Caesar Augustus became the first Roman Emperor in 27 BC. Augustus is widely regarded as one of Rome’s most important leaders. His reign began the 200-year pax romana.
The Roman Empire thrived in this period because of its excellent transportation and sewer infrastructure, which supported densely populated cities. Rome alone had an estimated 1 million residents.
These population centers were susceptible to disease, epidemics and lead poisoning. (Lead was used commonly in eating utensils and food and beverages), resulting in high infant mortality and a low life expectancy (maximum of 33).
The Roman Empire struggled to maintain its high birth rate above the replacement rate. Augustus gave tax breaks to large families, cracked down on adultery and abortion, believing that this was the cause of the decline in population. Too many men were spending their time with prostitutes, concubines, and having nothing left for their wives.
Despite government efforts, the birth rate has never been significantly increased.
After the Pax Romana ended, plague, war and low birthrates decimated Rome’s population. The power structure shifted from Rome to the newer Constantinople. Rome’s population never recovered. It fell from 1,000,000 in the late 2nd century to only 30,000 by 600AD.
Humans draw analogies and parallels across time and space to better understand our world. No two Western civilizations have drawn more comparisons than Rome and the United States of America.
Both nations enjoyed unprecedented peace and explosions of wealth, but today the US is facing the same problem that Rome faced 2,000 years ago – falling birth rates.
Hemingway wrote this timeless exchange in The Sun Also Rises:
Bill asked, “How did you become bankrupt?” Mike replied, “Two different ways.” “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
The real existential danger, which is the declining birth rate, will be like Mike’s bankruptcy. It will happen slowly, then suddenly .
Let me demonstrate some basic arithmetic.
The average population replacement rate for a developed nation is 2.1 children. In the US, the total fertility rate ( , which measures the number of children born to each woman at a given age if they all lived to the end and had children) is currently 1.84. This means ( assuming this rate) that every 100 parents will have 92 children, and 85 grand-children. Remember that rates have been steadily declining over the years.
The baby market is a bear one.
It’s not just a US issue. All over the world, we’re seeing this trend of low fertility rates.
- South Korea:
- Spain: 1.29
- Japan: 1.39
- China: 1.45
- Austria: 1.51
- Canada: 1.57
- Germany: 1.58
- United Kingdom:
- Sweden: 1.67
You might now be wondering, “Well, declining birth rates may sound scary, but who really cares?” Why does it matter?
It doesn’t really matter at the individual level. No one cares if I have no kids! You are entitled to this opinion.
Katie Gatti Tassin, in her article Everything’s a Pyramid Scheme recently published, highlighted a logical error within the “retirement early” movement.
Since I was a young person, I have been pointing out that financial independence and retirement are not possible at scale because the economic system would stop working. The workforce would shrink to just those below 35 years old if every person in their 30s and 40s achieved financial independence. This would remove roughly 66% or 44 million people from the labor force.
There’s also a funny contradiction in the system. If 44 million people of working age retired and stopped most discretionary expenditures, corporate profits would plummet, the stock exchange would grind to a stop, and the returns needed to support early retirements would disappear, forcing everyone to return to work.
Katie Gatti Tassin
In essence, early retirement works for individuals but not at scale, because the economy would crash without enough workers. Financially Independent Retire Early (FIRE), a movement that encourages early retirement, only works if the majority of people do not FIRE.
Back to the babies.
Our advanced and prosperous societies are so wealthy and advanced because of the growing population. This, combined with technological advances, has driven economies to grow and wealth creation.
Our advanced and wealthy societies now have systems in place that enable people to retire and enjoy their golden years with relative ease, decadence, and comfort, thanks to personal savings/investments, and social safety networks.
The tax payers , or workers, are the ones who pay for these social safety nets. Since the Industrial Revolution, our workforce has steadily increased.
Now that people are having less children, there will be fewer workers in the future. When life expectancy is higher than ever, but birth rates are lower and everyone wants to retire in time… do you get where I’m coming from? The math does not add up.
The same thing was said by Katie to show the absurdity of individualism .
It’s not that I’m a doomer, but I feel like we are about to reach the top of the first ascent of a rollercoaster.
What is the appearance of the descent? I don’t really know because we haven’t seen a population decline of this magnitude in modern times. But I imagine that it would look like:
- Social programs we have taken for granted in the past will not be possible.
- After the reform of pensions in France, you can already see protests about it.
- As population declines, so will stock and real estate market values.
After considering Why declining rates of birth are important, I have another question. Given the risks associated with such declines, why do we still see them in developed countries today?
Why don’t we have more babies, when the problem is so obvious?
I have some hypotheses.
According to the US Department of Health & Human Services, the average family would have to spend $16,000 annually to cover childcare costs. Half of US households earn less than $70,000 a year. It’s an expensive amount of money to spend on raising a child each year.
The perceived cost for childcare increases exponentially based on the social group. You and your spouse are high earners, earning more than $200k per year.
You want your child to go to a private middle-school to increase their chances of getting into an elite boarding school, which will ensure that they get a place in an Ivy League University and a job on Wall Street.
Will they play sports, take music lessons, eat organic food and drive a nice vehicle?
This is going to cost much more than $16,000 a year.
Even those with high incomes hesitate to have kids because they aren’t sure if they will be able to afford the lifestyle they want for their children.
2) Widespread contraceptives.
Silphium was discovered by ancient Greeks, Romans and other cultures thousands of years ago. Silphium was used for a variety of medical purposes, but its most famous use was as a contraceptive. Ingesting a dose the size of a chickpea prevented pregnancy.
Silphium had only one major problem: It could only be grown on a small strip of fertile soil in eastern Libya today. The Romans were so in love with Silphium that they used it excessively, driving it to extinction.
The birth control pill was introduced in 1950 after Silphium disappeared.
First time in 2000 years, women were able to decide when and whether they wanted children. If we can control the birthing process to a great extent, then the number unplanned pregnancies and total pregnancy will also likely decrease.
3) No matter what their gender, everyone is focused on their career.
In the past, it was common for men to go to the office while their wives looked after the home and/or the children. What about now? But now? Kids can be a real hindrance to climbing the corporate ladder.
Ambitious men and women do not want their careers to be derailed by children, nor do they want to give up the fast track of a partner in order to become stay-at home dads for a few years. Both sexes wait to have children until they reach a certain level of success in their careers. The clock never stops ticking. Every year you spend chasing papers is one year that you don’t spend chasing around two-year olds.
4) Bored Parent Hypothesis.
I’ve got this half-baked notion that the number of kids one has is directly related to how many fun/interesting activities they have available. You don’t have much to do if you are a 20 something living in an underdeveloped country on a few dollars per day, besides making your own genetic replicas.
If you’re in a first-world, developed country in 2023, there are many ways to pass the time. doesn’t include making babies. You will be able to enjoy a luxury that was previously unavailable to our ancestors. relax with your friends. Travel for fun, learn a new language, or engage in the strange modern phenomenon of “hobbies”.
You can choose.
We know, subconsciously, that having children marks the end of a period of great freedom and brings a lot of responsibility. It’s the worst of all first world problems, but some young people today in developed countries are reluctant to have children because they have so many fun things to do without them.
I am a young guy in a developed nation who believes there are a lot of things to do that don’t require having children.
The average age at first marriage is steadily rising, while the birth rate has steadily declined. The two numbers are linked: If you marry later, you have less time for children.
What is it? A biological clock?
Why are people marrying later? The internet gives us an almost infinite number of possible partners.
In the past, a guy would like a girl and if the girl liked him, the parents would arrange the marriage, without consulting their children . Then the guy and the girl got married and had kids.
But now, guy likes girl, girl likes guy, guy refuses to show how much he likes girl while girl plays hard-to-get to keep guy interested, and guy and girl enter a 4-month relationship-adjacent purgatory where they go on dates and sleep together but don’t acknowledge the relationship itself until one party inevitably stops talking to the other party to see what else is out there, and then the whole cycle repeats.
The “dating pool” is so large that everyone can be replaced. Rather than enduring a minor inconvenience in a relationship, one could use it as an excuse to find someone “better.”
The dating cycle can go on for years, as we delay our commitment to each other and have children.
Ironically, it was our economic prosperity which created the conditions for this to unravel.
- It’s expensive for kids to get ahead because of the desire to “get ahead”.
- The medical advances have enabled us to be strategic with our pregnancies
- Many people have put off having kids to pursue previously unavailable career opportunities.
- We have a wealth of entertainment options that do not require children.
- The internet has turned the entire world into a dating pool. This makes commitment near impossible.
Now we are faced with a really strange Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Anyone can put off having children in order to take advantage of our abundance. Their world will still function perfectly. If each person fails to have children soon, then the entire system will grind to a stop. Everyone will only benefit if everyone has more children.
Could society be just a big pyramid scheme?
