A Barometer Of Despair

I just read an interesting article that addresses something that's been on my mind all during the lockdowns:

Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: "It's a crisis"

The article works off an interview with a USC professor who studies demographic trends, Dowell Myers. While most experts expected the lockdowns to lead to a baby boom--nothing else to do, when you're shut up at home. That didn't happen. 

New data is confirming [that] a baby boom that some doctors expected was actually a "baby bust." Health departments in more than two dozen states provided records to CBS News, showing a 7% drop in births in December — nine months after the first lockdowns began. 

Researchers say it continues a much bigger plunge in fertility in recent decades.

The reason?

It’s not the main reason births have declined during the pandemic, but social distancing doesn’t exactly lend itself to romance.

No, the main reason seems to be an increase in anxiety and insecurity--financial concerns.

China's Population Woes

While China currently looks to be taking over the world, it faces serious problems. For right now, the PRC's economy is slowing significantly. But in the longer term the country looks to be caught in the classic ‘middle income trap’, in which the population grows old before the country becomes rich. 

Now comes news that China is poised to move into long term population decline, with nearly a third of its population above working age and new births plummeting. Overall, new births were down 15% from 2019, while in some regions the decline was as much as 30%. China lacks a true social security net and has relied on the younger generation to support the elderly, but this system will become increasingly strained as the population continues to age rapidly--and to shrink. For more specifics:

China population: Tumbling regional birth rates signal scale of country's ageing crisis

Note well--this isn't simply a 'problem'. It's a crisis for the economy and for the social fabric of the country.

The second half of the article goes into the implications of this crisis, beginning with a quote from an official at a government supported population think tank: