Embracing an Aging Population & Declining Fertility with Dignity
To counteract the increasingly alarmist fears of population decline, we have a sobering conversation with population economist and author of the book, Decline and Prosper! Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children, Dr. Vegard Skirbekk. Dr. Skirbekk takes us through decades of demographic research to lay to rest apocalyptic forecasts and insecurities around exploding healthcare costs, high shares of people dependent on others for care and economic support, labor shortages, and economic and cultural stagnation, and explains why instead a declining birth rate is not only a positive trend but one that can lead to more prosperity. Dr. Skirbekk provides key ideas on how governments can and should embrace and adapt to an aging population through citizen-centered policies and attitudes.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Vegard Skirbekk 0:00
So the oldest dependency ratio is perhaps the most used measure of population aging. It's a metric which typically shows the ratio between typically those aged 65 and over those aged 20 to 64. And as populations grow older, though, this dependency ratio will rise over time, but the error which this is based upon is the assumption that there's a fixed retirement age, that there's not an increase in age, how long one can be working, how long will actually is working? There's no change in gender specific economic participation or productivity. There's no rise in female labor force participation over time. There's no change in health. And all of those assumptions are incorrect.
Alan Ware 0:41
Those are the words of Vegard Skirbekk, population economist and author of the book, Decline and Prosper: Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children. In this interview, Dr. Skirbekk provides the facts that push back against alarmist fears of population decline.
Nandita Bajaj 1:06
Welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast where we tirelessly make overshoot and overpopulation common knowledge. That's the first step in right-sizing the scale of our human footprint so that it is in balance with life on Earth, enabling all species to thrive. I'm Nandita Bajaj co-host and executive director of Population Balance.
Alan Ware 1:27
And I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance, the first and only nonprofit organization globally that draws the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, and ecological overshoot, and their combined devastating impacts on social reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.
Nandita Bajaj 1:46
And before we move on to today's guest, we've got some listener feedback for our most recent podcast with Carl Safina which was on the beauty and complexity of animal cultures. The first one is from Clif from Minnesota. Thank you for another winning podcast. Safina eloquently explains aspects of animal culture that common experience tells us is true. They also express emotional states. It was heartening to hear his positive reporting about the restoration of key wildlife on Long Island where he apparently still resides. It was also good to learn of his overpopulation views in connection with overconsumption and ecological destruction, notably that both developed and undeveloped nations share some blame and responsibility. As always, you both performed your co-hosting roles as expected, demonstrating knowledge about the topic and asking appropriate questions and offering appropriate responses and insights. And the next one is from Cindy on the same episode. She says I just listened to your podcast with Carl Safina and found it fascinating and so in line with what I've learned over the years, I love the concept that Nature needs half and I'm so glad it was discussed and that you tied it all back to humans shrinking their numbers to an abundance of all nature. This is my first podcast listen, and rest assured I will be listening to all the others. Thank you for all you do keep up the good work. Well thank you so much, Cindy, for your feedback and welcome to our podcast. And thank you Clif for your excellent feedback as well. And if it weren't for listeners like you we wouldn't be in the top 2% of all the podcasts globally. For feedback or guest recommendations you can reach out to us using our contact form at populationbalance.org. And now on to today's interview guest
Alan Ware 3:43
Vegard Skirbekk is a professor at Columbia Aging Center, Columbia University, and a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. His research focuses on understanding the links between aging, health, and individual's productivity in countries undergoing demographic change around the world. He is currently interested in looking at differences across countries in terms of health and cognitive skills and relationships with investments in education and health. He is also interested in comparing variations in life trajectories in health across societies and countries. Skirbekk has published widely in academic journals like Demography, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and his research has received attention in global media like the BBC, The New York Times, The Economist, and New Scientist. His most recent book is Decline and Prosper: Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children. We also want to put in a plug for our most recent opinion piece that was published in Newsweek recently titled Coercive Pro-Birth Policies Have Devastating Impacts on People and the Planet, which features some of Vegard's ideas about the benefits of declining fertility rates. We'll add a link to this piece in the show notes.
Nandita Bajaj 4:57
Well, it's such a pleasure to have you in the studio today, Dr. Skirbekk. Your research on the benefits of a declining population are a welcome break from the barrage of media stories on depopulation panic your recent book, Decline and Prosper: Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children, has garnered praise from high profile economists, demographers, and gerontologists, including from the International Monetary Fund and the UN Population Division. We are so thrilled about this conversation. Welcome to the podcast.
Vegard Skirbekk 5:34
Thank you so much, Nandita. I'm very honored to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Nandita Bajaj 5:37
Great. And Dr. Skirbekk, your recent book, Decline and Prosper: Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children, reveals that much of what we term the depopulation alarmism is exaggerated and unwarranted. As you've noted, novel situations often give rise to insecurities, and population aging has led to some rather apocalyptic forecasts. Exploding healthcare costs, high shares of people dependent on others for care and economic support, labor shortages, and economic and cultural stagnation. And we're really looking forward to unpacking the several different elements of the unjustified panic over declining birth rates. And why, as you claim in your book, a declining birth rate is not only a positive trend, but one that can lead to more prosperity. So let's start with the basics of the fact that more and more people around the world are deciding to have fewer children. You've noted that over the past sixty years, we've seen a decline in average family size at the global level from around five children per family to about 2.3 on average. Your book outlines many of the reasons people are choosing smaller families. Could you give us an overview of some of the main reasons why people in virtually every country are choosing to have fewer children?
Vegard Skirbekk 7:05
Okay, thank you for the question. There are many reasons why people choose to have fewer children. I will highlight some of the key causes of fertility decline, which has been seen in almost every country on the planet. But the timing of fertility decline, the speed of fertility decline, and the initial level of childbearing before the onset of fertility decline varied widely. And so the current levels of fertility are caused by a wide variety of factors which depend on each nation's social and cultural and economic development. But the general trend is one towards fewer children. If I should choose from the top of the key causes, what I see and many of my colleagues also find are the main drivers of lower fertility, it would be the rise of education levels, increase in compulsory education, rising elective education, and in particular, rise of secondary education in most countries around the planet, and not least, the rise of female education. In many countries, male education has traditionally risen first. In recent decades, female education has risen to higher levels than male education levels in more and more countries around the world, including in traditional conservative countries; countries such as in parts of the Middle East and parts of Asia. In addition to education, I would also highlight the role of contraceptives - that there has been increases in the effectiveness and availability of modern contraceptives with a rise in, particularly in LARCS (Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives) reversible contraceptives, which are required minimum maintenance. If you'd like a contraceptive transition, where one has gone from traditional methods, including withdrawal, including safe days, and including other traditional methods of trying to limit their childbearing to modern day methods where one uses hormonal contraceptives to a greater extent, where one has a new set of contraceptives which are requiring far less maintenance and administration than past types of contraceptives. And this has likely decreased the proportion of unplanned children and also allowed them to plan families and childbearing to much greater extent than what historically has been the case. So contraceptives is a key reason. But there's also more and more other factors which are playing an important role in many countries. So, traditionally, many demographers foresaw that fertility would decline, but it would decline towards replacement levels. If you go back a few decades and read demographic reports, demographic projections, one foresaw that fertility will go towards two children per woman and then stagnate at this level. And this has often not materialized. Typically what we see is that fertility declines in many countries, but it doesn't stop at two. It typically falls below two, and often far below two. And part of the reason for the rapid decline in fertility has been, in addition to contraceptives, education, and also a decrease in mortality, one knows that most children one has will survive, decreases in preferences, many women and men prefer to do other things in life than forming families, including traveling, including realizing themselves, including pursuing careers, attending art classes, traveling, and so forth. And this is commonly perceived to be in contrast with early childbearing and also large family sizes. And moreover, there has been an increase in the proportion of women and men who ends up, and some choose to, not have children at all. In many countries, this has become increasingly accepted over time because there's been a change in norms, there's less economic concerns for, for example, women being alone without children because women increasingly work. There's also changes in how people perceive children. So people traditionally would perceive children as being a source of labor or potential income of somebody who can support them, transfer money to them. But over time, there's been a change in the economic role of children where children might be increasingly costly, children live longer, much, much longer. They start working much, much later, they're quite much more cost high investments and childbearing has become increasingly costly in many countries, and this has also contributed to a decrease in childbearing levels.
Nandita Bajaj 10:47
Yeah, this is all so illuminating to hear all of the different data points in one response. We especially resonate with your observation that the changing cultural norms play a huge role in the acceptance of fewer children and normalizing the decision to take contraceptives. For example, we know that there are over two-hundred million women around the world who have this unmet need for contraception. And often we think that it's the lack of availability of contraceptives that leads to that unmet need. But we know that research shows that it's usually some kind of obstruction from family, where family members or husbands are opposed to their taking contraceptives. So the changing of the cultural norms, and then also, availability of contraceptives has played such a huge role. And of course, the rise in education and all of the things that you said - an interest in fulfilling ourselves and finding other paths in life. These are all really positive things. And it's great to claim them for the positive things that they are instead of raising alarm bells about people not having enough children.
Vegard Skirbekk 12:01
I think these points you make are very true. And it's very important that one appreciates that the causes of decline in fertility are among the positive social developments - developments that most individuals would agree would be beneficial for society. That one has increased choice, that one has more autonomy in making the most important choice of one's lifetime, possibly, in terms of whether or not have children, how many to have, when to have them, with whom. And also giving more options for people, the changes in the economic growth of women in particular have been a tremendously positive development, which basically has allowed people to choose.
Nandita Bajaj 12:34
Yeah, we definitely agree.
Alan Ware 12:35
Yeah, of all of those variables, is education of women one of the primary ones, or is that just part of the whole stew of everything you mentioned?
Vegard Skirbekk 12:45
I think it's the primary one to put it short. And the reason is that many of the issues discussed are or has at least been highly controversial in some countries, including the role of women in the workforce, and including the spread of contraceptives. But the rise of education is something that not all but the vast majority of countries and societies around the world have endorsed and something that has a clear and causal effect on child bearing patterns. If you increase compulsory education, if you, by law, make girls and boys go longer to school, this is something that has been found to cause a decline in teenage fertility, to depress the onset of marriage, to postpone the onset of childbearing, and to lead to fewer children and fewer, most importantly, unplanned children.
Alan Ware 13:27
And the fertility of more educated women in poor countries becomes comparable to the fertility of more educated women in richer countries, right? Which is another, more evidence for the education-fertility linkage.
Vegard Skirbekk 13:39
Precisely. And in most countries, that is the case. And this is highly important because it's a policy that is fairly non-controversial, it is effective, very few countries/societies oppose it, and there is the benefits, both in terms of childbearing autonomy, but also in terms of being able to manage and adapt to a modern world, for example, working life demands, financial decision-making, and coping with the challenges in every form and sort are dependent on one having a proper education.
Alan Ware 12:44
And I thought it was interesting, somewhere in your book or presentation, how you mentioned women have been able to get a lot more selective as they've gotten more educated and skilled, whereas in, what was it pre-1950s Norway, they would take more likely any man, and now increasingly, women, as they become educated and skilled, get choosier, right?
Vegard Skirbekk 14:09
I think there's strong evidence for that. I think it's very important that part of the reason why we see this very strong fertility decline are often much stronger. Again, demographers predicted that fertility would stabilize around two children. What is seen, even in countries such as Norway, it has dropped to around one and a half children per woman. And part of the reason is that many remain childless, many choose not to marry or choose not to partner, and a large share end up without having children at all. And this is important. Part of the reason is likely that there's an increase in pickiness. Marriage is no longer universal and compulsory. To me, it's a choice and it kind of factors into one's basis, one's potential to decides on which partner to match with. The list has gotten longer, basically, in terms of what traits one wishes to see fulfilled, before one chooses to tie them up.
Nandita Bajaj 14:28
Yeah, it's a very heartening trend, actually, because in a way, the increasing number of people choosing to remain unpartnered or remain childfree, it's also normalizing other family formations. So, you know, marriage and children is not the only path for everyone. Remaining single is a perfectly legitimate path, living with friends, or adopting children, or adopting animals, we're also seeing an increasing trend for a lot of people who are just redefining what family means to them. And is your expectation that these trends that are associated with lower fertility rate will continue into the future?
Vegard Skirbekk 15:56
I think not only continue, I think that will be amplified in many countries and settings. Because the trends we're currently seeing have been perhaps, traditionally been more dominant a few years ago among urban, highly-educated and they're spreading and are still spreading to other sections of more societies, too. Partly more people are urbanizing and their changing norms and preferences towards childbearing is spreading also to maybe more rural regions of society, so the less educated, to different cultural groups and so forth. So I think for those reasons, they are becoming more important over time, and they certainly are spreading to more and more countries. This was once perhaps primarily a Western phenomenon. This is no longer the case. More people are living in low fertility countries now live in non-Western countries than in Western countries. And the changing the norms, I think, are extremely important and under-studied. Unfortunately, we don't know enough of this. There's a lot of focus on socio-economic inequalities, regional inequalities, but not enough in terms of cultural, religious, or normative differences in childbearing preferences. And this is something that is spreading quite fast around the world. People are, in more and more countries, choosing or preferring to have fewer children. And if this is a preference, this is something that should be celebrated, not opposed.
Alan Ware 17:02
So as we're seeing more and more people choosing smaller families and many countries facing the prospect of population declines, we're also seeing a rise in what you refer to as these apocalyptic forecasts from many voices in the mainstream media, and within political and economic policy communities. And those fears of population decline tend to focus on three areas: the excessive spending on health care services and old age care, shortfalls in pension funding, and potential worker shortages. So in your research, you found that fears about population aging tend to exaggerate the meaningfulness of chronological age as an indicator of health and productive capacity. And the standard measure of aging is the Old-Age Dependency Ratio, or the OADR. And you've replaced this in your studies with a measure you call the Health-Adjusted Dependency Ratio. So let's start with the basics here of looking at this, what is the old age dependency ratio?
Vegard Skirbekk 17:57
So the Old-Age Dependency Ratio is perhaps the most used measure of population aging. It's a metric which typically shows the ratio between two age segments of the population - typically those aged sixty-five and above over those aged twenty to sixty-four. And as populations grow older, the share of those aged sixty-five and above tend to increase for those in age twenty to sixty-four, tend to either stabilize or eventually decrease. And this implies that all this dependency ratio will rise over time as the share of so-called dependents is rising, while the share of those who are in the typical working ages is stabilizing. But the error which this is based upon is the assumption that there's a fixed retirement age - that there's not an increase in ages - how long one can be working, how long one actually is working. There's no change in gender-specific economic participation or productivity. There's no rise in, for example, female labor force participation over time, and there's no change in health. And all of those assumptions are incorrect, because we know that it's not only political correctness when one talks about the older people are getting healthier than they used to be. That is something we observe, we have more years of life ahead of us because of rising life expectancy. We have better health at a given age, we have studies which shows that physical strength is improving over time using something quite objective, you have so-called dynamometry, where you can squeeze as hard as you can and we find that people squeeze harder than they used to if you're in your mid-sixties, and considerably harder, meaning that you you basically have the same strength as somebody who used to be several years older than you a decade or two earlier. And you also know that cognitively people function better than they used to. So they are remembering better, they have better cognitive capacities. And this is extremely important because it affects how long you can be active in the labor markets, because cognition is a key determinant of how long you can be active economically, but also how long you can be able to cope on your own basically, not dependent on support from others to conduct basic tasks which require cognitive capacities.
Alan Ware 20:01
Yeah, you've noticed countries like US and European countries have lower health-adjusted dependency ratios than places like India, Mexico, or China.
Vegard Skirbekk 20:09
Yeah, very importantly, even if you might have, say many parts of the world, such as South America or Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South Asia have a much younger age structure. But if you account for the fact that poor health occurs much, much earlier in these countries, because health levels are much worse, basically, and the age specific onset of poor health is occurring at a much younger age, where if you account for this, you find that the global variation in health-adjusted dependency ratios is quite similar across countries, even if, say Western countries and certain Asian countries, including Japan, tends to be demographically older, they also tend to have better health until higher ages. And accounting for this and allowing people to be old only when you are reaching a certain level of poor health rather than some arbitrary age limit, you will be able to compare, in a much more accurate way, how different nations age. And doing so has shown exactly, as you say, that there's much less variation across countries in terms of the Health-Adjusted Dependency Ratio, which we argue is a much better measure of aging than the infamous Old-Age Dependency Ratio.
Alan Ware 21:12
Yeah, I thought you had an interesting fact regarding Japan, where many people are concerned about how rapidly they're aging. But you mentioned, according to the Health-Adjusted Dependency Ratio, a seventy-five-year-old in Japan is as healthy as a forty-five-year-old in Papua New Guinea.
Vegard Skirbekk 21:26
Yeah.
Alan Ware 21:26
That's a huge range.
Vegard Skirbekk 21:28
Yeah, the assumption behind all this dependency ratio would be that everyone has the same health globally at the age of sixty-five. And this is not true. It's also not true over time. They used to have much worse health in, say, Japan or Italy or but we have seen improvements over time, which implies that people are able to cope better with the aging than what used to be the case. So basically, what you argue it's true. There is much less variation in aging across countries than what purely demographic measures would suggest.
Alan Ware 21:54
And you had a great study that I guess I wouldn't have thought of, that countries with secondary schooling showed less cognitive decline, years, decades, generations of their lives later, they're still maintaining a little cognitive ability.
Vegard Skirbekk 22:09
Yeah, I think that's extremely important. It's not an easy fix. These are investments to improve health of populations, you basically have to think many decades ahead. And you can't do that unless you invest in the health and functional level and education and human capital of children. And that is what some countries have done, other countries have not done, and what you do find is that currently, oldest countries in the world have also invested quite heavily in education, say six decades early, which implies that the current generations of old people are functioning much, much better than what the case would be if they had not invested so much in education. Basically, we find that it plays a causal role - that those who are subject to longer education, they end up functioning cognitively much better than those who are not subject to longer education, and this plays a huge role at older ages, and how well you cope with the inevitable demographic change.
Nandita Bajaj 22:54
Right. And even, you know, as you say, with the increased longevity and deferral of health care costs, the burden on health care also happens in lot later stages of a person's life as a result, because they're living longer and healthier. And what are some of the best measures you found that can increase the ability of governments and policymakers to have a physically and cognitively healthy and potentially more productive population of older people so we don't see this kind of a spread across countries that you've just pointed to?
Vegard Skirbekk 23:31
Well, we discussed the role of education, which is crucial. But there's also, of course, the healthcare provision system is highly important. So to which extent basic preventive health care is universal, affordable, available, effective is crucial to whether one can basically build up the health which is needed to cope well with population aging. And the other important factors are having an effective infrastructure, having a society where you have a sufficient level of trust, basically, where people are able to trust that they will get the type of support they need, where they trust governments enough to be willing to pay the taxes that are needed, basically, to support these systems, both healthcare and social security systems. And also the capacity to effectively deal with an aging population in terms of seeing old people as much as possible as a resource, not only negatively but seeing them as something positive. But these are people who might have more time than they used to, they have better health, better educated, many have fewer family obligations, they have a capacity to cope better in the sense that modern labor market does not require so much physical demands anymore, you don't have to be physically strong. So those are crucial for whether you will be effectively coping with aging well or not.
Nandita Bajaj 24:37
Right. And the role of infrastructure. It's so crucial because so many countries don't have elderly health care infrastructure built at all, a lot of the burden falls on their children. So there's kind of an institutionalized pronatalism built-in. You have children so they take care of you when you're older, and the burden literally falls on the children because there is no retirement homes or nursing homes for older people.
Vegard Skirbekk 25:03
I mean, we should not underestimate also the challenges associated with aging, and Korea's maybe one of the fastest countries, if not the fastest aging country in the world, and it has also not implemented the kind of social security system you need to effectively deal with aging. And you also need to cope as good as possible with the fact that it is a challenge for many not to have close kin. And you should try to find ways of supporting housing and the living conditions for incursion, allow close interaction with other people, and incentivize new forms of social families so you can have other storylines are not necessarily your own blood but you might have at least as much support from them as you would have had from your own children. And also to prepare for potentially negative especially mental health effects. I think that's crucial. That one has to make sure people have a suitable way of feeling that they belong and contribute to society as at older ages, and that many countries are not able to do well at all. Even countries that claimed to have high esteem of old age, many of them actually have a lot of age discrimination, they have a lot of poor treatment of older individuals, and that is something that one has to address quite urgently in order to cope well with inevitable population aging.
Nandita Bajaj 26:06
We really appreciate this re-imagining and redefining what it means to get old. I think in one of your presentations, you mentioned it's not whether we get old, it's with what level of dignity are we allowed to age. Another major concern often brought up with regards to population decline is alarmism about worker shortages. We've had an interview with Dr. Jane O'Sullivan from Australia recently who wrote a paper about the aging population there and noted that there are typically natural feedbacks in a tight labor market. Firstly, employers start investing in training their workers and rewarding them so they don't leave. And secondly, employers will often invest more in automation. Are you seeing these feedbacks within the countries that you've studied?
Vegard Skirbekk 26:55
Well, I think to some extent, yes, we are seeing exactly that. We are seeing that many of the countries that have the oldest populations of the world today are also the countries that have some of the most technically advanced labor markets, for many traditional job tasks have been replaced by new technologies. There's certainly huge potential for increasing that trend. And this is highly important in the context of population aging, as it might offset some of the potential negative effects of a declining workforce. The also aging and population decline doesn't happen overnight. It happens over decades. The increase in life expectancy that we're currently seeing, which is driving population aging, has occurred in some countries for much longer than a full century, which means one basically has a very long time to prepare for aging populations. And we can't blame that this comes suddenly. This is something that has been foreseen longer than almost any other social trend, and one should deal with it as effectively as possible and investing in technology is clearly one of the key mechanisms to deal with it. So one should not only focus on the social aspects in terms of improving opportunities and conditions and human capital of an older and shrinking workforce, but one should also offset, as much as possible, the potential negative implications of decline in the workforce. And I think it's crucial to understand that one is currently very advanced already, one doesn't need so many workers in the whole world to produce what everyone eats in the kind of food production we have using contemporary technologies available today. We can produce what is basically adjusted on the whole planet with a quarter of a percentage of the world's current workforce, and this is something that should be accounted for - that one already has the potential to implement changes in policies, and new technologies which are enabling us to offset many of the most negative effects of population change. And at the same time, the fact that there are a few people has a large number of benefits as well, which are often not discussed at all in terms of offsetting the rapid rising housing prices, offsetting more than anything resource use, greenhouse gas emissions, and many environmental challenges associated with larger populations. A gradual decline in the population size will enable us to cope with all these challenges to a much greater extent than what would have been the case if one would have continuously increasing population sizes.
Alan Ware 29:06
To the extent that technology and automation don't take care of all worker shortages, it seems there'll be more demand for relatively fewer younger people, which could result in increased wages, which would do wonders for social inequality and intergenerational justice, and the fact that a lot of Western industrialized baby boomers and older have a lot of wealth, more wealth at a younger age than the present Gen Z and Millennials have, right? So it's kind of a redistribution of wealth assets - older rich paying for services at a slightly higher wages, which seems to be intergenerationally just.
Nandita Bajaj 29:45
The other thing that a lot of the governments, with their short-term pronatal push for women to have more children as a simplistic solution to solve this aging crisis, also misses the point that women are freed from the unpaid labor of childcare and are actually free to join the workforce and contribute to social security and elder care. It's kind of this reductionist system: people are getting old, let's have more kids. It also kind of misses the point that all the infrastructure cost of building new schools and highways and hospitals for this increased number of people could easily be deferred to better infrastructure for pension systems, elderly care, retirement homes, better wages, etc., rather than this simplistic way of looking at it.
Vegard Skirbekk 30:37
That is true. Population stabilization and decline can also give tremendous benefits in terms of opportunities for how to invest, there's more space available, lower housing prices, you can basically do more, you can buy more housing, redevelop, change how we organize societies. Some might argue, for example, that you could benefit from living more closer together, both socially but also in terms of providing social services, and in terms of providing healthcare assistance, and so forth. And that is something that can be also one type of response to the inevitable changes we see.
Nandita Bajaj 31:06
You know, you're one of the few people looking at the ecological benefits of a declining population. And in and of itself, the fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less consumption that follows a declining population are all very good for our planet. Even for people, having greater access to nature, which has a feedback loop of better health, better relationship to the planet, and generally better mental and social health.
Vegard Skirbekk 31:35
Those are important points. And I think you're mainly correct that these are likely developments. That you have these benefits, which are often not discussed. And I think it's often just the concept of aging. I'd like to stress that it is commonly misunderstood. It is driven to a large extent by raises in life expectancy, not low fertility, but it's longer and longer expected years of life that you'll have to look forward to. And this is something that would occur regardless if you have low or high fertility. All populations are aging. Also high fertility countries. And you cannot have above replacement fertility indefinitely. We know that because you will not be able to sustain indefinitely growing population in the very long-term. And basically, we all have to at least adjust to population stabilization. And as it seems, most places we have to adjust to declining populations, and doing so you should look at the positives and see how we can benefit as much as possible from this inevitable change. And I'm much much more worried that most countries will age poorly because they have not fully appreciated that this occurs, that there's no quick change, you cannot introduce some policy that will immediately boost fertility or make your populations young again, this is going to happen in all countries on the planet, eventually, in countries all over the world. And the question is whether we will be able to cope with these changes in as positive as possible manner.
Alan Ware 32:48
Yeah, we fully agree that countries should be embracing this future. And instead, many of them are fighting it with all kinds of pronatalist policies. But based on what you've seen, what has been the track record of success of these pronatalist policies?
Vegard Skirbekk 33:03
I think the fertility policy has had a long history, and traditionally fertility policy was thought of mainly as a way of improving contraceptives, improving autonomy in reproductive choices. And there it has been highly effective. You introduce policies which were able to allow women to have the children they want, to raise information availability and, and contraceptive access, and female autonomy, and male autonomy to choose to have a kind of family size that one can support, and where one can live a basically a good life. Policies implemented to basically allow women to choose the number of children they wanted, typically had fertility preferences in many countries which are far lower than realized fertility were very effective in terms of leading to a decline in fertility. However, in more and more countries, there's a wish to raise fertility again. You mentioned many of the policies that have been implemented, there are many many more which are focused on basically boosting fertility rates. And I think most of them can be justified, but they can be justified for other reasons: they can justified for reasons of economic and social equity and, and the fact that many younger adults are in a very poor economic situation, often worse than what the parents were. And there are many reasons why families should have more economic support and assistance from the government. But the effectiveness of these policy systems of raising fertility have often proven to be highly uncertain. In some countries, you see a short spike in fertility after some policies have been implemented, then the population basically internalizes some that you would expect some benefits, but it doesn't really affect their fertility choices in the long run, it might have affected the timing of fertility for some, and often you don't see long-term effects of these policies. Typically, you don't see a reversal in fertility once it has declined below replacement levels. And this is, to great extent, because it's driven by other reasons than pure economic ones, and many politicians and governments, both the left or right, are focusing too much on the economic relationships to child-bearing decisions, when in fact there are other reasons for women or men to choose to have fewer children than the purely financial incentives to do so.
Alan Ware 35:02
And do you anticipate even though these haven't been very effective, do you think governments will continue with these policies?
Vegard Skirbekk 35:09
I think so. But it's very, very hard as a politician to basically face that your population is declining. It's something that one relates to something negative. Unfortunately, I think the mindset has to change - one should see it as something positive. And we have to do this in the best possible manner. And that is part of the reason why many governments are pushing for these pronatal policies, it's so hard basically, to try to find a way of raising fertility again, and seeing it naively as a way of reducing population aging. And again, this is not possible. It's largely driven by rising life expectancy and not variations in fertility levels. Moreover, the policies tend to be highly ineffective in terms of affecting long-term trends in child bearing patterns.
Nandita Bajaj 35:51
Yeah, it's so interesting that you mentioned, you know, policies that have been designed to lower fertility tend to be more autonomy enhancing, because they're giving more access to contraceptives, providing more support in terms of shifting cultural norms so that people have more choice, more autonomy, whereas a lot of the pronatalist policies, while as you said, some of them can really address social inequities for families that do not have the support to raise children through maybe more progressive taxation policies, so that people who do want to have children aren't penalized through a lack of government support. But at the heart of a lot of the pronatalist policies is the motivation to increase reproduction rather than necessarily increase social equities and equality. In fact, we've actually started to see more troubling trend because of what you notice that a lot of these pronatalist policies are not yielding the results that governments are hoping for, you know, they might see a small spike. But overall, once women achieve their desired fertility rate, what, you know, some researchers have called the latent desire for small families, and engage in other types of life opportunities, including greater self-fulfillment. The troubling trend that we're seeing is the rise in right-wing populism, where there are more coercive policies that are being put into place, ranging from abortion bans, closing of reproductive health care clinics, we're seeing that happening in a lot of countries in Europe, Iran, China, for example, but also subsidized IVF clinics. But again, not to increase equality for people who are infertile, but these are policies that are designed to only help couples who are married in heterosexual relationships to get IVF treatments, so single people may not be able to get them. And you know, we're seeing similar rise, for example, in Hungary, that has a very xenophobic agenda. So there's a closing off borders to immigrants, but rather women who have four or more children, they don't pay tax for life, or what we've seen in Russia with this new Mother Heroine Award, where women who have ten children are then given some kind of a medal, but then also substantial payment. So some of these are happening in concert with coercive policies, like the closing of abortion clinics and vasectomy clinics, and we're nervous that we're going to see governments turning to more coercive tactics in order to grow their policies if they're unable to look at more creative solutions, like the kind you're mentioning to address what we would even call manufactured crises.
Vegard Skirbekk 38:53
First of all, I think you're right, these are very real concerns. But it's also important to note that this is also happening in a context where global fertility is declining and fertility is being postponed and contraceptive use is in many countries increasing sexual reproductive health, education is improving. It's not only negative developments, but of course, the grander scale is one where more and more children are likely to be planned and wanted. But yes, these are challenges. And I think my wish is to engage, and not only with people who might agree with me, I actually much more prefer to discuss with people who disagree with me in terms of these issues and try to figure out what the main concerns are, and to be explicit in terms of how issues can be effectively dealt with. For the first time in history, the world's ten largest economies are all below replacement fertility. Having below two children or less is something that characterizes richer countries all over the world, and not only richer countries, but also countries such as India, where we have a very large economy but also a society where women have often very high fertility, and now this is no longer the case. The same would go for China a few decades ago, how they have high fertility and now, this is no longer the case. So there basically is more and more likely that the world's economy will be dominated by low fertility countries, and having low fertility is related to more positive economic outlooks. But I think we should also be aware that much of the world population is probably much more aware; you have internet, you have better education, you have more insights, you can travel, you can make reproductive choices at a greater extent than what previously has been the case. So it's probably harder to implement policies that constrain reproductive choices now than what used to be the case.
Nandita Bajaj 40:27
How do you respond to the Chinese population decline doomsayers? One of the trends for example, I was just saying that I've noticed is Chinese women are engaging in kind of a birth strike, refusing to engage in China's new propaganda of switching from recently a one-child policy to now a three-child policy, essentially treating women as reproductive vessels for demographic goals. Do you have any thoughts in terms of how you'd respond? You wrote a really wonderful article for Wired recently. Do you want to share a few highlights from that?
Vegard Skirbekk 41:06
First, thanks so much for reading several of my articles. And I think Chinese, of course, is one of the largest populations of the planet - it is a key economy, especially in manufacturing. I think many countries will look to China for how they cope with low fertility. So China has implemented several policies in order to boost fertility, several of which have been, overtime, not effective. And I think the more plausible policies, which we're also seeing, is that they are eventually investing more and more in education, in trying to keep all the workers, stay in the workforce. You have a system with very low retirement age: for women, fifty years. You have systems which are completely unsustainable in terms of feeling in changes in the demographic age structure. And you should look at those systems rather than trying to, often ineffectively, trying to raise fertility levels. And I think also, it's important to know that many Chinese might see less population pressure as something positive, and something that would make it easy for them. Housing prices are very high in urban areas of China, it's difficult for young people to establish themselves, it is very difficult to cope for many, not least younger people, and seeing, for example, a certain plateauing or decline in housing prices might be very positive for them and their ability to establish themselves.
Alan Ware 42:14
Yeah, I've always been very aware, ecologically, what kind of overshoot China is in. And as we heard from the recent Global Footprint Analysis, they're at about four times what their land and waters can renewably produce and absorbing their waste. So they've got massive environmental issues and pollution and a population density that's four times that of the United States, which is quite a bit of population density, leading to things like the housing costs that you're talking about. And it would seem they could welcome lower population for so many reasons.
Vegard Skirbekk 42:49
I think it's important to try to have a global view. China's seen a rapid decline in fertility with the fertility a few decades ago being about twenty million, and now it's below ten million. And you've seen similar decreases in fertility in several parts of the world. And it's important to know that some countries are likely to cope well with this, other countries are likely to cope much worse with this, and we should really try to learn from each other. How can we best deal with the situation? This is not something that's going to go away. It's been going on for quite a few years in many countries, meaning that the number of women and men in key reproductive ages are much lower than it used to be; so even if you increase fertility rates, the number of children born would not increase as much because fewer potential mothers and fathers basically are of reproductive ages. So one has to deal with it; one should stop betraying oneself and suggesting that this is something that can be reversed or can go back to a situation where populations would be young again, it's not going to happen. But what might happen is one could cope effectively successfully in aging, or one might choose not to. And that is where the debate should be.
Alan Ware 42:49
We greatly appreciate that perspective. Yeah, of embracing low fertility. But it seems a lot of demographers and demographic economists, population economists like you are in basic agreement with mainstream economists and social commentators who are very panicked about possible social population decline. Do you have many allies within the broader demographic community about the embracing low fertility?
Vegard Skirbekk 44:16
Yes, I think there are many demographers, for example, who are seeing this development as something that has been going on for a very long time, with the decline in childbearing levels, and something that is related to better living standards, to better social and economic conditions, and certainly much, much better ecological futures. So many would agree. I think much of the greatest criticism unfortunately comes from people who work in slightly different areas. So it is a challenge if fertility drops too fast, too low but it's also a challenge if it's too high. And having fertility which is basically somewhat below replacement level might be optimal for the economy, they can see a gradual decline, we can adjust, we can be able to cope and prepare for the changes that will occur - that is what one should aim for. And basically we have changed these kinds of institutions which have been in place for different reasons, for example, the institutions preventing women to work historically, some have argued that it's been for to support women to avoid physically hazardous work. But this kind of policy might have been introduced in a very different world, in a different setting, where work could have been, to much greater extent, physically of interest, and now quite the contrary, having a longer work life might, according to many studies, be beneficial for one's longevity, for one's health, for one's cognitive functioning, and for one's wellbeing.
Alan Ware 45:28
That sounds encouraging, if more demographers are speaking the truth to different political and economic powers about the reality of what they're facing and the ineffectiveness of many of the pronatalist policies, they're hopefully seeing the evidence of that. Are you seeing more evidence of greater environmental and ecological awareness among demographers? That all of that human population depends on an environment that produces resources and absorbs waste? And, and we have these massive threats that I've heard you talk about, like climate change, that would seem to argue for the reasonableness of population decline?
Vegard Skirbekk 46:03
Yeah, there has been a massive change in attention in recent years, especially with the kind of weather conditions many can observe close to their homes with the natural catastrophes, some very, very high temperatures, and many are, I think, reconsidering how our mode of existence with high consumption levels and traditionally high population growth and population levels are stabilizing is by more and more, I believe, seen as something positive rather than negative.
Alan Ware 46:26
And are any of demographers or population economists questioning the infinite growth paradigm of growth economics? I mean, there's degrowth in Europe, there's Raworth's Doughnut Economics, and the circular economy.
Vegard Skirbekk 46:39
Yeah, they're questioning them, I think they're revising them. Nobody likes to question what they used to believe in themselves, but I think they are updating them. And very importantly, I think it's important to bring the whole political spectrum onboard. Many of these people have seen, for example, population decline as something positive have been perhaps politically marginal groups, often on the left on the political scale. And it's important to be much more cohesive and try to get the whole political spectrum on board, or should listen to different political views and see how can one best cope with this. Perhaps one needs to also look a little bit back in time. Some conservative factors can be important, such as the role of cohesive society so everyone supports one another, and as a less materialistic way of looking at the world, which some religious groups, for example, promote. One can try to include as many as possible, I think that's extremely important. And not only focus on the kind of social movements and groups possibly one belongs to oneself, because one is much less likely to be successful. We should be trying to understand how different groups might benefit from the changes and how they might contribute to coping as best as possible to these ongoing demographic changes. And that is something that requires a broad discussion from across the whole political spectrum.
Alan Ware 47:43
Well, it's great to know that your expertise can help build that bridge, maybe across the political spectrum with data, with evidence, with the fact that we're going to have to embrace this reality of lower fertility and how do we deal with it best in a fair and just way? Thank you.
Nandita Bajaj 47:59
In fact, I would say that we're still far from reaching really the political left in getting this message across because there's a lot of alarmism coming both from the political right and the political left for a lot of reasons. And I feel, you know, just like you said, policymakers and governments need to be aware, but journalists play a huge role in spreading disinformation and raising these alarms. We're seeing some of the top left-leaning publications also engaging in this kind of alarmism. And we really do feel that the failure on the part of journalists and activists to acknowledge these benefits, it's also a missed opportunity to counterbalance the negative influence of pronatalism that undermines reproductive autonomy. The other thing I wanted to ask you is you mentioned that the number of people having no children has increased all over the world, particularly in richer countries. And that's something we've definitely noticed, you know, we are a huge advocate of non-dominant types of families and what are some of the major reasons you found for this kind of increase in people without children?
Vegard Skirbekk 49:13
Well, much of it is accidental, people are not consciously planning not to have children. Typically, one often ends up not having children because one maybe postponed for too long, one naturally is no longer is able to have children, or one ended up making different life choices basically, which proved to be incompatible with childbearing, or very often, one did not find a partner in time to have one that one would like to have kids with, basically. But I think for many, it's also possible when marriage is no longer universal, and marriage is no longer something that one has to do, at least in many parts of the world. It's something one chooses, it's not one's community or one's family that chooses for oneself, it's more one's own choice, and that is a very positive development. It's a key decision one makes in one's life and one should certainly try to make it based on the preferences one has. And this is the key reason why one has seen the rise of childlessness in many countries such as Norway or the US, especially among men, perhaps a quarter or so, and rising, of all men age forty are without children. This is a very new development. It was not like this historically, it has risen in the last few decades, and it has risen much more for men than for women, with some men having multi-partner fertility and other men growing shares not having children at all.
Nandita Bajaj 50:24
Yeah, and you know, also that the proportion of people who disapproved of women remaining childless or a childfree by choice range from 4% in Sweden to 86% in Ukraine with similar ratios for men. What have you found are major factors affecting why your culture views childfree couples negatively or even childlessness?
Vegard Skirbekk 50:49
It is commonly related to traditional gender roles, to religion, or traditional interpretations of religion. And I think it's something that is often changing in many countries. Even if you go further back in time in Sweden, you might find much more conservative views on whether women should be allowed to not marry and not have children. And it might be economically not feasible or socially not possible. But it's something that is, it varies tremendously, as you mentioned, between countries where in some countries, the vast majority approves, other countries, the vast majority disapproves. But it might also change over time, in terms of, for many of these countries, where when one can observe that many women and men are choosing or ending up not having children and still living prosocial, good lives where they support their communities where they are contributing actively in activities of various types, and contributing to society. I think then you might see changes in the type of attitudes that relate to whether one should have children, and how many one should have.
Nandita Bajaj 51:41
Yeah, we completely agree with you. We've noticed that in a recent paper that we published from Population Balance, that a lot of the time people wanting to choose family size was undermined because of cultural norms. People actually didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Even people who could have children, who wanted to have fewer children, and people who wanted to use contraceptives received a lot of opposition, whether it was religious or family norms. But then, in addition, there was also a lot of stigma attached to people who couldn't have children, so childlessness, because of infertility. It would also lead to a lot of awful consequences for people, especially women, they'd get divorced, they'd experience violence from home, economic marginalization, or social stigmatization. And then in some communities, we noticed in our research, that people thought that infertility was a communicable disease, and people needed to stay away from these women. So basically, your research is pointing to something similar that a lot of traditional gender norms that do not give women a lot of opportunity to practice. Autonomy in their reproductive choices is at the heart of a lot of population growth in high fertility countries that may be more conservative and traditional in their views.
Vegard Skirbekk 53:01
And I think many of these awful consequences basically of negative behaviors towards those who are not able to or do not want children, I think that's something one needs to be very much aware of, and support as much as possible, these men and women who ends up not having children. I think it's also important to stress that even if men say that they don't have a social role, they don't have their own families in a way, and there could be economic policies which could come to this, for example, in South Africa, you introduced universal pensions, and that completely change the role of all the people where you traditionally have huge problems with elder abuse in South Africa with the poor treatment of older people. And after they had basically an economic position, even if they stopped working, they still had received the financial support from the government. And that changed the role, that change their status in societies and in families. And perhaps it's important to also view those who are without children in a similar way, that they might need specialist support, particularly because they are vulnerable, they are more likely to experience many of these negative implications of the fact that they don't have children. And an improved economic standard might, in some cases, better their situation.
Nandita Bajaj 54:06
Right.
Alan Ware 54:07
So as you've noted, it's not whether we'll age but how well we will age, and it's up to us to make the best of it. And you and your colleagues have created a body of work that shows it's possible to have population decline and prosperity. Have you had much interest from governments that are looking at this inevitable population decline to the extent they're not denying it, so they might learn from you and your research?
Vegard Skirbekk 54:30
I would say, especially in recent years, much more. I'm quite often invited for policy discussions and debates. And a key topic is precisely how we should cope with aging more and more rather than how one should avoid it. And I see a parallel to the climate change debate where one has changed from trying to mitigate climate change to adapt to it as good as possible. And, and the same goes for demographic change; one should try to adapt as well as possible. Yeah, I think governments are much more receptive to this type of policy advice than they used to just a few years ago. And the reason is that they misunderstood the matter - they thought there was a quick policy fix, and it could be changed aging situation, the low fertility trend. And that has certainly proven not to be the case. And now there is an increase in an understanding of the need to deal with this better. And they should have done this long time ago, but I think better late than never. More and more governments, I feel, yes, are open for discussions on these matters.
Alan Ware 55:21
Yeah, I've been aware of the Wellbeing Alliance countries and how they're questioning growth economics. This will be: Scotland, Iceland, New Zealand, Wales, and Finland. Have you had much interest from these Wellbeing Alliance countries?
Vegard Skirbekk 55:36
Well, independently, some of them yes, but not as an alliance.
Alan Ware 55:39
Well, that's good to hear. It's great that they're questioning growth economics, but I'm hoping that they're looking at population too. So that's good to hear.
Vegard Skirbekk 55:47
But also, if I may, I think it's important to change the constant growth, basically, from material to more immaterial growth, and try to focus on how one can build better social relations and better lives for people which is not compatible with too high population growth in the long term. And that is something that should be emphasized, this is a huge change, which is occurring all over the world. And we can learn from countries and regions and communities, which have coped well, and also learn from mistakes from the many countries where one has not coped so well, but it and that is probably the best way forward in my view. This is maybe for the future, but it will be of interest to discuss teenage fertility, which is still an issue in many countries, but is actually mainly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is a very new development. It reached a peak quite a few years ago, and then declined for most countries in the world, including Asia, South America, but not that much in Sub-Saharan Africa. And now, the majority of the thirteen million teenage births per year are occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's been seen as an issue of the past in the West, which to some extent is true. It has been a success to decrease and postpone teenage fertility - that has not occurred to the same extent in Sub-Saharan Africa. And it's a huge issue. And it's possibly a growing issue, because of the fact that there's more teenagers and fertility levels remain higher at younger ages. That is one issue I'll focus more on in the future, and I think it receives very little attention. It's still a huge issue, and somehow it's not on the political radar.
Nandita Bajaj 57:05
Yeah, we appreciate you bringing that one up because of its multipronged negative impacts, both on the teenager who is still a child who's being forced to have a child, and all of the burdens placed on that teenager to give up education, give up future possibilities of engaging in any kind of life pursuits that may bring fulfillment, to then also the consequences for the child who is born into a situation that doesn't offer the economic and material and emotional resources that they need to grow up in a healthy manner. It's certainly a concern that, you're absolutely right, doesn't get brought up enough. And also, a lot of people actually misunderstand that by not talking about population growth, which is actually happening on the backs of these really young teenagers who don't have access to education, or reproductive autonomy, a lot of cultural pressures - how that limits their opportunities in life.
Vegard Skirbekk 57:06
But it's also important to note that this is something that is positive for men, that many men who have children at younger ages, they're also challenged by economic burdens by having large families and often unplanned. If you have teenage marriages, for example, you often have men coming later into puberty, you might have socially and cognitively less mature husband compared to the wife, and avoiding that - allowing people to wait - is especially important for the men and has also improved the situation of men in many countries around the world. And that is also an important aspect to to account for. And also the preference towards not having children is actually higher among men, often, than among women. So that's also an important dimension, too.
Nandita Bajaj 58:45
Thank you for mentioning that. We definitely believe in elevating the role of both men and women in both autonomy and responsibility. And it's really important for an egalitarian society to ensure that men are included in these conversations and don't feel sidelined. But yeah, thank you so much for such a thorough examination of the fertility decline issue.
Vegard Skirbekk 59:09
Well, thank you, you're extremely well prepared. I must say, I've been interviewed many times, and I think you are the best prepared I've had so far. So thank you.
Alan Ware 59:16
Thank you.
Nandita Bajaj 59:16
Oh, that's a really kind compliment. Thank you. We've been looking for a book like this for a very long time to counteract a lot of the negative narratives out there. And you've done such a fantastic and thorough research to highlight all of the reasons we should be celebrating and embracing a fertility decline, what it means for the elevation of human rights and ecological rights.
Vegard Skirbekk 59:41
Thank you. Fantastic interview. I'm very honored to be part of it.
Alan Ware 59:44
Well, that's it for this edition of the overpopulation podcast visit population balance.org. To learn more to share feedback or guests recommendations, write to us using the contact form on our site or by emailing us at podcast at population Bell. lights.org And if you feel inspired by our work, please consider supporting us using the donate button also to help expand our listenership, please consider rating us on whichever podcast platform you use.
Nandita Bajaj 1:00:12
Until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj dodge, thanking you for your interest in our work and for all your efforts and helping us all shrink toward abundance.
