Covid 19 is one factor in the population's demographic emergency
Since 1960, 5 generations have had the ability to choose to have a family or not, the freedom of choice has significant implications for our future as a species. He's why...
Covid, Brexit and family planning have contributed to a 'reverse tsunami effect' on our society. Go back to my grandparents, from the Victorian and Edwardian eras and they usually came from families of anything from 5 + children from 2 parents, some were from 11 or 13 children families which was not uncommon.
Years ago, in a job I was in, the organisation found recruitment a problem, because the area had high housing costs and was not attracting the 20-35 year olds the business needed. This was the 1990s and the lack of humans to jobs is now becoming a real issue, even with the spread of automation. I conducted a straw poll about 10 years ago as an exercise of people I was at school with, I found that at least half had not had a family.
An analytical funnel graph - we can use this shape to
easily illustrate the human generational declines by generation, below
In the above graph we can show the top blue area as the 1900-1920 generation, where many children in a family were possible. Green is the 1940's when due to the second world war, families were mostly 2 children. The 1950's and into the 1960's can be the orange and yellow bands, where the same 2 children average prevailed.
The grey last band is more transparent and shows how this era to the present day has changed the game. Here we see how many have chosen to avoid producing children for many reasons - they like their lifestyle, they like the freedom, they have exciting careers, environmental reasons and other reasons including housing costs.
In China, the 1 child policy has lead to 150 million males who will never marry or have a woman partner because males are usually first born and without a possible female as a second child, the deficit is obvious - 4 old people now rely on 1 young person.
The problem here is when the 1 does not reproduce and in time the recession in the nation's replacement people can lead to unviability. In China's case this will take many years.
For Britain, many EU citizens returned home, where wages have risen markedly in thrown countries since they came to Britain to live and work. Changes in immigration have deterred some new arrivals. The underlying problem is a general ageing working population.
A place I know has about 12 staff, 4 are under 40, the rest are over 45, most over 50 in this bracket. Recently, they advertised a job, it attracted over 30 applicants, 5 were invited to an interview and only 1 responded to that invitation. This is the second time they advertised the same job. 5 years ago the situation was different.
In the UK since 1970 as a general datum point, successive young people not having families and 'replacing' at the least themselves has led to the UK having a reported less than 2 children per generation. Extrapolate this out ver 4 or more generations and you have a problem.
Automation has taken many jobs since 1960, but similarly, we are now seeing a population decline. A local rural primary school in my area has been under threat of closure for 15 years as the roll falls annually with few new pupils. You only have to see the empty seats on the small school bus going by to see how fragile the viability of that school is. Within 10 years I see this school closing due to lack of numbers.
This is worrying because these people are our future, if this pattern is repeated across the nation, we are in trouble. Obesity, other health issues like Covid, lack of population etc will all cull people, but without new people growing and replacing themselves, we are facing an uncertain future.
Automation is taking what were exclusive job roles - accountants, tax experts, solicitors as well as hitting the lower skilled and manual workers roles. But there is demand in some other jobs. An accountancy job attracted 200 + applicants, a social media role in the same company none.
The reverse Tsunami I talked about is coming - this is when the people 'wave' starts to fall back on itself, a situation I have identified with this term some years ago, the old fabric and structure collapses back on itself because the structure that should be behind it (people) is not there anymore.
We need to rethink our whole future as a species as a consequence!
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