A declining birth rate is beneficial, by John Engelman
Americans Aren’t Making Babies, and That’s Bad for the Economy, by Peter Coy
[After complaining that the U.S. birthrate is declining, Peter Coy explains why he thinks this is unfortunate.]
smaller families become the social norm; and low population growth reduces economic growth...
For the economy, fewer future workers will entail a bigger burden on
each one to support future retirees. Every two-tenths decline in the
total fertility rate (that is, two fewer children per 10 women)
necessitates an increase in the Social Security payroll tax of about 0.4
percentage point, according to a table in the 2020 annual report of the trustees of the Social Security trust funds.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/coronavirus-pandemic-americans-aren-t-making-babies-in-crisis
The best refutation to this argument is the example of Japan. In Japan the population is gradually declining by about 0.27% a year.
The life expectancy at birth is 86 years. This is the second highest in the world.
Nevertheless, elderly people in Japan are well cared for.
On
page 41 of A Farewell to Alms: A brief Economic History of the World, Professor of Economics at UC-Davis Gregory Clark has a chart that demonstrates that from 1300 to
1450 real wages for English laborers more than doubled. The reason was
not an increase in productivity or a strong labor movement. The reason
was that during the fourteenth century bubonic plague had killed an
estimated half of the English population. With fewer people competing
for jobs, wages increased. With fewer people buying stuff, prices
declined.
But it did not last. With a higher standard of living more English got married. They got married earlier. They had more children. When the English population rose to what it had been before the bubonic plague epidemic, real wages declined to nearly what they had been in 1300.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RF7DRN09TU6IS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0691121354
A growing population might increase gross domestic product (GDP). Even this is uncertain. Per capita GDP will not increase unless GDP is increasing even more for reasons unrelated to population growth. This is not computer science. When other factors are constant, more people mean that there is less of everything good to go around; fewer people mean that there is more of everything good to go around.
The relationship between population and average standard of living can be described with an equation:
(natural resources x level of technology) / human population = average standard of living
On the other hand, population growth benefits the rich. More job applicants mean lower wages. More people looking for places to live mean higher rents.
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