Population Boom or Doom?

A few decades ago the world was worried about over-population. The idea was that population would continue to exponentially grow, like it did in the "baby boom", and the world doesn't have enough resources to accommodate that growth and people will starve. It became unacceptable to have a lot of kids because that meant that someone else couldn't have kids because there weren't enough resources to go around. That WAS the idea. The problem is that for most people that is STILL the idea. 

The truth is the opposite. Fertility rate is declining and is lower than it needs to be to sustain a population in most wealthy countries. America's fertility rate is riding the line but it is expected to decline as well. Why should we care? Well for one thing as the older "baby boom" generation retires it rests on the few young adults to cover their retirement. It used to be that there were 13 working adults to each retiree. Now, however, it could be three working people to one retiree and if fertility rate continues to decrease we could have one working person, single handedly, paying for another's retirement... That's A LOT OF TAXES! Now that I have your attention let’s look a little closer. This is the white American population pyramid right now. You can see that the baby boomers are in the peak of their lives and are SOON TO RETIRE. You can also see that there aren’t as many working citizens to pay for their retirement.

prb.org

Another PROBLEM with this is that as the baby boomers get older they will be selling their houses

and there aren’t enough younger people that have the money to buy those houses. This will undoubtedly create a real estate CRISIS! Believe it or not… there’s more. As the baby boomers retire there will be less human capital, which roughly defined is the skills of a population. There will be less capable people to take over the baby boomers jobs. This means LESS PRODUCTIVITY and LESS ADVANCES. Basically it will be extremely difficult to maintain the standard of living that most of us are used to having now.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

The truth? We, as Americans, are becoming more individualized, more self-centered. This is just a statement not an insult. More and more people are putting off marriage until they finish their degree or are well into a career. The average marrying age of 2007 is 26 for females and 28 for males, and that was 5 years ago! So what? Well people that get married later tend to have less time to have kids. Another thing is that people don’t want to have kids anymore. As women are more accepted in the workplace some decide that they would rather have a career than be a mother. All of these things and more are contributing to the fertility decline. And the fertility decline is

CHANGING LIFE AS WE KNOW IT.