In their piece, published in Nature Human Behaviour, IIASA Distinguished Emeritus Research Scholar Wolfgang Lutz and IIASA Senior Researcher Guillaume Marois, who is also an associate professor at the Asian Demographic Research Institute of the Shanghai University, respond to political and public concern over declining birth rates in highly developed countries. While low fertility is increasingly framed as a crisis, associated with population aging, labor shortages, and fiscal pressure, the authors argue that this narrative is based on outdated assumptions that no longer reflect current demographic realities.

Higher levels of education, increased labor force participation, and rising productivity can offset—and even outweigh—the effects of having fewer births. Lower fertility can enable greater investment per child, strengthening human capital and innovation while reducing dependency burdens over the coming decades.

  • WanderingThoughtsEnglish
    11·
    10 days ago

    Economists don’t like telling the people that pay them to treat their workers and customers as people and actually care for them and not just use them as disposable resources to be exploited.

    That’s like that report from Amazon, where the high turnover made them cycle to almost all available people to work in their warehouse and literally not enough new suckers being born.