Germany joins EU’s ‘ultra-low’ fertility club ( www.ft.com )

LostXOR , 4 months ago

Love the terms and conditions that forbid copying articles, followed immediately by a copy of the article. And wow, 1.4 children per woman is far below the 2 required to maintain a steady population. Hopefully the trend continues elsewhere, as overpopulation is rapidly becoming a big problem.

nickhammes , 4 months ago

1.4 is a pretty sharp decline, and afaik we're not really seeing any serious overpopulation issues. We have enough food and houses for everyone, but can't distribute them efficiently enough.

But flattening out more would be good, rather than growing 1% a year. Let's get time to figure out better resource allocation, and get rid of fossil fuels before we have 10 billion people.

gandalf_der_12te , 4 months ago

I think the issue is more that World War 2 was partially also caused by lots of young men having no jobs and being frustrated because of that.

Well-paying jobs are already on a decline in the US today, as can be felt by many people who need a second or third jobs to make ends meet.

If the problem intensifies in the future, we will run into the same situation as 1930 where we have huge lack of jobs, and we can counter-act that problem by reducing baby count.

Zacryon , 4 months ago

Overpopulation is a myth.
I point you towards another comment in another thread under this post, where someone already put it nicely:
ShareMySims : Because while low birth rates are a real thing that is... answered But why *would* we revert falling birth rates? We're still... by 30p87 in Europe

gandalf_der_12te , 4 months ago

Yeah "overpopulation" is a myth because it sounds like "there are too many people". That is not the case.

What is the case, however, that we would do everyone and ourselves a favor by producing fewer children.