If you look hard enough, you can find conspiracy theories about pretty much anything you can imagine (and probaby quite a lot you cannot imagine as well, here’s looking at you lizard people!). While I am sure conspiracy theories have existed as long as humans have had society, with the coming of the internet they have really entered a golden age of semi-plausible nonsense.
While each conspiracy theory will be unique, there are often commonalities which run through them, and it is not uncommon for people holding beliefs in at least one conspiracy to believe in a range of ideas which merge into one overarching nefarious plot. In a fair number of New World Order-type conspiracies, one commonality is the idea of depopulation.
For reasons which have never quite been clear to me, in these belief systems the maleficent powers controlling the world are often looking to reduce the global population, whether by killing people off or reducing the birth rates. Why the powers-that-be would want fewer people while at the same time allegedly wanting us to work for them in perpetual slavery is not quite clear, but hey, who said a conspiracy theory had to have internal consistency?
You can probably guess from my tone that I do not buy into these conspiracies. As far as I am aware (…) I do not believe any conspiracy theory. But along with cults I am not a part of and other unexplained mysteries, I find them fascinating. I probably know more about flat earths, 9/11 truths and the illuminati than is healthy, but I keep coming back for more.
With this interest in mind, it is probably not unexpected that I take notice when I come across concepts and ideas even peripherally linked with conspiracy theories. Over the last couple of weeks I have been seeing just that on a range of YouTube channels I follow, and I am beginning to understand how someone could start to see conspiracy even if one is not there.
The most recent link in my newly developing conspiracy theory came from the channel Kurzgesagt (and no, I have no idea how it is pronounced). A week or so ago they released a video titled Why Korea is Dying Out which explored the falling birth rates of not just Korea, but the planet as a whole. With their own take on the topic, the basic thesis mimicked a few videos and articles I have see recently, namely birth rates are falling and this is a bad thing.
Those of you paying attention will have noticed this is in contrast to the typical conspiracy theory where they are actively trying to reduce the population of the Earth rather than worrying about falling birth rates. That is why I am seeing this as a new type of conspiracy theory; the Repopulation Theory.
Babies good, no babies bad
Ok, so I’m not being entirely serious with my repopulation idea and this is not a post promoting my new Conspiracy Theory. As I have said I am not conspiratorially minded, and I don’t think there is some sinister plot to get everyone to have more children (I’m just going to ignore the situation in the US since Roe v. Wade for the sake of my sanity and blood pressure). I don’t think Kurzgesagt is working for the man, whoever that might be, to condition us to accept bigger families.
No, what Kurzgesagt and others are doing is outlining a well recognised trend, trying to explain the trend, and at least in the case of Kurzgesagt providing reasons they think this is a bad thing.
We should probably start by considering what is happening with global fertility rates, because for this part of Kurzgesagt’s video they are spot on: fertility rates are low across much of the world, and even in areas where they are higher (Africa and the Middle East), they appear to be falling.
The total fertility rate is in essence the number of babies born on average to a woman*. The higher the rate, the more children each woman will have on average, and vice versa for lower fertility rates.
Alongside this, there is an idea of replacement rates. This is the value the average fertility rate needs to be to maintain the population (assuming death rates stay the same and migration does not happen, big assumptions I know). In more economically developed counties with typically low child mortality the replacement rate is 2.1 babies per woman, in areas where child mortality is high this can rise to 3.5. The global average is 2.3 (or sometimes given as 2.4, same as the mythical number of children in the average family). 2.3 babies per woman also just happens to be the global total fertility rate at the moment. In theory should this remain stable, we would see the global population stabilise (currently sitting around 8 billion). Personally, I think this would be a good thing (more on this later), but for the likes of Kurzgesagt and others talking about fertility rates, it is decidedly not.
The problem with old people
Arguments against a falling fertility rate (and stable or falling population) are typically economic in nature. Young people, by which I mean young adults (looking at you again USA…) are typically more economically active than old people. They are the ones with jobs, physically they are more capable of working, and they are the group most responsible for keeping the economy ticking.
With lower fertility rates, the demographics of a country (or the planet as a whole) begin to shift, with a larger percent of the population old and most likely economically inactive. Worse still, older people tend to need more resources spent on them in terms of healthcare and the like, so not only are they not working, but an economist would see them as costing the system as well.
If I am developing my new conspiracy theory, I would see videos and articles about falling birthrates as a push by a group of older rich people (the older you are on average the wealthier you are compared with young people) to see the birth rate go up so there are lots of young people to work while they relax and enjoy themselves. Of course I am not a conspiracy theorist, so I don’t believe this…
Fatalist natalist
I don’t buy the idea that the collective we needs to keep pumping out vast numbers of children to keep the economy rolling for all time. For one thing, his does not take into account the devastating impact on the environment 8billion mouths is having. At current rates we need 1.7 Earths worth of resources to just maintain living standards as they are, never mind improving standards for the world’s poor, and I am not about to start advocating for shooting off into space or mining other planets as a way to meet our needs. To be fair to Kurzgesagt, they do note the impact of population on Climate Change but dismiss population reduction as too little, too late to stop the worst of the impact on our planet.
While I am not advocating some horrific policy of killing people off to save the planet, having fewer children seems like a much less barbaric way of dealing with the impact of the population on the planet ecosystem.
For clarity, I am not an antinatalist. Having children and continuing the species is something I would encourage for anyone wanting to have a family. As I write this my own little squiggles is lying on top of me having a snooze. My thoughts are, as with most things in life, everything in moderation, zero, one or two children per couple (of course acknowledging twins and more can and will happen) seems just right and will see the population settle down nicely. Having a total global fertility rate sitting at or just below the replacement rate would be exactly where I would want it, and it will take some fairly convincing data and argument to change my mind.
Down with SSCCATAGAPP**
Even thought I am unlikely to agree with Kurzgesagt, let us for a moment assume they are correct and falling population is a categorically bad thing. If this is the case, what should we do about it? Once again, I have some thoughts (and not just “burn the whole system down and start again”. I have constructive thoughts…), and I might even throw in one or two about adapting society to a low birth future as well.
“You know this is the ladies bathroom, right?”
The joke in The Simpsons episode referenced above is that after a baby riot, townsfolk without children decide to enact rules to make Springfield less child friendly and more geared to adults. For anyone raising a child or children, you will know it would not be too hard for SSCCATAGAPP to achieve their goal. If we are serious in trying to get people to have more children, then enacting child- and family-friendly policies is a must.
Take the obvious parental leave. The wife and I were lucky in many ways to have periods of paid parental leave available to us, and being able to take the financial hit of the reduced salary for the wife (leave is paid, but not fully). Many people in the UK and across the world are not able to take sufficient leave to bond with and care for their child. If people are wanting to see birth rates going up, giving new families time together (let’s say a year per parent minimum) with pay (let’s say full, of course…) seems like a good first step.
And when parents do finally return to the workforce, making sure those precious children society wanted to be born are cared for in safe and affordable (did you notice the emphasis?) childcare should be top of the agenda. To get baby into a nursery near our house when she is one year old, we had to reserve a place 3months before she had even been born, and again while we will be able to cover the costs, when a majority of one partner’s take home pay is gone on nursery costs, you begin to wonder whether remaining in work is worth it.
It is not just the cost of things which need a cold hard look. Facilities for wee nippers can be lacking. One small example, finding a changing room I am able to access. Some places are fantastic with amazing facilities (hello John Lewis) but for many places the facilities are lacking, or worse, in the women’s toilets. Setting aside the sexist assumptions regarding childcare for now, on two occasions I have asked where the changing facilities are and been sheepishly told they are in the ladies but it is OK for me to pop in to use them. Let me tell you right now, it is not OK. I did not want to be there, I’m certain the women wanting to use the toilet did not want me there. About the only person who did not seem to mind was baby who babbled along oblivious to the social faux pas going on around her. If you want more people to have more babies, you need to not be surprised when some of those caring for said babies turn out to be men and provide facilities accordingly.
You’ve probably realised right now my suggestions are going to cost money, potentially a lot of money. If there is one thing our rich old people do not like to do is part with their money, so it looks like I won’t get my ideas off the starting block.
But look at it this way. More children is apparently an investment in our future economy. Without them society will fall apart and rich people might have to clean their own toilets and cook their own food. Anyone who has started a business or invested in the stock market will know, to get a return you first have to spend money. If children are an investment in the future economy, then rich people now will have to cough up to get the investment portfolio up and running.
🎶Working ten to four🎵
Above I focussed on the early years of a child’s life, my babba is only a few months old so it tends to be on my mind a lot. I am however reliably informed children continue being children for a few more years and need ongoing parental support potentially into their twenties and beyond. This support will take up a lot of time, and being at work tends to get in the way of that.
Flexible working seems like a small price to pay for all the extra sprogs the economy will get in the future. This should be on an individual level of course, be it reduced hours, condensed hours or a combination of the two. But flexibility in work should be available to everyone and not just because they have done their economic duty and had a child,
A couple of years ago I wrote about work patterns and mentioned briefly the increasingly popular 4-day week and 6-hour day. Since I wrote that post, the evidence in favour of a 4-day week has only continued to grow while the 6 m-hour day is not too far behind. If you take someone working the typical 40 hour week and shift them to a 6 hour/4 day contract, you free up a whole 16 hours in the week to spend caring for the little ones (or leisure activities, attending to personal wellbeing, chores etc. I’m sure you get the idea).
Given the evidence suggests productivity remains high (or even increases) when these changes have been tried, these pro-baby changes don’t even come with an upfront investment. The gods of economics get growth now, and presumably even more later when all the young ‘uns become big ‘uns
Which end of the shovel do you dig with?
In 2018, anthropologist and activist David Graeber published what I suspect is one of his most well known books Bullshit Jobs. In the book, he argues up to half of jobs today are essential pointless, existing for no reason other than to have people doing the jobs, and this is having a significant negative impact upon people’s wellbeing and society more broadly.
His conclusions are disputed, but even if we take a low estimate and say 1% of jobs are essentially pointless, then in a country like the UK with roughly 30 million workers, this would amount to 300,000 people completing jobs for no reason other than to be employed. If you take Graeber’s figure and 15 million people would be in pointless work.
Given the worries about the shrinking population, does it not then seem prudent to shift some of this people around to jobs which need to be filled. Begone with the financial speculators moving digits around on a page, hello care home workers feeding and caring for the ever growing numbers of old people.
How do you envisage this is going to happen you may well be asking. Again, short of burning the system to the ground, we could start appreciating and valuing those people working as carers, teachers, farm workers and waste collectors for the vital roles they perform. I have fairly regular contact with care staff in my job, and the turnover and burnout seems consistently high. When you pay peanuts for a physically and emotionally challenging job, this is not exactly unexpected. As with the shift to the four day week, this will cost money, but as we are investing in the future economy for the benefit of rich people, I am sure they can find a couple of quid down the back of the sofa to chip in now. Right?!
The solution to old people
My final suggestion (you’ll be pleased to read I am sure) is a more general idea to improve the lives of everyone regardless of the falling birth rate. That I think it will also help here is a bonus.
As I’ve mentioned above, one of the concerns regarding the changing demographics which come with low birth rates is more old people. Old people come with the double whammy of not working and thereby feeding the almighty economy, and also often costing a lot in the form of care and health costs.
I’m not about to propose old people should be expected to work longer to earn their keep. If anything I would like to see everyone given the opportunity of retiring earlier than people typically do to enjoy the autumn of their years. My final suggestion, my solution to old people if you will, is to do our best now to keep people fit and healthy, so when they get to old age they need fewer resources like health and care services, costing less money in the process and freeing up some of those precious and dwindling workers to do other useful things.
Clearly I am not about to make suggests to treat or cure every illness someone might experience in their life. Sadly medical science is not even close to being there just yet. Rather what I am suggesting (what anyone who cares about health and wellbeing should be suggesting) is a focus on modifiable lifestyle factors which can cause poor health. You probably know most of them already, things like diet, exercise, alcohol and smoking. With more of the second, less of the last two and changes to the first (particularly to a lower sugar, higher fibre diet with plenty of those fresh fruits and veggies) a sizeable chunk of later life ill health can be mitigated if not avoided all together.
To stick with the running theme, this is of course going to cost money, at least initially. Education programmes and access to exercise opportunities are not always readily available, but once again this is about investing now for big returns later. With a healthier population, productivity should be up with healthcare costs down (or at least I imagine an economist would say something along those lines), a win-win for the individual, society and those forward thinking investors who can now bask in the warm glow of their own satisfaction,
Ready, steady, breed…
You’ve probably sensed the sarcasm smeared throughout this post, and I’m sure some people think I am dismissing the concerns around population changes too readily without fully appreciating the challenges ahead. I can understand the arguments and the concerns, I just find myself unconvinced. Whether you worry about the falling birthrates, the climate emergency or both, simply expecting people to get busy in the bedroom without any changes to the way our society runs is unlikely to help either cause. The answers to complex issues like birthrates are not always as straightforward as I have presented here, but equally we do not need to be reinventing the wheel. All that is missing now is the political will to act, and I am sure that is just around the corner…
* I’m using the term woman here as that is the term used within the research. I appreciate not everyone who can have children identifies as a woman, and not everyone who identifies as a woman can have children. As much as it is not a perfect term, it is the one used consistently in the literature so I have stuck with it.
** Inevitably this is a Simpson’s reference. See Season 15, Ep 8: Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays.
https://twaddle.blog/2023/09/19/two-point-four-children/
#Antinatalism #Babies #cf2e2e #Conspiracies #ConspiracyTheory #Family #FertilityRates #Natalism #Population #TheEconomy
Carmelite Quotes
The Last Expressionist
The Last Expressionist
Self-Indulgent Twaddle