Navigating a Shrinking World: The Implications of Population Decline with Darrell Bricker

In this episode,, we have a special guest, Darrell  Bricker, who is here to discuss his book "Empty Planet." Together, we challenge the prevailing narrative of overpopulation and explore the evidence pointing towards a decline in the global population.

Diving into the topic, we examine the various societal shifts and factors that indicate this decline, such as declining birth rates and shifting demographics. We reflect on the implications of these trends on economies, societies, and the environment, questioning the commonly held assumptions about the future.

Throughout our conversation, we delve into the reasons behind declining fertility rates, discussing how the prioritization of careers and financial stability over starting families has contributed to this phenomenon. We also explore the impact of the declining population on economic growth, consumption patterns, and the distribution of wealth.

Recognizing the rise of artificial intelligence, we discuss the potential challenges and opportunities it presents to innovation and productivity in the context of a shrinking population. We challenge the traditional narrative of economic prosperity and explore different perspectives on how to address these complex issues.

Additionally, we touch upon the role of immigration and its impact on population trends and societal tensions, examining its potential to both alleviate and exacerbate the effects of population decline.

Shifting our focus towards the aging population, we discuss the need for strategies to address wealth distribution and meet the increasing demands of the elderly population as consumers.

Throughout our conversation, we emphasize the urgency of recognizing and addressing the implications of population decline. We encourage our listeners to be aware of these changes and to think creatively about potential future solutions.

Join us in this thought-provoking conversation as we challenge the commonly held beliefs about overpopulation and explore the consequences and possibilities of a declining global population.

Darrell Bricker's Contact Info
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrell-bricker-41645911/
Web:  https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk
Book:  Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

Tags

Darrell Bricker, Empty Planet, overpopulation, decline in population, fertility rates, global population, implications, economies, societies, environment, creative solutions, future

Transcript

Transcript

[0:00] Music. 

Introducing "It's an Inside Job" podcast with Jason Liem

[0:09] Back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Liem.
Now, this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionallyresilient so you can be better at bouncing back from life's inevitable setbacks.
Now, on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience into practical advice, skills, and strategies thatyou can use to impact your life and those around you.
Now, with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:37] Music. 

Introducing Daryl Bricker: Challenging the Overpopulation Narrative

[0:45] Well, welcome back to It's an Inside Job. I'm your host, Jason Lim.
In this week's episode, I am thrilled to have a distinguished guest with us.
He is an expert whose insights challenge conventional wisdom.
Joining us today is Daryl Bricker. He's the co-author of the groundbreaking book, Empty Planet, The Shock of GlobalPopulation Decline.
Daryl's work challenges the prevailing narrative of a world hurtling towards overpopulation, presenting a compellingargument that the reality might be quite the opposite.
In our conversation, we will delve deep into the contrarian perspective that global population growth is not the impendingcrisis we have been led to believe.
Instead, we will explore the compelling evidence and the societal shifts that suggest the world's population is on adownward trajectory. directory.
We will unpack the implications of declining birth rates, shifting demographics, and the potential ramifications foreconomies, societies, and global affairs.
What does it mean for our labor force, our economies, and our social structure if our population is not burgeoning, butdeclining?
Moreover, we will discuss the profound impact this could have on environmental sustainability, resource allocation, andthe very fabric of our societies.
I mean, are we prepared prepared for a world where fewer people drive profound societal and economic changes?
So join me now in this fascinating conversation as we challenge assumptions and explore the implications of an emptyplanet.
So now let's slip into the stream with the insightful.

[2:14] Music. 

Introduction and Background of Daryl Bricker

[2:26] I was wondering, maybe for our audience, maybe you could introduce who you are and what you do currently.
My name is Daryl Bricker. My daytime job is I'm the global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, which is the largest publicopinion, public research company in the world.
We're based in Paris, but I happen to live in Toronto, and I'm Canadian.
And my side hustle is I write books on topics that I'm interested in.
And so I've written seven books, many of them of I doubt your audience has necessarily read them that if unless they'reCanadian, but I have written one book called Empty Planet that is about global population change and focuses on thequestion of fertility and the collapse of global fertility.
And it's probably the topic I speak more about to international audiences these days than just about anything else.
You know, as we said, just before we start recording this, I think it's such a relevant topic.
I know the book was written in 2019, but I think the premise and what it's about still affects today.
I mean, there might be slight changes perhaps, but well, that's what I'd like to explore with you in the coming hour.
I was wondering, perhaps just to bring our listeners up to speed, I was wondering if you could summarize the centralargument around your book, Empty Planet, and how it differs from the prevailing view of global population trends.

[3:51] So, John Ibbotson, who is the writer-at-large of the Globe and Mail, which is the largest newspaper here in Canada,and I wrote the book together.
And really, the reason that we wrote the book was to make one simple argument.
And that's that everything that people know about the future of the human population, particularly as communicated bydemographers at that time when we were doing work on the book, was incorrect.

[4:13] Particularly, what the UN was saying about where the global population was going to get to by the end of thecentury was definitely incorrect.
And what we wanted to do was talk about why the modeling was not accurate and to suggest maybe what a differentfuture was going to look like based on one simple point.
And that was that estimates about global fertility were way off.
That in fact global fertility was that that was going to have the single biggest effect on the size of the global populationover the space of the next century and that you know the projections at the time that said we were going to be allowed youknow 11.2 people 11.2 billion people by the year 2100 were wildly inaccurate and so what we did was we made theargument in the book by traveling around the world and taking a look at what was happening in people's daily lives andhow they regarded the question of having children and forming families just just to make that point So it's not a bookthat's full of all sorts of charts and graphs and data.
It's basically a long story about what's happening in the world and what's happening in various countries.
To add up to our conclusion, which was that if you think that the global population is going to be 11.2 billion people bythe end of the century, think again.
And that the primary reason that we were never going to reach that number or get even close to it was because we'vestopped having kids.

[5:37] Yeah, it's definitely a contrarian view.
And I guess it was definitely a contrarian view back in 2019.
But I guess more this data is open to the world, more people are cognizant of it.
I just find it surprising that there hasn't been that much in-depth look.
And I think having a contrarian point of view really educates us to understand how that works. And so what do you thinkare some of the key reasons why you believe global population will decline?
I understand it's fertility rates, but I was wondering maybe if you could expand on that picture to the extent you wish.
Yeah, it really is. It really is the changing number of children that we're having in our lifetimes.
And basically what all of this is a result of is cultural change around the world, which is becoming a consistent globalchange.
And that is as the world's population increasingly urbanizes, it changes the lives of women.
And when women move into urban centers, they have different lives than their mothers and their grandmothers had, andthey're exposed to different role models and different possibilities for their lives.
So one of the things that they do is they probably try to extend their education.

[6:49] And then the second thing that they try to do after that is to participate in generating their own income by beingemployed for pay in a job outside of the home.
And when you make those kinds of decisions, what it does is it pushes back all the other decisions, particularly aboutfamily formation.

Cultural Changes and Declining Fertility Rates

[7:06] Information so it pushes back if you're going to be in a partnership the year at which you become permanentlypartnered and after that it pushes back the um uh the time at which you decide to start your family so canada is a greatexample of this i mean uh the average canadian woman back in 1960 got married around the age of 21 or 22 had her firstkid when she was in her early 20s and probably had four in her lifetime that was the average today the average canadianwoman gets married around the age of 30 if she gets married at all has her first kid shortly after and probably only has oneor at the outside two and as a result fertility has declined from four people four kids on average per canadian womandown to 1.3 today which is the lowest in canadian history yeah and i i guess i've been reading some articles you know asas part of the to to a little more in-depth conversation with you i also understand that you know it's just the cost of livingyou know like i I was looking at China and Taiwan.

[8:02] A lot of young professional women there because of the cost of just having kids or sending them to daycare or, youknow, floating a mortgage or all of these variables, I guess, add to this equation that leads to the fertility window.
And I guess that shrinks, right, because there is only a viable time to have, I guess, a healthy offspring at some point.
Or have I kind of missed the target a little?

[8:28] No, you're right about pushing every decision back. But, you know, when your parents had you, they didn't have allof those things in place either.
In previous generations, we didn't have all of those things in place.
And yes, housing was cheaper.
You didn't need as much education to succeed in the economy.
All those things are true.
But if you actually go out and you ask people why they don't have kids, the two prevailing reasons are, number one, I justdon't want them.

[8:53] I just don't want them. Number two is I can't have them.
And then you start getting into the financial conditions. So the issue is really from a cultural perspective, the idea that oneof the things that you want to achieve in life is to be a parent is less appealing than it's been at any time in human history.
And to the degree that people want to be parents, they want to be parents in a limited way.
And the reason is because you're not having kids to satisfy the patriarchy.
You're You're not having kids to satisfy your religion or satisfy the state.
You're having them for the purposes of living a full-life experience.
And most people are telling us that they've lived a pretty full experience with one or two. And the population only growsif you want to have three.
Because if you just have two, it's replacing yourself and your partner.

Reasons for Limited Desire to Have Children

[9:41] And in many of Western countries these days, the prevailing number, the modal number, the most common numberof kids that a family has is just one.
So this is this is what's happening now that's not particularly surprising i mean sometimes it's a little difficult to breakpeople out of the statistical arguments and then break it out into reality which is you don't have to listen to me go take alook at your own family.

[10:08] Take a look at your grandparents, take a look at your parents, take a look at your number of siblings you have, andtake a look at the number of kids that you have in your family.
Now, there will be some exceptions, but overall, what you'll find, mostly the trend is, it's like a funnel that gets wide at thetop.
When you get to your grandparents, it gets smaller and smaller as you get to the bottom in terms of family size.
And so the surprising part of that is it's not only happening in developed countries, it's also happening in developingcountries.
China being a good example, where their fertility rate has dropped from somewhere around four to now, some peopleargue, just over one or just under one.
And the result of that is that the Chinese population is going to decline by half or more over the course of this century.
And that's even, by the way, using the UN's estimates, which are wildly exaggerated in terms of what the actualpopulation is going to be, the population trajectories are going to be through the course of the century.

[11:06] So, I mean, how will this declining population, how will it impact different regions of the world?
You know, what are some of the specific implications, I guess, for developed and developing countries?
It's already happening. So there's over 30 countries now that actually have declining populations.
Japan loses about 800,000 people, 800,000 people from its population every year. year.
Greece, there's more people who die two to one over births every year.

Population Decline in Europe and China

[11:39] In Italy, they're losing over 50,000 people. In Spain, they're losing over 50,000 people. So it's already happening in30 plus countries.
All through Europe. I mean, the European Union is supposed to start declining in the mid 2020s. It's probably very closeto already tipping over right now.
The Chinese population last year actually tipped into decline.

[12:03] First time in Chinese history. Well, there have been periods, I should correct that, in which the Chinese population,if they were measuring it accurately during the Cultural Revolution and other times when they probably wereexperiencing some absolute decline.
But this is the first time outside of a major event like that in which the population has started to decline.
And even countries like India, over the last couple of years, started recording below replacement rate fertility.

[12:29] And so when you start thinking about that, it's like, okay, well, 36% of the global population is just two countries,and that's China and India, and both of them have below replacement rate populations.
How does that add up to 11.2 billion? By the way, the UN has adjusted its estimate over the space of the last three or fouryears from 11.2 billion to 10.4 billion.
So they've taken 800 million people out of their estimates in the space of just four or five years.
So you're just going to see this happen every couple of years as they change their projections.
And when John and I were writing this back in 2019, to say what I'm saying right now would be seen as kind ofoutrageously controversial.
It's now, for people who follow this issue a little more closely, I would say more of the conventional wisdom.
It's more of the conventional wisdom. But, I mean, understanding that, you know, the people at the UN are putting thesestats together.
I would assume that they're highly intelligent people, knowledgeable, and they can draw from the same science, the samestats that you guys have done in 2019.

[13:36] But what is the reason, do you think, they still are estimating 10 plus billion people?
Well, I mean, there are people who get into political motivations, but I'm not going to do that because I have no evidenceof that.
And that's for others to discuss. I think, as a statistician, I think it's just a really conservative approach to how you estimatepopulation.
So their model is really simple. It's take a look at fertility, take a look at deaths, and take a look at social people movingbetween and among countries.
And you can get a pretty good estimate of what's happening in terms of population growth.
The problem is it's all retrospective. It's based on how populations behaved in the past, mostly, in terms of how thepatterns will evolve in the future.
And the problem is the population is not behaving as it behaved in the past.
Assumptions you can make about, for example, and I hear this all the time, you know, popularly called populationmomentum.
You know, a lot of young people coming into the population, and that's automatically going to lead to, you know, boostsin population in certain countries.
And the answer is, yeah, except if they don't behave like previous generations behave. And why are you making thoseassumptions about their levels of fertility?
Because everything that we're seeing is that they're not behaving like previous generations.

[14:49] So it's not, I wouldn't say, like I said, there are people who apply political motivations to this.
I would say, just from a statistical point of view, the model is not up to the task.
They need to correct it or they'll just keep doing what they do.
And it's kind of a safe place to be because they adjust their estimates every two years.
So by, you know, 2000, you know, and 98, you know, they'll probably be close to what it's going to be in 2100.
But but looking at it from where it is today, there's just there's just it's very, very difficult to see.
Unless we start producing children in a way that doesn't involve the biological processes that we normally producechildren with, or actually almost uniquely produce children with, if they've come up with some other way of doing that,it's very unlikely that we're going to see anything close to what the UN is estimating.
And by the way, Jason, most of the global population growth that's taking place these days is not because children arecoming into the world.
It's because people aren't dying as fast as they used to.
So the biggest chunk of population growth is not tracking new people coming into the population.
It's being produced and actually tracking the number of people whose lives are actually longer.
So in Canada back in the 1920s, the average Canadian lived to 57.
That number is now up to 82 or 83.

[16:17] So that's why the population is growing. It's not because there's tons and tons and tons of kids coming into thepopulation. People are hanging on.
Yeah. And when John and I said this back in 2019, it was like, you don't know what you're talking about.

Faster Trends Confirmed, but with Unexpected Speed

[16:31] But the data just keeps rolling in, basically confirming the direction and trends that we talked about.
In fact, the only thing that's happened is it's happened faster than we said.
One of the things John's likes to say, John Edmondson likes to say about the book is we were wrong.
And the reason that we were wrong is not because we didn't get the trends right.
We just didn't get the trends fast enough.
It's actually accelerating, particularly as a result of COVID, faster than we predicted. I mean, China was supposed to betipping into decline sometime in the 2030s.
I just told you that in 2022, 2023, the Chinese government admitted that China's population has tipped into decline.
So it's happened a decade or a bit faster than was initially being predicted.

[17:15] It's a profound way of how we need to shift our thinking because what obviously in declining populations,populations obviously this is going to have economic implications at least that's the red thread i pull out of this so how doyou foresee these declining populations impacting global economies and sort of i i guess it's not just the negative but imean obviously there are potential challenges and opportunities with a declining population i was wondering if you couldelaborate on that yeah so uh since the industrial revolution um global economies have have been driven by a combinationof consumption and trade.
That's where economic growth comes from. So if you increase the number of people on the face of the earth, youautomatically increase the amount of demand for the goods and services that the economy produces. That's howcapitalism works.
But not just capitalism, any economic system works.

[18:12] When you produce a population that, first of all, is not in the consumptive phase, or the weight of the population isnot in the consumptive phase of life, which is the younger phase of life, the younger generations, when those start todecline and the larger part of the population becomes the older, less consumptive part, particularly one that's sitting on allthe wealth because young people don't have it.
And one of the things you pointed to is mortgages and houses and rents.
And one of the reasons is because all the wealth sits with the older generations.
All of a sudden, you've got a big problem in terms of consumption.

[18:48] Which is that unless we can turn older people back into consumers, economic growth going forward is going to bereally threatened.
The other thing that happens is that innovation, which tends to be a younger person's game, gets reduced.

Aging Population and Impact on Innovation

[19:02] So some of the issues that we might be able to resolve as a result of innovating won't be solved possibly as quicklyor as, I would say, as cleverly as they would if we had more younger people who are part of the innovation process.
And, you know, these ideas aren't uniquely mine.
There was an economist named Charles Jones at Stanford University who read Empty Planet and came up with somethinghe called the Empty Planet Result, in which he did basically all the mathematics around the question of what happens tothe global economy going forward.
And his two big points were fewer people, older people, less economic growth. That's the problem.
And then secondly, what it does is it reduces the population that would be focused on innovation.

[19:51] So, yeah, I think that's what we're going to what we're going to be confronting.
So, as you said, traditionally, it's been young people coming up through the game. They have the innovative minds. Theyare seeing new things.
So that would beg the question with AI and the rise of artificial intelligence and how far is that?
I mean, could, again, I know we have to speculate here, but do you see AI helping to contribute to this sort of innovativeprocess, finding new ways of doing things, novel ways of doing things?
Every time I hear about AI, and by the way, I'm really fascinated by it and a big user of generative AI.

[20:29] We're only scraping the surface of what it can do to transform things.
But every time I hear about what it's going to do for the future, all I can think about is jet cars or what people – when theinternet first came up, which was – it was originally developed by academic researchers and people in the defenseindustry to be able to communicate in a secure way. Nobody saw Netflix.
Nobody saw that the explosion of usage would be for things like porn.
I mean, it never – these innovations never find their way into the population the way that people are anticipating.
So I tend to think a little bit of jet cars and what has happened with the Internet when I think about AI in our future.
So we'll see, but probably not in the way that the well-motivated people are intending it will be the way that it's adoptedand what its effect will be.
But the second thing is that AI doesn't consume anything.

[21:25] The problem that we have, I mean, where everybody automatically goes into this conversation, and I didn't go thereon purpose, was in the area of production.
Production of all the problems that we have to face due to a shrinking and aging population is probably the one that we'remost engaged with and have the most sense of how to confront it.
And the reason for that is there are countries that are already dealing with it.
So, for example, like Japan and its robotization and everything from how it manufactures things through to evenproviding service robots to work in seniors' facilities and that kind of thing.
So, production, I think that that's the easier problem to deal with.
The really big problem for the future of our economy to deal with is consumption.
And that's because robots don't buy anything. AI doesn't buy anything. thing.
The people who are going to be the largest segment of our population, they don't tend to participate in the economy.
Nobody makes anything for them. I mean, people who produce consumer goods basically have a complete blind spotwhen it comes to older people.
They still think that they're catering to the post-Second World War baby boom in its infancy.

[22:37] But that consumption part of what's going to happen in the global economy is the part that I think is going to be themost vexing that we're going to have to deal with.
Because if there's no consumption, consumption then the idea that we're going to have stagnant growth going forward hasto become part of the part of how we prepare it has to it has to become the assumption of what the future is going to looklike because i there's no obvious way that consumption goes up given those demographics.

[23:01] Yeah, production, consumption. So do you think at a fundamental level, we have to rewrite the narrative of whateconomic prosperity is?
And I know that is not a simple thing to do. I mean, do we need to redefine how we see progress, how we see growth, howwe see economic flowering?
Well there's some people trying to do that you know the degrowth movement is out there and uh but you know honestlythat's kind of uh marxists living their best life again right yeah yeah it's it's just it's not really it's not really realistic but ithink that what's going to happen is is the facts are going to start producing more of a conversation about these things youknow.

[23:44] Auguste comp a french enlightenment thinker came up with the term demography is destiny and And people havecriticized him every moment since, but I think he was a lot more accurate than what we think.
I think our future is really going to be defined by what happens to the human species.
And I have to keep coming back to that term human species because we tend to think that we're not, you know, but weare.
We're a biological species with a lifespan of about 100 years.
And if this generation doesn't produce the next generation, who will?
Well right and if everybody decides to stop having kids and by the way every time i get up and give these a presentationon empty planet in a public audience oh somebody always stands up and says i'm not going to have kids because i'mworried about the climate i'm worried about this right those interest groups out there saying including the un saying youknow smaller families is what we need and all the rest of it it's like yeah yeah but you know if everybody decides to makethe virtuous decision we don't exist in you know just over 100 years by the time you know we're 50 years in the the future,we've lost so much reproductive capacity that we probably are, we're doomed at that point.
So, um, and I don't mean to be a, you know, a millenarian about this.
I'm not a, I'm not a doomsayer, uh, but you know, the math here is brutal.
And by the way, it's not even.

[25:00] Music. 

The Impact of Urbanization on Women's Lives

[25:11] In part one of my conversation with Daryl Bricker, we delved into the compelling factors contributing to the globaldecline in population.
One significant driver identified was the monumental shift towards urbanization and the consequent culturaltransformations reverberating across societies worldwide.
As populations urbanize, the lives of women undergo a profound change.
The transition into urban centers exposes women to diverse role models and opens up previously unmanagedopportunities.
Embracing careers and generating income outside traditional home roles delays major life milestones including familyformation and having children.
It's an evolution that alters the trajectory of motherhood leading to a marked delay in marriage with the average Canadianwomen marrying around the age of 30 and having one to two children on average.

[26:01] Now the reasons behind declining birth rates are multifaceted.
Some individuals opt against having having children due to personal choice, while others face biological constraints.
However, a significant cultural shift has made parenthood less appealing than ever before.
An example of this trend is evident in China, according to Darrell, where the fertility rates plummeted drastically fromfour to approximately one child per woman.
Darrell highlighted the limitations of current population models, emphasizing that historical behavioral patterns no longeralign with present trends.
Conventional models fail to capture the deviations in how younger populations are shaping their lives today thisdemographic transition poses formidable economic challenges wealth predominantly rests with older generations whoconsume less than their younger counterparts consequently younger generations face diminishing economic powerimperiling future economic growth additionally innovation and productivity could suffer as a result casting shadows overfuture prosperity.
And in this first part of the conversation with Daryl, it has shed light on the intricate interplay between cultural shifts,demographic patterns, and their far-reaching implications for economies and societies worldwide.
Challenging established notions about population growth and its economic repercussions.
So now let's slip back into the stream with part two of my conversation with Daryl Brady.

[27:28] Music. 

The Trend of Choosing Not to Have Kids

[27:36] You said there were two things where people say, I don't want to have kids and I can't have kids. I can't have kids.
That's that's a fertility problem at another level.
But those who choose, would you say it is a trend and meaning that it's kind of the flavor of the decade or the flavor of thenext score of years?
And do you think that there may be a change at one generation or another?
Other world they say you know what i want to have kids or as you said the mathematics are already playing where there'sa a point where there's no coming back we've crossed some line i think in some countries we've already crossed that line ithink i don't know how japan does it i mean, i don't know how italy does it um you know there's just the median age of thepopulation is 48 in both italy and japan they're already old and unless we figure out another way to produce humanbeings, their reproductive capacity has evaporated.
So their only possibility is through some form of immigration.
And, you know, Japan doesn't like immigrants and Italy has a real problem with them too.
So the Italian population is in decline and that decline will continue to accelerate.
But could there be a change in how people view raising families?
Yeah, there could very well be a change, but it isn't really happening anywhere.
The only places that you can see it are in more religious communities.

[29:02] And the only country that we've seen in the modern era that's actually moved from below replacement rate to abovereplacement rate in a significant way is Israel, and for obvious reasons.
But this is just the prevailing trend.
All of a sudden, are women going to wake wake up tomorrow and say, you know what, I want a family of four, like theydid back in 1960.
Well, maybe they will, but I think based on all the evidence out there, the likelihood is not.

[29:33] So if I sort of, we can get down a little nuts and bolts, why do people choose not to have kids? Or why is that agrowing trend?
Maybe even a majority of people saying, you know what, I have a good life.
I've experienced a lot. I have the financial freedom to do what I want, When I want and kids are just gonna belabor thisprocess I mean, what are some of the reasons that you've heard that why?
Women or just young couples don't want to have kids if we can just call it that and, Because mostly it's because oflifestyle. I mean, that's the main thing.
So the thought experiment I do with people is when somebody says to me, you know, I don't want to have kids.
And they give me the reason. So, you know, sometimes it's climate change.
So, well, you know, if we limit climate change as a problem tomorrow, how big a family would you have?
And it's like, uh, they never thought about it.
Or I would say to somebody, okay, so the cost of children, okay, if we made it free, how many would you have?

[30:32] Because there are countries in which we've done that. Where you're living, it's basically almost free, given all ofthe child care assistance that you get. I mean, the Nordic countries are the model.

[30:44] Yeah, I was just going to say, yeah. But they're the model.
I mean, if you don't think it's good in Norway, you're not going to find a better example of being progressive in terms ofchild care and helping people to raise families anywhere else in the world.
So you guys are at the high end of how most countries would aspire if they want to deal with this.
And you know as well as I do that fertility rate is declining in Norway, maybe not as fast as it is in the rest of Europe.
But the fertility rate in Norway is below replacement rate. And there's no sign that it will any time in the near future goabove.
So if Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark are all below replacement fertility and declining, what hope is there foranybody else?
But places like Canada and the States where they have policies of immigration, and a lot of the times they have the luxuryof bringing in the best people to bolster the numbers even if the native population is not growing.
I mean, how are trends like maybe, I don't know about Australia, but Canada and the States, where they have immigrationpolicies and they're much more open to that than, let's say, some European countries.
Does that give North America an advantage or am I seeing it in two black and white of terms?

Immigration as a Solution and its Cultural Disruption

[31:57] I think you're absolutely right.
It gives Canada and the United States and Australia a huge advantage.

[32:02] Now, the problem is massive immigration is very culturally disruptive.

[32:08] And you're already seeing, you know, a candidate in the United States who wanted to build a wall now talkingabout the blood of the nation being polluted by immigration in the United States with Donald Trump.
I mean, you know, there is reaction to these things. And I mean, even in where you are today, Norway, what the reactionhas been to immigration in the country, certainly in Sweden.
And obviously in Finland, there are – in democratic systems, there are reactions to that level of cultural change that's beenbrought in by immigration. So it only works in certain places.
Yeah, and I guess – And the places where immigrants are coming from are also going through the process of –.

[32:49] Declining fertility declining populations as well i mean the biggest diaspora in the world today is india and they'renow below replacement rate fertility i mean china there's a lot of still you know for a while it was the number one sourceof immigrants to canada no longer, and one of the reasons is because there aren't as many chinese to send, immigration isa young person's game in the median age in china today is 39.

[33:11] Wow that i did not know 39 okay that's why i'm here jason so i mean the chinese population is actually on averageolder than the american population median age in the united states today is 38 what would you say okay so we the trendsare the arithmetic the mathematics the stats are showing unquestionably that there is a declining population growth both indeveloped and um developing countries so what do you believe the technological and environmental impact of theseshrinking numbers means for the for the planet well i think anybody who's concerned about climate or the um the healthof the environment would have to see this as good um fewer people on the face of the earth if you believe that um humanbeings and i think most reasonable people believe this are the source of um destructive pollution in the world, andparticularly the size of our carbon footprint, you probably are happy about this.
I mean, if you're at the World Economic Forum or you're at the UN or whatever, where they celebrate or really focus onclimate change, this is probably going to be one of the things that has the biggest effect.
All good for the climate and the environment, but really, really bad for societies and really, really bad for economies.

[34:34] So you could actually see some societies sort of holding their own, such as maybe North America, if we take intoconsideration the clash of cultures.
And then other nations could actually literally implode and collapse.

[34:54] I'm not an apocalyptic person by nature, but the first stage of this is to recognize what's going on.
And that's why John and I wrote Empty Planet, because the conversation, by the way, Jason, that you and I are havingright now, four years ago when Empty Planet came out, would have been a very different conversation.
I mean, we didn't start into this conversation with, how can you possibly be right and the UN is wrong?
Because there's been such an accumulation of evidence. Anybody who's done their homework to talk about this topicwould know.
That this trend is going in one direction.

[35:36] But still, at the World Economic Forum last year in Davos, there was not one single session on population, not one.
So we have this, I think, prejudice, this blind spot when it comes to what's really going on with the global population thatis going to be, I would describe it as the single biggest issue that is going to affect the future of humanity over the courseof the next 80 years or 70 years it's time to wake up and start having this conversation in a serious way um and uh and andthat's not what that's still i mean as i said the narrative's starting to turn the people who are more informed about this arenow uh starting to talk about what you're talking about which is so what do we do about this what are the effects going tobe rather than saying it can't possibly be happening which was which is what it was back in 2019 when the book firstcame out we've laid out the challenge we've laid out that this is a trend and it's only a growing it's like a snowball down ahill it's just picking up speed and picking up mass so how can we prepare and mitigate for some potential disruptions inthis i mean are there recommendations you would have some things you've seen uh well you know That's where John andI have kind of turned our attention to these days and looking at recommendations and you know There's really kind ofthree different points of view on this.

Recommendations for Addressing the Population Decline

[37:06] There's two that are progressive and one that is conservative because You're gonna hear me writing and saying thisa lot over the space of the next while demography is not just destiny.
It's politics so I think that at some what's happening is that this is now moving to more of a political conversation and I,There's three groups. Two are progressive. One is conservative.

[37:29] One progressive group is the hallelujah. It's about time.

[37:33] We should get our global population down to two billion. That's what the globe can sustain.
Not recognizing, of course, that today we're eight billion and the globe is sustaining pretty reasonably.
But we should get down to two billion. And all of what I'm talking to you about right now should be completelycelebrated. These are the degrowth people.
These are the people who are part of kind of the population zero type movement.
You know, they see nothing but good in any of any of this.
The economic consequences, they don't care because we're focused too much on economic growth and fewer people onthe face of the planet is just going to be good.
What they seem to fail to realize is that two billion, as the population was around the Second World War, two or threebillion is not the same two or three billion today.
The pyramid's completely flipped. The population period's completely flipped, and there's almost no kids.
The population can't reproduce itself, and it's completely dominated by old people.
So it's kind of an interesting fantasy, but beyond the reduction of the numbers, they really haven't given it a lot of thoughtin the environment.
They haven't given it a lot of thought. And then there's a second group, and if that's the radical position, the reasonable,liberal, progressive position is, oh, well, the reason that this is happening, and we even had that bit of that conversationtoday, was essentially market failure.
And market failure as a result of sexism and inequality.

[39:01] So if we just made it easier for women, if we put the right incentives in place so women would not suffer a careerpenalty –, for having kids, and they were able to afford having kids, you know, by either dealing with the houses that theywould raise them in, sort of real estate prices, or the cost of child care, or whatever it is, this would simply fix itself.
And we would get to that neutral, you know, kind of 2.1 level in which the global population just replaces itself.
Except every place that it's been tried, it hasn't really worked.
And you're sitting in one of them.
Like, Like, what else can the government of Norway do?

[39:38] It's very difficult to see what the next incentive system is that you can put in place to make the market workbecause it's a problem of market failure.
So the problem with those guys is that's where everybody wants to be.
That's where the conversation is right now.
And the problem is it's just not really having an effect.

Political Implications of Population Decline and Immigration

[39:57] And then there's the third point, which is the one that is the most distressing, I would say. So if the first one is not,you know, they've got their eyes closed to this, okay, well, you know, their eyes are going to be opened by the facts atsome point.
The second group, market failure, isn't the problem. Well, they're going to wake up a little bit going forward, and maybethey'll come up with some different ideas.
And then there's the third group, which is the conservative group that John and I call neonatalists.
And basically their point of view is all we have to do is go back to the baby boom.
We know what works. So that means women out of the workplace, greater focus on religion.
Greater incentives to families to have large families greater incentives for women to abandon the educational system andand uh and uh start producing kids like their grandmothers did and if we just went back to that then we would haveanother baby boom good luck.

[40:51] Yeah, well, it's like, okay, well, that's the behavior you want.
Maybe not the educational part, but the having more kids is what you want.
But which women are going to go back to that?
I mean, so you've got this dialogue of the deaf that's happening on all of these things in which none of them are reallytalking about anything that would be particularly appealing to the public.
Or if they are talking about something that's appealing, it doesn't work to the level that the people who are the advocatesthink they would, like the people who are in that second group.
You know let's make child care for free how many more kids are you going to have well you know we just reduce childcare costs the government of canada tells us uh down to half of what it was three years ago or whatever it was when theybrought in the uh the program for uh for uh.

[41:34] Child care that the trudeau government put in place and in the in the period of time that it's happened fertility ratesgone from 1.5 to 1.3 so it's a great program for making it easier for women to work but making it easier for women towork doesn't mean that you give them a great incentive to be a mother right so some will but you can just look at thenumbers i mean there's cause and effect so that's this is why it's moving into it's going to move into the world of ofpolitical conversation it's because the issue is going to become more urgent as the facts build up as you're learningprobably through your research uh to have this interview is the is the facts build up and there's going to be a really umvery complicated difficult political political conversation in which the various sides are just starting to form that's going totake place.
And this is going to work itself out, I think, through the political process, because demography is politics.

[42:26] And so do you see, maybe not in all countries, but in certain regions, there is social unrest, however that shows up?

[42:35] Well, I think we're seeing it in some countries, like, for example, Italy right now, where we've just seen agovernment with a pro-natalist policy elected.
We've seen other governments, in Argentina, a government with a pro-natalist policy elected.
So the populist parties of the right, these days, is becoming part of what they talk about. It's a big part of what ViktorOrban talks about.
They don't want immigrants in Hungary. They've nationalized in vitro fertilization and made it a state asset.
If you've had four kids, you no longer pay taxes.

[43:06] Why? Because Hungary, if it can't reverse its fertility decline, is going to disappear.
Serbia, Croatia, all of the former Yugoslavia, all of them are in danger of disappearing because their populations haveevaporated through a combination of almost no fertility, really old populations in terms of median age, but also a diasporathat's left, or the younger population that's left, and they're working in other places in the EU, for example.
So there's, yeah, it's population is going to become a very, very political conversation over the space of the next 20, 30years.

[43:41] I think you made a, I'm so fascinated by, you know, the shifting populations of immigration, you know, over thelast, you know, news cycle, the last three months, you know, there's been a focus on Poland where they say, we don't wantany of these type of immigrants, but we've taken a million Ukrainians and they don't have such a huge cultural clash.
Clash in and then that obviously it helps the the economy in whatever ways but do you do you see because as you saidpart of it is it's the cultural clash when you have one type of uh society that have whole different values or share differentthat have different values and it just clashes and over trickle it be it allows uh the majority of the population to absorb andto understand But when there's like these waves coming over, you can understand how it can bring out the right wing nutjobs out of the woodwork and they create this sort of fermentation between between these two populations, creating justriling people up.
Is there something there that needs to be addressed? I mean, is this a conversation we need to have or is it just toopolitically sensitive?

[44:51] Well, you know, one person's nut job is another person's patriot.
Yeah, not at all. Exactly. Yeah. So I, I, I try not to put any value judgments on this, but as a political scientist, I'mobserving it and I can see it coming.
Just like when 2019 and John and I came out with this book and said, this is where we're headed.
The next thing is we can see where this conversation was headed, which is it's going to become a very politicalconversation and you can see the sides being drawn.
And you've got, as I said before, one group that just celebrates everything about this, the decline of population.
You've got another group that sees it as market failure and they're wrong about that.
And then you've got this third group, which is basically nostalgic and potentially nostalgic in a very destructive way thatwants to move society back and challenge some of the things that have been hard for our rights.
You know, everything for abortion is a great question, issue for this.
So, you know, So the current debate over abortion is really over two things.
It's over the right of a woman to choose and the right of the unborn.
That's been the defining conversation.
But what happens when you bring in the decline of the population?

An Animating Element: Rights of Women and the Unborn

[46:06] Has another element to that. That's something we haven't really dealt with.
Interesting. It's going to bring a whole new character to this conversation.
And there can be an animating element here that isn't about the rights of women, ultimately is about the rights of womenand the rights of the unborn.
But there's a national interest associated now with a certain type of outcome.
That doesn't exist right now. But you can see it coming.
Maybe we've already addressed this, but I'd like just to rewind.
You spoke about certain regions or regions of the world or countries that might buck the trend of declining populations.
Maybe, maybe there are some initiatives and efforts and policies put into place to try to maybe slow things down.
And you mentioned the Nordics or the Scandinavian countries.
From your experience, are there other conversations or other things that we might have to think that go beyond the threeclusters of you're talking about the neonatalists, the degrowth people, and the third group?
Is there something else that can maybe bolster certain initiatives that are not 100% promising, but can help bolster theencouragement of population growth, maybe in certain regions?
Well, the most immediate thing that we're going to have to deal with is the elderly population.

[47:28] So the most obvious and immediate effect we're going to be dealing with is that.
So by 2030, the entire global baby boom, as is defined by, I guess, the North American version of what the baby boom is,is kids born after 1945 up to the early 1960s.
The entire global baby boom is going to be 65 years of age or older by 2030. 30.
By 2045, they're all going to be in their, uh, in their, in their eighties.

Population Change and Aging Issue

[47:59] That life tends to peak just after 80 in terms of longevity and then likelihood you're going to live longer starts todecline so we're going to go through a massive population change just because of those two things what are we doing toget ready for that pardon me because that's the first conversation i think solving the fertility issue is going to be verycomplicated solving the aging issue is the one that's going to hit us hardest first.
So the priority would be how do we solve the aging issue? Pardon me.
So part of it would it be sort of again forgive the ignorance of this question but would we have to talk about wealthdistribution throughout the generations and sort of counterbalancing that so it's not all sitting at the top with the agingpopulation?
Again I know that's very controversial but I guess we just talk theoretically now.
Demography is politics Jason. Jason? This is what I mean.

[48:57] It's going to be a huge, yeah, are we going to have to redistribute income based on generations?
Because the people who are now fueling the rise of this right-wing agenda in many places in the world are not the oldpeople.
They're actually the young people who are not only feeling the pressure of everything that you were talking about before,but are in a situation in which the type of life that they feel, particularly middle-class drivers who feel that they've earned,are not getting access to.
And so they're looking for solutions to that problem, and the solutions of the left aren't necessarily that appealing.

[49:36] And the solutions of the right, which are more nostalgic, saying that you should, you know, you're entitled to thetype of life that you think that you're entitled to because your parents had that kind of life and your grandparents had thatkind of life, that has a certain amount of appeal.
And there's an energy in those movements right now.
So I think, you know, over the space of the next 10 years, and who can say, you know, who can even say beyondtomorrow, but over the next 10 years, that would be the thing I'm looking at.
And a lot of it is going to be directed towards how you deal with this fact that there's young people feeling like they're leftbehind.
And then you've got an older population that's basically sitting on all the wealth in most countries.
Yes, yes. You know, you can see sort of shifting trends here in the Scandinavian countries where there is more of thatpolicy.
And I think that, you know, the idea of social democracy to the extent that the Scandinavians do it, you may see a quickertrend as distribution where they think more so of, I guess, they think about everyone.
It's not so individually driven. But don't get me wrong. It is far from perfect here.
To give you the fertility rate for Norway, which is 1.48.
1.48.

[50:48] Replacement rate for your listeners is 2.1. So it's every woman in a country having at least 2.1 kids.
You can't have 0.1, obviously, but that's a rounding factor for kids that don't make it to adulthood.
By the way, in developing countries, because infant mortality is high, the replacement rate is actually higher.
So a place like India is probably more like 2.3, 2.4, and the Indian fertility now is 2.
But yeah, that's Norway. So whatever the Norway government is doing is probably better than what the Italiangovernment is doing, but not a whole lot better and is really expensive.
That it is. But it's a small population with no national debts.
And they've just, you know, they're sitting pretty with, you know, oil and such. But that's another episode.
We are coming close to the top of the hour. And I appreciate all of your input and such, because I think this is a wake upcall.
But if theoretically you were to write up a follow-up book to Empty Planet, and I think we've talked about certain policiesand strategies you think need to be put into place, such as dealing with the elderly population, the distribution of wealthand such, what else do you think we could do?
What are the conversations we need to have in the next, I don't know, 24 to 36 months at what levels of society?

[52:08] Well, I'm not a policy person, so I don't really have a lot of prescription.
And what I have seen, and by the way, I get asked this question a lot, and the answer is I just don't know.
I mean, if there was a magical solution, I'd certainly be here advocating for it.
I think it's going to be incredibly difficult. I mean, I actually read a recent book.
It was a really good one by a professor in Oslo on this, in which his analysis was, well, you know, we know enough aboutit that we can start getting ready for it.
What we have to do is we have to maybe transfer wealth from certain parts of the economy to other parts of the economyor from population to one or the other.
But we know it's coming, so we can get ready for it.
And my view of that was that in the best of all worlds, that would be true.
So the idea that you wake up to it and you understand that that's what's happening and you have to get ready for it isreasonable.

[52:59] But my view also is that just as what happened between the baby boom to the end of the baby boom was prettymuch unpredictable. It had never happened in human history before.
The idea that young people became consumers, I mean, there was no such thing as youth music before. There was onlymusic.
There was no such thing as things for kids. There was only clothes for kids.
It was just clothes, right?
Youth culture developed. And just as it was unpredictable on the way up, going up, the way going down is like fallingdown a mountain in the dark. work.
It's going to be really complicated and we just don't know.
So I'm not as sanguine about what the progress is going to be on this.
So I think that rather than suggesting a whole bunch of policy options that I've thought of, I prefer just to wake people upto the fact that it's going on and whoever is very creative on policy should be starting to think about it.
And a place that I I would be starting would be anything that has to do with the elderly, not just as dependents, but asconsumers.
The better way to get people to unlock their wealth is to make things for them so they can participate in the economyagain, which will help to spur economic growth.

[54:11] But if you look at advertising, I'm sure in Norway today, and take a look and see how many ads actually feature oldpeople as mainstream consumers, I think that would probably be a very small number.
So I think that there's a lot of things that have to change in terms of the way that the private sector in particular looks atthe population, and I talk to clients about this at Ipsos all the time.
Open up your mind to what's actually happening in the population, and it's not what your marketing agency is telling youabout kids.
I'll give you an example of this. Restaurants.

[54:45] Um, you know, everybody wants to create the new restaurant for kids, right?
If you know, the, the place where young people are going to go gather and have a great time and they're not friendlyplaces for older people.
So my advice to anybody with a restaurant is turn down the music, turn up the lights, open up the front door so I can getmy mobility device in, make sure that I can actually sit at a table rather than having to scrunch into some banquette thatit's not set up for me need to sit in and put some things on the menu that I actually understand.

[55:17] And maybe I'll come to your restaurant. Or I sat through a presentation a few weeks ago in which it was aboutsports marketing, in which they were talking about the fact that young people don't watch soccer or ice hockey or any typeof professional sports the way that previous generations did.
So what we have to to do is we have to change everything about the broadcast in order to attract them so we have toincrease the uh you know the snack ability of the items in it uh we have to increase gambling opportunities we have to doall this kind of stuff and i'm thinking yeah i can sort of get that but there isn't as many young people as you think and theydon't have as much money as you think, what are you doing for the old people who already have the habit of watchingsports are you going to wreck the broadcast for them because there's a danger you're going to do that So the minute thatyou start laying out the population realities to people who are in this business, they realize that the technology may be2023-24, but the population of 2023-2024 is not the population of 1964.
But they haven't woken up to that.

[56:26] That is a very salient point. Well, Daryl, thank you very much for your time today.
I really appreciate an hour, you know, a busy man such as yourself to have such a, for me, an insightful and eye-openingquestion.
And I think this speaks to a lot of what this podcast tries to, you know, talk about is resilience.
And I think with declining population and everything that means, I think, as you said, it starts with conversations. It startswith policies.
It starts about prioritizing and having these things. And it could be at such a pragmatic level as, okay, what do we do in arestaurant?
To attract more people, attract the people who have money, who can spend so we can thrive.
So I thank you very much for your time today. No, you've got a talent for this.
I thought that was really, I thought that was really, really good.
Thank you, Daryl. Thanks for your time. Have a great weekend. See you from Canada.

[57:19] Music. 

Standing at a Crossroads: The Importance of Population Dynamics

[57:25] As we wrap up this eye-opening chat with Daryl Bricker about the wild ride of global population changes, itbecomes crystal clear we're standing at a crossroads that demands our full attention.
We've peeled back the layers and realized we're in the midst of a critical moment, one that slipped under the radar, a blindspot in our collective awareness.
Daryl rightly points out that the destiny isn't a given in our democracy, it's a result of the policies we shape and thechoices we make.
Our conversation unveiled three distinct groups with different ideologies on managing population dynamics.

[58:00] There's a faction fixated on reducing global numbers drastically, believing fewer people equate to a better future.
Yet the historical population spread has inverted, leading to an imbalance where fewer young people support anoverweighted population of seniors. years.
Another group seeks solutions through economic incentives, striving to make having children more viable throughpolicies like affordable child care.
They believe economic stimulation and support for child rearing can mitigate this demographic challenge.
However, perhaps the most contentious group advocates regressive measures, longing for a return to antiquated societalnorms.
Their proposals aim to discourage education and and relegate women back to traditional roles, veering towards policiesthat hinder progress and inclusivity.
It's evident that amidst this nuanced landscape of perspectives, the path forward demands careful consideration andthoughtful policymaking.
The solutions aren't singular. They must be inclusive, respect individual choices, and forward thinking to ensure asustainable and thriving future.

[59:08] You know, as Daryl said, our collective future hinges on navigating this demographic evolution with wisdom, withempathy, and a commitment to progress for all.
So folks, if this has triggered your curiosity or intrigue, I highly encourage you to pick up Daryl's book, Empty Planet,The Shock of Global Population Decline.
I'd like to also send you a personal thank you, Daryl, for your time and sharing your expertise, your knowledge, and yourinsights.
I find it an eye-opener, this conversation.
It was so completely counterintuitive to me. when I first began researching for this interview.
And it's only encouraged me further to do more research and to jump down that rabbit hole to discover more.
So thank you. Thank you very much, Daryl. And a personal thank you to our mutual friend, Jim Gifford, who made theintroductions.
Well, folks, thank you for joining me for another episode. And until next week, the next time we have this conversation,keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak soon.

[1:00:07] Music.