Why is population collapse such a threat when we have 7 billion people?
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The issue is that age groups aren’t collapsing equally – the <65 age bracket is rapidly shrinking while the >65 age bracket is dramatically growing and that’s the real problem.
The stuff that you use every day – things like food, electricity, websites on the internet – don’t just magic themselves into existence. What causes those things to come into existence is people. People go to work every day to produce the things that you consume. If no one goes to work, then there is nothing for you to consume.
The people working are predominantly in the <65 age bracket, while people in the >65 age bracket tend to be retired. IE, young people produce more than they consume, while old people *only* consume.
As the population ages, the ratio of people who produce to people who consume gets skewed in favor of people who consume. That means you have less stuff being made and more people who want to consume it. Less stuff available + more people = everyone has substantially less than they used to. Another way to phrase that is that as the population ages, everyone gets poorer.
How much poorer they get depends on just how much the <65 age bracket shrinks, but its not outside of the realm of possibility for the answer to be “a lot poorer.”
In the past, increased productivity through increased mechanization/computerization has offset the increase in the relative percentage of retirees from people living longer, but we’re getting to the point where people are retiring at a rate that’s faster than can be offset through productivity increases – especially in areas like agricultural production, where production is plateauing or decreasing in many countries.
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