Population decline: Greatest threat to humanity

(Part 1)

Prophets of doom in the last century frantically warned the whole world about the so-called population bomb or the threat of overpopulation. Today, the greatest threat to humanity is exactly the opposite. Just listen to US billionaire Elon Musk. He has been very vocal about his concern with declining birth rates and what he sees as a looming “population collapse.” The declining population in many countries today is to Musk the major problem for the future of civilization, rather than overpopulation.

Musk says that most people wrongly think the world has too many people. He argues this view is outdated and that the bigger risk is too few people are being born. He is constantly tweeting that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” He has repeatedly insisted that there are not enough people in the world today and that if birthrates continue to fall, civilization will collapse. Whether in actual events or when communicating online, he is urging people to “have more babies,” arguing that low fertility threatens economic and social stability.

Musk has said that parents should aim for about three children to compensate for people who have none or only one, or else the population shrinks. It is actually a no brainer. If the mother and father die and they are not replaced by two children, the population will start declining. Musk points out that the fertility rate in many countries, especially in the developed world, is below the 2.1 children per fertile woman replacement level. He sees this as unsustainable in the long-term. Looking back at history, he attributed the fall of civilizations like ancient Rome to declining birthrates. He strongly rejects what was so-called “popular wisdom” propagated by international agencies like the World Bank that the planet is overpopulated. He refers to this propaganda as “the most nihilistic lie ever told,” arguing that declining birth rates pose the true existential threat. He has described population collapse as an existential problem and warned against allowing cultures or nations to “disappear” due to low fertility.

These dire warnings of one of the richest persons on earth could have not been more applicable than to the richest country in Asia, Japan. As the year 2025 ended, the international press was filled with news from Japan that the number of births in Japan is likely to come in below 670,000 — the lowest level since records began 1899, and 16 years earlier than projected by government forecasts. A Japanese demographer reported that the birth total for 2025 was likely to represent a 3% drop from 686,000 in 2024. This would mark the 10^th consecutive year of record low birth rates. Japan is estimated to have been losing about 700,000 people every year.

Japan is not alone among rich countries in suffering from record low birth rates. As Valentina Romei reported in the Financial Times, birth rates in the world’s rich economies have more than halved since 1960 to hit a record low. The average number of children across 38 of the most industrialized countries has fallen from 3.3 in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022, according to a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The fertility rate is now well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman in all the group’s member countries except for Israel. “This decline will change the face of societies, communities and families and potentially have large effects on economic growth and prosperity,” warned the Paris-based organization.

Declining populations obviously act as a drag on economic expansion. A most serious consequence will be labor shortages. Putting together rising life expectancy, low birth rates clearly put pressure on public finances as they leave fewer people contributing the tax revenues needed to pay for the rising costs of ageing populations. A lack of pupils is leading to massive closures of schools in these rich countries, especially in Japan. These countries are trying their best to implement family-friendly policies but, as was in the case of Asian countries like Singapore and Japan, these policies are unlikely to raise birth rates to replacement level. The lowest fertility rates were recorded in southern Europe (Spain and Italy) and Japan at about 1.2 children per woman, with South Korea having the birth rate at about 0.7. A fall in birth rates in countries with extensive policies to support families, such as Finland, France, and Norway, has been a big surprise. The OECD reported that “the second demographic transition,” a trend that marks the shift in attitudes towards greater individual freedom and alternative life goals and living arrangements, helped to explain the decline in family formation.

Countries in Asia and Africa that are still enjoying their respective “demographic dividend,” like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria, should study closely the lessons they can learn from the developed countries that are struggling to reverse their population decline and rapid ageing. Childlessness more than doubled in Italy, Spain, and Japan among women born in 1975 compared with women born in 1955. Some 20% to 24% of women in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain are childless among those born in 1975, with the figure rising to 28% in Japan. Mothers across the OECD on average had their first child at nearly 30 in 2020, up from the average of 26.5 in 2000. The figure rises to over 30 in Italy, Spain, and South Korea.

The most important lesson for those still enjoying the benefits of a young population is to remove all programs and policies that have the slightest semblance of the anti-birth measures popularized by the World Bank in the last century. Very early in the transition from large families to smaller families that are the natural results of higher per capita comes, the whole society — government, business, civil society and especially the academe — should be singing the praises for the institution of marriage and the benefits (psychological, social, and especially spiritual ) of having children.

It is very telling that between 1980 and 2019, as reported by columnist John Burn Murdoch of the Financial Times, most developed countries roughly tripled their real-terms per capita spending on child benefits, subsidized childcare, parental leave and other family-friendly policies. Tragically, they also saw their birth rates decline from 1.85 to 1.53 per woman. The main explanation given is that the decision to have children and how many in these high-income societies turn out to be due to more than financial incentives. Culture is more powerful than policy. For example, child rearing practices have an important impact on fertility rates. In 1965, mothers of young children in developed countries spent an average of just over an hour a day doing activities with their kids. By 2018 that had risen to three hours, and in Korea approaching four. Korea’s fertility rate has plummeted to 0.72, while in France, where parenting is much less hands on, birth rates have held up well and now stand at 1.8.

Early enough in current moves to actively involve parents in the education of their children, especially at pre-school and elementary school levels, there should be a concerted effort to enlighten parents about the prudent amount of time that they should devote to helping their children in their academic work and to avoid spoon feeding their children by spending an inordinate amount of time coaching their children. More important is their role in shaping values and character — in which the role of the parents is indispensable.

In the final analysis, the decision to have children and how many to have is based on the spiritual conviction proceeding from the religious belief that marriage and the resulting children from this “inviolable institution” (to use a phrase taken from the Philippine Constitution of 1987) are mandated by the Creator Himself.

(To be continued.)

Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

bernardo.villegas@uap.asia