IV. Who will feed us then?
Are low-fertility societies sustainable? Can we get away economically with fewer children? Do we still need at least 2.1 for psychological well-being? If a smaller youth population can not feed and care adequately for the masses of oldies that outnumber them, sooner or later the pendulum will swing back.
On the economic side of the equation, can we really afford this new way of life? Some economists predict long-term stagnation for low-birthrate societies. Yet, at closer inspection, this so-called catastrophe looks more like milder GDP expansion, not a falling back to Sub-Saharan economic levels. Projections from OECD, IMF and others still show living standards in the rich world, pending the necessary adjustments, rising in absolute terms, albeit slower than without population aging. Besides, certain quality-of-life gains can be achieved in a less-crowded society: more housing space, less pollution, less crime… These are exactly what the western governments had in mind three decades ago, before the current baby-bust, when they officially welcomed the prospect of an end to population growth.
While the worst-case scenario is unlikely, population aging still presents difficult economic problems. Troubles are looming for most pension systems in the rich world, where they were set up to tax the working population to pay for retiree benefits. When the huge boomer generation retires in a few years’ time, due to insufficient breeding in their prime, there will be too many retirees for too few workers to support. A wide variety of solutions exist, however, to avert a systemic collapse: tax raises (Europeans suffer high tax, yet they still do well in happiness polls,) later retirement (healthy life is much longer now than when Social Security was designed,) benefit cuts (pandering politicians promised impossible benefits, knowing they would be dead long before payment day,) immigration (postponing the problem for a while, until immigrants’ children become locals, with local reproductive behaviors,) private savings account (started in those people’s republics of Germany and Sweden)… or a combination of all these.
Whatever the reform mixture adopted, an even more important determinant of our economic outlook is the future of productivity growth. Smaller workforces won’t be a problem as long as the remaining workers are more productive. If recent productivity growth continues, the average worker’s output, having more than doubled in the last 50 years, will double again by mid-21st century. Continued productivity growth will also improve quality of life through high-standard retirement communities for all or cheap videophone that allows the virtual presence of loved ones… Economically, humanity cannot go away until it has built the ultimate machinery that can feed, house, clothe, amuse… people all by itself, removing then the need of further children being born to take care of those born before them.
Productivity growth happens mainly through technological innovation. Can older and shrinking societies innovate? There are reasons to think so. The record human capital invested in our fewer, ‘’quality'’ children will certainly help. We don’t need billions of scientists to innovate. A small youth population of brainy knowledge workers can be way more innovative than masses of illiterate hammer-and-sickle toilers. Time is on our side, too. Even if it takes, say, 10.000 years to figure out the technologies that reconcile population decline and economic boom, eventually we will find out, the searching period being meaningless on the grander timescale of the species.
It looks like we won’t have to wait 10.000 years. The process of modernization that brought us here will get us there pretty soon. The same technological revolution that is making children a choice in its early hours will go on to render them completely unnecessary. Modernization is about more machines and less human work. A society no longer dominated by physical work must be hard to imagine just a century ago. Fulltime workweek of 40 hours would look suspiciously part-time beside a Gilded Age sweatshop job of 70 hours. Will modernization, still going strong, continue to surprise in the next 100 years? The great transformations of the 20th century - which started in horse-drawn carriage and ended on the Internet - are probably just the beginning. A self-functioning life-support system for humanity, the necessary condition of human exit, is emerging through advances in computing, artificial intelligence, robotics…
The sufficient condition, however, will always remain human choice. Technology is neutral; it doesn’t dictate a direction. If people choose procreation, technology can help with, for example, an artificial uterus. Combined with previous breakthroughs like sperm and egg bank…, this invention will smash the so-called biological clock. Future generations will be able to reproduce as many as they want whenever they want, even after having partied - or worked - away their entire youth. Technology, if need be, will also provide new living space elsewhere in the universe - the way aviation made intercontinental migration possible - for all the babies their parents may want. For all these promises, however, technology could as well drive fertility even lower: if another chance to have kids always exists, folks, full of confidence, may be tempted to postpone indefinitely. At the end of the day, when human ingenuity have removed technical obstacles in all directions, only human desire matters. Its affordability aside, how desirable is this brave new world?