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As a kind of follow-up from this question, I have another question.

How can a country balance its demographics ethically and morally?

Of course, mass genocide and rapes are some of the ways, but they would not be embraced by the population in any sense of the word. This would be abhorred even by the international community.

Another way would be to "wait" until things balance "naturally" - this works best to "phase out" older people in favor of the younger people - under some conditions: 1) the economy can survive the wait and 2) the young people are actively "doing" something to help things - which might not happen because of the bad economy.

And the results of trying to raise the retirement age are already very visible.

I am not sure if the same strategies would work to balance the young-vs-old, as well as male-vs-female.

Rick Smith
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virolino
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    Are you asking about age only or ethnic, gender, religious and other characteristics? Also, what would you regard as 'balanced'. – Dave Gremlin Apr 06 '23 at 11:33
  • I think it makes more sense to talk about young-vs-old and male-vs-female. Others may be important also, but we declare them in this context as lower priority. I guess that "balanced" means something that is good desirable for the country (as a whole) as well as for the people - economically, socially... – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 11:40
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    Are you concerned with the Male-vs.-Female issue in relation to the after effect of China's one child policy, which indirectly lead to a disparate male to female ratio in the favor of men, and thus a problem for young men finding a wife? – hszmv Apr 06 '23 at 11:53
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    @hszmv: that is the inspiration of the question, and not the strict context. – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 11:56
  • @virolino Well, that's just don't adopt policies that directly or indirectly favor one sex over the other. China's One Child policy was an effort to keep their already insanely high population from rising further and it was a little too successful. Left to their own devices, males and females are born pretty equally (In humans there are slightly more boys than girls born in any calendar year, but there is a balancing of that so that by middle age, there are slightly more women than men because men tend to live less longer. – hszmv Apr 06 '23 at 12:01
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    I was going to write an answer about introducing a respiratory virus and using the media to gaslight the population and downplay its rate of severe consequences, but you said ethical and moral, so I didn't. – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 18:47
  • As well as birth rate (children produced per woman) the woman's age when giving birth is important to shape the age profile of a county. – Ian Ringrose Apr 06 '23 at 23:02
  • What does "balance its demographics" even mean? – ohwilleke Apr 07 '23 at 00:03
  • @user253751: What the influenza are you talking about? :) – virolino Apr 07 '23 at 06:04
  • @virolino You said influenza, but it's actually what we did with COVID-19. Even the name "COVID-19" was chosen because "SARS 2" (an earlier name for the same virus and disease) was too scary. – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 08 '23 at 19:15

4 Answers4

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In a liberal democracy, it's pretty much politically impossible to outright tell people how many children they should have. But there are nevertheless ways to encourage or discourage births in indirect ways.

There are several policies that aim to increase birth rates:

  • Financial incentives. Some countries give tax relieves and/or subsidies to parents. The idea is that by relieving the financial burden on parents, some people who are unsure whether they can finance raising a child will reconsider.
  • Policies that make it possible to still pursue a professional career while raising children. This includes policies like state-sponsored childcare, mandatory maximum work hours, mandatory work-from-home where possible, mandatory parenting leave and maternity leave.
  • Taking children into account during urban planning. This includes things like walkable city layouts and reserving public spaces for family recreation (parks, playgrounds, pools...). This helps to create an atmosphere where people feel that they are in a good environment to raise children.

There are also policies that reduce birth rates:

  • Provide sex education in the school system. Research shows that comprehensive sex education in school reduces the rate of teen pregnancies.
  • Make birth control easily accessible.

These policies are often considered a reason for the drastic reduction of birth-rates in Europe and North-America during the 1970s. The contraceptive pill came on the market. And sexuality became less of a taboo subject in school and in society in general, so people knew that they had the option to take it.

And besides birth rates, there is of course another way to change the demography of a country: migration. There are ways to encourag and discourage the immigration of people in certain age groups. For example, student visa programs to get young adults from abroad, work visas to get people of working age into the country and visas for the families of foreigners who are already in the country to repatriate whole families into the country.

Philipp
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  • There is a rather gnarly feedback in financial incentives. Government raises taxes to pay for program. Taxes increase cost of living. Plus, the administration process increases the size and cost of the govt. Increased cost of living requires more subsidy. Govt increases subsidy, requiring more taxes, etc. and etc., ever upward. Plus, so far as I have been able to find, it has not reversed the demographic trends in any country. – Boba Fit Apr 06 '23 at 14:45
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    I'd note that only financial incentives have proven to be of much help for increasing the TFR. Urban planning and support for working mothers doesn't seem to have worked even in the most progressive European countries. – JonathanReez Apr 06 '23 at 17:34
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    Well, the problem with finding out whether or not a certain policy had an effect is unfortunately that it is impossible to determine just by looking at the raw numbers. There are too many factors that affect the same number. It's always possible that the situation would be even worse without these policies. – Philipp Apr 06 '23 at 17:40
  • We do know that the only 4 countries that managed to go back above a TFR of 2.05 are not exactly known for their urban planning or support of working mothers. So even if those incentives do work, they're clearly not sufficient. – JonathanReez Apr 06 '23 at 18:40
  • Relevant: the policies that reduce birth rates also increase the quality of children; for example they are less likely to become drug addicts. Presumably you want fewer high-quality children to carry the elderly, rather than more drug-addicted petty thieves. – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 18:49
  • @JonathanReez Urban planning and support for working mothers are also financial incentives. Cars be expensive, yo – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 18:50
  • @user253751 not really because some people are still having a very large number of children and some percentage of them do so because they're irresponsible or don't understand how contraception works. So the median IQ is actually decreasing rather than increasing. – JonathanReez Apr 06 '23 at 19:28
  • @JonathanReez that's why they should be taught how contraception works and have easy access to contraception and abortion - the exact policies I was referring to! – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 19:29
  • @user253751 you can try but it won't work with some percentage of the population, which also happen to be the very people who shouldn't have kids. Unless you're willing to go the Chinese route. – JonathanReez Apr 06 '23 at 19:37
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 19:38
  • @JonathanReez How do you conclude that financial incentives help to increase birth rates? If anything your list of 4 countries shows that no policy has ever had a significant effect on birth rates. The list of countries with significant financial incentives for giving birth has no correlation with this list of 4 countries. – quarague Apr 07 '23 at 10:25
  • @quarague there's some studies which show a correlation between financial payments and higher birth rates. The problem is that they're far too low to push it above 2.05. – JonathanReez Apr 07 '23 at 14:07
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Migration.

If a country has insufficient workforce, but is otherwise a pleasant place to live, people from unpleasant places have an incentive to move there.

Or, alternatively, elderly people who can't find a caregiver might emigrate to a place where care is cheap.

meriton
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  • You have some very good points. It would be helpful for the community (probably for me too) if you expand your answer a little, to highlight the main pro's and con's of them. +1 As we can already see, migration might have serious negative impact long term. – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 11:52
  • I would suggest looking into the population growth of retirement aged senior citizens in Arizona and Florida, which has a combination of low property values, low to no income tax (as they are living off of fixed income), and year-round favorable weather that lead to them becoming popular retirement spots. – hszmv Apr 06 '23 at 11:57
  • @hszmv: I did not know of that. Do you happen to know, maybe Arizona and Florida intentionally pursued becoming "retirement states" for some reason? – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 12:10
  • @virolino: I think these pros and cons greatly depend on how migration is implemented. Who is allowed in? What incentives are in place? What perspectives are open to migrants? For instance, is there a path to citizenship? Can spouses/families come too? How much social mobility is there? Is there a language barrier? What about culture? There are numerous factors that can be utterly devastating or complete non-issues depending on the particulars. – meriton Apr 06 '23 at 12:15
  • Therefore, I don't think we can specify the main pros and cons at this level of abstraction. And if we are to enumerate all permuations, we'd probably have to write an entire book to do the variance justice ... – meriton Apr 06 '23 at 12:18
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    @virolino I don't think they pursued it. It just sort of happened. Both states didn't see it happen until the advent of air conditioning. And it's a chicken or egg situation of "did policies change that attracted the elderly" or "did the elderly move and thus the policies changed because of their demographic shift." I do think it was the weather that pushed it (elderly don't handle winter well and the warm weather would help with joint pains.). – hszmv Apr 06 '23 at 12:54
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A decrease in birth rates is achievable through means that most people will find agreeable. For example, through increased education, in particular making sure that it is available to women, and to all economic levels. Education usually means higher income, more awareness, and more ability to make choices. The net result is, among many other things, people can be more assured of having their children live to adulthood. They can prepare for their own old age and not depend on children to care for them. They are aware of ways to take control of such issues and can afford them. So education generally results in lowered birth rates.

Increasing birth rates is a tougher proposition. Nearly every country in the world is experiencing falling birth rates. Granted, few countries are actively trying to reverse these trends. And the few that are (China for example) have only recently started doing so. It is early to expect results.

But, if it were easy, one might expect that some countries would have found it by accident. It would be possible to pick out countries and say "that country is pleasant and they're having lots of babies."

It isn't clear that there are pleasant methods of achieving increased birth rates. For example, few people would accept returning to the conditions of a century ago when birth rates were higher. Plus, it isn't even clear it would work. The education cat is out of the bag.

Boba Fit
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a political class has no moral right to impose on its population decisions such as how many children should they have

indirectly however, since there are consequences from the externalities of excessive population, it makes sense that people should pay for them as close to the problem as possible, as they do with basic education and hospital care through taxation

indeed people already make decisions on how many children they should have based on the fact that children are no longer cheap labour and are in fact a massive liability in economic terms at least for the first couple of decades of their life, as children are not allowed to work and parent have a duty to care and to provide for State-mandated education among other things in most if not all of the industrialised world

these liabilities already constitute a large tax on children, perhaps too large in many cases as people have decided to have less than 2 per couple, leading to an aging population

the framing of this question implies that the political class has the right to decide how much population is too little or too much, rather than the very effects of population numbers on the people - removing agency from the people and assigning it to the State through the political class

at most, the political class could perhaps pose the question to the electorate, perhaps as part of an electoral programme, to take measures that would lead to different incentives to have more or less children; but I don't think this is even an issue when, as soon as the externalities of children are exposed to parents in terms of long-term liabilities from having children, the problem is that people may have too few rather than too many children

muyuu
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    If it´s really just your opinion it makes the answer off topic. – convert Apr 06 '23 at 11:35
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    @muyuu: my question is about ethical influence (as well as moral), so "impose" is not really what I am after. We have to agree that the economy cannot survive without young (working) people, so when their numbers are too low, some initiative must be taken. – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 11:43
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    every answer in politics will follow one or more schools of thought, there is no objectivity in political policy other than objective adherence to a certain school of thought – muyuu Apr 06 '23 at 11:43
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    @virolino the problem with your question is that it puts the agency on the State from its very framing, rather than the responsibility on the individual – muyuu Apr 06 '23 at 11:45
  • @muyuu: it might be true. Please edit your answer and explain your statement: "the problem with your question is that it puts the agency on the State from its very framing, rather than the responsibility on the individual" - I do not fully get it from a simple comment. – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 11:47
  • Now I understand better. But that is the "definition" of a country: people give up their rights and hand them over to a few, called "the State". Or? And when the State does not care about the opinion of people, "unrest" happens. – virolino Apr 06 '23 at 11:55
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    Please consider using capitalization and punctuation in your answer. – shoover Apr 06 '23 at 18:34
  • @virolino that is a very strange definition of a country. – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 18:53
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    @muyuu you are doing the same thing, you are putting agency on the individual when it should be the government. The entire point of governments is to coordinate solutions to collective problems that cannot be solved individually. Nothing I can do (apart from starting a cult of serial rapists) is going to appreciably raise the ratio of young people to old people, and neither is anything you can do (apart from that). – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 06 '23 at 21:52
  • no, not really @user253751 - political parties can come up with arbitrary programmes and that is legitimate as I already mentioned before. For the government to engineer crises to trample over fundamental rights and the electorate's agency, it isn't legitimate. – muyuu Apr 07 '23 at 10:39
  • @muyuu when you say government-engineered crisis, what do you mean? What did the government engineer? – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 08 '23 at 19:05
  • @user253751 every crisis that a government brings up to remove or exempt fundamental rights can be safely assumed to be engineered. If a government is allowed to exempt itself from limits, it will take the necessary steps to do it. – muyuu Apr 10 '23 at 07:38
  • @muyuu I still don't know what you are talking about. What did the government engineer? Please clarify it in your answer, if it's relevant. – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 10 '23 at 16:20
  • @user253751 which government? I just said that every crisis that a gov. brings up to remove or exempt fundamental rights can be safely assumed to be engineered. Was this not clear enough? do you need examples? how about a diagram? – muyuu Apr 11 '23 at 10:45
  • @muyuu You are clearly referencing some specific crisis that you think was engineered by the government, but you won't say which. Which crises were engineered by governments? – Reasonably Against Genocide Apr 11 '23 at 19:11