It will not continue seeing such rapid growth for another few hundred years, world population will plateau by mid century and even the big cities will at some point stop growing.
But the "suburbs" (some of them would not be considered suburbs but simply outer parts of the city in a lot of other places in the world) are immensely more populous than 100 years ago.
birth rates in pretty much every developed nation are below replacement level. Some countries are using migration as a sort of band-aid fixed but the worst fears are starting to come true recently.
Previously some people had thought or hoped that falling birthrates was/is a natural concequence of becoming rich enough, that as countries develop kids are seen as less of a necessity.
But iirc newer data shows falling birthrates even in poorer nations that are stagnant/not developing. They are still well above replacement rate for now but its not a good trend.
As for reasons why: nobody has one single cause, but a major one is that current economies mean children are more of a cost than a benefit, and even the most ambitious incentive programs dont make up for the toll of both working a job and taking care of a helpless human.
As for why this is a bad thing: There are a lot of inbuilt assumptions to the way society is structured that will begin to break down. Things like: there are more workers than retirees. There are more students than teachers. There are more juior employees than managers. When these kinds of things start to change, we will have to adapt society or things will just fall apart.
You're already starting to see previews of this sort of crisis in sectors where few young people join, like becoming merchant ship captains. People having to be called back from retirement, buisnesses failing not from lack of buisness but from lack of employees
The human population cannot grow indefinitely without moving to other planets, which is very much infeasible now and probably infeasible into the foreseeable future. Society just has to adapt. The problem I see is our current leaders are only interested in pushing the problem down the road. Declining population (which won't actually decline till 2080-ish IIRC) is not in itself a problem.
I agree. This is a transitory state, where a lot of assumption built into the social contract will break down. If we can fix them (and presumably we will... eventually), there is nothing inherently bad about a declining population.
Better medical technology means people die older. Older people already own most of the capital, having them live longer isn’t going to get us to a healthier society that’s not as biased towards existing capital versus innovation and income.
And older people passing their wealth to a newer generation isn't going to fix things either. All that changes is who will be ossifying society. At least, with medical technologies, people can't run away from the problem by dying of old age.
That's a separate problem to the population crisis. People thinks population's going to decline. I am not so sure. Things can change a lot in a few decade.
All we can say that at this current time, the trend is toward population decline.
it is extrodinarily unlikely anyone will do such as thing.
As I noted earlier. the birth rate is below replacement rate in almost all developed countries. If not for immigrants population would be shrinking. If anything they would demand more children...
The probability of death is correlated to your chronological age. The older you are, the more likely you are to die.
Eliminating or reducing the probability of death correlated to chronological age means our average lifespan is likely to be thousand of years, but not unlimited since we will die to other causes, likely involving accidents and natural disaster.
In my opinion it could be solved by simply making it more attractive to have children, but it would require more equality and redistribution of wealth to cover the costs. There would still be billionaires, but the number of ultra-rich may be reduced.
Women wants careers and equal opportunities. That means they wait longer and longer before they get children because they want to make sure they have a career to go back to. That is the single most important problem that we need to solve.
1. Provide a decent parental leave (1 year minimum) with full pay.
2. Women often end up as the primary care giver who has to take care of the child when it is sick or attend parental meetings. This often hurts their career. We should incentivise men to take an equal part in raising a child, so that this is more accepted in work situations.
3. Provide free child care and health care. Many simply can't afford the additional financial burden of a child.
4. Provide free education including University. (see point 3)
5. Reduce the financial risk by creating a good safety net. If one or both of the parents are not able to cover their part, the government needs to provide enough support.
Simply put, the choice of having a child should not hurt families financially, or hurt their careers. Humans are "programmed" to want to reproduce, so if we remove the financial barriers
Yes, this will be expensive but it will be less expensive than a future without enough young people to take care of the old.
You are free to ask "Why should my money go to others", but then you don't get to complain when you are 90 years old and only get to shower once a month because they don't have enough people to help you.
Norway is close to providing all of what you describe and still seeing well below replacement fertility rates. It maybe be a start, and it produces a far more pleasant society, but it's not enough.
There are other concerns as well related to cost of living.
Even though we would like people to live outside the cities, cities attract a lot of potential parents. They end up in a situation where they have a long education and start their careers late and don't have the financial capability to get a decent family friendly apartment in the city. Many wait until it's almost too late, and having more than 1 or 2 is definitely not something most wants
The average age of first-time mothers is over 30 years old. A single child may be something the family can handle, but more than 1 or 2 forces the families to move outside the cities to be able to afford a house in addition to hurting the mother's career.
Tldr:
- Cost of living in the cities are too high
- If a second (or third) child forces them to move out of the city, many increasingly choose the cities
- Having more than one child after 30 will have a negative impact on the career as they simply can't work as many hours and has to spend long periods away from work
I think you can simplify that: Standards rise as living standards rise. People want more both for themselves and their children when they see that as realistic, and opting for fewer children is a way to make that happen.
Yes, I think that covers everything in a concise way.
If we want to go back to a sustainable birth rate, we need a wide range of actions. Some may require to reduce the financial risks, while others require encouraging cultural changes.
Because birth rates are going down worldwide and at some point the people who wanted to move away from the countryside/poor countries to the big global cities would have already moved (those left behind are older than the ones leaving, so such places will have even lower birth rates).
The major global cities will still grow in the next 200 years compared to now, just not as much as they have the previous 200 years.
