[ExI] Birthrate falling worldwide - not just in the developed nations

[Adrian Tymes]

Is it perhaps the case that exploited laborers, seeing their kids no more
able to provide than they are (and thus not seeing that kids are the
traditional retirement plan any more) and/or being squeezed for short term
(usually less than 5 years') gains, are less willing to take the
traditional burden of raising children?

If so, will the future belong to those nations that deploy in mass scale,
pro-natalist policies and technologies, essentially treating child raising
as one of those community expenses like firefighting and road maintenance?

If so, would any large nation over the next 20 years see the development of
human cloning and/or nannybot & teacherbot AIs - to help nudge to a future
where the majority of children are primarily raised by (and in particular,
at the expense of) the state rather than any one or two individuals - as a
vital national interest?

Is this a future that the reactionaries who presently dominate the US
Republican party dread, knowing that however much they try to corrupt state
sponsored education, the inevitable efficiencies will propel most students
to see through their lies and refuse to go along with an unchanging
reactionary (and possibly theocratic) government?

On Fri, Oct 25, 2024, 7:41 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Fewer babies are being born around the world, and not only in the
> places you’d expect
> John Ibbitson        Published October 17, 2024
>
> <
> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opinion/article-fertility-rates-developing-countries-globally/
> >
> Quotes:
> There has been a great deal of commentary on falling fertility rates
> in developed countries – including Canada, which has seen its birth
> rate drop from 1.6 children per woman to 1.26 in less than a decade.
>
> But not enough attention is being paid to an even more dramatic
> phenomenon: the collapse, in just the past few years, of fertility
> rates in developing countries.
>
> Even those of us who have been predicting, in defiance of United
> Nations estimates, that the global population will peak mid-century
> and then begin to decline didn’t expect to see the numbers plunging
> like this. The accelerating collapse of birth rates in the developing
> world is nothing less than astonishing.
> ----------
> We can debate the environmental benefits, economic costs and
> geopolitical implications of global population decline. But one thing
> is beyond debate: It’s coming at us faster than anybody thought.
> --------------------------------
>
> Hmmm.  Soon there will not be enough workers to tax to pay pensions.
> Those robots better get working soon!
>
> BillK
>
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