politicians have a greater chance of success if they target the over-50s population, who are deeply concerned with pensions and healthcare. We are in a system with more takers than givers, but the takers are in power and force the givers to give more every year, meanwhile the takers' population grows and the givers' population declines. It's an absurd, broken, crooked system that will continue to be abused until nobody has anything of value left to give and everyone is poor. Unfortunately, that's the only endgame: Mass poverty, end of prosperity, high inflation, mass protest and civil war. All of this because we let a broken social sytem continue to run decades after it started to be clearly unbalanced, without drastic adjustments.

Again, I am not saying that we should have no social system; having a minimum public pension and basic healthcare is great. I am in favour of keeping our social system because we all love it and have enjoyed it for 70 years. I am advocating a fix to the welfare system, not its abolition. However, to keep the current welfare system working, drastic adjustments must be made to adapt to the current balance of givers and takers: no pensions above the minimum wage; only contributors to the system should be allowed to vote; and limited access to and spending on healthcare for retirees. The only goal is to make it economically balanced and no longer in deficit, simply adjusting to the demographic reality. In order to pass laws on drastic adjustments, you need a voter base that is in favour of fixing the system. This starts with deciding who is entitled to vote.

Why is the demography a taboo nobody talks about?

In the Western world, no one talks about the impending population collapse or the impact of not having children on the workforce and the stability of the social system. The popular trendy topics are democracy, politics, climate change, women's empowerment, freedom of speech, green transition, sports, billionaires, celebrities, etc... it seems to be taboo to talk about why people don't have children or why we should have more babies. Here are my 5 takes on why almost nobody talks about the demographic collape:

First, there is the backlash associated with pro-natalist policies: Pro-natalists and associated policies are mostly seen as far-right fascist, patriarchal, mysogyst, ultra-conservative, anti-feminist and anti-women's empowerment. Whether this is true or not is debatable, but the backlash is real, and neither politicians nor journalists dare to talk about our coming demographic desaster, or they risk to be persecuted, insulted and blasphemed in public. Actually, more children means more workers later, so more tax revenue and more redistribution to lower paid workers, people in need, health care, immigrants, etc... so pro-natalism actually fits the far left agenda, but public perception largely paints pro-natalist policies on the far right.

Pro-natalism policies like taxes, penalties and restrictions to encourage a higher birth rate are very unpopular measures. Raising the retirement age, taxing childless adults, reducing pension benefits and increasing health taxes are ideas that 90% of the population would vote against. Politicians, being politicians, looking for approval ratings, votes and popularity, are afraid to put these ideas on the table for fear of losing popularity. If you dare to talk about fertility in public, you are labelled a fascist, a mysogenist, a far-right ultra-conservative. No one dares to talk about it openly. Nobody wants to be the one saying when and how many babies women should have, because it feels both invasive and intrusive.

Secondly, demographic decline is an extremely slow process. It is not a sudden fall off the cliff from one year to the next, but a steady, slowly growing burden that builds up over decades. The economic impact could be 0.2% to 0.6% per year, so that people and politicians do not associate demography with economic or social decline. This would be the equivalent of an income of €2000 per month and a decrease in income of €1 per month. The second month, €1999, feels exactly the same as the first month. The third month, €1998 also gives you exactly the same lifestyle as €2000. Continue this for 10 years and suddenly you only earn €1850EUR, and the missing €150 is significant in your purchasing power. Do that for 50 years and you end up with €1200 a month and you can no longer live decently.

The consequence of depopulation is a very slow death of society, happening after several decades and different generations. So slow that nobody realises it is a problem, and nobody realises that current economic or welfare state decline is linked to fertility rates 20 to 30 years prior. This association is difficult for most people to understand, and the causal relationship is largely unknown to the general public. Fertility rates dropping is nothing compared to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Covid-19 pandemic and sudden shutdowns, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These were sudden shocks with immediate consequences such as inflation and soaring gas and electricity prices within a few months, so people could see the link between cause and effect. Low fertility rates and ageing populations are very gentle, like 0.5% of economic loss per year, a bit like ageing: When you look at yourself in the mirror, you hardly see the difference from last day or last month. It's only when you look at pictures from 10 years ago that you realise you've aged. I think most people do not realise that our civilisation has a cancer, there is no cure for it, it is in our bodies, has been there for 30 years. A cancer develops slowly at the beginning and very quickly at the end. We are entering the final stage. In the next 2 decades, metastasis will appear, all organs will be affected. And the whole society will go bankrupt: it happens very slowly at the start, then all at once.

Thirdly, people seem to misunderstand that low fertility is the root cause of most of our societal issues. Many of the current social and political discussions, especially in Europe, are about immigration, pensions, sluggish economic growth, productivity, house prices in the cities. Although all these issues are in the headlines, they are all related to demography, they all have demography and the fertility rate at their core, but no one seems to make the connection or is willing to talk about demography, the real problem. What an irony of a weak and not accountable society! We all love to talk and debate about the symptom of headache and whether we should take aspirin or paracetamol, but we all hush and shut up about the cancer that is the real cause of the headache because we are too afraid to go to the doctor and get a diagnosis as a reality check.

People also misunderstand the seriousness of the situation and the massive negative impact it has on society. Our entire civilisation, democracy and social model are on the brink of collapse. The demographic situation is really that bad. Many people believe that low fertility rates are not a significant issue, but they could not be more wrong.

Some people see the danger of falling birth rates in the difficulty of running the state pension system, which many know is doomed to failure and simply wish it would last as long as possible. Otherwise, most people don't seem to care about the plummeting number of children in the western world and feel that there are no consequences; whether the population of 10 year olds is half that of 50 year olds seems like just a statistic with no impact or consequences. People are either unable to connect the dots or are too lazy or uninterested in the subject to do their research and are busy with a loaded agenda and daily concerns of anxiety, stress and see climate change as a more pressing issue. Men seem to be more concerned about their careers, their income and their dose of entertainment, and women are more excited about women's rights, empowerment and emancipation.

Any discussion of low fertility with women immediately ends with the argument: "You want to reduce women to baby-making machines, ignoring our rights and our desire to live a balanced and happy life like men, it is each person's choice to decide if he or she wants children", and the discussions turn into a taboo, a polarised ultra-conservatism versus progessivism debate, ignoring the reality that the ultra-low fertility rate is a catastrophe that is slowly decimating our civilisation, and the vast majority seem fine with not having children and do not see the looming problem.

Unfortunately, we will need the coming decades of suffering and economic collapse, social services disappearing, riots and civil wars for people to understand the gravity of the issue, only for it to be too late and the young generation to be too small for any meaningful possible recovery.

Forthly, there are the different personal interests of each age groups. If you split the population into 3 age groups, you would have:

The old adults, 60 years and older, are past their reproductive years, generally richer than the young adult age group, and have fewer years left to live, so they are neither directly affected on what will happen to society 20 years down the road, nor very concerned about the distant future, and they have had a tremendous last 40 years, full of growth and quality of life, so they are generally spoiled and optimistic. Their interest is to keep the public pension system as it is, so that they are guaranteed free money from the state, and they wish good luck to the young workers to keep the economy going.

Interestingly, young adults aged 20 to 40 are too complacent and are the current beneficiaries of this laissez-faire policy of freedom of choice: They are given the choice to have 4 babies, or just 1, or none at all, as they wish, which makes the situation extremely comfortable for them, both men and women. Any enforced policy or social pressure to have more children would be seen as oppression, as a burden, as a loss of freedom, as adding stress and anxiety to an already difficult and busy life, so no one in this age group even mentions the subject and they are very happy with the current arrangement.

The middle age group, 40 to 60 years old, should be the ones protesting and raising the issue, because their decision to have children or not has already been made, and they are seeing the younger generations making even less babies than they did. They still have a long life ahead of them, still have to work a while before retirement, and are facing the collapse of the pension system and also the public health system in the next 10 to 30 years, just at the time when they are supposed to be entitled to receive their pension. This is the age group that will need a health care and pension system the most when it will collapse in the coming 2 decades, when they are at the age of 60 to 80.

Personally, I am in my mid-40s and I see this terrible future for myself in 20 years' time, because the younger adults of today prefer not to have children, which will destroy the social system in the coming decades, and I am convinced that in 20 years' time, when I am in my mid-60s, no pensioner will be able to survive on the state pension alone, and the quality of the public health system will be catastrophic, almost non-existent or completely privatised.

Fifthly, another reason for the public taboo on fertility decline is that the women's empowerment movement, feminism, wokism and all the women leaders in our governments and medias will absolutely promote more freedom of choice for people, promote high positions for women in the workforce, defend women's freedom not to have children if they don't want to, and fiercely oppose any new legislative proposals that would introduce measures to encourage people to have more children. Women are now fully empowered, in the media, in politics, in the justice and in the highest positions of power and influence. Women now make up 50% of the workforce. The women in power today are absolutely pushing the "not having children is great for women" narrative, which is great for young women today, I reckon, but disastrous 10 to 30 years from now. Any male leader who tried to pass such a law would be branded ultra-conservative, archaic, mysogynistic and macho, and would be instantly discredited in the global media and social media. Women simply avoid these conversations, preferring to focus on climate change, social inequalities, the need for more public spending, the fight against poverty, and the fight for all kinds of rights and choices.

Most women would not even allow the public debate to take place. All the possible solutions and starting points for political and sicietal negotiations are polarising issues that are quickly identified as extreme right-wing and ultra-conservative ideology, against women rights. Immigration control, birth control, abortion, the role of women as housewives compared to the role of women in the labour force, the place of the family in society, etc. These are very sensitive issues that touch on personal freedoms and rights, deep convictions that are often associated with radical thinking. I totaly understand that people in the general media, radio and social media remains muted on this subject in order to avoid polarising and alienating their female audience. Anyone living from an audiance, whether in TV, radio, written journalism, social media or podcasting, does not dare to talk about the issue of low fertility rates, simply because they are afraid of losing female viewers and of alienating and provoking the women in their audience. The backlash would be so severe that they could lose their job or revenue. Ultimately, people with a platform simply stop talking about fertility.

Don't bring up the subject of the fertility crisis with women

So those are my 5 takes on why the issue of falling fertility rates is a taboo that nobody dares to talk about these days. Again, I am simply trying to give a rational explanation, not trying to judge whether a personal decision to have a child or not is right or wrong. Each person decides for itself.

There are 2 psychological reasons why many people still remain optimistic or indifferent about the low fertility rate, and believe in a positive outcome for society, despite the terrible demographic situation. The two key reasons for this denial of reality and the kind of optimism that some people have today regarding the actual terrible impact of demographics are:

1. Many lessons cannot be taught. We have to learn them ourselves through mistakes and failures. If we don't experience failure or success ourselves, we don't really understand. I don't understand the Holocaust of WW2, exterminating innocent people just because they were Jews. Similarly, I don't understand the genocide in Gaza in2024-2025 because I haven't been there to see it for myself or experience it from Israel's perspective. For the last 60 years, we have experienced mostly growth and better living standards, so our natural assumption is that we will find an answer to the demographic issue and that everything will be fine. For the majority of us, our assumption is that we overcame the oil shock, the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, AIDS, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVD-19 pandemic, and that we will therefore be able to overcome the depopulation bomb and keep society running. This is because we have only ever known a world of growth and prosperity, so we are only familiar with optimism and positive outcomes. However, the demographic issue is not a temporary problem like the oil crisis of 1973, the financial crisis of 2008, or the eurozone crisis of 2013. The demographic issue is a slow, 40-year death sentence bound to poverty and civil unrest.

2. The human brain is unable to recognise danger as a threat and let it go, while knowing there is nothing we can do to defend ourselves. When faced we danger, we freeze, fight or flight. From an evolutionary standpoint, the cognitive psychology we have inherited is that we have a self-defence mechanism that reassures us that we are going to be fine, in order to eliminate anxiety. We start tricking our brain with imaginary stories and scenarios, and start believing in them, just to feel appeased and not live constantly in fear, stress or anxiety. In the case of the demographic issue, we either ignore the problem, refusing to think or analyse it in depth, or convince ourselves that the situation will improve in the future and that everything will be all right, just to make our anxiety go away, even if our reasoning is unfounded. It is unimaginable to be faced with a danger that you cannot escape or fight. Our brain cannot cope with this situation, so we tend to classify the low fertility rate as 'not an issue' or 'an issue we will find a solution to'. Humankind does not accept the idea of fatality, of having our fate set in stone and our destiny written down. We are a species who believe we are in control, we can change anything and that nothing is impossible. Humans hate the idea of a fatal destiny, such as suffering, when a dire outcome is unavoidable, because we want to believe that we can turn things around and avoid pain. Human sadness stems from the fact that we want to control everything in our lives, whereas in reality, everything is unpredictable and out of our control. So we tell ourselves lies, believe in them, and live in permanent reality denial.

While the low fertility rate is a taboo subject that is rarely discussed in public, no one wants to talk about immigration either. A sensitive issue, because the reality is that most of us would rather live in a homogeneous society with ethnic continuity, without dealing with people of completely different background. Many of us would prefer to be surrounded by people of similar religion, culture and values. Some of us would prefer if there were no immigration at all.

No one in the public media, influencers or politicians dares to make a controversial statement about immigration: If you claim to be against immigration, you are a racist, fascist and intolerant. If you say you are for mass immigration, people will hate you for wanting more insecurity, more crime, the loss of traditional values. Either way, you lose a good part of the support of the population, you lose a big part of the audience, and suddenly you have a lot of haters. Especially for a politician, any statement on immigration is a guarantee to lose at least 20% of the vote, whatever the content of the statement.

The two taboos of immigration and fertility rates have led our society to ignore the demographic issue, to avoid putting demography on the agenda and thus avoiding the necessary reforms and policies, and the restrictions on hedonism and self-fulfilment we need to apply. It has avoided the discussions and debates that would have been necessary and instead is pushing us towards either a last minute reality check with poverty and loss of social services, or a total collapse of civilisation.

Why are states so ineffective to combat the fertility crisis?

First, people need to realise that businesses and political leaders are not incentivised to encourage adults to have lots of children. Childless adults work more and consume more, which boosts business revenues. Having children is a public burden and an economic payload for the first 20 years. Young parents take more days off and work less hours per day following the birth of a child, which results in children costing aa loss of productivity, more public money spent on childcare and a loss of tax revenue. Children mean less state tax revenue and more public spending, so, in the short term at least, politicians who are promoting a strong economy are not actually in favour of more children.

Business and political leaders see children as a drain on time and money in the short term, which will deter young adults from mass consumption and instant gratification, thus reducing corporate revenues and state tax collections, which is contrary to the goal of the political and managerial elite.

The search for immediate satisfaction in the short term is the driving force of this consumer capitalist society. Having children is more of a long-term view, which does not fit in with the plans of the political and economic elite. Even if you do have children, you are bombarded with toys and baby items that every mother should buy, most of which we don't really need. Our grandparents did not have all these things and our parents grew up fine.

The elite and leaders also want to maximise female participation in the workforce in order to increase productivity, economic output and GDP, increase tax revenues and reduce overall labour costs by increasing the number of participants. While this agenda fits the politicians' four-year timeframe and gives women a sense of belonging and rewarding importance, the more women who enter the workforce, the more difficult it becomes for them to balance time for work with time for motherhood and childcare, thus reducing the fertility rate of a population in the long run.

The family is the most fundamental social unit, the bastion of autonomy and privacy, separated from the public sphere. In a pro-economic society promoting and rewarding individual success, the family is rapidly disintegrating, causing problems at the macro level. The state elite and corporate lobbyists, pushing against children for their own agenda, have unleashed social forces that will lead to its demise, one way or another, sooner rather than later.

Then, the fact that the social welfare system provides an environment in which people rely on the state for basic income and services means that they do not need to procreate to survive and prosper. This is especially true of women nowadays, who don't need a man to provide them with wealth and financial security. They can achieve independance themselves through high education and high-paid jobs. Later in life, they can receive free healthcare and a state pension. Why would women want to become financially dependent on a partner, thus pushing up pairing, bonding and birth rates, when they have all the security they need from the state? Women's emancipation and the social welfare system have made men redundant in this respect, turning pairing and having children into a desire rather than a necessity for people, especially women, as it was until the 1960s.

The more incentives a state provides to women to become mothers, the less attractive men become in their eyes. If women can rely on public money for financial security, paid parental leave with guaranteed reinsertion into the labour force, childcare subsidies and free healthcare for children, wealthy men become less attractive to women. Take paid sick leave, for example. If a woman is unable to work for a month or more due to health issues, she can now rely on state support and public social security to still receive an income. In the past, just a century ago, women who were unhealthy and unable to be active for a month due to health issues would not receive any income or benefits and would therefore rely on their male partner or parents to get food and income. This is an example of how state support has replaced the need for a partner, making bonding and pairing optional and romance-related rather than functional and existential.

Women are more likely to date the elite few who have social status, a large social network, are handsome, emotionally sensitive, intelligent and have a sense of humour, among other positive attributes. This means that basically all women date the same 10% of men. These men now have a large pool of potential partners and no incentive to commit to one woman forever. Even if they do, it leaves many women competing for a small number of men, meaning the majority of women will not find this ideal partner and will continue to search for a charming prince well into their late thirties. For men, having a well-paid job and providing a good income is no longer appealing, as women can get this financial security from their own job or from state support. While this is a definite plus, wealth alone is not sufficient to attract women for family purposes. This is why too many incentives actually break down the serious relationship dating market even further and consequently do not help to raise fertility rates. It makes women rely more on state support and devalues the need for a wealthy partner or dependency on a partner in general.

Lastly, when governments think long term and try to incentivise young adults with subsidies and privileges for young parents, there is evidence from several countries that pro-child policies do not work. Tax relief, free childcare, cash bonuses and paid time off for nursing children hardly affect the balance of choice between having children or not. Norway, Japan, South Korea, China, Hungary and Italy have all tried attractive policies, yet all of these countries have seen their fertility rates plummet over time. There is a simple explanation. Most of the major reasons for not having children or having only one are not affected by state policies: These include not finding the right partner, biological infertility, unwillingness to sacrifice career or leisure time, the desire to have more free time for individual pleasures and achievements, the cost of living in the city, anxiety and depression, being self-absorbed by social media and the willingness to remain financially independent from a partner. There is nothing the government can do about these reasons with pro-natalist policies and financial subsidies to young parents. Money does not move the needle. While pumping money in favour of having children is good and necessary, it isn't enough.

If the government really wanted to provide financial incentives for young adults to have more babies, it would offer 500€ per child per month for 20 years, or the equivalent of half a minimum wage per child for 20 years. However, this kind of benefit is so substantial that it would generate an even larger fiscal deficit. Therefore, it would require significant cuts to public pension benefits and/or the spending on healthcare system, which would be very unpopular. Our societies would rather go into debt to finance the consumption of retirees who don't build the future than address the devastating fertility crisis that would lead to more children and a better future for our nations. This is the tragic reality, which is why financial incentives for young parents are currently very limited and insignificant across the world, such as 200€ per child or 1,000€ for a year. These incentives do not encourage young adults to have children because they do not provide a significant long term financial incentive.

If we want to encourage people to have children, we must make childless adulthood less attractive, penalised and inconvenient.

In this modern society of free choices and opportunities, penalizing childlessness at the societal level is our only chance. If the carrot doesn't work, you need to use the stick. This is the reality, but nobody is willing to acknowledge it because they fear the backlash of telling the truth and implementing change. Penalising childlessness is unpopular, does not win votes and does not entice anybody. No child wants to be scolded or punished, even when they are in the wrong. However, as parents, we need to discipline our children in order to teach them good behaviour. Adults are the same: we don't like to be punished or penalised for anything. Unfortunately, our natural preference for a better individual life will always come at the expense of long-term societal benefit, so we need to be educated and constrained through punishment and penalty if we choose or end up having no kids. This is obvious, but after 70 years of privileges, we have become accustomed to them and nobody wants to lose those priviledges of freedom at all cost. People live childless or single-child lives while benefiting from all public services, despite not contributing to future society by not having two or more children who will become workers, taxpayers and consumers. Is everyone OK with this? Why should a future non-contributing, childless adult benefit from public services in the same way as a future contributing parent with two or more children? In a society that rewards contributors and non-contributors equally, most people will eventually end up on the non-contributor side. We can't let this happen and pretend it's all fine. By letting this happen, we are destroying our societies. Rising debt, deteriorating healthcare services, a balooning public debt, a slowing economy and, soon, high inflation and no more public money: this is the fate we have chosen by having fewer children and fewer young adults, and deciding to do nothing about it. There isn't even a public debate about penalising childlessness. I think that's crazy. Let's open up the debate about why and how we should penalise childlessness.

Why politicians are powerless to address the demographic collapse

In industrialised countries from the 1970s to the 1990s, the majority of the population were young workers. Consequently, cultural trends, societal focus and political programmes were dedicated to this demographic: better wages, greater female participation in the labour force, freedom of career and family choices, investment in public infrastructure, increased consumption, entertainment, travel and holidays, etc. However, since the 2010s and for the next three decades at least, the majority of people is over 50 and soon over 55, meaning they are either retired or approaching retirement. This has major implications for societal trends, politics and how public money is spent. Older people are more concerned about healthcare and pensions, which represent roughly 50% of total public spending. Productivity declines, innovation is reduced and there are labour shortages in non-office jobs that require an on-site presence and physical involvement, such as infrastructure, restaurants and healthcare. Immigration is seen more as a safety concern and higher risk of criminality, rather than an opportinity and a chance for the immigrant and for the economy. Older people want stability and safety; many want fewer immigrants and more conservative traditional values. Across most of the developed world, ageing electorates tend to oppose measures to increase immigration to boost the working-age population, as well as measures to raise the state pension age or reduce pension benefits. Most elderly people are rejecting major changes or cuts to public pensions or healthcare, because they benefit from these social policies. And politicians target this over-55 audience, who make up the largest proportion of voters.

This is why major societal changes will be met with extreme resistance: the majority of people are now elderly and unwilling to lose the social welfare privileges they were led to believe they deserved all their lives. These include a decent public pension, free and good healthcare services, and well-run infrastructure such as public transport, the water and electricity networks, etc. Governments are forced to raise taxes on workers and companies, tax the profits of businesses and wealthy individuals, and make living standards for young adults and entrepreneurs much more difficult, just to keep the largest part of the population happy so that politicians can be elected, re-elected and avoid massive civil protests. This is the constant wealth drain from the under-45s population to the over-55s. But this time, due to the demographic imbalance, young adults and households can no longer afford to live a decent life and are starting to protest. We are about to see a clash of generations: workers against retirees, each fighting for their rights and a fair distribution of wealth. While no side is to blame, it is simply the ratio of workers to retirees that makes this situation unsolvable, and it is all due to fertility rates plummeting below replacement level over the last 50 years. The next three decades will be much worse due to extreme low birth rates since 2010, which will trigger massive wealth imbalances and protests. We are entering an era of clashes between generations.

The issue is not a management or political issue, it is not about how to best redistribute contributions and benefits; the issue is a manpower imbalance issue.

We cannot change our demography with laws or money. We are screwed for the next 40 years.

Those between 30 and 50 are especially screwed because they pay a lot of tax to support today's elderly, but in 15 or 30 years they will become part of the elderly population and there won't be enough workers to support the welfare system and provide public benefits at the level that elderly people have received over the last 40 years. This is why I have completely lost hope in the future of industrialised countries with high social spending over the next few decades. There are no soultions, only answers and understandings. Workers will have to work harder and for longer. Workers and businesses will be heavily taxed, which will crush competitiveness. We will have some supply shortages due to missing manpower. Living standards will decline for everybody but the top 5% wealthiest. Elderly people will receive much lower pension and healthcare benefits, and many will live in poverty. This will lead to a loss of living standards for all age groups, resulting in widespread protests, social unrest and civil wars. Any political or societal solutions will lead to high inflation and mass poverty. It is both unfortunate and unavoidable.

In the 1980s and 1990s, politicians could have done something to stop the decline in fertility rates, when it was still possible to stabilise the rate at around 2 children per woman. But now, in 2025, they cannot do anything to stop the decline. They are powerless and ineffective because the issue is structural, cultural and ethical, and is embedded in the democratic capitalist framework within which politicians operate. Whether it's John, David or Steve at the helm of Country X or Y today, they are all passive and unable to change the course of a society whose fate was sealed in the 1980s. Social media has at least 10 times more influence over people than political decisions do. The wealthiest 5% of people in the world control the money supply, technological innovation and the future of consumption. Politicians are largely powerless and ineffective in comparison.

When we renounced imposing measures to curve back the fertility rate to 2 back in the 1980s and 1990s, and decided to have continuous budget deficits and issue new debt to solve all of society's problems, to please citizens and win over politicians, that's when things started to change and humanity gave up its future prosperity for a temporary satisfaction of a few decades. The massive baby boomer generation was a blessing to society during their working lives from 1970 to 2020, but now they are retired or about to retire, and each subsequent generation has been smaller than the previous one. There is nothing politicians can do to revive the economy and stop social spending bleeding, because an ageing population is a structural issue.

Today's politicians are dealing with the consequences of 40 years of women's empowerment, freedom of choice, globalisation, outsourcing of activities to other countries, inaction against falling fertility rates, and the rise of smartphones and completely unregulated social media. It is too late to cancel or reverse these trends, which have become part of our identity, culture and values. The middle classes of industrialised countries are spoilt children who have become emphatically too demanding of a society that can no longer deliver on its promises. When you give privileges to two generations since the 1960s, you no longer realise that they are privileges; you consider them universal rights, take them for granted, and feel it is absolutely inconceivable to surrender even a part of them. I am talking about paid holidays, paid sick leave, working 35 hours per week, unemployment benefits, a public pension from the age of 64 onwards for 20 years with benefits equivalent to a median salary, free healthcare, free medicine, maintained roads and public infrastructure, and grocery stores filled with fresh food produce daily. I am not talking about low wages, which have actually declined in real purchasing power over the last three decades. Workers earning low wages are on the othend of the privilege spectrum. I am talking about public societal privileges: the goods and services that make our world great, give everyone a chance, and leave no one behind.

When the working population shrinks and public spending on the elderly increases, politicians nowadays have no choice but to increase the budget deficit every year and fund our social privileges with new debt. Cancelling or reducing our privileges would lead to massive protests and social unrest, and politicians would lose the confidence and electoral support of the population. This is why no politician in a democracy dares to address the demographic issue and the overly privileged society we live in. In a way, I can't blame the politicians because they are part of a system with certain rules and have no choice but to please the population by presenting a positive facade today, despite the situation worsening later. Each year, more dressing up is needed because the situation is worsening quickly, until the years when the downfall escalates quickly and society is doomed.

The mission of politicians is not to reduce the budget deficit or public debt. Nor is it to please citizens with attractive policies. Their mission is to prevent anarchy in the population, avoid mass protests and social unrest, and keep as many people as possible in the hamster wheel working and paying taxes. They must also avoid financial sanctions on the market when the interest rate on new debt financing rises too much, because financial actors lose confidence in the national economy and its ability to service future debt. They are not tasked with making the nation a great power like it was in 1980s or 1990s; rather, their mission is to survive another year without social, economic or financial escalation. This is the hand that politicians have been dealt due to the ageing population and the abundance of public privileges that people have become accustomed to.

We simply cannot maintain our level of public services with a declining working population and a growing elderly population. We must pay the price, either through inflation, by sacrificing part of the population or by reducing our comfort levels and high standards. When there are fewer workers and more people receiving benefits, the quality and quantity of public services can only diminish and living standards will decline. Our public services will deteriorate significantly over the next three decades. In fact, this process began already in the 2010s. There is nothing we can do about it. In practical terms, this means that pension benefits will be reduced and/or the retirement age will be postponed to closer to 70 and/or workers will be taxed more. It also means that when you visit the doctor, there will be 10 people in front of you in the queue, or the closest doctor's surgery will be 30 km away instead of 3 km. It means that roads will have more cracks and holes, and will not be renovated immediately. All sorts of benefits, such as unemployment benefits, will be reduced. The budget for public schools will be reduced, leading to teacher shortages and ageing school facilities.

Ultimately, it means an increasing budget deficit each year, more public debt and currency devaluation, leading to a decrease in purchasing power. Politicians can't do anything about it. We are facing a structural decline. The only thing they could potentially do is impose strict pro-natalist regulations and redistribute public funds from older people to younger ones, so that our civilisation can recover and prosper again by 2060 and beyond. However, from now until 2060, our demographic situation is our destiny and the downfall is inevitable, regardless of who governs the country.

In a democratic system in which leaders are elected for a fixed term, such as four years, there are multiple perverse incentives within that system. Before elections, politicians make outlandish and unreasonable claims and lies, utopian slogans and promises that are often impossible to fulfil without major side effects, just to win votes. Once elected, leaders spend beyond their means via massive debt in order to please everyone, avoid mass protests and boost their popularity. If the mandate is for four years, no leader will care about spending on a project that will take ten or twenty years to accomplish (like building nuclear power plants or reviving the fertility rate) because it will be their successor who reaps the rewards. Democracies are bound to sacrifice the future for a better present. Debt and low birth rates are consequences of our political system.

A better democratic system would set criteria and limits, such as a maximum budget deficit of 3%, a decrease in purchasing power of no more than 1% per year, a maximum unemployment rate of 5%, and social inequalities rising by no more than 1% per year. If the incumbent political leader fails to meet one of this criteria in any year of their mandate starting off the second year, they are dismissed automatically, new elections are called, and no one from their party is allowed to stand as a candidate. This system would be a results-based democracy instead of a story-telling exercise followed by utopian propaganda. A successful leader could remain in power for 15 years if they meet all their targets every year, or there could be new elections every 2 years if the elected leader does not deliver tangible results.

The reality is that we are not living in democracies; we are living in neoliberalism, where the industrial and financial complex decides where capital is allocated, which public goods or infrastructure must be privatised and which international assets can be accumulated for profit. All politicians answer to banks, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and asset managers.Whether the far-right, center or the far-left is elected, the forces of the neoliberalist capitalist system are much more powerful than any elected politician.

In Europe particularly, but also in some other Western industrialised countries, people perceive two kinds of reality:

On the one hand, growing social inequalities and the increasing concentration of power and wealth, combined with the fact that the purchasing power of the poorest 40% has been declining for 20 years. These people vote for the far left, and they are absolutely right to do so as a protest vote requesting major changes.

On the other hand, there is nostalgia for the prosperity of the 1990s and 2000s, and a sense that our national and cultural values and identity are being lost due to the fact that African and Muslim adults have an average of 2 to 2.5 children, while white Christian Caucasian adults have an average of 1.2, which pushes down the proportion of white Caucasians in the population decade after decade. Add to that the suffocating taxation at every level, a lack of local competitiveness due to expensive energy, high wages with generous social and professional benefits, and the result is an economy that stagnates or declines, with businesses relocating abroad. These people vote for the far right, and they are right to do so, as a protest vote requesting major changes.

Both perceptions of reality are true. Social media will pit these two groups against each other and polarise the 2 extremes, but the reality is that both groups have valid reasons to vote for extremist parties — and they are both right to do so based on their beliefs and perceptions of the world. I believe that voting is pointless because in our short-sighted democratic system (4-year terms), national and governmental politics can do nothing when you let freeriders (the unemployed, long-term sick and retirees) vote. However, voting for any party other than the extremes — that is, the conservative centre, moderate right-wing or moderate lef-wing — means ignoring the current demographic decline and turning a blind eye to the collapse of our neoliberal, feminist, progressive, libertarian civilisation. Dramatic periods require radical changes to governance. The status quo is leading us towards the end of prosperity and civil war.

Why the greatness of our society will be our demise

Policy tweaks, whatever they may be, will never be the ultimate solution to increasing the birth rate. If none of Norway, Japan, China, Germany, Thailand, Italy and Spain, nations and people that are extremely different in terms of culture and family traditions, are able to raise the birth rate, then I think the problem is not political, it is not the incompetence of the political leaders in power, because we have so many different examples. At the end of the day, politicians can only do so much, because the real problem is that men and women today aspire to lifestyles that do not involve children: Travelling, entrepreneurship, entertainment and pleasure, work, networking, a great career, time with friends, time for health and body, local community aspirations, you name it, these aspirations are not compatible with the burden, responsibility, time and sacrifice required to be a parent.

If everyone in the world got a free personal trainer, available 24/7, to train for a marathon, would we have more marathon runners in the world? The answer is a little more, but not much more, and that's simply because most people don't have the passion, ambition, courage or diligence to train hard to run a marathon. The same is true of policy incentives: they hardly matter.

The real cause of the decline comes from the culture of abundance and ease, the great progress our society has to offer, the social media that show a vibrant lifestyle and give the impression that everyone should aspire to such a life, and the widespread culture that everyone can have a great lifestyle full of pleasure and consumption without hard work, sacrifice and without taking responsibility and duty. Most people want to have children, but not at the expense of a full-time job, reduced accomodation size per person, less time and money for personal pleasures, and so people's prerequisites for having children is a long list that includes a committed partner who shares the responsibility of raising and caring for them, a large apartment in the city centre, no impact on career opportunities, childcare subsidised by the government, a nanny or relative to get free time in the evenings for personal pleasures, one car per parent, etc.... All these prerequisites or conditions we set ourselves in order to have children lead to the paradox that rich countries have a lower fertility rate than poor countries, and most people in rich countries would claim that the reason they don't have children is financial, which cannot be true. In relatively rich countries, the reason is cultural, it is rather the high expectations of their own lifestyles that they arbitrarily set for themselves: not willing to sacrifice the benefits of a great society, not willing to have a so-so job, not willing to live in a small apartment in the suburbs, not willing to rent instead of home ownership, not willing to give up hobbies or other personal pleasures, no willing to give up good sleeping nights. We live in a world of freedom, we have been given many rights, but nobody wants the duty and responsability that come with it: Reproduce and ensure continuity of the society for the future generations.

'Universe 25' was an experiment conducted by ethologist John B. Calhoun in the late 1960s and 1970s. He created a 'mouse utopia' with ample resources such as food and water, but limited space. He then observed the behaviour of the mice, which led to abnormal social behaviours and ultimately population collapse. Initially, the four male and four female mice thrived, and the mouse population increased rapidly due to the abundance of food and the lack of need to hunt or chase anything; they were living in a luxurious prison. Although the test area could support up to 4,000 mice, the population peaked at 2,200. Strange behaviours were observed: increased aggression and fighting, hypersexuality or withdrawal from social and sexual interaction, and high infant mortality, among other reactions. This ultimately led to population collapse and full extinction. The experiment was run 25 times and produced the same results every time. Although humans are wired differently, with more complex drives and better social connections, and are accustomed to tight spaces, the experiment intended to show that when living in overpopulated areas blessed with abundance and ease, where no effort is required for convenience and no survival needs are necessary, a species starts to behave abnormally socially and does not breed enough to sustain its own reproduction over the generations. Personally, I do not believe that weird mouse behaviour, such as aggressiveness, translates to humans. However, the sexual and social withdrawal and the decrease in fertility is definitely echoed in the human population of industrialised countries today.

Also, because we are still living in a great society of abundance with no apparent lack of resources, no one sees the imminent threat to survival coming and everyone wants more of the societal benefits for themselves now. Nobody cares about the nation or the future in 20 years, people have more pressing issues of "me" and "now". Ultimately, we need more scarcity and real collective struggles in life to return to procreation, as is the case today in those African and Middle Eastern countries with above-replacement fertility rates.

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining popularity. A guaranteed income for every citizen to cover basic necessities. While this sounds great in theory, it could never work in practice.

If the UBI is set at 30% below the minimum wage or less than that, it would reduce administrative bureaucracy while still incentivising people to find a job. This could provide a safety net for everyone and is probably a good idea.

However, if the UBI is around the minimum wage, the majority of low-wage earners would quit their jobs immediately, which would destroy our working societies and our economies by removing system-relevant workers from our society. Also, the government would not be able to finance a substantial UBI anyway; they are already heavily in debt and struggling with a deficit. Where would the money for a universal UBI come from? Governments are already broke.

Let's do an exercise: Imagine a world where suddenly every adult over the age of 18 receives a universal minimum basic income for life, equal to the national minimum wage income. If you didn't work at all, you would receive benefits equal to the minimum wage, and if you work for the minimum wage, you would earn as much as an inactive person receiving basic income. By the way, this idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been floating around and has already been tested in some cities, as another illusion of the great state provider and free lunch for everyone. Imagine if this universal basic income were to happen overnight for the whole world and for everyone on earth. This would be the ultimate achievement of society, democracy, progress, human rights, empowerment, reduction of inequality and the fight against poverty. Sounds like the perfect society we all want and hope to achieve one day, right?

Well, what do you think would happen in the following 6 months in such a society, in a realistic scenario? Here are 2 safe assumptions:

I think 80% of the low-paid workers would stop working. Why would you do a hard and demanding job for a low salary when you could earn the same amount by not working at all? I also estimate that between 30% and 50% of average-paid workers would quit their boring office jobs to do something more fulfilling: Photographer, artist, volunteer, etc. Most of the low wage workers do it for money and not for passion.

Just with these 2 fairly safe assumptions, you can already assume that the whole of society would collapse within a few months: almost no construction workers, no rubbish collection service, no cleaning staff, minimal hotel and restaurant services, very limited childcare and education, massive shortage of hospital and elderly care workers, lack of lorry drivers and postmen to deliver goods and food, etc... The whole society would immediately collapse, there would be power cuts, fresh water shortages, empty shelves in the supermarket, no gas at the petrol station... not even a month would go by without a complete breakdown of society.

The intention of this thought experiment is to make the point that in a comfortable and prosperous society, the more benefits, rights, freedoms, safety nets people get, the less pressure people feel to do the hard work to contribute to a collective achievement. We naturally tend to be more lazy, more entitled, more comfortable, more reliant on others to do the work while we benefit from the good lifestyle. This is exactly what is happening with the low birth rates and with the pension and health care systems that are not adapted to the reality of our society. We continue to receive all the benefits while fewer and fewer people contribute. Political policies, even if they could be imposed by a dictator with all the decision-making power of a nation, would be massively rejected by a population used to abundance and prosperity. Although some forced unpopular pro-natal policies would help to reverse the trend, they would not solve our coming societal collapse. Our society has to crash into massive suffering over a generation or two, go through poverty and civil war for a generation, experience suffering and trauma, before things can return to a balanced and efficient society. The Great Reconstruction of 1945-1965 and the baby boom of the same period were only possible because of the horrific life experience of the people during the Second World War. The happy housewife lifestyle that all women wanted and embraced in the 1950s and 1960s, with 3 children per woman, low education and low participation of women in the labour force, was only possible because women were happy to have a roof over their heads, a husband, no fear of bombs falling, and simple enjoyment of life without watching what the pop stars and influencers were doing. There is a reason for the title of my book: We have to go through hard times to bounce back. There are no easy solutions. I feel sorry for all those living in the industrial world in the next 30 years, you will be dramatically affected and there is nothing we can do about it. This is the demographic fate we have chosen over the last 40 years.

Not having children is like taking out a loan: you compromise the future of society for a better present of your own. As we started 50 years ago, the future is now catching up. The demographic changes that have already taken place over the last 50 years are certain to change and end the world of prosperity as we know it. At this point, the demographic decline can't be reversed because it's so steep. The only question is, will it end humanity altogether? All trends point to even lower total fertility rates in this century, will we reach 0.5 ? 0.1 ? 0.01 ? No one is publicly announcing the reality that population contraction is an existential threat to humanity, much more serious than climate change or AI, and as serious as nuclear war, only longer in duration and spread over decades. We constantly tell ourselves that a higher level of education for everyone is great, that freedom of choice of partner and children is great, that the women's empowerment movement is great, and that not having kids will make the best version of yourself with no consequences for society. For 50 years, we have been lying to ourselves with feel-good stories, and nobody dares to oppose or deny them as if they were universally valid scientific facts.

The tragedy of declining fertility rates is that, once they start to fall, they continue to decline indefinitely, forming a vicious circle of retroactive feedback loops that trigger even lower rates in subsequent years. There are 3 reasons for these negative feedback loops that perpetuate the decline in fertility rates:

1- The number of births in a country in a given year is equal to the fertility rate multiplied by the number of women of reproductive age. A population consisting only of women over 45 will not have any babies at all in a given year. Even if the fertility rate were to increase overnight, the pool of women aged 16–45 today is very small in the industrialised world compared to the total population of the country. This means that there is only so much that this limited cohort of women can do to save a country. For many countries, even if the fertility rate were to return to 2.1 overnight, it would not alter the population curve and the ensuing problems over the next 40 years.

2- Mimetism: People in society tend to copy their siblings, neighbours, best friends and work colleagues. For example, take a group of five girls in their twenties who are best friends all have boyfriends. When one of them gets married, the others suddenly consider seriously to get married too. Similarly, if two of the five girls become pregnant and have babies, the other three suddenly desire to become mothers too. This example is only here to illustrate mimetism and it also applies to men. We are a social species that copies the behaviour of those around us. If everyone around you has one child, you would be less likely to consider having three children as it would feel out of sync and not accepted. Similarly, if none of your friends, siblings or colleagues have children, you feel much more accepted as a childless person too. If you are 30 and all your best friends are childless, you won't feel pressured to have children or feel envious of those who do have children. When a society such as South Korea has an average of 0.75 children per woman, and only 0.5 children per woman in Seoul, this does not encourage people to have children at all. In fact, if you have two children in Seoul, you may feel isolated and unwelcome in certain areas and public places. You may even be rejected by the majority, so that almost nobody has 2 or more children in Seoul. Childlessness is becoming a cultural standard and slowly establishing itself as the norm in our society, making it very difficult to return to the standard of having two or three children.

3- As the economic balance shifts towards taxing workers and companies to support the ageing population, the economic burden on under-40s is so high that adjustments are often made by sacrificing the desire to have children. Children cost time and opportunities and require more accommodation, so adults who are short of money tend to decide against having children or against having a big family in order to maintain a decent standard of living, even if they wanted to become parents or have a big family in the first place. Young, adventurous and ambitious adults living in a society with high taxes to support a large elderly population will increasingly move to places with lower income taxes, such as Dubai or Singapore. This will further aggravate the situation in countries with generous social welfare systems.

Overall, fertility trends have been declining for 50 years, with no country returning to a sustained fertility rate of 2 after falling below 1.7 durably. There is no end in sight in terms of the minimum fertility rate. Statistics show that Generation Z, born after 1995, will have the lowest birth rate of any generation to date. This is largely due to their early introduction to smartphones and social media during puberty. This is evident from the continued decline in fertility rates since 2012. This means that the number of children and young adults entering the labour force will continue to decline over the next 20 years at least. All signs point to an average of around one child per woman. Society is adapting to this new childless culture with no incentive to have more children and no penalties for childless adults. The outlook for public finances to support the welfare system is bleak. There is no easy way to avoid the impending demographic crisis.

Demography is the root cause of every modern social issue, except climate change. All of our modern social, political and economic issues are caused by our demography and the lack of births over the last 40 years. These include immigration policies, insecurity, inflation and loss of purchasing power, rising house prices and rental prices, rising public debt and budget deficits, widening social inequalities, deteriorating healthcare services and public infrastructure maintenance. Yet nobody talks about the link between these social issues and fertility rates in public, as if it were a crazy taboo to point the lack of children as responsible. The reality is that all our modern societal troubles are linked to the demography.

Even with regard to climate change, one could argue that the decline in fertility rates since the 1970s, and particularly since 2010, has resulted in a more individualistic society that is focused on achievement, money, pleasures and self-realisation. This has led to increased consumption, which in turn has resulted in higher production levels, greater carbon emissions, and more toxic chemical waste. Having fewer children is also a key factor in accelerating environmental degradation.

With lower fertility rates, fewer young adults enter the labour market over time, so one solution is to 'import' labour via immigration. If this is done on a large scale, it creates issues around acceptance and integration, as well as a loss of identity and social cohesion. Also, the more migrants you welcome, the more uncontrollable the population becomes, especially with open EU borders, and the risk of criminals and terrorist extremists entering the country increases. As the ratio of workers to pensioners diminishes, governments bridge the deficit through debt and printing new money, which devalues the purchasing power of money and generates inflation. More money needs to be created each year, and this money first goes into hedge funds, banks and asset managers, who benefit most from it before it flows into the creation of real goods and services. That's why the rich are getting richer and the middle and lower classes are getting poorer over time, and also why house prices have become unaffordable. As the population ages, the elderly require more healthcare services, but there aren't enough healthcare staff to treat everyone, which reduces the quality of healthcare services. As fewer young workers are available, there is a shortage of manpower for infrastructure renewal and maintenance, which degrades the quality of our public infrastructure. Once again, almost all societal issues can be explained by demography and the plummeting birth rates of the last 50 years.

The baby boomers, a 20-year period of high birth rates from 1947 to 1968, produced a ratio of eight workers to one pensioner in the 1970s and 1980s.

From 1970 to 2010, the baby boom era created the illusion of infinite prosperity and permanent economic growth of 3% to 5%, instilling unrealistic expectations of social privileges and welfare benefits. This has turned Europe into idealistic utopians who, after 40 years of economic growth, believe that all immigrants and refugees can be welcomed free of charge, that all pensioners should be decently compensated, that healthcare should be free and of a high quality, that a skilled labour force is always available on the market, that a 35-hour working week with six weeks' holiday and 12 bank holidays per year can be maintained while remaining competitive worldwide, and that plenty of money is deserved and available for education, unemployment benefits, childcare, infrastructure, and climate change investment, that adults can enjoy all the benefits of public society without providing a young labour force by having children, that our public infrastructure, such as roads, streets, and buildings, can be maintained, that we can strengthen our military and defence staff, despite the rapidly declining 18–35 population, that we can go to the doctor or hospital at any time and receive treatment, despite the massive cohort of over-60 requiring constant healthcare and overloading our health and pension systems.

Since 2020, the reality has been kicking in and our beliefs are facing reality and falling apart in this decade and the next three. This is all due to our plummeting fertility rate of the last 40 years.

We have become blind and completely utopian, in denial of the reality of an ageing population. We have become accustomed to having plenty of rights and benefits without duties, without an industrial base or high levels of export. The USA has been somewhat immune to this phenomenon, partly because it is an oil and gas superpower, a tech innovator and a capitalist libertarian country, but also because it has always welcomed a large amount of illegal immigrants for cheap work and a large amount of very skilled labour force ready to work. Unlike Europe today, the USA has not experienced a one-off wave of baby boomer workers followed by a dearth of children and young adults.

Nevertheless, the USA, like any other industrialised country in the world, has experienced declining fertility rates below 2 since the 1970s, which has deep socio-economic and political consequences for every aspect of our societies that we start feeling now in the 2020s.

Conclusion

In just 250 years, the human population has grown 20-fold. However, we are about to enter a new era. The population bomb of the 1945-1965 era is now giving way to a depopulation bomb. For the first time since the Black Death in the 14th century, the global population is set to decline in the second half of this century. This poses a brand new challenge with gigantic socio-economic consequences. The transition to a low fertility rate is rooted in our disinterest in having families and our increased desire for autonomy, convenience, hedonism and self-realisation. This will negatively affect living standards, the economy, our social and financial systems, and shift the geopolitical balance of power towards sub-Saharan Africa in the second half of the century. The consequences of population collapse will be felt exponentially fast in the coming few decades.

Low fertility rates pose the greatest threat to humanity. In fact, it is not just a threat, but a surefire slow death of our prosperity. While it was a potential threat in the 1990s and 2000s, it is now a certainty that will cause the collapse of our societies' prosperity within the next 30 years. The low fertility problem has been getting worse for 50 years and accelerating the past 15 years, and is occurring almost everywhere in the world. There are dozens of reasons why this is happening, meaning that even if we solve one of them, it won't alter the general trend. There are no effective solutions to stabilise the population and prevent us from debt spiral, experiencing supply chain shortages and high inflation. Even worse, the fertility issue is not widely recognised, and having fewer or no children is actually perceived as a good thing by most of us. We have not even begun to recognise low fertility as an issue, so it is not going to be addressed any time soon.

I believe that humanity is facing its greatest crisis since the Black Death in the 14th century. I am not exaggerating when I say that the consequences of fertility rates well below 2.1 for 50 years and still falling are dire. The lack of births is global, persistent and cultural, with no changes in sight any time soon. This situation is slowly destroying our social welfare system, our currency, our prosperity and stability, and will soon affect our infrastructure, institutions and civil peace. The situation is dire, and the consequences are painful and terrible. Since the 2010s, the decline in the fertility rate well below replacement level has started to have a severe negative impact on our welfare system, living standards, purchasing power and social and civil stability, and this impact will worsen dramatically in the coming decades. This will affect the governing regimes, politics and geopolitics of the next two generations (the next 50 years). There is no quick fix or pleasant solution.

Interestingly, like any predator-prey combination in nature, the world eventually returns to a natural balance: If a population of prey strives and grows because the population of predators is very limited, the preys will eventually encounter the predators more often and closer, and it will be more accessible and easier for the few predators to find a prey. So the population of predators will strive and tend to grow faster than the population of prey. Then, once the predators are numerous, there will be a lot of them fighting for little food and resources, there will be fewer preys available, so the life of the predators will become more difficult and the predator population will tend to decline.

I would not be surprised if the same cycle happened with humanity: A huge growth from 1 to 9 billion within the last 200 years, now a depopulation in the 21st century which will make life extremely difficult in the second half of the century, and maybe we will return to a fertility rate of 3 or more by the end of the century due to scarcity, restrictions on leisure and the end of abundance. Who knows?

In the end, nature always wins and rebalances itself. Our over-consumption, disregard for environmental damage that has led to our ultra-comfortable society will end in population decline and collapse due to lack of focus on reproduction, and we will return to poverty and start a new cycle again. The Roman Empire was strong and growing until it collapsed, but there are still Italians on earth today. The same goes for the Egyptian Empire. These are the natural cycles of powerful civilisations: rise, prosper, suddenly fall, suffer and survive, start again somewhere else.

Our advanced civilisation has given us a comfortable life, full of abundance, privilege, entertainment and distraction. This is the main reason for the low fertility that will lead the industrialised countries to a population collapse: Too much prosperity for too long, no common ennemy from outside, no sense of danger or urgency to reproduce in order to survive.

Collective society needs as many babies as possible because, eventually, those babies will become workers who provide goods and services for everyone. They will also become consumers who boost demand and growth, as well as taxpayers who enable the collection of taxes to be redistributed to all kinds of social welfare and government support, such as education, the police, public infrastructure and unemployment support, among other public expenses. However, as an individual in a modern society, the fewer children you have, the fewer constraints on your time, money and responsibilities you have, and the more freedom you have to fulfil your potential and enjoy life. Ultimately, there is a clear conflict of interest between individuals and society as a whole.

Many people claim that general cost of living, high house prices or rents in cities prevent them from having many children. However, in areas where housing is cheapest, the fertility rate is also low. People living in areas with affordable housing might say that's because salaries and incomes are lower in those areas and job security is uncertain. So what people actually mean is that living standards today are too low to accommodate big families. However, if we compare the average living standards of Americans or Europeans today with those in the 1960s or 1970s, they are much better today. Therefore, it is not about living standards per se, but rather about people's expectations of what constitutes a decent standard of living. People have raised the bar so high that a large family is no longer compatible with average expectations. A couple expects a big apartment in the city centre with one bedroom for each child, one car per woman, two parents working full-time, childcare to enable full-time jobs, holidays every year — preferably several times a year — far from home, and time and money left over for shopping, restaurants, babysitters so you can visit friends and attend events. The lifestyle expectations of everyone are much higher today than in previous generations, and as people are not willing to give up their desired lifestyle, they give up on having large families or children altogether.

Only 50 years ago, before the 1970s, almost all countries in the world had fertility rates above the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman. So why did we stop having babies? In essence, the reason for our declining population is very simple: The advantages of not having children far outweigh the disadvantages of having them. People would rather spend their time on leisure activities, hobbies, sports, personal care, travelling, and spending time with friends and family than get up in the night to feed their baby, surrender most of their free time, or give up some of their career or residential space.

This is the rise of hedonism: If people can choose between a comfortable life with fewer responsibilities and a life without commitment and sacrifice, they will always choose what is best for themselves, which most of the time means not having kids.

It's like an unbalanced scale. On the one hand, childless adulthood has many advantages and few disadvantages, while on the other hand, having two or more children has many disadvantages and few advantages. When people weigh up the two lifestyles, the childless one usually outweighs the family one.

Childless lifestyle VS family lifestyle

The scale is unbalanced because childless adults are entitled to same level of social welfare and public spending as other adults, they enjoy enjoy public services and social welfare in exactly the same way as parents, without restrictions, limitations, or penalties. You pay almost the same taxes, have the same rights to healthcare, receive the same public pension whether you have children or not, and are protected by the same justice system, police and firefighters. You have the same rights to access a job or residence, etc. Our society makes no difference whether you have children or not. A firefighter or police officer acts to protect citizens, not only because citizens pay taxes to fund their salaries, but also because someone raised a child who grew up to become an adult that serve their country. Public services require public money and people (i.e. children) to function. If you are over 60, you depend on the next generation working and paying taxes to fund all the societal benefits you receive. If you don't have children, you don't contribute to the next generation, and therefore to the public services and social welfare system. So why should childless adults be entitled to the same rights? This is why the social system is broken. The older generation depends entirely on the younger generation in the labour force, i.e. on people having children 30 or 40 years ago. However, there is no incentive, reward system or penalty system for having or not having children.

When a scale is unbalanced, there are only three possible solutions: Accept that the scale is tilted and live with the consequences; add weight to the lighter side of the scale; or remove weight from the heavier side of the scale.

Adding weights is adding more benefits to family life, public financial incentives to help young parents. Financial incentives have been tried all around the world, for example in Hungary, South Korea and Norway, but they do not work as birth rates keep plummeting. These incentives include paid parental leave, financial support for young parents and free childcare. These measures simply do not work empirically and do not influence the decision-making process of young adults.

The other solution that has not yet been tried is removing weights: making childless adulthood less attractive, more painful and more penalised. Although this is unpopular and controversial, it is our only remaining hope: We need to penalise the childless lifestyle to make this decision less attractive via various penalties, such as a childless tax, lower pensions for childless retirees, lower healthcare services and lower access priority, and lower job and residence priority.

With the demography issue, there are only three possible outcomes now:

1. We do nothing and let society and civilisation vanish due to population collapse and massive poverty. This is not a desirable outcome.

2. We stop the free choice not to have children, essentially turning to an authoritarian regime with new laws enforcing every adult to have at least two children. This would drastically reduce women's empowerment and gender equity. This is also not a desired outcome.

3. We change the balance of pros and cons of having children, making parenthood more attractive and appealing and making childless adulthood more restrictive and challenging, so that having children versus not having children is a fair comparison of trade-offs and equally enticing lifestyles. We have seen that enticing pro-natalist policies do not work. People don't care if childcare is free; if you can get a bigger home for free, people will choose the freedom and pleasures of a childless life over money. This leads us to the only possible solution: penalise and punish childless adulthood by making life very difficult for them via high taxes on childlessness, lower healthcare, job and residence priority, and low pensions for childless elderly people. At first glance, these measures may seem discriminatory and stigmatising, but they are actually very fair to the social system and society as a whole when you consider the basic ratios of workers to the elderly population.

In industrial societies, people tend not to have children, or to have very few, in order to enjoy a better personal life. However, people wish that society as a whole would have a fertility rate of 2, so that society could continue to survive and prosper in the coming decades. Essentially, everyone relies on others for public spending, goods, services, and the maintenance of cities, yet people want no children or very few for themselves. What an irony! If everyone relies on each other, who is going to do the job? If a group of five friends go for dinner and nobody takes a credit card or a phone, assuming another friend will pay the bill, who will eventually pay the bill? By letting individuals make selfish decisions that benefit themselves, the collective group collapses as the young population declines. When the entire society crumbles due to a lack of a young workforce, everyone will pay the bill. The longer we postpone addressing the issue, the bigger it gets and the less solvable it becomes, with increasingly dramatic consequences. Unless we penalise childless adults in some way, nothing will change and people will prioritise their own comfort to the detriment of society, and eventually, people's comfort will fade away.

Apart from Israel, every country in the world that features democracy, education, prosperity and gender equity is depopulating quickly. Those societies will unfortunately vanish. By the end of the century, the surviving societies will have to give up one of these beloved values: We will have to give up prosperity and embrace poverty; we will have to give up democracy and embrace authoritarian regimes that impose austerity; or we will have to give up women's rights and force women to have children to ensure the survival of the human race. One of these values will have to be given up. From a basic mathematical standpoint, there is unfortunately no other path for humanity. The societies that will survive are those that enforce a pro-natalist culture by law or as a basic survival need. This is the tragedy of Western civilisation. We have the freedom to choose whether or not to have children and with whom, but we are not reproducing enough for our beloved society to survive, which will lead to its demise at the expense of other societies that do not provide so much freedom to people, especially women. By acting in their own best interests, women in the Western world are indirectly destroying this environment of freedom, gender equity and prosperity in the long term. What a disaster for humanity!

Western civilisations have lost their social pressure for people to marry and have children, instead promoting individual rights, personal distractions and the promotion of individual success, with no obligation or duty for us to reproduce and pass on to future generations. We have no compelling duty to society, we only take the good of society for ourselves here and now. We are responsible not only for the things we do, but also for the things we don't do, such as providing offspring for society and the next generation.

The consequences of an ageing population and a shrinking workforce are disastrous. The median age in 2023 is 19 in Africa, 40 in China and 45 in Europe. By 2050, 50% of the population in South Korea and Japan will be over 65 years old and 50% of the population in Germany, Italy and Spain will be over 60. How can those countries function as a society ? How can they service the national debt and keep the public services and economy going ? This is a guaranteed crash, civilizational collapse, and the only way out is poverty and/or mass immigration from Africa.

A shrinking and older population tends to consume less, needs more social and health services, and buys fewer consumer goods, which is bad for the economy, but needs health services, which puts further pressure on the labour force, the economy, government budgets and debt, and requires more human labour, which is unfortunately in decline. Public health and social services will be overstretched and the quality of service will decline over the years.

We have no precedent in history for how an ageing population with a shrinking workforce will behave in economic, political and social terms, and we are beginning to face it starting this decade in most of the advanced economies, and certainly in the next 30 years for 70% of the world's population. We have no experience of managing a declining population; the only times we know of when populations have declined are wars and pandemics, and even those have never lasted 40 years and counting. Fertility rates below replacement levels for over 40 years at scale is a first-time experiment. We are entering uncharted territories, and all the signs and scenarios point to disaster.

When the working population is shrinking, it is a disaster to maintain the public debt, to maintain a social system and to provide for an ageing population. When the elderly population grows, it is a disaster for our future environmental impact and a huge burden for the shrinking labour force that will have to provide for the ageing population. And if the population of children were to rise again by a miracle in the future, the tiny working population would bear the enormous burden of sustaining both a large elderly population and a large child population. This is the triple trap facing industrialised societies, for which there is no easy solution. This is the triple trap facing industrialised society, with no good solution.

In a nutshell: The population is ageing and will soon start to decline, which is inevitable and has major economic and social welfare implications.

There are only two ways to mitigate the inevitable pain:

1. "Sacrifice" the elderly population by providing them with much lower public pensions and health care, leaving the remaining working population "only" with the shrinking economy and high sovereign debt to deal with, hoping to maintain a degraded but functioning society, free from the unsustainable burden of public welfare spending.

Or 2. You let everyone suffocate from a shrinking workforce, get poorer and poorer, shrink the economy, lower living standards, drain young adults with taxes and labour to support the huge elderly population, further reduce birth rates, further worsen the demographic situation for the next generations, and we face an absolute global collapse of civilisation, mass extinctions and civil wars.

Some solutions include mass controled immigration with dedicated integration policies, reducing public pension benefits for retirees and health care benefits for non-active citizens, reconvertion of senior adults into adapted workplaces so that elderly can still be active past 60 as long as they physically can and wish, penalising childless adulthood with more tax and less public benefits, sponsoring and financialy incentivising young parents, so that couples who wish to have kids can no longer claim that money is the limiting factor. Those ideas are unpopular, restricting our comfort level, but our only ways out and our only chances of survival to avoid civil war and the collapse of civilisation, driven by economical factors like shrinking active population, growing retired population and growing level of debt that can not be serviced by the economy.

I don't blame today's retirees. They have done everything right: They worked more hours per week than today's average, they paid taxes for 40 to 45 years and had an average of 2 to 2.5 children. There is nothing wrong with retirees. They did everything right. It just so happens that the following generations — Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z — had continuously less children below the replacement rate of 2.1, and that started 50 years ago with some Babyboomers. Not only are we missing children, but we are also missing young workers under-45 to support the elderly population and to support our beloved social welfare system. Retirees just happen to live in a society today with not enough young workers under 40 to provide them with the amount of social welfare, pensions and healthcare that they currently receive and expect. What retirees received in public pension benefits from the 1950s to the 1970s was perfectly fair at the time, given the proportion of retirees to workers in society. Meanwhile, the average lifespan in retirement in advanced economies has more than doubled, from 10 years in 1960 to 23 years in 2025, while the ratio of workers to retirees is dwindling with each passing decade. These welfare benefits given mostly to over-60 elderly are not universal and forever, are not a gain of democracy or a progress of society, they simply reflect the demography at a given time, and they depend on the ratio of workers to retirees. What was feasible and fair in the 1960s is now irresponsible and unsustainable. The drop in fertility rates below replacement level since the 1970s means modern society cannot keep redistributing these social privileges, as this comes at the cost of young workers, who have measurably less purchasing power and thus have fewer children, exacerbating the phenomenon with each passing decade. Retirees today and in the coming decades are the scapegoats we need to deprioritise in order to save our civilisation. By clinging onto our comfortable welfare system and maintaining generous pensions and unlimited free healthcare for all, we are jeopardising our ability to maintain in the near future this very system that we all cherish and love.

Nothing is eternal or set in stone. Social rights and workers' rights, as well as social benefits, can only be established with a thriving economy and a growing labour force, which is no longer the case in most industrialised countries. Our prosperity, peace with our neighbours, and our democracies are only possible with abundant, affordable resources, energy, and materials in a growing economy. When living standards decline year after year for the bottom 50% of us, social unrest, mass protests and civil wars will arise, leading to authoritarian regimes led by the army.

Humans have been masters of engineering systems and societies to make life easier and more convenient, to improve our quality of life, minimise our effort and maximise our food, energy and possessions.

From mastering fire and agriculture to enhance modern food production, to designing machines for the Industrial Revolution to do the work for us, to computers, ships, aircraft and rockets that put satellites in orbit, to optimised and automated factories, vaccines and medicine that have reduced infant mortality from 50% to 1% and increased life expectancy from 45 to 82 years, humans distinguish themselves from other species by their brilliance at inventing and engineering complex systems that maximise our comfort and improve our lifestyle.

The easier life becomes, the more enjoyable it is and the more good education and job options and leisure society offers, the more people are inclined to put aside the sacrifices and burdens of parenting and raising children. The greatness of our societies is actually the reason for declining birth rates. Why bother with such a demanding, constraining duty when life offers so much fun? It's no wonder that birth rates have declined since the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century.

As it is our great lifestyle that is the ultimate source of declining birth rates, the only way to reverse the trend globally and sustainably is to lose some of our quality of life. We have to be refrain from all this comfort, restricted from all those public benefits and conveniances, have to toughen up and create insecurity to change destiny and make human procreation a priority again. Unfortunately, we must endure hard times if we are to have any chance of a rebound and resurrection of our prosperity.

It is unfortunate, but we have at least 200 years and history of 200 countries to confirm the cause and effect. Only a drastic and prolonged decline in living standards and a massive drop in public and social conveniences will raise fertility rates to 2 or above again. We will have to suffer tremendously for things to improve. There is no other realistic scenario for reversing the global decline in birth rates.

Of the 4 major threats I defined in my introductory "The 4 Major threats" chapter (demography, government debt, fossil fuel dependance and climate change), I believe that demography is the most critical, severe and urgent one by far that we are facing today and for the coming decades, and the main reason for growing government debt, the second major crisis in my opinion which is a simple consequence of the demographic collapse.

Climate change at around +1.4°C today is not a real problem except in very specific areas of the world. Living in a big city in Europe, apart from hotter summers and milder winters, I don't see any difference from 20 years ago in terms of climate change negatively affecting me personally. Climate change will be a major problem in 2050 and beyond, especially in terms of access to fresh water, but right now, for most people on the planet, climate change is not really being felt in a negative way. Elon Musk said it best: "Population collapse due to low birth rates is a bigger risk to civilisation than climate change". And he is absolutely right, even considering how big a problem climate change is.

Cheap conventional oil will run out in 10 to 30 years, but then unconventional shale oil and deep offshore drilling will take over and secure supply, albeit at greater environmental and economic cost. And when the world's oil reserves run out sometimes in the second half of the century, we will still have enough natural gas and coal to power our society for the next 3 centuries

Public debt has been rising since 1980, especially since 2008, and GDP growth has been reducing since the 1990s, which coincides with the start of the decline in the share of the working population. In fact, demography is the main reason of an economic boom like we see with India or Poland right now, and also the explaination for the public debt spiral in most advanced ecnomies. It will force us to allocate more of the fiscal budget to debt servicing and less to public spending, which will gradually reduce the quality of our public services such as public schools, public hospitals and law enforcement. This may be manageable for another 10 to 20 years before hyperinflation and social unrest become inevitable.

But the most pressing problem we face today, indirectly, is the low birth rate that began in the 1970s, which has brought the social system (health and pension programmes) to the brink of collapse and forced the government to take on more debt every year. Our population, culture, values and identity will slowly disappear over the course of the century, either through population collapse or through massive immigration diluting our core values. Labour force will be hard to find for all the social and relational jobs. It is difficult to anticipate all the consequences of an ageing and declining population, but they will be tragic and devastating.

Money will not save you from what is coming. If you have 100 rich, old, sick men queuing up to see a single doctor who can only attend to a maximum of 30 patients, you will end up with 70 of the sick old men unattended and untreated, regardless of the wealth of those 70 people. At the moment money buys everything, especially for the top 3%, but in the coming decades the entire middle and lower classes will face problems of supply chain disruption and extremely limited access to labour-intensive social services. The ageing population will stretch our social systems to the breaking point, leading to a downward spiral for most of us. Politicians will blame someone or something and claim to have a solution, but they will never publicly address the root cause of the problem, which is that we stopped making enough babies over the last 40 years, and now we have very few young workers, and in the coming decades we will extremely few young workers. Yes, money will buy you stuff, but it will not be able to buy you human labour intensive goods and services or ultra complex goods that depend on a functioning globalised economy.

As Auguste Comte said back in the mid 19th century, “Demography is destiny”.

Not having children is like taking out a loan: you compromise the future of society for a better present of your own. As we started 50 years ago, the future is now catching up. The demographic changes that have already taken place over the last 50 years are certain to change and end the world of prosperity as we know it. The only question is, will it end humanity altogether? At this point, the demographic decline can't be reversed because it's so steep. The only question is, will it end humanity altogether? Fertility rates seem to have no floor, so we could reach a point where the average adult has 0.5 children, or even 0.1. However, no one is publicly acknowledging that population contraction poses an existential threat to humanity that is greater than climate change, nuclear war or AI doomsday scenarios because it is now inevitable, while other risks are only possibilities.

Children born after 2010, known as Gen Alpha, will be such a rare breed that any talented young person will be offered excellent job opportunities in the future, when the young labour force will have shrunk significantly. Today's children will be the kings of tomorrow. This is a very good reason to have children now!

Life encompasses everything that happens between birth and death. If we do not have children, there will be no future human life on Earth. Without children, there would be no joy, learning, innovation, love, relationships or transmission of culture, values and habits. Without birth, our existence is meaningless on a historical scale.

My message to the youngest generations: Don't let the older generations continue to transfer wealth from you to themselves. It's time for a revolution in public welfare and a seismic change in public redistribution, based on fair give-and-take!

Good luck to the younger generations!

Next chapter: 15 – PREDICTIONS

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- THE LAST DECADE -
December 2025

Why we are all doomed and there is nothing we can do about it.

Why do we have so few kids, and what are the consequences for society.

The uncomfortable and inconvenient truth about the soon coming end of prosperity in our industrial civilisation.

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THE LAST DECADE