Why are the populations of developed countries stagnant?
Malthus's theory of population may be correct at a certain stage of human development, but it does not correspond to the advanced stage of human development, and a large number of facts can prove Malthus's wrongness. The population of Europe as a whole has come to a standstill, North America has basically stopped growing if immigration is deducted, and Australia and New Zealand in Oceania have basically stopped population growth, all of which are Caucasian people who believe in God.
What about the yellow race?Japan's population growth, which has long been a developed country, has begun to decline, and Japanese culture is deeply influenced by Confucianism, which is different from the Western culture of God, but the population growth will still stop. Korean culture is also deeply influenced by Confucianism, and has moved towards developed countries, where young people have fewer children, and population growth has entered a slow period, and negative population growth will come soon. The culture, ethnicity, and ethnicity of Taiwan's region are the same as those of the mainland, but because it developed several decades earlier than the mainland, Taiwan's population growth rate has also dropped significantly, and it will not be long before Taiwan's population growth will be negative. It seems that the idea that the population will continue to grow indefinitely does not make sense.
In the barbaric era, population growth was extremely slow, hunger and disease curbed population growth, and eventually the population size would be adapted to the productivity and natural conditions of the time. People determine the size of the population by fighting each other or by starvation and disease. A little more in the technology of life and production, a greater number of people fed by nature, and soon the population will reach a new state of saturation, and hunger and disease and war will continue, and so on. It was not until the 20th century that mankind finally found a civilized solution to the unrestrained growth of the population, not by hunger, disease, or war. Nor is it solved by the compulsory family planning policy, and certainly not by the propaganda of family planning. Rather, unconsciously, it was solved by technology.
The emergence of various contraceptive technologies is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for addressing the unrestricted growth of the population. The production of various contraceptive technologies can satisfy human fertility desires and prompt people to have children on demand. In the past, many families had several children, some of whom were forced to give birth because there were no contraceptive techniques in the past, which could not meet people's needs. The development and popularization of contraceptive technology has made it possible for people to have children on demand. In the case of on-demand childbearing, people's needs for raising children are gradually changing with the development of society. As things stand, the need for raising children is gradually decreasing.
Raising children is blissful and hectic, and raising children brings more happiness than the effort put in. When people are relatively poor, life is monotonous and boring, and there are fewer choices of happiness, and people choose to achieve happiness by raising offspring. With the development of society, people can obtain more and more areas of happiness, and people's energy and time are limited, in order to obtain other colorful happiness, people will shift the time and energy that used to obtain happiness through raising offspring, and shift to those content that can get more happiness or more attractive content, the number of children needs will be less, and the children supported by each family will be less. In today's developed countries, where the average family has less than two children, the total population is shrinking.
The number of children is also in line with economic principles, the happiness or harvest obtained by a family raising children is related to the number of children, and the relationship between the number of children raised and the happiness or harvest of parents is in line with the law of marginal decline.
If the total amount of happiness or harvest brought to the family by the first child of a family is 10, and the effort or cost is 5, then the family's harvest is 10 minus 5 equals 5. The total amount of happiness or harvest that the family brings to having a second child will be less than 10, if it is 8, and if the effort or cost remains the same, it will still be 5 (the effort or cost will be reduced a little due to business proficiency). Then the gain is 8 minus 5 to get 3. The third child of the family will bring less happiness or harvest in the process of parenting, let's say 5!The effort or cost is about the same as the two above, so it's still 5!In the end, the happiness or harvest is 5 minus 5 to get zero, and the family will face the question of whether to have this child. Probably, the family would not have had a fourth child, if there were various contraceptive techniques. If the opportunity cost is taken into account, the family may not even have a second child, because the gain or happiness gained by doing other things in the same time may be greater, and as a self-interested person, of course, they will choose to feel greater gain or happiness.
When human beings are poor, there are fewer other things to be happy or gained, and less happiness or harvest is achieved through other things, and in economic terms, the opportunity cost is lower, and people choose to raise more offspring. (When humanity was poor, if there were various contraceptive techniques.) ）
As society develops, people can do more and more, and there is more and more happiness or harvest that can be obtained in other things, that is, the opportunity cost of raising children is getting higher and higher. And the amount of happiness or harvest that people get by raising their offspring is determined by human instinct. Human instincts have changed so little in just a few hundred years that they can be considered constant. The technology for raising offspring is also advancing, and it is indeed becoming more convenient, but not as fast as in other fields. As a result, the need for childcare is gradually decreasing, a trend that is already common in developed countries.
Although people's hobbies are different, and although each family's demand for children is also different, there is a certain trend in general. The previous argument did not take into account the evolutionary factors of human beings, and if evolution and heredity were taken into account, it might be possible to reverse the shrinking population of developed countries, but the changes caused by evolution seem to be relatively slow.
If China does not carry out family planning, as long as the economy develops to a certain stage, the number of births among its citizens will naturally fall, and there is no need to do anything more. This stage is not unattainable, and Taiwan, China, reached this economic level in the 90s of the 20th century. If China had seriously started to develop its economy in 1949, instead of engaging in public-private partnerships, continuing to allow private enterprises to develop freely and carrying out the construction of the rule of law, Chinese mainland would have realized the modernization of childbirth in the 90s of the 20th century. By now China will become a superpower, which should be at least twice the GDP of the United States, and the Chinese population may be around 1.5 billion.
For China, which has now taken a detour, the level of economic development in Chinese mainland after 2010 has reached that stage, that is, without the birth policy, the fertility rate of its own people can drop to a level where the population no longer grows, which is the so-called fertility modernization.