I’ve never understood why a declining population is in itself a bad thing (for individuals).
Everywhere there seems to be labor shortages it’s almost always the low-end jobs that can’t fill vacancies (that’s a good thing for living standards). Plus benefits like less inheritance splitting, greater capital per person (roads, houses, etc.). And at the far extreme, developing countries often have high growth rates and widespread poverty as a result. On the flip side, if I’m an only child and inherit my parent’s house, that is a huge increase to my living standards to never have to carry a mortgage.
The argument usually seems to be that old people consume resources without working, but isn’t that true of both children and the elderly? The elderly need a lot of hospitals, doctors, nurses, etc., but kids need teachers, doctors, school bus drivers, universities, daycares, etc. Both groups might pull family members out of the workforce for years to care for them. But the elderly often have their own assets to draw from to pay for some/all of this, whereas kids come into the world with nothing.
What am I missing?
In: Economics
low end jobs tend be the ones building and maintaining the infrastructure and taking care of people, a lack of them is terrible for living standards.
If there’s a labour shortage for sure you can still fill high paying roles and it’s things like carers and cleaners that get squeezed and either go short staffed or have to employ less able candidates but a bad nurse or no nurse is almost always a far more serious problem than, say, a bad tax accountant or no tax accountant.
Greater capital can just mean more stuff that needs maintained with less people willing to do it: your million pound facility is worse than worthless if you can’t staff it. The declining birth rate does mean you need less schools and daycare centres; teachers and midwives; but you’ve already built and trained them so now you need to mothball, demolish or repurpose the hardware and retrain the staff, more expense.
The assets of the elderly in currency and property are worth less if there’s no labour. worker hours is the true gold standard for any economy apart from maybe a few of the oil states.
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